Penn & Teller: Fool Us is a TV talent show that is filmed in front of a live audience (or, virtual audience during the pandemic). Oh, and we can't forget to mention that Penn and Teller are there too -- they're the judges!

During each episode, four magicians perform a magic act for Penn & Teller which, at the end of each act the magician-comedian duo try to deduce how the trick was done. In very articulate speech, Penn -- as Teller remains characteristically silent -- commends the magician on a job well done. If the magic act fooled Penn & Teller, they win a sweet Fool Us trophy and a trip to Vegas to be the opening act for Penn & Teller's show!

I want my opinions below to reflect those of a spectator who just saw a performance live. To achieve this, I've only watched this episode once. In real time - no pausing. No slow motion. Once through, with commercials and with my kids enjoying it with me too. Did I remember everything I saw? Did I see everything that happened? Do I remember the exact words that were said? Maybe, but likely not -- which means if I over-portray an effect below then it was just that great of a trick. If I under-portray it, well, yeah. So let's see what this episode's got in store for us!

Episode Recap

What a fun night of magic. We got a taste of interactive mentalism, milk, cards with expletives, and even some sword action! Did I mention the milk?

The fooler of the night's episode was Helen Coghlan. While all of the night's acts were good, her act (the one with the milk =P), was just pure magic. Her presentation was straightforward. She told you what she was doing, or not doing. And then, it happened... or didn't happen?! The act made you question the possibility of things, as did some parts of the other routines too. Keep reading below for all of the details!

Yann Yuro

Yann Yuro, mind hacker, professional liar, and inventor of the internet! At least, according to his Instagram profile (@yann_yuro). His act's intro was pretty neat and also set up the stage for his act which was, of course, mentalism.

He started off the routine by handing Alyson a large envelope with a prediction inside. Then, Yann showed 5 different cartoon pictures and had Alyson assign a number to each. He gave fun commentary on each selection and then finally asked Alyson to open the envelope... and it was empty?!

An assistant ran from off-stage to hand the papers and he quipped to just "edit it out", which was pretty hilarious. Unfortunately, the papers weren't correct! But, that fit into his routine - "to err is to human!"

Continuing the routine, he flipped around each picture and it spelled out the word "HUMAN". What a really nice routine and excellent presentation!

While I didn't predict the word "HUMAN", I did expect the ending to be revealed on the back of the pictures. As he turned them around, the lighting on the stage immediately revealed to me exactly how it was done. While I don't know if it was because of the camera angles or not, Penn's coded message said the same. While he didn't fool them, it was a pleasure to watch.

Helen Coghlan

Ah, Helen Coghlan -- do we need an introduction for her? She's only been on Fool Us four times prior to this one, and fooled Penn & Teller all four of those times! Her father is Arther Coghlan, arthurcoghlan.com, and together they've been showing off magic and illusions that stun all of their audiences. She's said that he dad builds the routines and she comes on to perform them for Penn & Teller.

Helen started off by letting them know that she's going to go full circle and use milk like she did the first time she fooled them. She showed off an empty glass and then put it in between two planks of wood, then filled it with milk. Pausing on that one, she flipped over to another table on the stage and said she's going to do a second trick first. She claimed she'll be changing the rules and if one of the two tricks fool them, she wins!

Showing a steel pitcher and a pail, she visually poured milk from the pail into the pitcher and said that it didn't actually happen. To prove it, she again visually poured the milk from the pitcher back into the pail... and then showed that it was impossible to have happened because the pitcher didn't have a bottom! It was completely hollow, end-to-end!

Strolling back over to the glass of milk, she topped it off and then put two more planks of wood around it, fully surrounding the sides. She took a metal rod and inserted it through a hole in the planks which pierced the glass of milk in between. I was a little skeptic at first, but the camera panned to a top-down view and showed the glass of milk with a rod through it! She removed the rod and planks and the glass was full of milk! Holy smokes!!!

Penn had some pretty color commentary about her changing the rules on them. He went on and on for about a solid 2 minutes. He ended it with shouting "You Fooled Us!" -- you'd need to watch it to see her reaction, it was great!

Oh, "four fools and counting" -- now I see where the name of the episode came from =]

Jason Michaels

Jason's a magician, with Tourette's! I had to explain this to my kids because they didn't know what it was and all they took away from it was that he says bad words -- go figure. But that aside, Jason has found that, through magic, he's able to keep his syndrome at bay and help spread joy to others. There's a lot more info available at jasonmichaelsmagic.com.

