At the ball of the masked singers, hey hey!

After 12 weeks of jerky cries and mechanical movements by Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge, the most popular program on the small screen in Quebec, all networks combined, unmasked its latest mascot with a robotic voice on Sunday evening.

Now the whistleblower here sounds like a former student of Star Academy, which has been revised and corrected several times. So it was Véronique Claveau who was hiding in the imperial costume of the Queen of Day and Night and who was crowned the big winner of the second season of Masked singers at VAT.

His rereading of All cries the SOS was gorgeous, and the show’s impersonator See you next week from Radio-Canada was one of the few competitors to sing a cappella, surrounded by hanging furniture, in a beautifully composed scenic tableau.

Unlike last year, the voices of the masked singers were less manipulated, less electronically tweaked, which allowed fine ears to recognize the crystalline timbre of Véronique Claveau, one of the headliners of the musical Anne.

During That Plane For Me of Plastic Bertrand, it was also easy to identify the host Pierre-Yves Lord, alias the Super Otter, who concluded his performance suspended in the air. Even Ludovick Bourgeois’ distinctive grain of voice pierced his Robot armor when he redid What About Us from P!nk in a skillfully choreographed assembly line act.

This fall, it was the more cryptic and less obvious clue capsules that gave viewers a hard time. Let’s say that some information about our mystery stars has been gleaned far, far from their CVs.

The resounding conclusion of Masked singers began with the return of the 2021 finalists, namely the Harfang des noces (Johanne Blouin), the Black Turkey (Jason Roy Léveillée) as well as the Inséparables (Wilfred LeBouthillier and Marie-Élaine Thibert), who sang The Winner Takes it All d’Abba, a rather conventional and predictable choice of piece, let’s say it.

Anouk Meunier remains my favorite investigator on the panel. She has flair, enthusiasm, quick repartee, and she always picks up on key pieces of information that have slipped under the radar.

Masked singers is an effective, dynamic, well-constructed show, which however ends up becoming repetitive. That said, it’s tailor-made family entertainment, returning in September 2023 for a third lap.

In this bustling parade of top-of-the-range disguises, I think that Laurence Jalbert (the Punkette Skunk), Stéphane Archambault (the Mandrill) and Véronique Béliveau (the Firefly) deserved to progress further in the competition. Justice for these misunderstood creatures, good!

The hour of truth therapy

By viewing The moment of truth Sunday evening, a neophyte might have believed thatDouble occupancy: Martinique was the most wonderful, human and enriching experience in the modern history of Quebec reality television.

Phrases like “friends for life”, “positive leader”, “beautiful bromance », « just love “, “being there for each other” and “learning about yourself” dotted this 1h 30 min show which felt more like therapy for personal growth than a necessary tune-up after so much turbulence.

“Everyone reaps the fruit of their person”, philosophized Jimy the cowboy-tiler, who fortunately had not dragged his guitar.

It smelled very strongly of the public relations operation to restore the image ofODwhich was marred by the bullying scandal of the three ghosts of Christmas, present, past and future.

Jay Du Temple, with an astonishing capillary and sartorial sobriety, confessed the competitors in the tone of a Louise Sigouin torn between two dualities. What have you learned about yourself, my friend?

And when candidates fromOD swing sentences like “you gave him the gift of giving him his space”, for real, there is clearly an error on the nature of the program. This intimate formula, punctuated by a Christmas-type soundtrack with André Gagnon, no longer had anything to do with the old hours of truth, when things stirred a lot more.

Did this 2022 vintage drink an amnesiac — and not an energy — drink before the cameras came on? The confidences of the fireman Jonathan, the bachelor who was disliked by Voldemort and his two “toxiamis”, were the only authentic moment of the evening. “I had never experienced this in my calisse of life,” Jonathan summed up the exclusion he suffered in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers. Without the presence of the cameras, Jonathan met Félix (one of the three banished fromOD) in the company of the mediator Jasmin Roy to pick up the broken pots. From what we deduced on Sunday evening, Jonathan wishes to erase OD of his CV, and we understand that.

According to the production, Kiana declined the invitation to join The moment of truth, while Sandrine had a fever the day of the recording. Isaack and Philippe, the two responsible for the debacle, have obviously been automatically removed from the board.

The percentage of votes has not been publicly disclosed, but Claudia and Jimy won by a “very considerable margin”, I am told. Understand: Aïssa and Walide have only collected crumbs.