mask, what mask? It’s that time again, the “TMS” syndrome is in season on ProSieben. “The Masked Singer” dressed up and pulled aside the curtain on the eighth season the night before. We remember: Last fall, the mole, alias Daniel Donskoy, won, losing out to the werewolf (Bürger Lars Dietrich) and Rosty (Rick Kavanian), among others.
This time, the selection of the jury went back to the well-tried “2 x formula”. After Ruth Moschner was the only permanent member last year, Rea Garvey is now back as a set juror. The variable, the third in the group, was singer Wincent Weiß from the start. And otherwise? Everything as usual, one would like to say, in the best sense. Presented by Grand Seigneur Mathias Opdenhövel, there were costumes at the creative apex of psychedelic carnival, somnambulistic tailoring workshops and Alice in Wonderland – singing mushrooms, mutated spiders and raccoons in three-quarter trousers.
The kangaroo at the start still belonged to the more moderate part, with crooked sunglasses and rally stripes, as if Skippy had been herded onto the Shrove Monday procession after half a dozen “little cowards”. Ruth Moschner located his “Blurred Lines” between Peter Illmann and Götz Alsmann, Wincent Weiß rumored something about Jakob Lund and that Rae Garvey brought the name Kool Savas into play here is not smeared on his bread because in the end he revised and hit the mark with it. The opponents in the first three-way battle: A terry cloth elephant from Aunt Trudi’s upcycling aside with “Never Gonna Dance Again”, plus the ornithological department with the Schuhschnabel, the song “One Step Closer” by Linkin Park, including a crooked Judas Priest falsetto.
In the second triple then two little animals and a toaster: the hedgehog came in a tartan skirt and with glow sticks in spiked fur. “Punk is my thing,” commented Rea, Wincent, on the other hand, couldn’t really decide between Cindy from Marzahn and Stefanie Kloß, while Ruth came from Igel to IGeL, i.e. ‘Individual Health Services’, and from there to Andrea Berg. You have to be there longer to follow these winding paths.
The motto of the next performance was: If the extraterrestrials come and turn on ProSieben, they will fly away right away. A googly-eyed dancing toast singing “Pump Up The Jam” and fried eggs taped to his legs – somewhere Jonathan Meese was crying softly into a used Tempo handkerchief. Almost conventional, on the other hand, was the swimming badge of childhood, the good old seahorse, with “Because Of You” by Kelly Clarkson, Rae and Ruth proudly speculated in unison: AnNa R could be it. It had to tremble a little later.
At the end another infernal trio: A slightly aged mushroom with “In The Shadows” by The Rasmus, between jokes like “two beers” and “You have to be able to carry athlete’s foot”. A raccoon with pants that were washed too hot and a Burlington slipover, whose “Hey Ya” should have been called “Hey No”, a fiver for every crooked note and the next hit move would have plenty of Rotkummel sparkling wine. No comparison to the creepy gigantomania of the last masked ones: an elaborately designed spider creature named Diamantula with a matching song, the Bond classic “Diamonds Are Forever”. Rae’s conclusion: “the best performance of the evening”. In fact: The balladesque classic rock timbre, somewhere between Doro, Jennifer Weist and, um, Judy Williams, will certainly be heard in a few more, if not all, episodes of this season.
In the end, that wasn’t the case for one. In the relegation round were the mushroom, the seahorse and the kangaroo. The latter was finally allowed to hop back home. Shortly before, Ruth Moschner, Wincent Weiß and Rea Garvey had thrown final guesses into the ring. Rea changed the tip immediately before the unmasking and brought the name Jan Josef Liefers into play. Lo and behold: the man was to be right. So it caught with the eternal Professor Boerne in the first episode of the new season a real big head. Next Saturday is the second round.