Jason performed a fun card trick using a deck of alphabet cards. He aimed to spell different words but, channeling his Tourette's, the cards always spelled obscenities. It was a really funny presentation, but the two big magical points of the routine were the deck changing from shuffled order to perfect alphabetical order, and then at the end a stack of four cards changing from "hell" into "damn". What's fun about that is that both times, it was supposed to be "fool".

Penn's coded message was really praising, both for the comedy and presentation. He didn't quite fool them, but it was a fun routine nonetheless.

Alexander Boyce

Alex is a magician who, just by looking at his Instagram account (@boycealex), has gotten around to some really cool gigs.  He's a corporate and party magician by profession, and a performer at Speakeasy Magick.

Alex brought out Alyson to assist and kept asking fun questions like "did you bring n antique, 5 inch miniature sword and an ornate mahogany display with you?" and "did you bring a bell?" Of course, Alyson didn't have any but that was okay, he had all of the props necessary.

With all of the props in place, he borrowed a ring from Alyson and vanished it inside a wooden box. Then, the ring was found skewered on the sword that was held in place on a stand, under a cloth bag!

He didn't fool the magical duo, though he did technically fool me. I say technically because I can't explain how it's done; however, I had made a guess about it based on what I saw on the screen and the guess aligned with Penn's coded message of a "Vegas tilt." No idea if there's actually a magic term that's expressed that way, but the tilt was pretty visible on screen.

I enjoyed the performance though. It was different than a lot of the other acts that you see. Maybe because of the very different props!

Penn & Teller ended the show with "Pluma Y Cajero" and started the whole skit off letting us know that they simply bought someone else's trick. They bought it from a magician named Woody, from Spain, and they paid him $784 for it!

$784, the most we've ever spent on a trick.

The trick came in a big envelope and was a giant instruction book, all in Spanish. Penn knew some Spanish, so he opted to translate it and perform it on the fly. Also in the envelope was a tiny red handkerchief and a spoon.

Reading the instructions, Penn and Teller stretched the tiny red handkerchief to be quite large, large enough to make a giant monkey appear! And what was the spoon for? For the bowl of soup, that appeared next!

Unfortunately, Penn realized that the second half of the instructions were all in English and he had been translating wrong! It wasn't supposed to be a monkey. Rather, he was supposed to tie a knot in the handkerchief, blow on it, and make it disappear!

The whole routine was a perfect Penn and Teller one, so happy to have seen it!

Takeaways

What a night, what a night. Of the guests, Helen was my favorite performance, hands down. It's routines like that that make me not want to branch out beyond card magic too much so that the mystery stays! Then again, if guys like Penn & Teller can still be amazed and fooled by it, maybe learning more won't hurt as bad as I think. Speaking of the duo though, their finale performance was my favorite out of all from the episode. They went big, and it paid off really, really well!

Either way, I'm excited for the next round of magic!

To watch this full episode, check it out here, on the CW!

Today I want to share with you a tutorial for a quick little routine I filmed and posted on Instagram a few weeks ago. The routine is of the "card to impossible location" genre, specifically to under the tuck box.

Here's my video of the routine, a solo performance from my perspective:

Card Under Box

There are plenty of variations of this routine and I'm sure something similar exists. I came up with this when playing with the new Workers deck by False Anchors and seeing the neat features it has hidden within it. It is a quick routine that, when using the same setup, allows a hands-off reveal.

Effect

The performer takes a Joker from the deck and places it under the card box on the table. The spectator selects a card from the deck which then visually disappears. Showing that the card is no longer in the deck, with a glance from the performer the spectator's attention is drawn to the card on the table. Flipping it over reveals their selection!

Setup

The following is my setup using the Workers deck. You can adjust accordingly if you're using a different deck.

• A duplicate of the selection, in this case the 7 of Hearts, face-down on top of the deck
• A Joker face-down in the 2nd position of the deck (below the 7 of hearts)
• A pencil mark in the upper-left corner of the other 7 of hearts which is placed in the middle of the deck

Step-by-Step

Begin by giving the deck a false shuffle.

