“The Next Uri Geller” show 5 (2nd season 2009) – Opinion, tricks, explanations

This is a report about one of the German second season shows from 2009. You may also:
» Display all my reports about this season 2.
» Display everything about the first season 2008.
» Display all articles about Uri Geller.

Show number five tonight, and again Pro7 didn’t make the effort to write a press release but only a few short newsflashes.

It’s time for all six remaining contestants: Gabriel and Daniel, Manuel Horeth, Waayatan, Jan Becker – searches “the neeedle in the haystack” or rather an apostrophe object hidden in the studio with the help of the celebrities’ eyes –, Jan Rouven – he is “hung headlong on 3 burning ropes several meters above the ground. With the help of his mental abilities he wants to find the correct key to save him from falling on pointed spears” – and Ully Loup.

Celebs today: Singer Joy Flemming Fleming, Tatort actor Ingo Naujoks (who had been pre-announced for last week but wasn’t there) and current Playboy girl, jungle camper and guardian angel parking-space wish bullshitter Giulia Siegel, about whom ProSieben writes (as usual, all quotes were translated by me):

She daily speaks with her guardian angels and even wrote a book about it. At “The next Uri Geller” tonight, she will meet Germany’s best mentalists, some of whom will attempt dangerous experiments. Let’s hope Guilia won’t need her guardian angels tonight…

Following the show, there will be half an hour (gross) “Street Magic with Farid”, about which the wunschliste.de newsletter wrote:

Better a good steal than a bad copy: What’s just a stopgap on Disney Channel with Cody Stone under the name “Magic Attack” now makes the jump into the night program on ProSieben: Farid […] walks through pedestrian precincts and shopping malls and performes magic tricks in front of passers-by caught unaware.

According to Pro7, one of the performances will be reading the PIN numbers from the eyes of bank customers. Does Farid need money that desparately? Anyway, maybe I’ll write about that too, or maybe not, depending on how I feel like tonight.

The show

Geller begs for more viewers – call friends and relatives, they want to see it too, he says – and again announces one of his silly “experiments”, this time with “mind waves” or something like that which you’re supposed to feel at home. Celebrities introduced without letting them say anything – are they scared of what they might say or of running too long with 6 contestants today? Well, then they could use shorter clips from their earlier performances – yawn…

Contestant 1: Jan Becker

“Only the mysterious is beautiful”, Jan says in his clip – well, his apostrophe haircut is mysterious, but certainly not beautiful. Blue suit – blue being the color of the deep, of the subconscious, he says. “We are heart beings”, which he wants to prove with a “simple ritual”: we all are told to point at ourselves – and everyone alledgedly points to his/her heart. (Or far away from it, but at least to the upper body and not to the brain.) And make couples, hug “from left to left”, hearts next to each other – Jan with Giulia, can understand he likes that.

Ingo “sprints” back to the sofa to fetch the envelopes with photos the 3 celebs were told to bring along. Left hand of each celeb on Jan’s heart, concentrate on the photo, of course; Giulia hides hers somewhere in the audience while the other two hold their hands over Jan’s eyes. Quasi-hypnotic hands-breath-flying-heart babble and gestures, the audience puts on white masks. Ridiculous. With Giulia behind him, he walks around in the audience, with intermediate stops where he describes parts of the photo. Moves on. Stop. Detail. Moves on. Slowly on the stairs, into the correct row. Feels around the finally picked viewer befor taking the envelope from her back pocket. So either a transmitter in the envelopes or it’s been whispered to him (at any rate the photo content must have been), the microphone fixture had enough space for a speaker right next to the ear. Yet more about the photo before he opens the envelope: photo of her with a friend and something about a tooth necklace.

Always follow your hearts, and another hug with the “completely perplexed” Giulia.

Geller thought it was great etc.

