Vegas Odds Masked Singer

Well, it took a hard rock expert — guest judge Sharon Osbourne, a.k.a. Ozzy’s wife/manager, a.k.a. the Ladybug’s mom — to figure out what I (and every other rock fan in America) knew all along. The Masked Singer’s Banana is in indeed reality TV regular, a-peel-ing party dude, and Poison frontman Bret Michaels. Every clue of the season had indicated that, inside that Banana, lurked a man more famous for wearing bandannas. The hangovers. The old-school Hollywood area code 213. The two doting daughters. The recent loss of his father. The fact that his “memory is not what it used to be” due to a “traumatic injury.” That time when he almost quoted a Poison song, then stopped himself and described The Masked Singer as “nothin’ but… the ultimate fun” instead. This week’s clues included a cat that had been dragged in, a mouth that was opening up and saying ahh, some poisonous bug spray, and a backstage pass. Oh yeah… and the Banana moved and sounded exactly like Bret Michaels. Even when he was talking, with that weird Frampton-talkbox audio effect to disguise his voice, he sounded exactly like Bret Michaels. So yeah, there was that. And yet, while regular judge Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg finally got wise a couple weeks ago, her clueless fellow panelists thought this might be Brad Paisley, Billy Ray Cyrus, Bill Engvall, Keith Urban, Kid Rock, or even Larry the Cable Guy. But shrewd Sharon took one listen to the Bret’s costumed cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — which was clearly inspired by onetime Poison rivals Guns N’ Roses’ version, and pretty much sounded just like Poison’s power ballad “Something to Believe In” — and she knew what was up. Wednesday’s episode, starring four of this season’s celebrity cosplayers, featured a “Smackdown” round — with Bret competing against country crooner the Rhino, and hippity-hopper the Frog going head-to-oversized-head with sexy starlet the Kitty. and I really don’t understand why the Banana had to split this week; I feel his stadium-worthy performance, which included some mimed Elton-style piano and an audacious piano-bench-kicking, was way more competitive than the Rhino’s mellow Dan + Shay cover. However, when the Banana faced off against the Kitty’s “Unstoppable,” it turned out that, well, he was stoppable. And so, his Banana face came off.