“The next Uri Geller 2008 – The world’s best mentalists” – opinion, tricks, explanations

This is about a show from the first German season of “The Next Uri Geller” from early 2008. You can also:
» Show all my reports from the first season.
» Show everything about the second season 2009.
» Show really all articles about Uri Geller.

General reading tips (German): GWUP info page; and the blog with explanations and discussion already during the shows: The contestants’ tricks, explained in an easy way. English: CSI (ex-CSICOP).

The ninth show from March 4 – the international competition

As if the shows in various countries had not been enough, this time we are presented with a selection of international winners or runners-up and a for once funny comedian – unfortunately, the celebrities are not that international.

The contestants, next to Vincent Raven, winner of the German show, are Angela Funovits who reached second place in the USA show “Phenomenon” (which had only 5 episondes, by the way) – what happened to the winner, Mike Super? –, Lior Suchard, Israel’s winner („The Successor“), Aaron Crow, “gloomy star” from “De nieuwe Uri Geller”, the show from the Netherlands, and as “surprise guest of the evening” Morta Deller, known from Schmidt & Pocher – well, that really is a surprise that Geller lets Oliver Pocher appear here. Ratings, that’s what counts – and something which may be intentionally funny.

From the preview on prosieben.de (my translation):

Raven father Vincent Raven demands: “I want to fight the best of the best!”

Even if he didn’t want to, he had to, since this was planned long ago…

“All four belong to the best of their craft. But this time, they must push the envelope to earn the title ‘World’s Best Mentalist’”, mystifier legend Uri Geller said. “During this unique live show, not the slightest glich must happen.”

Oh, bad prospective for our raven daddy.

The show begins

“The most unusual international contest in television history” begins. Lots of cheering and standing ovations, especially for the old spoon fiddler – the audience might have been ordered to do so; but many arguably won’t need that order, sadly.

Uri is overwhelmed by the success and tells about poor little children who shout “achat shtaim shalosh” when they see him on the street. The “poor” didn’t come from him, of course, but from me. And Geller wants to sharpen the viewers’ intuition – you can win some money, too.

Celebrity guests

“Presenter”, “model” and mama Verona Pooth, actress and “singer” Jeanette Biedermann and actor Thomas Heinze. I feel somewhat sorry for international guests and viewers… but hey, even two of them have English Wikipedia pages! Plus as so-called “incorruptibles” three firemen – they won’t stop short of any possibly highly reputable occupation group, it seems.

Hey, how about a new band, the Village Mentalist People? Mayor, judge, police officer, state attorney, doctor, notary, principal, referee, fireman – gotta be a number 1 hit single, don’t you think? Given what’s currently listed in the “worst charts in German music history” (German)…

Contestant 1: Angela Funovits

Second place a.k.a. first runner-up in the US show, 20, from Ohio (USA):

On Tuesday, she wants to establish LIVE on ProSieben an emotional connection to one of the celebrity guests – and has to reveal much of her legs for this purpose …

We already had the former – the latter, though, is extremely welcome. First, a US clip including a slam-hand-on-hidden-knife trick, chainsaws and necklaces. And there she is, in a sexy short red dress. She has stolen Vincent’s self-igniting candles. Thomas becomes her assistant, is told to think about someone from his past and write down the name, during which she babbles mind reader rubbish – but with a much nicer voice than any former candidate. (And not as porn-moaned as Vivien used to.) We better ignore the simultaneous interpreter’s voice.

She then tells a bit about the person he thinks about and burns the crumbled paper in an open flame. (Suitable for olympic torch runners.) Playing with the fire, more details about the person – if she didn’t inform herself beforehand, someone must be whispering it to her now. More playing with fire, she seems to burn off her leg hair with it – and presses an ice pack on it, making the correct name “Linda” appear (a kindergarten friend of Thomas’s). Oh wow. Standard mentalist performance, albeit with a little more fire – and of course sex appeal – than from others.

Geller: The usual “well done”.

Contestant 2: Aaron Crow

Winner from the Dutch show, “age and origin unknown”. So it’s raven vs. crow. That’s gonna be interesting. Or not. At least, he won’t bend our ears:

The mysterious Belgian excites the masses for years – and all that without any word! Solely with the help of his Asian martial arts and his intuition the mute mysttifier wants to win the title “World’s Best Mentalist”.

Bizarre guy. Not like Vincent, but not less. Clip including a Wilhelm-Tell-like performance, he enters the stage with a sword on his back. And an apple in the hand – sure, if you don’t talk, you can easily eat. He throws the apple and cuts a piece off with his sword, then asks all three celebs onto the stage; Verona first shuns him, he pursues her, she has to hold a paper bag in her outstreched arms (on the right-hand side of the stage, seen from the audience), Thomas (in the back) a board vertically, small Jeanette gets (on the left) a watermelon on her head (with bowl with a handle).