Contestant 2: Jan Rouven

See above: Danger that he wants to evade with a mental connection. Giulia with her experiences in jungle danger is to help him – don’t mind, actually, she really does look better than Joy. She’s told to take a few of 500 keys and try to open the lock that prevents access to the saving switch that operates the suspension device, and it works multiple times – “that seems to be your influence”, Jan says, and I fear the guardian-angel bunny even believes that –, so he must fetch another lock, and it doesn’t work with that. The key that came with the other lock is mixed with the others.

A mishap? They should have lowered the suspension device before it was locked, someone must fetch a thin thing – as long as that takes, this might have been a real mishap (added later: or was it the wrong (trick) lock from the beginning that would open with any key after it would have replaced a real lock? So would the trick not have worked anymore at all?), but Geller got the opportunity to stand up and raise concerns since something already went wrong before – “should he do it?”, audience applauds. Something else isn’t quite right either, Uri wants to see no blood, acts strict, doesn’t want to allow this to be performed now – and Jan must leave the stage! Can be back only in the next show – if enough viewers call for him.

Oh man, what’s the use of this crap, get a few thousand more viewers for the next show? So no action today? (Or does Jan have too little tricks suitable for TV?) Really a greeeeaat “scandal” staging – or cover for a capital mishap… that could even mean some work for the Pro7 press release writers.

Farid speaks a few words, some clips from his Street Magic show are shown. “Modern” cutting methods – hardly one second per scene and trick… well.

Contestant 3: Daniel and Gabriel

It’s gonna be romantic, they say. A large dividing wall with 5 photos (Venice, Bochum, Caribbean, New York, Zermatt), clothes stand and a big clock to prepare a rendezvous (and Ingo is to help) – identical on both sides of the wall, and of course one of the two will receive what the other picks. Ingo picks the Matterhorn photo, Gabriel waves his hand in endless strange movements in front of it and Daniel receives and takes the correct one.

Time: 12:01. (Or 12:00, depending on perspective.) More numerous movements that might well be the code for the time (or picture or clothing) which Daniel can receive as pulses. (Or as distraction from other signalling via feet morse codes or something like that.) The blue track suit jacket somehow suits Ingo… Three ladies enter the stage: sexy blonde in black mini dress, black-haired casually in jeans and a young businesswoman. On the other side too, apparently twins. Ingo picks the one in jeans, if anyone wants to know, and Daniel of course takes her twin sister on the other side. Fine, then I’ll take the other 2×2.

Geller enjoyed it – but he wants something more intense. Yeah, and stopped Rouven before…

Geller’s crap

Geller guarantees we wouldn’t trust our eyes – and get pen and paper ready. Warning, thought transmission through space and time. Brief commercial break. Geller pressures for speed. “Remote viewing” of Geller’s hidden photo “of a giant building” in a capital city. I’m guessing at numerous sketched Eiffel towers… With his Hebrew 1,2,3 he wants to beam first the city and then the building into our minds.

And what a miracle, it’s correct! For a lot in the audience! I’m clairvoyant!! On one drawing, he says, it’s even the exact same size, but even that’s something I disagree with. Verena in red asks for audience pictures and mails.

Okay, honestly, who would straightaway think about any different “large building” in a “capital city”? Colosseum in Rome? TV tower in Berlin? Tower Bridge in London? Erm in Errm… all that’s second choice at best.

Contestant 4: Manuel Horeth

…today turns thoughts into music. And blabbers about there being no more free thoughts tonight. A rolled-up plan hangs from the ceiling, will be shown at the end. Joy and Ingo to the stage. Over 700 CDs in white boxes are ready. Longwinded selection of a CD box that’s not opened yet (so there could have been the same CD in all boxes except the first few per row that were opened), longwinded mental fuss with “mental eye” and stuff. Joy must draw the cover that she’s “seen” on a board – table and chairs, glasses, picture. Correct. Revolverheld, Chaostheorie. Well, only somewhat correct, she drew 4 chairs around the table and only a small picture, but the cover shows them side by side and the “picture” (Rubik cube with portrait) is much more dominating. But apparently they couldn’t whisper that to her or arrange that before…

15 titles, Giulia picks a number: 2 – that’s the song “Ich werd’ die Welt verändern” (=I will change the world), which also is printed on the aforementioned plan (a poster), and Revolverheld play (parts of) that song live right away! Nice addition to this trick.

