Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Claim To Fame’ Season 3 On ABC, Where People Try To Keep Fellow Contestants From Guessing Their Celebrity Connections

Claim To Fame became an unlikely hit for ABC two years ago because it was a fun exercise in almost pure competition. The contestants are all relatives of celebrities, but most of them weren’t looking to be famous, just to win the $100,000 prize. Now, the show enters its third season with a couple of tiny changes, and some contestants who are looking to really throw their fellow housemates off their trail.

CLAIM TO FAME SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Hosts Kevin and Franklin Jonas are riding down a road on a motorcycle, with Franklin in a sidecar.

The Gist: The two Jonas brothers — one famous, one not — are back to host the third season of Claim To Fame, where 11 contestants live in a villa and compete for a $100,000 prize. Each of the eleven contestants are relatives of famous people, and the idea is to keeping fellow housemates from guessing who that relative is for as long as possible.

As the Jonases talk to the contestants on the first day, the guessing game starts immediately, as each contestant gives “two truths and a lie” about the celebrity that they’re connected to. The house has lots of clues, including the now-infamous “Clue Wall”; this season, however, the wall is locked in a display the first couple of nights.

The first challenge is now a Claim To Fame tradition: A talent show. This time around, each contestant has to present three talents, with ideas generated by props that are displayed backstage. The winner of the talent show, which is judged by all of the contestants, wins immunity and a choice of which person to get a clue about from the villa’s “Wine Cellar” (the clues are in bottles with each person’s name on them).

The bottom two contestants are subject to becoming that week’s guesser through a vote in the “Voteo Booth” (this show loves naming things). The person that is voted the guesser picks someone from the cast and guesses who they are related to. If they’re right, that person goes home. If they’re wrong, the guesser’s famous relative is revealed and they go home.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Before Season 1, we said Claim To Fame crosses The Bachelor franchise with The Masked Singer, and that seems to still be true.

Our Take: The formula for Season 3 of Claim To Fame has been tweaked a bit, but has pretty much stayed the same as it was in the first season. We no longer get to find out who the relative of one of the contestants is; during the first episode, each and every one of the contestants’ famous relatives remained a mystery until the very end. The challenges are tweaked, too, but just for entertainment purposes.

What we notice is that there are generally one or two contestants whose connections are more obvious, either via their looks and voice, what they say in the side interviews, or both. We have some pretty good guesses about Adam, for instance, given his looks, his speaking voice and the fact that he didn’t sing during the talent show because he sounds exactly like his famous relative. Others aren’t as obvious, even after the Clue Wall was opened to show a massive collage of clues to both us and the housemates.

There are people for whom our guesses turned out to be wrong, and that’s the best part of the show. You get sucked into guessing, gloat when you’re right and have your mind blown when you’re wrong.

This year, it seems that a few of the contestants that are trying to throw people off. Gracie Lou, for instance, is trying to foster a profile that connects her to country music, even though she admits that she’s not all that connected. Shane is boisterous and wears a chicken drumstick on a chain around his neck. Dedrick blurts out a famous last name, seemingly by mistake, but no one can be sure if it’s not done on purpose.

These acts of subterfuge are amusing but don’t seem to be all that complex in nature, and the smarter contestants will see through them. In essence, the show will come down to the usual alliances and other arrangements contestants make with each other, judging which contestants are the strongest and targeting them.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: When Dedrick lets that famous last name fall out of his mouth, Naomi wonders if he did that on purpose or not. She feels it was accidental.

Sleeper Star: We just appreciated the fact that both Naomi and Gracie Lou have good singing voices. We also liked the fact that Naomi looked perturbed when Gracie Lou sang after she did, completely wiping out any good vibes her singing brought.

Most Pilot-y Line: Like most reality shows of this type, things are stretched way too much, with editing putting pauses before names are given, and lots of camera cuts to look at reactions that weren’t necessarily of that moment.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We like Claim To Fame because the contestants are real people; they’re not trying to be famous themselves, but they have relatives that are. It’s pure competition for the most part, and that’s why the show seems to be so much more fun to watch than other similarly-formatted reality shows.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.