‘Masked Singer Australia’ S1E2 Recap: We Must Protect Monster At All Costs
With Parrot bowled out, ten Masked Singers remain.
Masked Singer‘s first episode saw 1.56 million live viewers last night, which not only is truly astronomical for a Monday night, but is reportedly Channel 10’s biggest result since I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here debuted in 2015. It’s both surprising, and not at all: if we know one thing, it’s that Australia really likes watching celebrities at risk of embarrassing themselves.
There’s certainly a cultural cringe going on here: not so much a ‘who is that?’ but a ‘what is that?’, and time will tell whether the interest will continue now we know what the show actually looks like.
But even with the shock fading, this episode stood strong — if anything, I enjoyed it more. While it’s just as chaotic and crowded as the first episode, the panel seemed a bit more comfortable with the format, riffing a little bit more.
Dave Hughes is absolutely phoning it in as ‘The One Who Guesses Incorrectly On Purpose’, but it’s a nice balance from Jackie O and Dannii Minogue’s genuinely astute guesses and LiLo’s best attempts to land on an Aussie name. Since they’re really the glue, given the contestants offer very little personality on-stage, it’s nice to see them — and Lohan especially — actually have fun with the world’s dumbest show.
Plus, the performances were okay to great: at least three of them are singers, and the others were seemingly sport-leaning men, which this gay man simply has little time for.
And Brett Lee was the only one I was confident enough to guess, mostly because of this 2006 Bollywood song he recorded for some reason. But tonight we said goodbye to Lee, who was the Parrot, which is clearly actually a rainbow lorikeet. The mask upon mask upon mask… wow…
It’s Showtime
There were a few minor switch ups from Masked Singer‘s first episode: the main thing was that the audience have been unmasked.
Free from their shackles, they continue to stand there, wide-jawed, clapping and cheering. Even when Parrot drops poisonous beach balls upon them, they do not run or hide: they praise the sky to the beat (well, as best they can) and hit the balls back into the air, releasing their noxious fumes. They are just happy to be here, and so is Osher Günsberg.
What an energetic man: not even his gold-crusted suit can compete with his dazzling Vanessa Amorosi puns. Perhaps he’s just excited to unleash his voice, no longer whispering every line as he does during The Bachelor.
As Werner Herzog once said, “The birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing – they, they just screech in pain.”
After this episode, we’ve also met the season’s roster. In this episode, we meet Dragon, Monster, Parrot, Spider, Rhino and Lion: oh my! Now we’ve got the whole collection, the costumes float through my mind like Woolworths’ Ooshies: pointless yet cute pollution that seems to symbolise the endpoint of society as we know it, but really, are just an easy target.
I’d much prefer to watch this than The Voice, a show which sells inspirational moments but profits off ordinary people’s attempts to make their lives matter and rarely offers more than a shitty post-win single before it moves on, leaving the winners stuck in contracts and lives they weren’t ready for.
At least the celebrities know what they’re signing up for: they have nothing to lose but their masks.
Absolutely Anybody
Dragon
A cover of Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ would have been a lot more fun.
Dragon is a self-professed brute, which is probably why he sings a song by Sheppard. He also says he has petrol in his brains. Perhaps he fell into a vat while working on an oil rig, a cautionary tale that could create ‘screams of joy and tears of great sadness’, one of the other clues.
There’s a lot of dad energy in Dragon, between the fist-pumping and the angry stomping he does when Hughes says he has a ‘feminine energy’. Wouldn’t want to be called a girl dragon.
Names thrown around include Anthony Mundine and Sam Newman, but the dragon didn’t rip off their mask to say something homophobic or yell about Adam Goodes, so both feel pretty unlikely.
Grant Denyer is a solid guess, too: he does love a V8 car race (once called ‘brute’ races) and, as we’re delighted to discover, last year released a charity song for Christmas. The voice could be him, but we’re not 100 percent convinced.
Monster
Showing vulnerability right off the gate by ‘accidentally’ falling off the stage? I see your game Monster, I see your game…
Lohan has another revealing moment when Monster says “nobody likes to think of themselves as a monster, but I guess I am”, immediately saying that they must be American. Dark!
Monster sings Aretha’s ‘Think’, and her voice certainly makes us pause for thought — she’s one of the best singers the show has. The clues also heavily hint she’s a horse girl, which instantly removes all that respect.
Laboratories and time in the shadows are hints too: it meant nothing to me, but Twitter suggests it’s The Project host Gorgi Coghlan, who studied biology, did dressage as a kid and changed ‘streams’ from Channel 9 to 10 a few years back (and if that’s a stretch, before that, she was a teacher).
It could also be Heli Simpson, former Saddle Club star, singer, equestrian and now a doctor, but as per her LinkedIn, she’s kind of busy working a very important medical job.
Spider
So Spider is a spider who wears a spider on its head? Or it the spider vomiting out the singing human?
Stream Spider on Google Play! While the first notes of ‘Toxic’ sounded a little too Tones And I for our tastes, this was a genuinely great performance, no doubt helped by the string rendition of a Britney classic.
Spider is seemingly someone who made their way song-writing before making their own way as a singer, and has a father in the business. Sia isn’t a terrible guess, but the voice isn’t right at all, and she’s, uh, definitely not on this show.
Kate Cerebano could work — their voices kind of match, though the clues are a bit iffy. Over on Twitter, Channel 10 personality Justin Hill says it’s Neighbours star Bonnie Anderson for sure, and listening to her song ‘Sorry’, it’s definitely a vocal match. As politely as this can be said, we really hope not: what a boring reveal that’d be.
Rhino
I have absolutely no idea who he is and don’t care. Don’t stream Rhino on iTunes!
Lion
This costume is absolutely a reject from ‘The Lion King Musical’.
Ever since we heard Lion sing in the ads, avid Masked Singer sleuths have been convinced it’s Jessica Mauboy behind the mask, especially after she had a slip of the tongue on radio saying ‘she didn’t know if Guy Sebastian was on too‘.
The powerful voice is certainly there, as are the clues which point towards being on Australian Idol at a young age. It does seem a little too easy, though, and the voice doesn’t quite sit right: it could be Paulini or Casey Donovan, or perhaps Lisa Mitchell after she had a complete creative crisis. Alternatively, Em Rusciano lives, breathes and eats all things camp, as does Kate Ceberano — if at least one of them isn’t on this show, that’s a cosmic travesty.
Speaking of cosmic, it would truly be stunning if a certain Australian Idol alumn’s nodules had finally healed. Then again, would we even need a mask to not recognise Cosima De Vito?
With Brett Lee bowled out, ten Masked Singers remain. Please don’t leave me alone on this journey.
Masked Singer Australia airs on Channel 10/Win at 7.30pm Mondays and Tuesdays, and is available to stream on 10 Play.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and will be streaming Alien on Spotify. Follow him on Twitter.