Perform a double lift to show the Joker. Turn the Joker (double) face down on top of the deck and casually thumb off the top card (7 of Hearts) face down onto the table. Place the deck box, a glass, or anything really on top of the card. Leave at least half of the card visible so it's not entirely "out of sight."

Feel free to give the deck a shuffle at this point, or not. For this routine I tend to avoid it because the upcoming force feels pretty fair.

Here you will Classic Force the pencil-dot card. Your first false shuffle should have kept it in the middle where you roughly know its location. Begin spreading the deck between your hands for the spectator to select a card. When you start the spread, you can keep eye contact with the spectator or look around with the audience. Once you're getting closer to where you know the force card to be, look down towards the spread which will also psychologically pull the spectator's eyes there (if they weren't already). Once you've spotted the pencil dot, you should be able to complete the force.

Have the spectator remove the card from the deck and show the card around. Simultaneously, after closing the spread, Top Palm the top card of the deck in your right hand.

Request the spectator also show you the card and to place it face up onto the deck.

Using any method you'd like, "vanish" the selection by placing the palmed card on top of it. Spread the deck, careful not to reveal the face up selection at the top, to show that it's really gone.

Direct your gaze down to the card that's been sitting on the table this whole time and have the spectator turn it over.

Notes

• Joker Discrepancy:
  • By starting with a shuffle and then the top card happens to be a Joker may feel like a bit of a discrepancy. It hasn't been an issue whenever I've performed it, often overshadowed by the other events that take place. However, you can alleviate this by having the Joker start in the middle of the deck and going through the deck, face-up in front of the spectator, to "find the Joker". Performing a Top Change before placing it on the table will leave you in the proper setup -- then you can do a false shuffle before having the spectator select a card.
• Alternatives to using the Classic Force:
  • If you start with the force card on the bottom of the deck, you can perform a Hindu Shuffle force. Or, get a break above the card on the bottom and swing cut (or any cut of your preference) the deck so that the force card is in the middle and you have a break above it. Then, you can use a Dribble or Riffle Force.
• Card Vanish:
  • An alternative to a Top Palm is to use your left hand fingers to push the bottom card into your right hand's palm when squaring the deck. This is the method I used in the video, but not what I tend to use in real life, because it's less telling on video. In real life, I Top Palm all day!
  • If you have a card pre-palmed like explained above, there are many ways you can "vanish" the face-up card on the deck. The most simple is to just wave your hand over the deck and drop the card (careful to have it squared) and boom, gone! You could also do a Window Change for more of a quick, flashy change.
  • Without pre-palming the card, you can extend the routine itself and go into an Invisible Palm routine. This is actually the variation I tend to do; my explanation above was to replicate the quick display used in my performance video.
• Ending Clean:
  • When the trick ends, you not only have two 7 of Hearts but one of them is face up in the second position in the deck.
  • My preferred way of cleaning up the reversed card is to slip my pinky under the top card (above the face up card) and use a pinky-pulldown to slip it to the bottom of the deck, effectively reversing it back to face-down position in the process. This is similar to a Cardini Change, except under the cover of the top card. Not sure if this is a published move anywhere. I've been using it for years and it seems to work pretty well though.
    
    You could, alternatively, get a pinky break under the top 2 cards and Double Undercut them to the bottom and then perform a Half Pass with just the bottom card, reversing it.
    
    The audience will be distracted with the card on table which should offer plenty of cover.
    
    
  • To get rid of the duplicate 7 of Hearts, you can Bottom Palm or Gambler's Cop the bottom card of the deck (one of the 7 of Hearts) and while the audience is distracted, slip it into a pocket. Alternatively, you can take back the selection from the table and place it on the bottom of the deck (below the duplicate) and slip the entire deck into the box. If you're done performing, you're done! Or, you can offer to show another trick and remove the deck from the box while leaving the bottom card behind.

And The Audience Goes Wild

As mentioned at the beginning, I recently posted a solo performance of this routine from the magician's perspective. Performing a card force on a spectator, without a spectator, is pretty easy. That, and filming for the purpose of posting online also means cleanup isn't really necessary. I didn't post a tutorial, I only posted a performance. And still, the audience went wild!

Or, rather, this guy did:

As far as I can tell, this guy knows how the routine's done. It's a video that is filmed from my perspective, so it's not hard to fathom that it wouldn't take long to figure out. But to prove that his sleuth skills were on point, he made sure to drop a friendly comment letting me know that he knows -- and how I can do it better. I love how helpful random and private accounts can be on the internet, don't you?

