‘Masked Singer Australia’ Recap: Sloth Must Apologise To Lizzo
They wanted to make sure we understood Cactus was a woman, so they gave her cactus breasts.
In Masked Singer Australia‘s first episode of season two, Dannii Minogue spoke of bad dreams; by the second, she’s fully disassociating, referring to herself only in third person.
While she lives out her Mulholland Drive fantasy and sending inspector Minogue to find herself within herself, there’s a singing competition (???) underway.
Tonight we met the other six masked contestants and said goodbye to Hammerhead, who, unfortunately, was not Jamie Durie as I thought, but cricket star Michael Bevan.
Even for Masked Singer, this is scraping the barrel — though it’s possible this 26-year-old gay man has a blind spot when it comes to sport.
Sorry to this man, but the show is clearly trying to gaslight me into thinking the guy who my landlord paid to fix the ever-widening hole in my sharehouse’s ceiling is not actually a tradie, but a cricket star.
Then again, if he was actually a cricket star masquerading as a tradie for some COVID-side hustle coin, this would make more sense: desperate times call for desperate measures (appearing on Masked Singer, ‘fixing’ a ceiling).
“Yeah na it’s just an old house hey, it might happen again I don’t know hey”
His Wikipedia is substantial enough to prove me wrong, but those clues were another level of niche: when he took off his mask, we learnt a reference to Kylie Minogue was literally about how she looked at him one time in a hotel lobby.
That’s not a clue, that’s the world’s most boring celebrity encounter story. It’s something your uncle might mention every Christmas once he’s a little too drunk as a way to taunt your aunt that he can’t help it if he cheats on her again as women just throw themselves at him even Miss Minogue, and besides it’s her fault for not showing him enough love it’s never been the same since the nursery fire-
Anyway, several people on Twitter seriously guessed that Hammerhead was Nick Cave, so my disappointment simply can’t compare to theirs.
Speaking of disappointment, let’s dive into episode two, which, even with the loud-noises and colourful costumes, felt a little… subdued. Last night I called the show an ‘hour-long nang’, but this gave me ‘spilt bong water’ — murky, dark, and I don’t want to deal with it.
Having said that, this group of six singers had some of our clear ‘front-runners’, as several of them are clearly singers by trade. Not all of them, though.
Artist’s rendition of Dannii Minogue’s psyche, two episodes in.
Sloth
Lizzo might call for self-love, but Sloth’s cover of ‘Good As Hell’ shows that sometimes self-confidence is stolen, not earned.
Evidently not a singer by trade, Sloth is trying something new — and she made up for shaky vocals with a lot of props and an outfit “reveal” (she took off an apron). For that, she’s Dannii’s favourite contestant so far, which proves that a white woman’s love for Lizzo truly knows no bounds.
Sloth is one of the cutest costumes, and ridiculously oversized, too, which hides the body underneath.
We do learn that Sloth has a colourful past and family, has had many jobs, loves sunshine and was involved in the Commonwealth Games. Besides that last clue, this more or less reads like a Tinder profile.
Twitter suggested Katie Noonan, as she music directed the 2018 games, but that’s incredibly rude to her, an actual singer. I suggested Susie O’Neill for Goldfish, but she fits here too, as does Johanna Griggs, who has had 1000 tv jobs since her Olympic days.
Wizard
Wizard’s costume is one of the most intricate — basically ‘Davy Jones meets mossy Gandalf’ — and it’s also my least-favourite purely on an aesthetic level.
Putting aside that magicians are incredibly annoying neckbeard bros, the Wizard’s dreadlock beard offers some real ‘my mattress is on the floor’ energy.
At least Wizard looks ashamed of his filth.
He’s also the easiest to guess. As soon as I heard him sing, it was clearly Isaiah Firebrace of Eurovision and The Voice fame.
A few clues match up, too — he started his career young, for starters, and a line about ‘heavy metal’ links to his track ‘Streets Of Gold’ — but admittedly not all of them, at least immediately. But it’s absolutely him.
