Wednesday marked the return of one of the most bizarre reality shows that has been successful on American television and that says a lot. The masked singer season five started with host guest Niecy Nash speaking for Nick Cannon, positive for COVID, a rooster that keeps the secret that hides clues from judges and a harvest of new masked crooners.
If you’re not familiar with the premise of the Fox series, it’s basically a singing competition in which stars (or “stars”) play elaborate karaoke routines while judges Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy, Nicole Scherzinger and Robin Thicke scour packages of video clues for clues as to who might be under the masks.
Wednesday’s premiere featured performances by five of the season’s ten contestants: Raccoon, Snail, Seashell, Russian Doll and Robpine (this is a robot porcupine, in case it wasn’t clear). Guess who was under the mask on Wednesday, from Jamie Foxx to Jessica Simpson and Ginuwine. But only the singer with the lowest number of votes from judges and the home audience (in this case, a limited number of people who would have watched live streams when the show was recorded weeks ago, we think?) Is revealed the end of the episode and this week was ….
[Spoiler ahead.]
Worm. Judges ‘guesses for who performed Hall & Oats’ “Make My Dreams” with a country sound included Adam Carolla, Billy Crystal and Jay Leno. But when Snail’s top hat was taken off, no celebrity head was seen. Instead, Kermit Frog came out of the snail’s shell. Yes it is. While judges guessed real-life humans like lumps, he was always a Muppet. Or at least the puppeteer Matt Vogel.
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Based on the costumes, it’s obvious that there are real people behind at least some voices this season, but it’s still unclear if the Russian Doll is one person, two people, a whole family of people? Or, if there was a clue tonight, maybe it’s just the whole Keebler elf tree.