I have to respectfully disagree about the use of a Pass here though. I'm assuming he meant a Classic Pass (or Herrmann Pass, or any other variation). Using a Pass would put the card face up somewhere in the middle of the deck which begs the question: is half of the deck on top of a face up card better than a single card?

Alternatively, cutting the card to the bottom and performing a Half Pass, like explained up above in the Notes section, would fix the reversed card situation. However, you're then left with a duplicate on the bottom of the deck. While slightly cleaner than having it reversed, we are now stuck with the spectator's selection in their hand and on the bottom of the deck. We have, in all cases of using a pass to "get rid of it," failed to get rid of it.

Also, there are plenty of routines that "cover up" a card with another, but I'm just guessing that this guy isn't a fan. To each their own, I guess. Unfortunately, when I asked if he wants to chat or to do a jam where he could show off his ideas, he... politely... refused.

If you have any ideas or feedback on the routine, I'd love to hear them =]

Penn & Teller: Fool Us is a TV talent show that is filmed in front of a live audience (or, virtual audience during the pandemic). Oh, and we can't forget to mention that Penn and Teller are there too -- they're the judges!

During each episode, four magicians perform a magic act for Penn & Teller which, at the end of each act the magician-comedian duo try to deduce how the trick was done. In very articulate speech, Penn -- as Teller remains characteristically silent -- commends the magician on a job well done. If the magic act fooled Penn & Teller, they win a sweet Fool Us trophy and a trip to Vegas to be the opening act for Penn & Teller's show!

I want my opinions below to reflect those of a spectator who just saw a performance live. To achieve this, I've only watched this episode once. In real time - no pausing. No slow motion. Once through, with commercials and with my kids enjoying it with me too. Did I remember everything I saw? Did I see everything that happened? Do I remember the exact words that were said? Maybe, but likely not -- which means if I over-portray an effect below then it was just that great of a trick. If I under-portray it, well, yeah. So let's see what this episode's got in store for us!

Episode Recap

Season 9, Episode 2 of Penn & Teller: Fool Us is named "Sleight of Foot". Given that the name always has a meaning from the night's show, I was pretty curious as to what this one entailed. But, we'll get to that. First, just wow. This episode was filled with different types of magic from cards to mentalism and a good deal of manipulation. It's acts like these where I feel bad that Penn and Teller have to take notes and not fully enjoy the presentation.

The fooler of the night's episode was Benjamin Barnes. His "fair card trick" routine saw a clear and direct guess from the magic duo, to which Barnes replied with a blunt "you're not even close." Ouch! Read more about it, and the other routines, below =]

Theron Christensen

A prosecutor by day and a magician by night, Theron Christensen is a hobby magician who found a way to link his profession to his passion! I haven't found a ton about him online, but you can check him out on Facebook, on YouTube, and from his book Plotting Astonishment: The Performing Magician's Guide to Creating Original Magic.

Theron brought his day-job as a prosecutor to the magic world and did a whole skit around the trustworthiness of an eye witness. I really enjoyed this routine, I don't think I've seen one quite like it before. Not because of the whole "prosecutor" theme, but the magic act itself.

He started off by having Penn examine a white cloth, which then magically changed to have a red handprint on it. Then it further changed to have several slashes in it. Finally, it was back to being a plain white cloth that covered a butcher's knife! Beautifully handled and from where I saw it (on my TV), it looked perfect.

During the analysis phase with Penn & Teller, Penn hinted that he used sleight of hand and swapped things out. I haven't gone back to re-watch yet, but I can't believe it! I thought I was watching so closely the first time around, how did something like that slip by?! I can understand with the knife bit how we were slightly distracted and that could've been slipped out, but the cloths themselves?! You see, it's routines like this that make me want to branch out beyond just card magic!

Jaana Felicitas

Jaana was, or still is?, a dancer. Bringing her love and passion for the artistic world of dance to magic has led to some very creative, and very beautiful, routines. This is her second time on Fool Us and a completely different performance piece. You can follow her here on Facebook to keep up with any news.

