“The Singing Bee”: A Concept So “Good,” It Had To Be Copied Immediately

There was going to be a long post here decrying The Singing Bee, the Joey Fatone-hosted “can you remember these lyrics?” game show that, last night, gave a very overexcited man $50,000 because he remembered that the lyric after “I wanna rock and roll all night” in Kiss’ “Rock And Roll All Nite” was “and party every day!” The original post was a 500-word eye-roll about the show, which has dancers dressed in “sexy bee girl” outfits and a playlist straight out of Jack-FM; the only real bright spot is the fact that it calls its final round “The Final Countdown” and uses a wedding-band take on that song as the segment’s introduction. See? So much material! But then, this nugget from Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales came across the transom:

Not that there are any bloody murders in “The Singing Bee,” a new NBC calamity premiering tonight and thus beating to the air by a day Fox’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!” — a game show with a format, according to industry buzz, nearly identical to that of “Singing Bee.”

He’s not kidding. Is it too much to hope that the Fox “twist” on the concept will involve the adult singers being pitted against the tots from Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?–perhaps collected in a Kidz Bop-like choir!–and asked to complete the lyrics to Fergie songs? Then, if they break down, they get tossed, Remote Control-style, into a pit of imperfect Candie’s jeans.

NBC Unleashes ‘Singing Bee’; America Breaks Out in Hives [WP]