Oh man...I'm a big fan of the Korean version and had high hopes for this one, but am disappointed. I think the FOX producers were running low on content due to the whole COVID situation and just wanted to pump out some content to keep the network afloat without giving much thought to the overall quality. I mean, even the end credits say that "some of the audience visuals were borrowed from other TV show tapings." This leads to the bigger point, which is the overall feel of artificiality. The original Korean version packs authenticity and an emotional punch by diving deeper into the stories of the singers and actually highlights them rather than making them mere accessories to a Las Vegas, it's all about the money, style singing show (it says so much about our culture when almost every game show has a gambling like, get rich feel to it). Obviously, it helps too that in the Korean version, the audience is real and that any money made actually goes to the singer/faker as they're the ones putting in all the effort (if they're good at faking, they're gonna walk way with the prize money nowhere near the level of 100k though, while if they turn out to be good, they get to produce an actual song with the guest of the show - who is almost always a respected musician/producer/music group).
With all that being said, there is promise for this show as the singing participants are actually pretty good. I was blown away both by the faking skills and the actual singing quality of the secret singers. But, again, it's a shame that they are just used as mere props. Hopefully, the producers can take some of the lessons from the Korean version and actually apply them for the second season, or if it's not too late, for the remaining episodes of this season.