Jaana's routine was very, very artistic. And wet... and cold! Water to ice, ice to ice, so much ice! She produced icicles out of water, left and right, and even from her hair! And the cool part, no pun intended, she made them each disappear with a splash.

Obviously sleight of hand was involved, there's no doubt about that. In this case, however, it's all about the performance itself. The performance was beautiful and really clever. The part that really fooled me though was disappearing the icicles. I know how to "make a pen disappear" in that way, except, I can't show my hands as empty afterwards. Especially not repeatedly. And the water?!

At one point while watching I thought that maybe they were like balloons that could pop to provide a splash -- and disappear -- but they were clearly hard objects. This one was really fun for that reason; I could follow the magic handling up to a point, and then it was beyond me =]

Benjamin Barnes

Benjamin is the Entertainment Director of the Chicago Magic Lounge and based on his Instagram (@barnesmagic), he does a whole lot more when it comes to magic. If I'm ever in Chicago, I know the place I want to check out!

Benjamin kicked off his routine by stating that he would perform the world's fairest card trick, then he opened a new pack of cards and had Alyson shuffle. He fanned the deck and ran a Joker along the fan, prompting Alyson to say "stop." When she did, he inserted the Joker and showed the card at that spot -- the 4 of Hearts. Having Alyson shuffle the deck again and then place it back in the box, then sealing the box with a sticker, he placed the deck in his jacket pocket (which Alyson also "examined" to be empty). With an empty hand he reached into the pocket, removed a single card, and then showed the box to still be sealed. The removed card was in fact the 4 of Hearts!

My very first thought for this, because I recently read about some pocket shenanigans, was that he used his other hand, which was holding his jacket, to slip the single card in through a hidden slit in the pocket. However, I quickly thought that that was too big of a jump for something that could be done much simpler. Ah, but therein lies the conundrum...

Unfortunately, Penn & Teller's guess was that same idea -- that the pocket was rigged. "Not even close," was Benjamin's reply. And by saying it, he fooled them!

My second thought for this one might actually be closer to the truth, and it's also something I've been working on recently. Not to give too much away, but a fun fact about decks of cards -- especially Bicycle decks -- is that the back of the tuck box is usually the exact same design as the back of the cards themselves. In this specific case, however, we only ever see the back of the tuck so maybe that small fact doesn't matter too much. Thanks to books like False Anchors though, it's amazing what you can do if you only remove the top part of the cellophane from a deck when opening it! The way the camera edits away as soon as Benjamin goes to move the box and Joker(s) on the table after the selection was made though means that we can only guess. Was it a force and there was a duplicate? Did he actually use sleight of hand to pull out a fair selection? We'll never know!

Brian Curry

This guy, let me tell you! His intro video had me hooked. You want to talk about sleight of mind, anyone willing to hold up a toilet seat to make it look like they're in an airplane is a person I want to talk to. Even his Instagram name, @briancurrylies, is on-point =P

Fake Mentalism and Comedy, what a hoot! Brian's routine was just that, an attempt to fake mind read Penn's thoughts. He did so by having Penn write a single word on a card. This word is one word to describe Teller. Then, he had that card placed in a tiny envelope which was then placed in a large envelope. After some comedic divination, Brian wrote a single word in a cartoon thought bubble suspended above Penn's head: "sneaky" -- which was in fact the word Penn wrote!

He didn't fool Penn & Teller on this one, but they did really like the presentation. That's an important note though because we all know how much they hate normal mentalism's attempt to deceive people in an immoral way. I, personally, thought he used a clever way to peek at the card either through a hidden card or envelope flap. I don't have any of these things myself, I only know of them through friends and random ads. However, Penn's guess at genuine sleight of hand was a good smack to the back of my head. Here I was trying to think "like a mentalist" when the thing could've just as easily been done with a good steal or switch!

Either way, I don't know how it was done, but I did enjoy it. It was a quick routine and Brian's intro video was amazing. He's up in D.C., only about 2 hours from me, maybe I'll get a chance to check out his other work sometime!

Penn & Teller ended the show with the headliner act, Sleight of Foot! Just a quick overview here but they hopped up on a table and proceeded to do a card trick... with their feet! It was pretty long-winded, even for them. Funny, yes. But I did think that it went on a little too long -- which, in retrospect, is actually how I feel about most "card to mouth" style routines. You always have the audience staring down at the deck or pile of cards, trying in earnest to find their card and then you're kind of stuck... how do you get them to look up?!