Firebrace even sings ‘Firework’, the best song inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On The Road that also features an allusion to American Beauty (also, incidentally proving that Katy Perry and 14-year-old me have the same taste in Serious Art).
I could be wrong, and I have been before, but I really don’t think I am.
Kitten
Lisa Frank’s Spring Breakers.
Shortly after the clues pointed out that Kittens don’t sing, Dannii says it “must be” a singer. Inspector Minogue strikes again.
It’s clearly a misdirect, as a line about throwing shoes clearly points towards either Cardi B, who raps but doesn’t sing, or Iraqi journalist and Twitter king Muntadhar al-Zaidi. Channel 10 probably can’t afford either of them, and we’re back to square one.
Kitten sings ‘Don’t Start Now’ by Dua Lipa, which Jackie O and Dannii really enjoy and sing along to. It’s cool that they enjoy contemporary pop music, like me, the viewer.
The clues about ‘judgement’ have Twitter guessing everyone from Nat Bass to Julia Morris and Julia Bishop. Think we’ll have to come back to this one.
Cactus
Unlike the other contestants, Cactus’ clue-reel featured a heap of tangible things to hold onto.
We seemingly have a lot to work with here. She’s spent some time in Perth, Melbourne and the UK, via her suitcase stickers; a complete non-sequitur shot of a DJ deck suggests she’s a DJ (though that really doesn’t narrow things down); and we learn she’s ‘dangerous’ and done some dancing.
Most importantly, you better watch out boys, because this cactus has titties.
“Hmm, I don’t know. Will the audience get that she’s a female by the huge lips, eyelashes, and flowers? I think we simply have to give the Cactus breasts.”
Literally every name mentioned by the guessing panel means nothing to me, but it turns out there’s a reason why.
Under duress by Dave Hughes, Cactus reveals she’s been “overshadowed” by a more famous family member. The fact that the show didn’t cut to Dannii here genuinely suggests that she didn’t okay the joke or it’s forbidden by her contract, as it’s the most obvious edit in the world.
Music nerd and radio presenter Nic Kelly reckons it’s Olympia Valance, Holly’s half-sister who seemingly exists, but a bunch of music theatre nerds are convinced it’s Wicked and Legally Blonde: The Musical star Lucy Durack, saying the clues point towards her roles.
All I can say is that Cactus’ titties are incredibly unnecessary, and seemingly too sexual as even Hughesy didn’t even make a weird comment about wanting to fuck the costume.
Her performance of No Doubt’s ‘Just A Girl’ was one of the night’s best — her ability to have a genuine stage presence in that outfit makes me think the Gleeks are onto something with Durack.
Bushranger
Why does Bushranger look like he’s in the colonial edition of Joel Turner’s Modern Day Poets?
In a subtle promo for The True Story Of Ned Kelly, where Ned Kelly wears dresses in a ‘radical queering of history’, Masked Singer‘s final performer wears a glittered version of the bushranger’s armour.
Meanwhile, literal queer Australian bushranger Captain Moonlite gets no love. Fame’s a fickle thing.
This Bushranger is ‘famous for punching above their weight’, waves the Czech flag, is a fighter and knows when to hide by turning off the light.
I floated Neighbours star Bonnie Anderson as a potential contestant last season, and while that wasn’t right, she could be on s2.
Twitter user Maddy Rowe has connected the dots. Anderson’s grandfather was a boxer, she has a song called ‘Blackout’, and was the first winner of Australia’s Got Talent — a slight exaggeration of the word pioneer, but it’s not like she’s writing these clues herself.
Time will tell — though if these guesses are right, we’re in for some pretty disappointing reveals. But, as Dannii Minogue whispered under her breath this episode while staring into the abyss, “the hunt is always more thrilling than the kill”.
Masked Singer Australia is on Channel 10 each Monday and Tuesday at 7.30pm AEST, and available to stream on 10Play.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and on Twitter.