One of reality TV’s most impressive, and underpraised, achievements has been its ability to find ultra-talented nobodies, like Kelly Clarkson, and reveal that they’re secretly stars. Instead, that moment bursts the fantasy bubble-all along, we’ve been watching a variety show featuring Terry Bradshaw singing Imagine Dragons. They can’t sing, and I don’t know, or care, who any of them are, and you can’t make me.īecause, really, that’s the problem: you do need to care who the star is when it’s revealed. My less informed complaint is that, if I’m going to watch a Broadway/Vegas trivia game, it shouldn’t feature so many-or, really, any-athletes. The judges should also, he suggests, know what they’re talking about-right now, they swing between off-base guesses (a celebrity chef?) and joke guesses (Ruth Bader Ginsburg!). It should be a two-night event, not something that goes on for weeks the unmaskings should come faster and we should get a reasonably revelatory interview once the mask comes off. In Vulture, the reality-TV critic Andy Dehnart offered an aficionado’s brisk, convincing diagnosis of the show’s main flaw: unlike the Korean version, it drags. Is it Bella Hadid? The vengeful ghost of a Dionne quintuplet? Every masked performance is followed by a heated brainstorm to guess the star’s real name, like Influencer Rumpelstiltskin. “I betcha she’s a model,” Jenny McCarthy, one of the judges, says. Under the sweatshirt, there’s an apple-shiny red catsuit. She explains to the packed stadium, “In my family, anonymity is a completely alien concept”-a clue that she’s a Kardashian, or maybe a Hilton. “With this mask on, the tables are turned! I see you, but you can’t see me,” squeaks the Alien, who, in her introductory video, wears a sweatshirt reading “Don’t Talk to Me!” and an insect mask with magenta eyes. Instead, the forum is framed-mock sincerely-as a kind of liberation for celebrities suffering from too much exposure. The episodes feature elaborately choreographed singing competitions, although nobody is especially interested in whether the contestants sing well, and that’s good, because only a few do. There’s a genuinely impressive Bee based on the clues, she seems to be Gladys Knight, an icon who probably didn’t expect to be competing with the Pineapple, who, it turns out, is the stoner comic Tommy Chong. There’s the Raven, with a glorious span of slick black wings, whose “strength” is being “empathetic,” and who is almost certainly the former talk-show host Ricki Lake, or perhaps Sherri Shepherd. There’s the Unicorn, who speaks in a tinny voice, like a broken Siri. It’s a bit like “What’s My Line?” merged with Pokémon Go.Įach participant gets a moniker-the Monster, the Lion, the Poodle-and a voice-distortion algorithm. The competitors are all C-level celebrities (or A- or B-level ones-it’s impossible to say, although I doubt that Beyoncé is lurking inside the Alien). Based on the South Korean series “King of Mask Singer,” “The Masked Singer” is a reality show in which contestants disguise themselves in Comic Con-style costumes, then compete for-well, mostly, to be recognized as worthy of their fame. But just because something is dumb fun doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Ripening quickly also happens to be the weakness of a lot of reality competitions, particularly those based on gimmicks as extreme as that of “The Masked Singer,” a Gaga-glittery pageant on Fox that has become a surprise hit. His Hawaiian shirt hangs open, revealing fake abs. As Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta Man” thumps over the loudspeakers, the mystery contestant struts onto the stage, his head concealed by a bulbous pineapple mask. “Enter the Pineapple!” Nick Cannon, Mariah Carey’s ex-husband, shouts.
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