Takeaways

I really enjoyed this episode. I didn't feel like anything was being done explicitly to try to fool Penn & Teller like we've seen before. I thought that these were genuine acts, real performances by real magicians who just love what they do. Given that I have no clear and direct answer to say how any of these acts were done tonight, honestly, they all fooled me! Jeez I love magic =]

Either way, I'm excited for the next round of magic!

It may come to no surprise, but I like to collect magic books. The good news is that I also read them! Cover to cover, I absorb all that I can. Sometimes it's hard and other times it's a breeze. The reading ease level may be because of the book contents itself, or just dependent on what's going on in the environment around me. Either way, I take in as much as possible.

I typically get through a single magic book in about a week. I don't read every week, or rather I don't read magic books every week. When I do pick one up though, it's my main focus.

This week I finally got the urge to take a book off of the shelf that's been collecting dust: New Magic of Japan by Richard Kaufman. I bought it back in 2020 which I was going through a "hey, let's buy a bunch of Kaufman books" phase. It looked like it had some interesting routines, so I went for it. And then it, and 20 other books, arrived.

What really made me think of the book was a photo I had taken for Instagram:

I really wanted to take a photo of this deck of cards with a book, and I figured this book would be a good selection. Since it was out, well, why not read it too?

The book itself has a variety of magic routines in it. I want to say it's mostly cards and coins, but there's really a fairly equal mix of everything. I usually only focus on card magic while reading and skip over other things, and I've so far done exactly that when I come to a coin routine. However, the routine Glass Load caught my eye immediately! The effect:

I likely wouldn't do this routine with a long-stemmed glass, but instead imagine a bottle of beer appearing out of nowhere. Definitely! I have an event coming up this weekend where I can try it out too. The only issue is waving a silk around. I want to make it more of an impromptu thing, and in this case, I'll be in someone's kitchen with a lot of friends just hanging out so maybe I can do it with a hand towel or something. I'll let you know =]

There are other neat non-card effects too like Cane from Fireball and Crafty Wand Vanish. The former sounds pretty difficult to make unless you already have the materials. It requires an Appearing Cane and Flash Paper -- I have neither but I looked them up and I really like this one on Vanishing Inc. because it comes with a list of tricks too. One of the tricks is "Fire Silk to Cane," which isn't quite "from a fireball" but it's pretty close.

Crafty Wand Vanish is a routine, or a quick visual vanish and reappearance of a wand, that I've seen in a handful of magicians' videos before. Even last week's episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us featured it with a glass wand. It's a nice one to know!

Since this book is from a wide variety of magicians and it's written by Richard Kaufman, I don't quite pick up on the Japanese influence that I thought I would. There's really beautiful magic in here, don't get me wrong. I really enjoy the book and will be trying several of the routines from it (card magic and not!). However, I did kind of expect to learn more of the magic culture from Japan, their influences, and perhaps a shared feeling or style of their form. Perhaps, beautiful is that style?

If you don't have the book yourself, check out New Magic of Japan on Amazon, Vanishing Inc., or directly from Kaufman and Company.

Penn & Teller: Fool Us is a TV talent show that is filmed in front of a live audience (or, virtual audience during the pandemic). Oh, and we can't forget to mention that Penn and Teller are there too -- they're the judges!

During each episode, four magicians perform a magic act for Penn & Teller which, at the end of each act the magician-comedian duo try to deduce how the trick was done. In very articulate speech, Penn -- as Teller remains characteristically silent -- commends the magician on a job well done. If the magic act fooled Penn & Teller, they win a sweet Fool Us trophy and a trip to Vegas to be the opening act for Penn & Teller's show!

I want my opinions below to reflect those of a spectator who just saw a performance live. To achieve this, I've only watched this episode once. In real time - no pausing. No slow motion. Once through, with commercials and with my kids enjoying it with me too. Did I remember everything I saw? Did I see everything that happened? Do I remember the exact words that were said? Maybe, but likely not -- which means if I over-portray an effect below then it was just that great of a trick. If I under-portray it, well, yeah. So, let's see what this episode's got in store for us!

Episode Recap

The first episode of the season and while Alyson Hannigan is back with us, the crowd is still virtual. Many other TV game shows are already back to in-person audiences but Fool Us still has giant screens with faces on it. While unfortunate, we're all here to really watch the performances so it's not the end of the world.

