By Staff Writer Benjamin Pfeffer.
A new show The Masked Singer is, as you might’ve guessed, another singing show. It has been overhyped and ended up being a severe disappointment.
The show had its premiere on January 2, 2019. It is hosted by, as you could guess in a few tries, Nick Cannon. If, for whatever reason, you end up curious about the show and want to watch, it is on Fox, Wednesdays at nine at night.
If you can ignore the fact that there are grown adults masquerading in giant animal costumes, the general idea of the show is a good one. However, it is executed very poorly, which is surprising given how often there have been successful shows like it to go off of, all based off of American Idol.
The show is based off of South Korea’s The King of Mask Singers. The South Korean show has done very well in its country, which is another shock as to why the US version has done so much worse. The point is that famous people all across the celebrity spectrum dress up in disguises and sing and the judges/audience have to guess who the animals are.
The reason the show has done so poorly is likely because of the repetitiveness, lack of useful feedback/comments and general criticism from the judges, and the lack of stakes for the participants.
The show seems to focus too much on the actual unmasking of the famous people, which, to be fair, are very interesting and shocking at times. They do seem to forget to make the rest of the show entertaining because of this. The show is very repetitive and bland.
The judges are not very good at doing their job: judging. They don’t know when to talk, and when it’s finally their turn they don’t give any substantial feedback at all. Caroline Framke, a writer from Variety perfectly describes this phenomenon of when the judges talk out of turn as “it feels like you’re watching the show next to chatty strangers who are sorely mistaken about how much charm they have to burn.”
Unlike the singing shows that succeed, this one is missing one major key. That key is that the contestants have something big to gain. In the new show The Masked Singer, the contestants are all people that have succeeded in life and have very little to gain. For example, some of the contestants have won Grammy’s. What singing prize could they possibly care about that compares to a Grammy?
Overall, the premise of the show is a good idea, as shown from the original in South Korea, but it is executed very poorly. The show probably thought the celebrity involvement would carry the show to popularity, but they now realize it takes more than having famous faces on your show, it takes continuous interest from an audience.
SPOILER ALERT: The show has had quite a few faces revealed already. To be fair to the show, they have managed to gather a very wide variety on the spectrum of celebrities. The show’s competitors have a combined 65 Grammy nominations, 16 multi-Platinum albums, 16 Emmy nominations, 9 Broadway shows, 4 Super Bowl titles, and 4 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The first to be eliminated was Steeler’s wide receiver Antonio Brown. Brown was disguised as a hippo. Next to be eliminated was famous comedian Tommy Chong. Chong was disguised as a pineapple. Third to be eliminated was four-time super bowl champion Terry Bradshaw. Bradshaw was disguised as a deer.
The most recent two eliminations are less renowned names. The fourth week eliminated actress Margaret Cho who was disguised as a poodle. Finally, the fifth week eliminated actress Tori Spelling who was disguised as a unicorn.
The show started more interesting and lost excitement throughout the month of January, however, I still would like to find out who else is disguised. So, I won’t watch, but I will stay updated.