Beeping growing faster, Aaron pours wax over forehead and eyes – yo, some S&M fans like that, but they, at least, cry out or groan – and wraps some bandage over it, then a black tape and some aluminum foil. A, erm, slightly bizarre way to be blindfolded…

While wrapping the foil, he twiddles around a little and moves his bandages aside – you can clearly see some wax dropping. And if the foil is thin enough, he can easily see through it… (cf. gellerentlarvt blog, German).

Prancing around to cheap techno music, stabbing Verona’s paper bag with a knife, rice(?) falls out. Similar game with small nunchakus against Thomas’ board. And the sword and the melon, which of course doesn’t appear to be without danger. But he surely knows what he’s doing…

Geller: “incredible”, mental precision and stuff. “Well done!”

Uri’s intuition sweepstakes

Seven lawyers with a suitcase each – only one containing the money. The people at home shall sense that one by intuition. My intuition tells me we’re in for a commercial break first.

Ha, I was right!

By the way, for the 1.5% who are searching for “Uri Gellar”: his name is “Geller” with an “E”, in case you didn’t notice from the search results (Google treats both variants the same). No connection to Sarah Michelle.

Uri expects us to have a strong intuition after the 9 weeks – yo, we have, but not the way he thinks. Au contraire. He wants to ask the lawyers one after another if they got the money (15,000€? only? in those big suitcases?) – without them replying. Only closeups of their unmoved faces.

And aaaaarghat, erm, “achat, shtaim, shalosh”. Hebrew for “1, 2, 3”, for those who still don’t know that by now. “If you believe you know where the money is, call us.” I’d say in suitcase n (n ∈ {1,…,7}). The probability is, of course, 1/7 each…

Verena Wriedt in dark green with gold ornamentation, but not that deeply cut, may read the phone numbers.

Contestant 3: Lior Suchard

From Haifa (Israel), 26. I hope I’ll remember to have enough chocolate ready…

He prophecied the TV news of the day for his victory in Israel’s “The Successor”. On Tuesday, he wants to not only predict time – but even change it …

Change time? I can do that, too: by fast-forwarding my recording when viewing this in time-shift mode in case of a boring performance – let’s hope that won’t be necessary. Retrospect with distorted widescreen – stupid. And of course, his name isn’t pronounced in a chocolaty French manner, but somewhat like “SUE-shard”.

“Hello everybody!” He talks about time – and so rapidly as if he had too little of it, or if he had to amend for Aaron. Sigh. Thomas says a number for warming up, he had written it down. Ladies on stage. Sort of a joke about “if I told you I had to kill you” – “then tell my wife”. Haa haa haa. Everyone is told to think about a time (of day) that means something – he clatters down 6:12 and 11:11 as examples.

Thisfasttalkermustbearealchallengefortheinterpreter, but he seems to keep up quite well.

Verona is to fiddle around with a watch (spin the knob with eyes closed). Hands on the shoulders. EVERYONE. Oh, this talking speed not only causes unnecessary hectic, not only wants to distract from the tricks, but probably torment any live- or near-live-bloggers. I savor the brief and rare “concentration phases”. Somehow he guesses Jeanettes time: 12:00 pm (exactly when she was born), and the watch in Ex-Feldbusch’s hand shows that too. Oh, fine. Finally over.

Geller praises him, “well done”.

Sweepstakes again

Also called “Intuition Challenge”. The confused Verena first speaks of 150,000 instead of 15,000 € – must be caused by too much fabric between the breats.

Contestant 4: Vincent Raven

The German show’s winner, aged 41, from Switzerland, who can’t make up his mind how to spell his raven’s name (Asael? Azael? Azrael?) – he should take Corax or Odin, these names of his other two ravens won’t confuse his homepage‘s or ProSieben’s operators…:

“With the help of my raven Azrael, I will make contact to the souls of our beloved dead”. Most imporant object of his performance: an ancient cognac snifter …

Oh, again contact with the dead. Well, cheers! He tells of a childhood friend, a crow named Sammy (or something like that), who has died since then, of course – he still got the right foot on a chain. Verona – babble – onto the – croak – stage. She mixes the 6 little boxes in one of which he had put Sammy’s foot. Spread the boxes in the audience, again this heart-hand rubbish (on chest; right hand with box behind back).

He admonishes Verona to make sure the people have enough distance between each other, for he or an assistant must be able to locate the transmitter!

Azael prefers to stand on the stairs between the audience instead of on his pole. And picks at the edges.