Like usual, we were treated to four acts. The variety of magic between the acts was wide and spectacular, hopefully a hint at what we can look forward to for the rest of the season too. Typically, the name of the episode is brought in from a piece of a single act, something that stands out. This episode, Single-Handed Three-Legged Twin Bullet Catch is actually made from each act (in reverse order, no less).

The show was, also like usual, ended by an act from Penn & Teller. I'll get into that one in a little bit though, but first...

The fooler of the night's episode was the Van Hargen Twins. All the acts were great in my opinion. I, of course, have opinions on how each were done -- one more of a guess than others -- and some more right than others. In either case, if you want info on each, keep on reading!

Jon Mobley

Jon Mobley (@mobleymagic) is a magician based out of Indianapolis who likes to perform Sleight of Mind. Based on his website, he says that every one of his shows is interactive and fun in an attempt to bring magic to a whole new level. If his shows are anything like his performance on Fool Us, it's bound to be a great time.

Right at the start of the act Jon laid everything out, plain and simple. He was going to perform a new version of Penn & Teller's Bullet Catch routine. Except, different. He would be doing it with invisible bullets and a, get this, a hand gun!

Jon had Alyson choose an invisible bullet from a dish and, using an invisible marker sign any card she thought of onto the invisible bullet. I hope you're able to follow this while reading, if not, it's one of those "you had to be there" kind of things =P

The rest is kind of easy to guess. She fired the invisible bullet, and he caught it in his mouth! Ta-Da!

The first magic element here was that he caught a real bullet in his mouth -- not invisible! The second element was, the card Alyson thought of (the 9 of Diamonds) was actually signed on the bullet. Seeing the bullet up close (on the TV), my first idea was that that 9 also looked like a perfect 6. This was on par with Penn's hint at how the trick was done, which was the actual solution.

I came away with two questions though. The first, which wasn't addressed by Penn's hinting, was how the bullet actually got into Jon's mouth. My only idea is that it was always there; my time working with LIT makes me know it's possible, but I still doubt it. Then again, maybe...

The other question was, what if a non-Diamond was chosen? I know that the show is edited, I feel like they may have cut something out. Yes, yes, he could just be that good and I really hope he is. However, it feels like too clean of a selection to show up with only two possible solutions. It's definitely possible that, if they did cut something out, it was purely for brevity and it didn't really make a big impact on whether it was fooling, or it might have provided the viewing audience with the solution itself. Maybe we'll never know.

The Van Hargen Twins

As their title suggests, these two are in fact twins! Sasha and Poppy Van Hargen (@vanhargen) are both 17 and have a wide array of skills and passions. Their introduction on Fool Us had very little to do with magic, but it did set the stage for their mentalism-based routine. I'm not going to lie, my first impression from the intro was a little aligned with the Fox sisters, but we won't got here just yet.

Full of energy, these two started their act with a simple warmup exercise. Sasha, or Poppy -- I'm not sure which was which =P -- grabbed a deck of cards, shuffled it and selected three in a row. Poppy, or Sasha, then called out which each was. Nice!

For brevity, I'll just say Sasha was holding things and Poppy was calling them out (apologies girls, you look identical and weren't wearing name tags!).

Kicking things up a notch, they then had Alyson join them and select a large card from a big fishbowl, on it was written a sport or something. Each card was different, Alyson mixed them up in the bowl before selecting, then selected one and handed it to Sasha. Poppy instantly knew what it was.

This was followed this with one more selection from Alyson, a gold medal from a bowl and each medal had a country name on it. Sasha took it behind her back, Poppy blew a whistle, and then Sasha began twirling it around -- nobody could see what it was, but Poppy was able to call out "Mexico" and even Alyson, before the medal stopped spinning, yelled out "it's good!"

Their finale was to let Penn pick a ping-pong ball from a bowl of I think 200. Each had a different name written on it, but even still, when Penn picked one and gave Sasha a glance, Poppy knew what it was right away.

It was a great act with a lot of energy. I did, almost, think it was "rushed" just a little, however, their entire theme was speed-telepathy, so it actually worked out quite nicely.

