Illusionists Penn & Teller throw down the gauntlet to aspiring magicians to perform their most mystifying trick - and fool Penn and Teller. Penn & Teller have no prior knowledge of either the performers or the planned trick. They sit in the audience just like everyone else, watching every move the guest magicians make. If any illusionist fools the professionals, they win a five star trip to Las Vegas to perform as the opening act in Penn & Teller's world famous show at the Rio Hotel & Casino.
21 Aug Penn & Teller: Fool Us (2011- )
Game Changing
I think I have seen most of the episodes of this, all out of order. There really is nothing like it in my experience. It is reality TV, while being stage performances. It has several different personalities as focus, but shifts to our focus duo.
The context is magic, which comes from a pretty worn out tradition so far as stage performance. Penn and Teller have single-handedly reinvented the art, quite independent of this TV enterprise. Here, they have fabulated something that has some humanity in the performers, but instead of the profoundly unappealing judges of ‘got talent’, we have two guys who love what they see and are very gracious. They want to build the family, so you can see them celebrate diversity, female and young performers… a fellow with no hands!
When the performer is an expert, they bend over backwards to complement. This is such a deep value that I think I am storing Penn’s cadence and tone as a model of social generosity.
Each performance has four parts: 1) a filmed introduction to the performer, quite economical and effective 2) the performance, the magic 3) some chitchat with the host, historically Alison 4) the report from Penn where he usually reveals to the performer how the trick is done without revealing to us.
The more recent change to Brooke Burke as host is notable. She’s a manufactured persona (and body), which takes a giant step away from the human touch. These guys know what they are doing, so I can only assume they decided to reinforce a boundary where the performance — everything on the stage — is more glitzy and professional, in order to emphasise the human, family end of the two guys, our representatives in the audience.
I make a study of narrative perspective, where we are meant to be, and how much godlike presence we have in the narrative. Here, the narratives are only a few minutes, five at most. That simplicity is in a seriously complex wrapper. We watch the magicians, and we watch the watchers, and nothing essential is revealed in each encounter.
Posted in 2024
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.
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