Shaquille O’Neal has spent decades being impossible to overlook. Now somebody has decided that making him disappear would make excellent television.
Honestly, we understand the assignment. We just have concerns about the available hiding places.
ABC has announced Can You Hide… Shaq?, a new competition series that sends eight contestants around Dallas with a wonderfully ridiculous mission: keep the Big Fella from being recognized.
Yes, that Shaq. All 7-foot-1 of him.
A baseball cap and a casual “nothing to see here” might require some additional planning.
Actress and comedian Nicole Byer hosts the series, which turns an everyday childhood game into a logistical challenge of unusual proportions. Contestants will need imagination, teamwork and presumably a healthy appreciation for door clearance.
Shaq, naturally, seems delighted by the experiment.
“I’m 7-foot-1. I’m not exactly easy to miss,” he said in the announcement.
A fair assessment from a man who can make professional athletes look like they accidentally wandered into the wrong age division.
The appeal here is immediate. Most celebrity competitions ask famous people to sing, dance or survive somewhere uncomfortable. This one asks ordinary people to solve the problem of being near Shaq without everyone immediately noticing Shaq.
That is a very specific skill set. We suspect it does not appear on many résumés.
There are actual competitive stakes underneath the silliness. The contestants begin in two teams, tackling timed missions while trying to minimize sightings. Success can bring immunity, and the prize fund grows toward a payout for one eventual winner.
Appropriately, that fund is called the “Shaq-pot.”
Somewhere, a producer probably smiled for the rest of the afternoon after coming up with that one.
Dallas provides the setting, with announced stops including the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and Reunion Tower. How the contestants attempt their concealment remains part of the attraction.
We are already imagining the planning meetings. Someone confidently suggests a disguise. Someone else remembers that the disguise still needs to accommodate Shaquille O’Neal. Everyone returns to the drawing board.
To be clear, those are our imagined scenarios. We will have to watch to discover which ideas actually make it onto the show.
And that curiosity is exactly why the premise works for us. Shaq has the size, the recognizable face and the playful personality to make even an attempted low-profile outing feel like an event.
The fun will be watching how much ingenuity it takes to overcome all three.
The series opens with two episodes on Thursday, December 3, from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern on ABC and the ESPN App. Two more episodes follow December 10 in the same window, with next-day availability on Hulu.
That gives us a little time to prepare our own completely unqualified hiding strategies from the couch.
Could a convincing disguise work? Would a distraction do the trick? Is there any circumstance in which a passerby sees Shaq and simply continues with their errands?
We have questions.
Fortunately, the Big Fella is about to help answer them. For once, his next entertainment venture depends on people failing to spot the star.
Good luck, contestants. You have been assigned an exceptionally large needle to hide in a very public haystack.