"The Masked Singer" ran its fourth episode on Thursday, January 24. The singing competition on Fox is definitely one of the quirkiest new reality programs on TV today. As E! News Online reminds us, the show is based on a Korean singing competition and features 12 contestants, all of whom are disguised in elaborate fully-obscuring costumes.
This Thursday on "The Masked Singer," the identity deductions were focused on the female contestant codenamed Poodle, after her fellow competitors Rabbit, Alien, Raven, and Bee passed the face-off sing-offs. The unmasking of this Masked Singer even shocked one of the regular panelists.
Korean-American comedienne is the latest unmasked contestant
The Daily Mail Online reveals that Poodle, whose rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” did not quite take with the panel, is actually Korean-American comedienne Margaret Cho. This blew the mind of “The Masked Singer” panelist Ken Jeong, as they played siblings on the two-season 2015 ABC sitcom “Dr. Ken.”
The playfully indignant Cho addressed Jeong after her unmasking saying, “Ken, I thought you would know!” To this, Jeong answered that he felt dumb for getting her “clues” but not putting them together. He also praised Cho as a pioneer in Asian-American comedy.
Debut reality programs like Fox's "The Masked Singer" really need to do standout things to get noticed by viewers as competition is fierce against the long-runners.
To compare, “America’s Got Talent” on NBC has completed 13 seasons, is currently doing “The Champions” spinoff and will start Season 14 later this year.
‘Masked Singer’ concept catches audience attention
In rotations of several singers per episode, contestants on "The Masked Singer" perform weekly before a four to five-person panel of judges and a live audience, who together pick three contestants that week to advance, with the one eliminated having to unmask.
The guessing games on the contestants’ identities are one of this reality singing contest's well-liked features.
The featured contestants also on "The Masked Singer" are not all professional music artists either. Since the Fox reality show's premiere in January, when the first eliminated contestant (dressed as a Hippo) was revealed as the NFL’s Antonio Brown, speculations on the hidden identities have run rampant.
Guesses range from a Kardashian to Paris Hilton. Last week’s eliminated singer was NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw.
Only eight contestants remain mysterious in “The Masked Singer” hosted by Nick Cannon with a judges’ panel of Ken Jeong, Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, and Nicole Scherzinger. It airs Thursdays, 9 PM (EST) on Fox.
