Celebracadabra: Celebracadone

Here it is, my friends, the Celebracadraba finale! I’m not sure yet if I’ll miss the show, but you know what I will miss? Celebracapuns.

My all-time favorite thing about finales is the requisite 15 minutes of recap at the start of the show. Oh, what a delight! The recap highlights how C. Thomas Howell really sucked at first and Hal was the front-runner, until he turned into a huge douchebag. That’ll screw ya every time.

We start off at 8 AM, with eight hours to go until the big show. Las Vegas is odd, apparently; who goes to a show at 4 PM? Rocco thinks the show will go all right, but C. Thomas Howell is openly like, “I am exhausted and unprepared!” That’s a positive attitude right there. Hal thinks he’s going to win, naturally, and he yaps to Rocco about how in the future, he’ll do some of Rocco’s tricks in his own magic show but he’ll make them better. Oh, great, thanks. They make their way to Steve’s theatre, which is apparently in a strip mall, so it’s really classy.

Real magic, real professional.

Once they all get to the theatre, Murray asks C. Thomas Howell how he feels about Hal. He says he has no energy towards him. Meanwhile, in Hal’s dressing room, Hal talks about how he heard C. Thomas Howell talking shit about him again. While he says all this, he’s playing on his laptop as always. I swear 90% of Hal’s rehearsals have just been games of Spider Solitaire. He takes a break to chat with Kimberly, who makes me squeak over how fucking terrible she looks.

Don’t you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?

It’s already 10 AM, so somehow the guys have wasted two hours already. C. Thomas Howell finally gets into his tang-colored suit and starts working a little bit. David firmly states this show will be horrific, so they have to do everything step by step to try to work out the kinks. That’s going well enough until an intercom comes on like, “This is a test for the life safety system. This is only a test!” The intercom broad heard about that safe falling down the other day, she’s just trying to watch out for everyone.

The emergency siren is still going off with five hours left ’til the show, so no one has been able to get any real progress made towards rehearsing. Instead they just sit and/or rehearse really basic tricks, none of the huge tricks like the safe or the Bengal tiger shebang. Rocco is bummed about that one, but only because he thinks the tiger is pretty calm, and that’s lame. I’m not inclined to agree because you know, a tiger is scary pretty much all the time, but Rocco thinks they should’ve made it starve for three days before using it in the show. Sounds smart to me!

An hour later, the siren is still going off. This is just going to be the whole fucking episode, by the way. The guys linger in their dressing rooms, which appear to be super secluded. I’m sure C. Thomas Howell can talk shit freely in here.

Privacy is private.

Hal visits Rocco to kill some time, and Rocco shares his fear that C. Thomas Howell will win. C. Thomas Howell has practiced this one trick about 75 times, and it’s one of Judge Jeff’s signature moves, so Rocco thinks the judges will be really impressed. Of course, Jeff could also be pissed off, but you never know. No matter, Hal doesn’t give a shit. He thinks Rocco worries too much, so that’s the end of that! Then Rocco decides to take a nap since, you know, they’re not facing any kind of deadline.

With three hours left, Hal decides to do another run-through, which mostly consists of him telling his harem of women, “If something goes wonky, just move onto the next thing.” Great! The most interesting thing about the run-through, which goes too quickly to really observe any tricks, is that every seat in the house is labeled. I love that Celebracadabra is really strict about that, of all things. They don’t particularly care if Hal catches fire or C. Thomas Howell dies, but those seats are imperative!

Finally it’s showtime! There’s 30 minutes left in this episode, and I swear the big performance is going to take up about five of them. Regardless, Jonathan greets the crowd and explains the whole premise of the series, to no one’s fascination. He introduces C. Thomas Howell as having acted in over 140 films, which is totally false according to IMDB – of course I checked because I’m an asshole that way.

His act starts with a bunch of dancing girls, and then he appears in his tang-colored suit. Marvelous! His act starts with some awkward stand-up comedy, and you can hear the crowd being like, “What the fuck, start the show.” He finally does, and he does the trick Rocco was so enamored with, where C. Thomas Howell makes money appear out of thin air. That part’s cool, but then there’s a lot of dancing and X-rated miming, which his wife surely enjoys from her seat in the audience. His filthiness winds up with him handcuffed and locked in the ol’ safe. A dancing girl hoists the safe into the air and then holds up a sign with C. Thomas Howell’s face on it. She pulls it up, pushes it back down, and voila, she’s C. Thomas Howell! A dancing girl is then locked in the safe! Even I, cynic that I am, have to admit that’s pretty fucking cool.

His act basically consists of different magic scenes. When that one ends, he cuts to one where he’s mourning the loss of a girl or some nonsense, and then when he holds up a sheet, she appears from behind it. C. Thomas Howell must get laid all the time with all these chicks he has in the lineup. I really don’t know what happens in this scene because it’s set to music from Beauty and the Beast, and it’s like, what the fuck? He makes the girl levitate eventually, but neither I, nor the audience could tell you why.

He doesn’t know either, so he just goes to sleep.

That marks the end of his show, and awesomely enough, the crowd gives him a standing ovation! Carnie Wilson, in particular, goes nuts for him but it’s only because she realized he could make a turkey sandwich appear for her. C. Thomas Howell goes backstage and flips his fucking shit about how great he was, which is really super cute, to be perfectly honest. Even cuter, the announcer leads up to the next segment by being like, “Coming up, Hal deals with some technical difficulties.” Celebracadabra, you are precious.

