The third week of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars brought us a lip sync extravaganza, with each queen playing a famous woman of history – Eve, Helen of Troy, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, Annie Oakley, Eva Perón, and Princess Diana. (Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Frida Kahlo were earmarked for the departed girls.)
These group lip syncs are some of the most scripted performances on the show – each queen needs to hit a set of pre-determined lyrics with a dictated look and choreographed dance steps.
That leaves limited room for creativity (unless they’re choreographing themselves), but a whole lot of opportunity to mess up on execution.
How did our queens fare in this cooperative endeavor after the ultimate in “every girl for herself” last week in Snatch Game?
1. Alaska Thunderfuck 5000
Runner-Up, Season 5. Pre-Season Rank: 1. To date: 2, 1
This was an average showing for Alaska – maybe even an off week? Yet, it’s still clear she inhabits a different plain than the majority of her opponents.
Her lip syncing as Eve was far and away the weakest of the entire bunch, despite a showy and altogether hilarious dance performance. There were clear missed and misaligned words if you watch closely, especially during her strut to center stage. That’s despite her Britney-knockoff tune having one of the most straightforward pop arrangements of all the songs. She also wasn’t especially noticeable in the background of the other girls’ performances, either.
Her saving grace was the runway, even though runway didn’t save a similarly weak performance for Detox last week. Alaska’s runway was an imaginative and complete alien vision that nods to Sharon Needles’ final runway of Season 4 with long tentacled fingers. She wasn’t headed to the bottom two with a look that on-theme that wisely broke out of the expected silver box the other girls were in.
With a dance challenge out of the way, can anything else possible derail Alaska? Only if some of the queens on her tail start delivering a string of flawless performances – particularly the next one… [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E03 – “HERstory Of The World”