The very first trick, the warm-up read, I can say with 100% certainty I know how they did it. Everything after that, well, my guess was as good as (and identical to) Penn & Teller's. Penn's guess at then using "codes" was very ambiguous though and could either cover only one very specific answer, or a long list of answers. Unfortunately, we the audience don't know which is which. My son asked, "what if they were lying when they said they weren't using codes?" and I had to explain to him how the show worked, I also had to mention that while for us it could be ambiguous, for them it might literally mean a specific "code".

Personally, I think they used different methods for the different telepathic thought transferences. Or, magic. Either-or!

They definitely earned their trophy, and I can't wait to see what else they come up with in the (near) future!

Axel Adler

Axel Adler, this guy! He creates magic routines for others, but also performs himself. On his Instagram account (@axel.adler), you can see  clips from his four-arm act which preceded this act on Fool Us (I highly recommend checking it out). And his website has some very choice quotes on it that I can't help but to agree with:

I don't really know a great way to describe Axel's performance, beyond the quote above. He walked out, with three legs and a chair. And then for a few minutes, he dazzled the audience as he rotated, twisted, turned, stood, and sat with his three legs moving all around. And then, each leg detached. Each revolved around his body. All three were fake. All three were real. It was really, really cool to watch.

My thought when watching, besides being amazed, was "but this isn't really a magic trick..." My oldest kid also said right after it was over, without prompting, "this is more of an illusion than a magic trick." And Penn & Teller agreed.

They had really great things to say about it like how it was such a beautiful act and if the show was called "enchant us," he would have won a trophy. Unfortunately, though it was an amazing performance, he didn't take home the beloved F.U. trophy.

I know I didn't write a lot for Axel's performance, but that's really because it's hard to put into words -- go check it out if you haven't already!

Chris Canfield

Chris Canfield, @chriscanfieldmagic, "creator of magical things." His personality, at least in his intro and during his performance, was very pleasing. Relaxed, refined, and happy to be bringing a magical experience to others. Such a pleasure to watch =]

Chris started things off by bringing Alyson and Penn up to the table where he then kicked off a one-handed shuffle and flourishy cut. And then, he cut to all of the face cards. Nice!

What followed was a three-part series of dealing, picking up, and dealing again. Each time he dealt the cards out, things would change. They would be paired together - Red King with Red King, Black Queen with Black Queen, and so on. Then, it would alternate to be a Red King with a Black Queen, and so on. Then, mixing the cards up into piles on the table he'd show they were all mixed and yet, after getting a little magic love from Penn and Alyson, they were all back in color-matching pairs!

I'm not the biggest Oil & Water fan, personally. However, this routine was different. Rather than separating all of one color, he was moving pairs around. It was a different kind of presentation and it just flowed very nicely.

Penn only slightly coded his "you didn't fool us" message for Chris though. He directly called out Bill Simon's Call to the Colors routine, and also leaned into René Lavand a lot. Those two alone should have been more than enough to say "hey, we know how you did it," but Penn continued to go on and then did throw in some coded messaging hinting heavily at the idea of second dealing.

While I doubt I could perform the routine with half of the dexterity that Chris does, I do know how it's done. But again, I enjoyed watching it and it was very well performed. I can't wait to see more from Chris!

Penn & Teller

These guys, always gotta be causing trouble! They ended the show with a routine I've never seen before and right on time for the Halloween season too. Originally titled Bucket of Blood, Penn led the narrative of how they wanted to perform Bucket of Blood, but the network told them, no blood. So, they tried gasoline but that was too expensive. Going further down the liquid chain, they unfortunately had to settle on something more family friendly, so the trick became Bucket of Milk.

Penn poured more than half of a pitcher of milk into a bucket that Teller was holding, only to later reveal that there was no bottom in the bucket! That alone was really neat, except teller then put a piece of metal onto the now upside-down bucket and Penn poured the rest of the milk... which just disappeared!

Kicking things up a notch, after Penn talked for another good minute, Teller tipped over the bucket and blood ran out everywhere! Bucket of Blood, a great twist on classic magic!

Takeaways

Like I said in the beginning, this episode's magic covered a lot of different areas. We were given card magic, mentalism, safe danger magic, and even a wonderful mind-boggling leg performance! We had a single fooler, or rather, a single act that fooled them, but each performance was quite well done.

The season's just getting started and I can't wait to see what they have in store for us next time!

You can see this episode and more on The CW.