S01.E01: Premiere - Everybody Mask Now!

[OtterMommy]

Series Premiere.  Air date: December 27, 2020

[Seamie]

Well that was...bad. Not sure the format works with people dancing. Not crazy about the judges either. Cricket should have gone home. Disco Ball was not great, but at least he had a few moves. Cricket barely danced.

[Phishbulb]

Yeah, not sure guessing will be as easy with this version (although allowing us to hear them say one word helps a bit). Like the tulip sounded a bit like Maddie Ziegler to me (or possibly her sister), and the clues seemed to fit with that as well. 

[realdancemom]

Tulip seemed to be the only one with dance training.  The only other one that was good was the other female.

[bobbyjoe]

Considering that two of the contestants barely danced at all, I’m not sure I see how the guessing part of the show is supposed to be fun.  
 

Unlike Masked Singer where you can try and recognize the voice, I’m not sure anybody could actually recognize somebody from them basically standing there barely using their legs and just moving their hands.  Which leaves us just guessing the celebrity from the clues, and unless somebody broadcasts a show called “Celebrity Peek-A-Boo” I’m not sure how you could have a more boring game than “here’s a few clues, now guess the celebrity.”

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I was really hoping that the Ice Cube would be Ice Cube and the Hammerhead would be MC Hammer. My hopes for that were dashed once I saw Hammerhead dance because MC Hammer is definitely a better dancer than that. My guess is that Hammerhead is a professional wrestler. I noticed he said one word (I think it was happiness) with a slight accent so that might be a clue.

I was so proud of myself for guessing that Disco Ball was Ice-T! I knew it was him because I saw the glass of iced tea and the L&O hammer, so I guessed who he was before he danced or spoke.

I am most interested in finding out who the tap dancing tulip is. I honestly don't know that much about tap so I couldn't tell how good she was, but obviously she was decent enough to include it in her routine.

I'm guessing the big bird is a basketball player. She's tall and coordinated but not in a trained dancer way (despite Paula Abdul trying to claim that this person had training, I disagree because her feet were a bit clompy and stompy). And she did a basketball swoosh move at the end of her video package! I liked her sass so I hope she and Tulip stick around for a while.

I think the cricket is an athlete. He was coordinated but he didn't move like a dancer. He looked like he was having fun, but the choreography was way too simple. I wonder if he asked for a very easy routine to be sure that he wouldn't mess it up. He seems like he's capable of doing more challenging choreography.

Edited December 29, 2020 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Destiny007]

It was also easy to guess Ice T for the disco ball because of the shark fin.  He plays Detective Finn Tutuola on SVU.  When I saw that and the glass of Iced Tea, I knew it was him.

 

 

[marketdoctor]

What makes me wonder is how well the costumes are designed to move.  Sure, a dancer might adapt, but those costumes add a degree of difficulty (and you had contestants on The Masked Singer complain occasionally, so my confidence that "they know what they're doing" is low.)

But unless someone has very specific moves, it's going to be hard to guess from the dancing.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

8 hours ago, marketdoctor said:

What makes me wonder is how well the costumes are designed to move.  Sure, a dancer might adapt, but those costumes add a degree of difficulty

I think the costume heads are the worst part for a dancer because it limits your peripheral vision and it makes it difficult to do turns because you can't spot properly, so I can see how the costume heads could make the contestants a bit hesitant, especially the first few times they wear it (although they should be doing dress rehearsals to make sure that they can move in them okay).

The costumes from the neck down seemed to allow for movement though, so I don't think the costumes should affect their performance too much. There are definitely some aspects of costumes that can hinder your range of motion (not specifically anything I recall seeing in this episode, but I wasn't looking super closely). But a costume is not going to change your general level of coordination so it was pretty easy to tell who was able to dance and who wasn't. If you let Ice-T dance around in his regular clothes, his dance moves aren't going to improve drastically from what you saw him doing in the Disco Ball costume.

[realdancemom]

11 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I think the costume heads are the worst part for a dancer because it limits your peripheral vision and it makes it difficult to do turns because you can't spot properly, so I can see how the costume heads could make the contestants a bit hesitant, especially the first few times they wear it (although they should be doing dress rehearsals to make sure that they can move in them okay).

The costumes from the neck down seemed to allow for movement though, so I don't think the costumes should affect their performance too much. There are definitely some aspects of costumes that can hinder your range of motion (not specifically anything I recall seeing in this episode, but I wasn't looking super closely). But a costume is not going to change your general level of coordination so it was pretty easy to tell who was able to dance and who wasn't. If you let Ice-T dance around in his regular clothes, his dance moves aren't going to improve drastically from what you saw him doing in the Disco Ball costume.

In the Masked Singer, there have been lots of contestants that have said that the costume heads are heavy or that they can't see that well.  So I can see how that would affect dancing.  I can't imagine people doing a bunch of turns.

I've also heard complaints that costumes were too tight on MS but then the costume people fixed it.  Ice-T moved like an old man at the beginning until he loosened up at the end of the dance.  He still did old style moves like disco so he would have been my choice to go.

I think this show came about since Ellen was doing Masked Dancer segments on her show.  One time, Nick Cannon and Nicole S. were guests.  So the two of them along with Twitch were trying to guess the dancer.  Nicole knew that it was Derek Hough even though he didn't talk or do any ballroom.  He was just doing casual goofing off type dance moves.  I bet Nicole saw him do that a lot during DWTS rehearsals when she was a contestant and that's how she knew.

[MsJamieDornan]

Wow, the show sucks.

[Kromm]

On top of the rest of this mess, I didn't even like Craig Robinson on it. And I otherwise like Craig Robinson. 

[MsJamieDornan]

18 hours ago, Kromm said:

On top of the rest of this mess, I didn't even like Craig Robinson on it

He wasnt a good host