The Masked Singer Is What Happens When Everyone Tries Too Hard and Gives Up at the Same Time

By Rich Juzwiak | January 3, 2019 | 3:32pm

Entertainment TV

I can’t tell if the existence of Fox’s new singing competition The Masked Singer is proof that we are losing our minds collectively, or if it’s just great background material for us to lose our minds to. That’s probably a minor distinction, anyway, since we are losing our minds, after all. I know this show is real (it’s based on one out of South Korea)—I watched it and then I watched it again to mine particularly random moments for the montage in this post, but I still feel like I dreamed it.

Disgraced crooner Robin Thicke was there? So were Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s favorite human of all time, Nicole Scherzinger? So was Nick Cannon’s hairline? They all watched and commented on mostly terrible singers in ridiculously ornate costumes—a peacock, a hippo, a monster, a unicorn, a deer, and a lion—and pretended like they were so excited to do so? It’s an ongoing competition where every week the identity of one out of the 12 contestants who loses through a clearly unscientific polling system will be revealed so I’ll keep watching because I’m so curious and the world is ending anyway so whatever this matters as little as anything else? It was like if someone dismembered H.R. Pufnstuf and threw the bloody pieces at American Idol? The judges wore handsfree mics? The competitors talked in pitched-up voices so as not to reveal their identities through speech? Nicole Scherzinger did this?