4 or 5 of the 6 people can open their boxes, they don’t have the crow’s foot. I think we already déjà’d this vu. Hopefully more successful than last time, when he got the wrong information and the third person had the object after all… One then goes to the front, claw in his box. Well, worked better this time. And is said to have “opened a door into the other world”. The usual tattle, with strange ethereal background sounds – still better than Aaron’s techno crap. And they match the slowness of it all.

Jeanette enters the stage, Azael is also back there. Think about a dead person, imagine an image to go for a walk with that person in a forest, in fog. He “sees” a woman. Bla. “Do you feel something?” Slight shaking of her head, but bla. Erm, “yes”. “Pleasant thoughts”. He fetches the snifter, puts somethin on top of it (leather?), fog appears in the glass which he then “sets free” and wants to go one step further. Oh, so this isn’t the end yet? Aw.

He scribbles “Who is here for Janette” on a board – without “e” or question mark. And wipes that off again with a liquid and a sponge – and it soon (clearly) reads “Magarete”, what was also to be seen briefly before. Her granny (died 2 years ago). The usual inform-yourself-about-celebrities or agree-on-it beforehand…

Stefan Gödde in all seriiousness asks Verona if she really spread the boxes by her free will – and she replies in all seriousness that there was something in the air. Well, brainwashing of the people is apparently not just written down in the contract, but sometimes directly reaches its target.

Geller bows down to Vincent, which he says he has never done before, “not even for the Queen” – so she didn*t invite him, that speaks in her favour…

The winning suitcase

“Thousands” have phoned in, the brocade curtain in the phone studio says. Callers in percent for the suitcases: 12%, 10%, 24%, 17%, 10%, 21%, 6%, the display says. A caller for no. 3 is connected – she says the lawyer had “looked that strange way”. Said lawyer Bettina Küppers opens her suitcase, and 15 thin 10×100€ bundles are inside. In the others, by the way, bent spoons.

Stefan mentions the Wok WM appearance with Verena, wants Uri to give them positive energy for that, 1, 2, 3. No, I won’t say anything about that anymore.

Noncompetitive: Morta Deller

“Comedian” Oliver Pocher in his best role – at least Mortadella Morta Deller is more or less the only thing of his that I like. So let’s see… to have more time for vote callers, ProSieben even lets him perform, the “dyslexic among the mind readers”. Including an introductory clip with Geller speaking some sentences, such as regretting to have not included him before.

So he can indeed open and close the entrance doors… he wants to show an incredible time experiment – “that is, it will take some time” – and a few more things in the style of earlier performances by the others. Get a beverage can from the freezer, hold it in the heart hand, say the magic words: “Paper, Stone, Scissors”. Even Uri seems to smile. “Nothing will happen”. Then “achat, shtaim, shalosh”. Then “open the can”. Yes, Geller apparently really laughs.

Box with predition, call magic phone number (0180-0-something), you heard something, hang up. He opens the box, first a “wrong” card “from last time” – like Farid’s paint gun drawing – then in between he receives a thought from Verona, which is on a 2nd card: “Where money?” Then the correct card: from a speaking clock, including “tuuut”.

On with a deck of cards and Verona. Talk with Ken Chicken(?) – a chicken from the supermarket on a pole –, then blindfold, dagger for Verona, “tip” for “Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten” for Jeanette (her daily soap). Cards on the floor, Verona told to stab one, bla bla. His first “outdoor performances” in Schmidt & Pocher (with lift, subway etc.) were better. A few “jokes” about sticking a card into the plunging neckline, hand on breast and playing around as well as “what’s inside” – “you could caulk windows with it” (Verona acts as if she didn’t get this silicone innuendo – or she really didn’t, who knows that with her). Oh, and the card was of course also on the board with all cards that Morta shows.

Intermezzo

Chitchat with Jeanette about a “Funny Movie” next week, and the firemen can confirm something which they, in fact,cannot be able to confirm. And Thomas concludes “as long as it’s entertaining” – he’s right. But it wasn’t all the time. Especially not when the old chief spoon fiddler was on screen.

The decision

And the winner, “the world’s best mentalist”, is: Vincent Raven. Fireworks! Fireworks for his fans who apparently were numerous enough – half of Germany, entire Switzerland? – (assuming it wasn’t manipulated, of course, but who would have to manipulate to have the German winner win again in Germany, anyway?), fireworks for the Uri Geller brainwashing of the people being over for the time being!

(17 minutes overtime.)

Ratings

The lowest of the season:

Viewers aged 3+: 2.48 million, 8.1% market share (last week: 3.22/10.6%).
Viewers 14-49: 1.68 million, 13.4% market share (last week: 2.3/18.1%).

Repeated on ProSieben on Sat 8 March around 7:35 am.

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