With its Super Bowl lead-in season premiere out of the way, The Masked Singer is back to giving Hump Day a little extra zing, in its regular Wednesday night time slot. And this time around, guest panelist Jamie Foxx, a.k.a. host of Fox game show Beat Shazam, is followed by Jason Biggs, aka star of Fox sitcom Outmatched. Funny how this all works, isn’t it?
Biggs takes a seat with usual suspects Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg, Ken Jeong and Nicole Scherzinger. Their task: guessing who’s who in the remaining five contestants from Group A. The other night Lil Wayne was the first to be sent packing in Season 3. What megawatt A-lister will get the boot this time, fair viewers?
Llama
Well, this is all a bit anticlimactic, isn’t it? Given the new rules, you’ll be seeing the same cads from Group A who performed three nights ago do it again, minus Lil Wayne, of course. Llama is first up and gives us a fairly decent rendition of Tom Jones chestnut “It’s Not Unusual.” Has anyone else noticed the song choices have gotten less current while the talent roster has gotten less Z-list on this show? Guess we can speculate on where the money’s being prioritized.
The panelists’ guesses as to who’s lurking under the Llama mask range from Johnny Knoxville to Woody Harrelson. At this point I know I can do a better job than all these “experts” combined. And yet, my phone’s not ringing. Oh, right — they’re moving away from Z-list this year.
Miss Monster
This has to be Chaka Khan, right? Miss M drops a telling clue after performing Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy” when she says she was voted “most likely to be in the presence of royalty.” So allow me to get all Ken Jeong for a moment…
You know who will always be royalty? Prince. He recorded a sassy little R&B jam in 1979 for his self-titled sophomore LP called “I Feel For You.” You know who covered that song five years later, took it to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and scored two Grammys for it a year later? Chaka Khan. She’s the living legend who was front and center on “Ain’t Nobody,” shined just as brightly in the background on Steve Winwood’s 1986 super smash-a-roo “Higher Love” and — to reference a personal fave here — sang beautifully on an early ‘90s duet with Peter Cetera no one but me remembers called “Feels Like Heaven.”
I know that voice. Miss Monster is Chaka Khan or I’ll eat my hat. So there.
White Tiger
White Tiger is just straight-up terrible. He manages to rap 40 seconds or so of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s “Good Vibrations,” and all I can wonder is whether Jenny McCarthy will bring this up at the Wahlberg Easter brunch, or if she knows better? She probably doesn’t know better.
Robin, who’s usually straightforward with his critiques, surprisingly scores the night’s biggest over-the-head burn: “You could have muted the whole song and it still would have been an entertaining performance.”
Kangaroo
Poor Kangaroo laments that she feels she’s been watching her life from the sidelines lately because everyone seems to be against her. She then launches into a pretty swell take on Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.”
Robin declares Kangaroo to be the frontrunner of the season that only started this week, so take that with a grain of salt. Jason Biggs picks up on a basketball hint in the pouched contestant’s clues package and speculates Kangaroo could be onetime Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air star Tatyana Ali.
Turtle
School-themed imagery, like a chalkboard, cafeteria and classroom, fills Turtles clues package. He gives us a by-the-numbers rendition of James Arthur’s 2016 snoozer “Say You Won’t Let Go,” then informs the panel he “was voted most likely to hunt for booty, and I have often.
Ken thinks Turtle is Backstreet Boys member AJ McLean. Robin goes with Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, while Jason and Nicole toss out Darius Rucker and Zac Efron, respectively. I don’t even think you need a 3rd grade education to be a panelist on this show, to be honest.
Eliminated: Llama. A bit of a surprise, as White Tiger was clearly the weakest vocalist for the second episode in a row. Llama turns out to be comedian and Price Is Right host Drew Carey. These are very strange times, friends.