At a Bartlet family birthday, Penn and Teller burn the American flag in the White House, prompting a publicity nightmare.

Watch it Wed nite.

This sounds good, I'm not a big fan of the West Wing but I'm gonna check this out. Thanks.

Vandy

I have never watched West Wing in my life, but I was flipping through and was lucky to catch the opening with Penn and Teller. I thought it was a great presentation. I liked how there were not really any cuts during the actual effect, that was a good move by the directors. I changed the channel after the opening.

I whatched the West Wing the other day and saw Penn and Teller. I was quite amused. Very cool. Later they are shown as Penn juggles apples and Teller eats them. Strange idea for an episode, I see west wing often by the way.

Just watched this episode on DVD.

Excellent idea. if they really burned the Flag in the Whitehouse then it's a scnadal (Even though it shouldn't be - whole point of the presentation was the freedom to do it is protected by the bill of rights).

For those who missed it they rolled the Bill of Rights into a Tube, placed the Flag inside. Added some other paper, and set it alight. There was a flash, and they unrolled to tube to show the Flag was gone, but the Bill of Rights was undamaged.

If it's just a trick and they didn't burn the flag then there's no problem. But being Magicians they won't expose the trick. (Lay audiences won't get the irony of P&T being the Magicians used for this episode).

It also raises the question of whether there's a difference between actually burning the flag and just appearing to burn it. After all a Flag is all about symbolism so does it really matter if they only symbolically burned it.

West Wing is excellent, but get your hand on seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. Season 2 was the best TV I've ever seen.

-MM

As I'm not sure if even the magicians will get some of the irony, but actually they DO expose this trick during their show(which by the way is excellent and probably the best "big magic" show in vegas((though I'm still partial to Mac King's Afternoon Comedy Magic at Harrah's)), Check it out if you can)... They expose by doing the effect with a clear bill of rights, showing all the motions involved... pretty cool actually when matched up with the patter.

On a related note the silk vanish that Teller does as a throw away before the flag part of the effect is EXCELLENT and I'm still not 100% on what the heck he did, the vanish and appearence of confetti got me.(but hey I am a closeup guy, but even the miser's Dream really got me so that may not be it)

Just reading that first post made me burst out laughing. Reminds me of a clip on Robert A. Wilson telling out of state cops to read the tenth amendment while eating a hash brownie during a hash brownie give-away (for ill people of many conditions) sponsored by the Californian government....
Now where's that?

Joe