Wednesday was the return of one of the more bizarre reality competitions that achieved success on American television, and that says a lot. The Masked Singer season five kicked off with host Niecy Nash steps in for COVID-positive Nick Cannon, a secret rooster hiding clues from the judges, and a harvest of new masked crowns.
If you do not know the premise of the Fox series, it’s basically a singing competition where celebrities (or ‘celebrities’) sing extensive karaoke routines, while judges Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke search video clue packages for tips of who may be under the masks.
At Wednesday’s premiere, performances by five of the ten contestants of the season appeared: Raccoon, Snail, Seashell, Russian Doll and Robpine (this is a robotic pig, if it was not clear). The guesses for who were under the masks on Wednesday ranged from Jamie Foxx to Jessica Simpson to Ginuwine. But only the singer with the lowest number of votes from the judges and the audience at home (in this case a limited number of people who presumably watched live feeds when the program was recorded weeks ago, do we recommend?) At the end of the episode and this week it was ….
[Spoiler ahead.]
Snail. The judges ‘guesses for which Hall & Oats’ “Make My Dreams” performed with a made-up national anthem included Adam Carolla, Billy Crystal and Jay Leno. But when the Snail’s high hat was removed, there was no glamorous personality to be seen. Instead, it was Kermit the frog that came out of the snail shell. Yep, that’s right. While the judges guessed the real life people like chumps, it was a Muppet all along. Or at least puppeteer Matt Vogel.
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Based on the costumes, it is clear that there are real people behind these voices, but it is still unclear whether the Russian Doll is one person, two people, a whole family of people? Or, if that’s a hint tonight, maybe it’s just the whole tree of Keebler elves.