Wednesday marked the return of one of the most bizarre successful reality show competitions on American television, and that says a lot. The masked singer Fifth season started with guest host Niecy Nash replacing Nick Cannon positive for COVID, a cock that keeps secrets hiding clues from the judges and a crop of new masked singers.
If you’re not familiar with the premise of the Fox series, it’s basically a singing competition where celebrities (or “celebrities”) sing elaborate karaoke scripts while judges Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke rummage through video tip packs for tips on who might be under the masks.
Wednesday’s debut featured performances from five of the ten contestants of the season: Raccoon, Snail, Seashell, Russian Doll and Robpine (who is a robot hedgehog, if it’s not clear). The assumptions for who was under the masks on Wednesday ranged from Jamie Foxx to Jessica Simpson and Ginuwine. But only the singer with the fewest votes from the jury and the audience at home (in this case, a limited number of people who supposedly watched the live feed when the show was recorded weeks ago, do we think?) Is revealed at the end of the episode and this week was ….
[Spoiler ahead.]
Snail. Judges’ hints about who sang “Make My Dreams” by Hall & Oats, with a feigned country tone, included Adam Carolla, Billy Crystal and Jay Leno. But when Snail’s top hat was removed, there was no celebrity head in sight. Instead, it was Kermit the Frog who emerged from the snail’s shell. Yes that’s right. While the judges guessed real-life humans as idiots, he was a Muppet all the time. Or at least puppeteer Matt Vogel.
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Based on the costumes, it is evident that there are real humans behind at least some of the voices this season, but is it still unclear whether the Russian Doll is one person, two people, an entire family of people? Or, if tonight was any indication, it might just be the entire Keebler elf tree.