Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Claim To Fame’ On ABC, Where Relatives Of Famous People Compete To See Who Can Best Hide Their Celebrity Connection

Claim To Fame, hosted by Kevin and Frankie Jonas, is a reality competition show where relatives of celebrities live in a house. The goal is to keep their celebrity connection secret for as long as possible. The winner of the competition takes home $100,000.

CLAIM TO FAME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Los Angeles and a large house. Then Kevin Jonas appears on camera and says, “Do you ever think what it would be like to live in the shadow of a famous relative?”

The Gist: Everyone introduces themselves on the first night and gives three facts about themselves and the celeb they’re related to, including that person’s biggest award-winning moment. The only thing is that any or all of that information could be a lie. One of the contestants actually calls himself “X”, for instance, and keeps himself mostly away from the other 15 contestants. Another housemate, Logan, decides to lie in casual conversation, telling people he’s from Tennessee when he’s really from Georgia.

Two of the housemates actually reveal their connection during their side interviews — one of them is pretty obvious — but most of the rest of the housemates’ connections are kept secret from the home audience.

There are items in the house that give people clues, and there’s a challenge that determines both immunity for the winner and possible elimination for the two rated at the bottom of the pack; in the first episode the contestants display their various talents, such as they are.

After the challenge, the rest of the house (except for the immune winner and bottom two contestants) go to the “Voto Booth” to vote on who they want to be the guesser. The guesser then picks one of the non-immune housemates; if they guess that person’s celebrity connection correctly, that housemate is eliminated, but if they guess wrong, they’re the ones going home.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Claim To Fame crosses a reality competition like The Bachelor with a celebrity guessing game like The Masked Singer.

Our Take: While some aspects of the gameplay on Claim To Fame are a little too cumbersome, the idea behind the show is deliciously simple. Also, despite the usual modern reality competition scenes where we see people talking in bedrooms and kitchens and making alliances — though everyone is friendly with each other at the end of the first episode — we caught ourselves playing along during the entire hour, trying to figure out some of the connections.

Of the two viewing-audience-only reveals we saw, one of them was an “oh, yeah, we see it now!” kind of thing, but the other just confirmed what we knew from the second we saw the person on screen. As it turned out, most of the housemates had guessed it, too, which makes that person part of everyone else’s strategy. L.C., one of the funnier members of the house and one of the few working under a pseudonym, calls the easy guess a “layup,” meaning that if she were picked as the guesser, she’d have to use that person as a guaranteed way of staying in the house. So we may see this person last longer than expected, despite how obvious their celebrity connection is.

We did end up figuring out who X is related to, and you may as well (the show didn’t confirm this, but Google did). We do hope he stays as long as possible, because he’s one of the few housemates who displays any sort of personality, and he has a cockiness that might make him a target. You always need one of those on a show like this, and X is a pretty entertaining version of the “house a-hole.”

As we said, the rules that govern who goes home and who stays are a bit cumbersome, and the first episode actually ended with a strange elimination. But the reveal that came from that elimination showed us and the housemates that things won’t be as easy as they seem at first.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Everything you thought about everyone in this house is incorrect,” says L.C. after the shocking reveal.

Sleeper Star: Pepper was one of the few people in the house who had no idea who the “layup” was related to, and she was very confident about another connection that ended up being very, very wrong. She’s an interesting wild card because she seems completely clueless, at least right now.

Most Pilot-y Line: The first words out of Frankie Jonas’ mouth is that a celebrity relative can “bide your time, wait for the right moment, then, you know, swoop in and take all the attention back for yourself.” Is he referring to his older brother Kevin, back in the spotlight after becoming a contractor? We know it’s a scripted inside dig, but it’s a weird one.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Claim To Fame isn’t high art, but it’s fun to guess along with the housemates, even if you can Google your guesses and find out who the housemates are before they’re revealed on the show.

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.