Even Without Rudy Giuliani ‘The Masked Singer’ Premiere Was a Hot Mess

Like an annoying cold you just can’t shake, The Masked Singer continues to return to TV screens twice a year, presumably for no reason other than to keep Nick Cannon employed so he can support his countless children. You sort of learn to live with it, sometimes even forgetting that it’s there, and then a rapping pink bear in high heels is revealed to be Sarah Palin, and it’s suddenly impossible to ignore.

Season seven of The Masked Singer (how have there been seven seasons since 2019?!) premiered on Wednesday with a new Western theme and the subtitle, “The Good, the Bad, and the Cuddly.” The familiar panel of judges—Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong, and Nicole Scherzinger—is back to make completely improbable guesses about the identities of contestants even though they have now been doing this for three years. No, Nicole, that is not Ewan McGregor in the Scottish terrier costume. He’s too busy with his Star Wars spin-off series to sing Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” with sexy poodle backup dancers!

This season of the Korean-import reality-singing competition already made headlines last month when Deadline reported that during an episode taping, one of the contestants was unmasked to allegedly reveal Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Apparently, the unmasking prompted Thicke and Jeong to walk off the stage in disbelief and anger. To that end, here’s a word of advice for the producers of The Masked Singer: if even Robin “Blurred Lines” Thicke is disgusted, you have really taken things too far.

Disappointingly, Wednesday’s premiere was not that infamous episode. But it was still a hot mess. The contestants that compete in the episode are, from Team Cuddly, a not-at-all-cuddly monster called Thingamabob, from Team Good, McTerrier and Firefly, and from Team Bad, Cyclops and the Ram.

For those who don’t know how The Masked Singer works, and thus the above words are utter nonsense, the series features anonymous C-list celebrities singing covers of pop songs as huge, nightmare-inducing furries. Its aesthetic, premise, and judge-host combo all make it feel like one of those fake TV shows Jack Donaghy conceived to boost NBC’s ratings on 30 Rock.

Before the contestants sing, Nick Cannon introduces a “Clue-mercial,” or an ad for a fake product that offers hints—and red herrings—about the singer’s identity. After each performance, the panelists guess who might be under the mask and share their convoluted reasoning with the audience. “You know, [Jeff Ross] is the Roastmaster General, and we saw that flame—fire, roast, get it?” explains Jenny McCarthy, only somewhat coherently, about a candle clue for McTerrier. At the end of the episode, audience members and the panel vote for their favorite, and the top four continue in the competition. The singer with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and dramatically unmasked.

Thingamabob kicks things off with a surprisingly impressive rendition of a Bon Jovi song. But the drama really picks up when McTerrier hits the stage and clearly can neither see nor walk in his adorable giant puppy head. In a moment that almost feels staged, McTerrier (I am groaning aloud every time I type the word “McTerrier,” FYI) trips and knocks his mask off.

Right away, this whole thing feels just a little bit off. I am typically one to blindly buy into the delusion that reality TV is in fact real, because to do anything else spoils the fun, but I rewatched this moment over and over, squinting at my laptop screen like an FBI agent trying to crack a case, and I am positive that McTerrier deliberately removed his mask. Somehow, he turns around and covers his head fast enough that none of the hundreds of people in the room see his face. Nick Cannon asks no one in particular if they saw anything, and decides to operate on the honor system, I guess, when a few audience members respond by shaking their heads.

If that weren’t enough manufactured drama for one night, another contestant appears to have a literal asthma attack on stage mere moments later. Firefly, a New Yorker with a gorgeous singing voice, steps on stage to sing Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” but only manages to get out a few lines before she starts coughing and choking. Sweet Nicole Scherzinger immediately notices that something is wrong and starts shouting for someone to help her.

Now, it feels slightly ickier to speculate that a medical emergency might be staged to drum up reality-TV drama, but I’ll just say this: If she were in true danger, seemingly unable to breathe properly, wouldn’t someone take her damn mask off, like, ASAP?! The 20-pound insect helmet probably is not helping with airflow. It appears as though a producer eventually takes off her mask and ushers her off stage, though they cut to commercial before we can see it happen. But wouldn’t that be your first instinct? And she returns to flawlessly finish her performance not long after, with absolutely no explanation of what happened.

In the end, McTerrier is eliminated, even though his performance was way better than the Ram’s cover of “I Want You to Want Me.” He was shockingly not Ewan McGregor but the Ace of Cakes himself: Food Network’s Duff Goldman, doing a Scottish accent. I guess they had no choice but to give him the boot after a room full of people saw who he was earlier in the episode and lied to Nick Cannon about it.

Unfortunately, I will be continuing to rot my brain by watching this fake TV show every week until Rudy makes his appearance. Stay tuned to find out if The Masked Singer producers were feeling chaotic enough to put him on Team Cuddly.