With that knowledge under our hats, we’re all set for Hal’s arrival! Going last could really benefit him, assuming his technical cock-up isn’t too severe. He starts by appearing in a tube of smoke, which I can’t make sound impressive, although it’s kind of cool.

Just kidding, I mean it’s hot.

Hal says his biggest fan is here, and then wheels out a huge fan. LOL, Hal, what a card. His trick is to crawl through the fan’s blades while they’re moving, and he’s like, “There’s two ways to do this. Magically…magically…or very quickly.” Ah, here comes that technical difficulty! Whatever’s supposed to happen clearly does not, and then the director actually interrupts the show over the loudspeaker and is like, “Whoops, my fault!” At least he’s taking credit, but hm, makes it obvious this won’t be done the magical way. Hal recovers well enough even though this is mortifying, and he makes it through the fan without being split apart, so that’s a plus. Also, his dick looks huge while he does it. He may not win but at least he’s got a nice rod.

For his next trick, he talks about how magic is a great way to make a party. He climbs into some sort of party box and waves a blanket around, which then turns into some kind of critter. He does it again and then tries for a third time, and…

Whoops! Magic can’t control his limbs.

He falls flat on his fucking face, which makes the audience cringe and makes me cackle really hard. Once he recovers, the blanket critters turn into sexy women, and one turns into Hal, which is also really cool. Would’ve been cooler had he not fallen down like an asshole, but you know. Before he moves onto the last trick, Hal talks to his celeb friends in the crowd, who are Carnie, Kimberly, and Chris Reid. It’s kind of awesome that these were the only ones to make it – Ant and Lisa Ann Walter are waaaay too busy, ya dig? Anyway, he asks Kimberly to join him on stage, which seems to surprise her even though we all kind of knew this was coming.

They dance together really unattractively. Don’t get me wrong, Kimberly is fucking amazing as a dancer, I’ll give her that! Hal, however, is not. They dance and he makes rose petals drizzle from his hands, which I was going to say equates to jizz in some awkward analogy. Then I heard the backing song, which apparently says, “I saw the tears running down your nose” but sounds a lot like, “I saw the jizz running down your nose.” So whatever, dude, this act is phallic.

I guess Kimbo agrees.

He locks Kimberly into a cage and covers her up with a blanket. After spinning it around for a minute, he does the big reveal and shock of shocks, it’s the tiger! Hal pets it but looks terrified as fuck, like maybe they really did starve it for all those days! Luckily it doesn’t bite him, but he still storms off the stage and cries. Cries! I’m not even exaggerating, dude weeps over his technical difficulties. I guess that’s a shame but considering how cocky he is about everything, he sort of deserves it. Also, I’m an unsympathetic whore.

It’s already time for judging, which is sort of shocking to me. This episode flew by when normally they drag, so this is bizarre and exciting. Jonathan brings Steve on stage to give his opinion, but he gives the PC response of “They’re both winners in my book.” Then he does a big illusion to show them up, naturally. He takes a twee toy airplane and places it in the center of the stage, lowers a curtain over it, and then voila, a huge jet appears! With Hal and C. Thomas Howell inside of it, no less! Tricks that involve people coming and going are always baffling to me. I guess I wonder where they wind up when they disappear, you know? Kimberly probably wonders the same thing. No one’s seen that poor girl in weeks.

Anyway, no worries, the finalists are right here before us. Judge Max says he’s impressed with C. Thomas Howell’s show, since it was really well rehearsed and also coherent. Max had a lot of time to think about this while nursing his raging pinkeye.

You scratch my eye, I’ll scratch yours.

Jeff agrees, saying that in just a few weeks C. Thomas Howell created the illusion of being a real magician. As predicted, he rags on the money trick, but he praises C. Thomas Howell for his stagecraft and storyline. Jonathan says much of the same, but also notes that there were a couple of accidental reveals in the tricks. None of us civilians noticed that, of course, but the professionals are a different story.

Then it’s time to judge Hal, and Jeff says he rocked the house. He also rocked his ankle right out of the socket when he fell, but que sera sera. Jeff says something about how the show had “more sizzle than steak,” which means nothing to me. Max takes over and says Hal is a great performer, but the act was full of glitches. He commends Hal for moving forward in spite of these flaws though, so that’s a bonus!

Unfortunately there can only be one winner, one Ultimate Celebrity Magician. Oh, the suspense! Jonathan tries to do one of those American Idol cliffhangers like, “We’ll find out the winner after the break!” I rolled my eyes, but a second later I panicked that maybe we actually wouldn’t find out this week. By the way, guys, I am a sucker. Luckily if you buy the episodes on iTunes as I do, the break is over in about three seconds flat. Crisis averted!

Jonathan praises our finalists and tells them how proud he is of their performances. One person still has to be the runner-up, though, and there was a unanimous decision on the winner. Hal was 99% there for his show, but C. Thomas Howell was 100% there. That means C. Thomas Howell is our Ultimate Celebrity Magician! He went from worst to first, and he pulls off the win! Hal is very happy for him.

He’s positively glowing.

Luckily no one gives a shit about Hal’s tiny tears, so they celebrate C. Thomas Howell’s win instead! And with that, Celebracadabra comes to a close. Thanks so much to anyone who lived through this season with the celebs and me! I wish you all the luck in the world if you’re watching NBC’s Celebrity Circus to fill the gaping hole in your heart now that this series has come to an end. God knows I don’t have the strength to join you, but I’d love to hear the highlights!