'Penn & Teller: Fool Us' Season 7 Episode 3 Highlights: Not shadows or illusions but coin trick fools judges
No matter how much preparation you put into your work, going up against Penn & Teller is always a gamble. While tonight's performances contained a lot of innovation and a lot of heart, luck just wasn't on the participants' side - aside from one contestant, who managed to find their way to the trophy with a toss of a coin.
The night started off with a simple trick from "Supernerd" Caleb Wiles, whose performance was as much a plug for a 'Penn & Teller: Fool Us Home Edition' board game as it was a performance itself. Though Caleb didn't manage to fool the judges with his homemade trick, he managed to 3D print himself a mini-trophy for the board game, so he at least didn't go home empty-handed.
One of the more wondrous moments of the night came from performer DK from South Korea. Inspired by Teller's work with shadows, DK combined an orchestral score with a silent performance that mixed shadows, lights, teleportation and illusions to stun everyone involved. While DK wasn't able to fool the judges either, Penn wanted to take a moment to emphasize how much he appreciated DK's performance, saying, "It's just beautiful."
Speaking of beauty, fashion magician Alana impressed the judges with a leather jacket trick involving more hands than any one human should rightly have, sprouting out of pockets and folds seemingly all on their own. It may not have fooled Penn & Teller, but it did impress them. Penn spoke about how he wanted more women magicians with innovative ideas like Alana's taking the profession of magic forward in new directions and not just be the boys club that it is.
It was a simple coin toss, audience-elimination trick from Wes Iseli that managed to fool the judges. Wes whittled the audience down one coin toss at a time, to a single member predicted by him before the show began. Penn & Teller were absolutely confident that they'd figured this one out - Penn so much so that he believed he could accurately predict Wes's next coin toss, putting the trick to the ultimate test in a gamble. It's a gamble that Wes won, winning him the trophy of the night.
Penn & Teller rounded the night off with a juggling act taking place around a carefully constructed card castle, a juggling act that escalated in wild new ways featuring comedic stuntsmen Jon Wee & Owen Morse. Starting with simple bowling pins and quickly graduating to chainsaws, flaming batons and thrown knives, nothing stood in the way of Teller's concentration...until a little flash photography bought the whole thing crashing down.
The next episode of 'Penn & Teller: Fool Us' airs July 13, on The CW.
