Justin Timberlake is making hit solo records, selling out concert venues and dating Jessica Biel. Fellow N*Sync member Joey Fatone is now hosting The Singing Bee, a new game show debuting on NBC tonight at 9:30pm. Gee, I wonder who got the better end of that deal.

America's Got Talent may be the obvious heir apparent to the cult classic game show The Gong Show, but The Singing Bee, premiering after America's Got Talent, rightfully deserves that title. It's a haphazard show that meanders with no clear aim in sight. Fatone appears to be making up the rules as he goes along, occasionally taking a break to let some equally embarrassing timewaster fill the stage.  He's a modern-day Chuck Barris, minus the delusions of working for the CIA and the cocaine.

At the start, Fatone roams the audience, “randomly” selecting six contestants to go on stage. It feels a lot like a low-rent Price is Right. In round one, they each have to complete a song lyric, and the top four move to the “Musical Chairs” for safe passage to the next round. In round two, they must unscramble words on a screen to, again, complete a song lyric. The top two face off, but this time, instead of a lyric, they must complete the entire chorus of a song. The winner heads to the "Final Countdown" (with music by Europe, naturally), and must complete seven song lyrics, winning $5,000 for each, with a promise of $50,000 for five right.

In the first episode, those rules are only revealed periodically throughout the game, as Fatone herds the contestants, telling them to sit here or stand there as the game progresses. Slightly amusing is the fact that the words must be exactly correct, so adding a “well” or “yeah” will get you eliminated. Equally amusing is the trouble many contestants have with Bananarama.

The true Gong Show appeal of the show, however, lies in its absurdity. Four women dressed in black and yellow striped bikini tops and mini-skirts, affectionately called the Honey Bees, take up busy airtime dancing around for no apparent reason. Fans of the short-lived, William Shatner-hosted Show Me the Money will find this refreshingly familiar.  They're low-rent Barker's Beauties, the girls who got cut in the final round of auditions to hold a briefcase on Deal or No Deal.  The more appalling fact is that the house band singing the lead-ins for the contestants is truly awful. It's like they weeded out all the fakers from an American Idol audition and just kept the ones who legitimately thought they could sing, but can't.

As a host, Fatone is light-years behind such luminaries as Regis Philbin or Howie Mandel.  He has little charisma and barely manages to play the role of a conductor on this runaway train. When one of the songs in the game is his N*Sync standard “Bye, Bye, Bye” from 2000 (seven years ago!), he sends us to commercial break by performing the video's trademark dance moves. You know how boxers sometimes come out of retirement late in life, then get beaten down because they're old and out of shape? It's a lot like that, only less sad and a whole lot more funny.

The Singing Bee airs Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9:30pm on NBC. Or, if you prefer the talents of Wayne Brady to Joey Fatone, FOX has shamelessly counter-programmed with it's own version of this premise, Don't Forget the Lyrics, premiering Wednesday night after So You Think You Can Dance.  It's an epic summer showdown: two shows enter, but only one show leaves.  Or, more likely, both shows will leave the air after this summer, never to return.


-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image courtesy of NBC)