Oh, The Masked Singer. I know this show has many detractors, with lots of people critizing the judges, the quality of the performers, or the whole gimmick, and even the people who keep watching it often bashfully characterize it as a "guilty pleasure". Well, I don't believe in guilty pleasures. I like what I like without being ashamed of anything, and I honestly like this show a lot - although I will admit that some of the steam has went out of it since it began. The contestants in the first season are still the most memorable for me, and while I understand why they wanted to increase the number of them - more celebrities and more wacky constumes, yay! - for me it killed a bit of my immersion in the show. Last season I stopped writing down clues entirely and by the time the same performers rolled around I completely forgot if I even liked them the first time. So I'm not altogether happy that they decided to keep this format, but hey... more wacky costumes, at least! As for the judges, yeah, they can be annoying... all the "No way!!!" even when they guessed someone right four weeks ago, the fawning over mediocre performances as if it was the best thing ever, Ken Jeong's increasingly terrible-on-purpose first guesses... but you know what, I saw the first episode of the Hungarian version, and the Americans have nothing on them in terms of sheer absurdity and horribleness, so I appreciate the fact that it could be much worse.
Before starting to review this season, it's also important to note that I hardly ever guess any of the celebrities right, in fact, I can only remember two times when I did, and even then only after the judges did first and I started to agree with them. Now the reason for this is twofold: the majority of these contestants I've never even heard of (especially all the athletes and radio hosts and reality stars) and the ones I have, I'm just not that familiar with their personal lives or up to date on celebrity gossip of any kind. I literally have no idea who went through a difficult time recently or had self-image issues as a child or got how many kids, and I know even less about where and when they worn born and how many awards they have, which to me seems to make up an unreasonable amount of the clues we get.
Speaking of clues, I did catch up on a few things over the last three seasons that should make it easier to guess them. Generally speaking, there's two rules I follow while guessing:
1. If they reference some super famous song or movie title in a super obvious way, it has nothing to do with their identity (no, judges, it's not Tom Cruise just because he said "succeeding in this business seemed like a mission impossible"). In a related note, I noticed that if the judges latch on to a particular guess really hard, song/movie titles of that person usually start to appear in the clues to make them think they're on to something, but they're not.
2. The majority of the clues require an insane amount of conjecture to get right, and usually include visual puns or wordplay. My "favourite" was the one where an actual baseball bat in Kelly Osbourne's package was supposed to be a reference to her dad's infamous incident with a real, live bat, and I thought that was just really fucking dumb.
None of this really helps my guessing in any way, so usually the only thing I can really count on is recognizing the voice and then somehow fitting the clues to that person... then again, I did not get Bret Michaels until his very last episode and I actually love Poison and know his voice a lot so... maybe I'm just not very good at this.
Before I get into the actual recap of this episode, I feel obliged to address one more thing - that is, the whole Nick Cannon of it all. To start with, I'm not in the least a fan of what in recent years came to be known as "cancel culture". I really don't think people should lose their jobs and have their reputations ruined by something dumb they posted on social media, especially if said posting happened years ago and the person hasn't actually exhibited behaviours reflecting it in real life. This goes for ordinary everyday people, and celebrities as well. Obviously if it's something more serious like actual, provable domestic abuse or child molestation, then go for it. Now, what Cannon did falls into the first category, so I don't think he should have been fired (not that he ever was in any danger, I mean, he's a black man who tweeted about white people being subhuman savages, when has that ever bothered anyone in Hollywood). That said, from the moment I read about his true opinions, I knew I would never be able to take his friendly banter with any of the white judges or contestants seriously ever again... or with his favourite joke-buddy Ken Jeong, for that matter. I'm not sure how black supremacists feel about Asian people, but it can't be good, right? Also, if I was Robin Thicke or Jenny McCarthy, I would probably feel really awkward making nice with this man from now on. But hey... I'm not a Hollywood person whose whole livelihood depends on pretending, so they'll probably be fine.
Alright, now that that's all over and done with... how did Group A fare this week?