Geller really liked the creativity.

Contestant 5: Waayatan

Wants to detect which dangers are hidden in the shadows. The deal with the eerie talk and the look when saying “also in yours” is something he has to practice a liiiiiittle more… Joy wastes time picking two helpers from the audience. Typical hand feeling stuff by Waaya with the celebs and the helpers. Several weapons are ready on a wall which the people are to pick and hold in front of them such that the weapon can’t be seen in their shadows, for they step behind shadow walls, illuminated from behind. Meanwhile Joy covers his eyes – he has to kneel down cause she’s so small.

He “feels” around the shadow cabinets – is there a little gap he can see through, or can you see through somewhat from nearby? Or is there a mirror above, the way he keeps looking up? Whispering assistant? Well, he then tears down the paper walls after he twice said the correctly “sensed” weapons and twice the wrong ones. That probably rules out an assistant (unless it was intentional).

Final word: “He who bears peace in the heart needs no weapons” – and the remaining weapons that had not been chosen fall down (remote-controlled). Giulia says she don’t mind her wrong weapon guess, she liked it anyway.

Geller was all the more convinced of “real powers” because it didn’t work every time.

Contestant 6: Ully Loup

Wants to adjure the four elements. Geller’s a little scared to say “the stage is yours” – yeah sure. The celebs ball a sheet of differently colored paper and put it into an urn – an urn with a textile cover you have to stick your hand through to put something on its ground. Not quickly, but slowly one after another, “the energy of the colors will catch hold of your thoughts” and stuff. And then they shall take a paper ball with the left hand out again – warning, don’t try to grab a specific color – and hold it such that the color can’t be seen. Combined with ado and tattle in Ully’s typical strange style. Well, who knows what kind of inner workings the large urn has – maybe with compartments from which colored paper balls fall in a defined order.

Ully senses a fancy way of thinking in Giulia on whose shoulder he hangs – does he mean her guardian-angel silliness? – babbles something horoscopy pseudopersonal or alledgedly a trait of the color and which color he “sees”, which is correct. One after another. Open paper ball, put heart’s desire into a feeling, name feeling in one word and then put this into the “symbolic color”.

Ully takes all 4 balls and then calls upn Satan, Lucifer, Belial and Leviathan from the four directions, “shem ham forash” – which Vincent Raven at the end of season 1 translated as “The wing beat of my ravens will watch over you! In death as in life” – and the balls go up in flames (his large gloves and his sleeves got enough room for assistive material), leaving behind a black heart of stone, symbol of the fulfulled wishes of the celebs and his own unfulfilled, what makes him happy nonetheless. The celebs apparently were really impressed – well, got to admit that he knows his mystic psycho style, a tightrope walk between ridiculousness and atmosphere…

Geller considered the performance credible.

The decision

No immunity from Geller. Commercials. Audience reactions: So many images and mails – which they claim to be analyzing, for whatever reasons – they never received, they say. One with “Venice” crossed out before “Paris” was written. Well, the Eiffel tower is easier sketched than, erm, the Rialto bridge or the Marcus Square/Tower or whatever.

Now the decision: Longwinded as usual, in the end it’s Daniel and Gabriel who must leave.

And, surprisingly: this time they were 5-6 minutes too long. Despite the short commercials that didn’t even give me enough time for intermediate updates of this report (well, its German version)…

Won’t write about Farid.

Ratings

Again a little decrease in total – 1.63 million (5.1%) – with a little higher share of ages 14-49: 1.14m (8.8%).

Farid’s show: 1.48 million (6.2%) / 1.07m (10.7%).

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See also:

• My pre-show report with all ten contestants.
• Skeptic’s dictionary: Uri Geller.
• ProSieben page about the show (German).

» Go to all my posts about Uri Geller. «

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Photos: shadowvincent/Fotolia, wilhei66/sxc, shadowvincent/Fotolia