Criss Angel: Mind Freak or Mind Fraud?

Criss Angel: Mindfreak is a television show on A&E with a magician/illusionist named Criss Angel. Most of his tricks seem real, like when he levitates a cup or swallows needles on a string and pulls it out of his belly button.

He's done it in front of a real people, but Criss might have pushed his career too far on a live episode of Mindfreak. On Thursday, July 31st, he was handcuffed to a railing that was on the sixth story of a building that was about to implode. In case you don't know what that is, a building implosion means to strategically place explosive material and timing its detonation so that a structure collapses on itself in a matter of seconds which minimizes the physical damage to its immediate surroundings.

Criss Angel had four minutes to unlock the pair of handcuffs, unlock four doors, and get to the roof where a helicopter was waiting for him. When there was thirty seconds left, the helicopter had to leave whether Criss was on the rope ladder it let down or not. When the clock started he got out of the handcuffs in twenty seconds, but he had trouble unlocking the first door, so he broke the window that was by the door. He got in and unlocked the second and third door with no problems. He ran up three flights of stairs to the ninth floor and had to unlock two locks to get the fourth and last door open.

With one minute and thirty seconds, he started having a lot of trouble with the locks. At forty seconds he still didn't have the first lock done. Thirty seconds came and the helicopter had to leave so when the building imploded, the helicopter was safe. Criss got the first lock to the last door unlocked with ten seconds left. He couldn't get the lock undone, so when the time was up, Criss was still in the building.

All of the cameras that were put through his path were destroyed, and the building collapsed. Five seconds went by, and there was no Criss in sight. Ten seconds, fifteen seconds, until twenty seconds went by. At that moment, Criss slowly stood up, covered in dust, and slowly started walking over to where his two brothers, Costa and JD, and his mother stood. Criss was shaken, but the episode ended there. Is Criss Angel a Mind Freak or a Mind Fraud? You can be the judge of that.