The Masked Singer has proven to be television as its simplest and most genius

The Washington Post

"What felt foreign and almost excessively stupid when Season 1 premiered in January has been made utterly American and instinctively engrossing," says Hank Stuever. "Instead of feeling the slight shame of watching junk TV, one is drawn in by the ingenuity of the costumes and the effort of the performers hiding within them. If you’re in the right mood, it’s great and weird fun. The whole family can get involved — the younger ones have heard of celebrities (and celebrity foibles) that an older viewer never bothered to notice. The older folks still have a working knowledge of ancient pop lore, and can tell you why it’s such a big deal that the Bee, last season, turned out to be none other than the great Gladys Knight...In addition to this pop-culture communion, thoughts turn to the very nature of modern celebrity status. The walls separating the A-list from the B-list (and the C-list and especially the D-list) are no longer the solid structures they used to be, and instead resemble something our president might build, too late and after the fact. Singing-show winners break into movies. Movie stars break into television. Television stars become talk-show hosts. Reality-show stars run for office. Never has so much effort gone into preventing celebrities from becoming has-beens. This, in turn, becomes part of The Masked Singer’s allure: It treats its contestants with equal respect. Under that mask they could be anybody. Under that mask they could be a very important somebody. Many of them have said they were grateful to the mask for giving them something they’d long ago lost — a chance to be nobody." ALSO: The Masked Singer winner Wayne Brady: “People are like, ‘You sing?’ And I’m like, ‘Hell yeah, I sing!’ This is how I made my money all my life."