RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 14 - "Blame It On The Edit" Review & Power Ranking

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourteenth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Blame It On The Edit.”

This is the final competitive episode of the season, with our top four queens writing a verse for RuPaul’s gaslighting anthem “Blame it on the Edit” and appearing in the music video inspired by Michael & Janet Jackson’s “Scream”! Plus, a “Drag Excellence” final runway and a final lip sync to reach the Top 3… or, so they claim.

I know many fans who don’t enjoy these semi-final RuMix episodes with their Tic Tac Chat interview segments.

I get it. There are typically no surprises in these episodes. No one is going to be allowed to fail spectacularly at the video at this point in the competition (and one queen nearly did tonight). Ru and Michelle are going to get exactly what they need for the edit from an interview segment, whether that’s a humanizing personal story or painting a queen to be bland and professional.

Yet, all of those reasons are part of why I often enjoy these episodes. Even if a queen is clearly not destined to win the season, we still get to see her living her dream at the top of the game of drag artistry. I know some folks watch this show for reality drama, but I’m here to see drag excellence – and semi-finals like this one tend to deliver.

Plus, it turns out this episode did have some surprises in store! A rightful challenge winner was paid dust, and what could have been an obvious cut to get down to a Top 3 was eschewed. That meant every queen swapped rankings compared to my power rankings from last week’s makeover challenge!

However, this also means that my Pre-Season predictions were nearly perfect. I clocked 3 out of the Top 4 queens based on their “Meet The Queens” interviews and social media presence, and the fourth finalist was my prediction for #6 – just two spots out of contention. Alas, Jax and Malaysia Babydoll Foxx did not come through for me in 4th and 5th place like I thought they would!

(But, seriously, I dare you to find anyone else who had both Anetra and Luxx in their top three in pre-season predictions without the benefit of spoilers. I am very proud of myself on that one.)

Next week’s episode is the cast Reunion, followed by the grand finale on April 14! That means this is my final power ranking of Season 15, although I will also be posting about both of those episodes. If you’re worried about running out of fresh Drag Race, never fear: Drag Race España Season 3 begins on April 16, and Drag Race All Stars Season 8 is due to follow within the next two months!

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

Reminders: I consistently refer to Drag Race artists with their drag names and with she/her pronouns even when they are not in drag, which is the convention of the show. Some performers may have different personal pronouns. Drag is inherently brave, political, and artistic, and all drag is valid. It’s also hard to do. Every drag artist in the world deserves endless essays dedicated to their talents and life stories. I’m commenting on drag artistry in how it fits the established expectations of this specific television program, but the reason I’m commenting at all is because I celebrate all drag and the people who create it.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 14: “Blame It On The Edit” Power Rankings

Before we get to the “Drag Excellence” runways and my final power rankings, let’s check out a Ru look that is anything but “Drag Excellence” … and, we can’t even blame it on the edit.

Look: I get that Ru is a woman of a certain age and we’re not going to get the same kind of cinched shapes we saw from her even two or three seasons ago. However, these bare shoulder dresses with awkward nude panels have got to go. If Mama Ru is ready for her Mother era, let’s get her in some opulent gowns where the shape comes from the voluminous quality of the garment rather than it being snatched to her figure.

All that said: lovely hair and make-up from Ru’s team here. I just hate the dress. so. much.

#1. Sasha Colby – 4 Wins (1.62 avg; was #2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5, Pre-Season #1)

Sasha Colby is a music-video-making professional and a pageant veteran. Both of those qualities came through loud and clear in this victory lap semi-final episode. Even if her “Blame It On the Edit” verse wasn’t as exiting as the one she contributed to what should have been a win for Girl Groups, she looked like a real pop star in Ru’s music video and delivered note-perfect answers in her interview with Ru and final runway, cementing a win and walking into the finale as the surest front-runner since Bob the Drag Queen in Season 8.

Part of what I have grown to love about the majority of Sasha Colby’s runway package is that it’s not just about clothes, it’s about silhouettes and styling. She has given us many stunning, fashionable looks all season long, but she hasn’t delivered a straight-up evening gown since the first episode! That allowed this relatively-simply pink champagne colored gown to seem like a major event even though it’s not absurdly over the top.

I found the thick trim around the burst that is repeated at the hips to be such a singularly weird feature. Up close it’s slightly distracting, like Sasha has been tied up in ropes. From a middle distance, it creates the perfect illusion of the tops of hip bones jutting out through the dress to outline Sasha’s abdomen. Add to that the over-sized arm bangles and the massive coif that’s as much flower as it is hair and this is absolutely Drag Excellence.

(Maybe she went a little overboard on the brighter points of her contour, though – he cheeks look bright white in this shot!)

I was more impressed with Sasha Colby’s visuals in the “Blame It On The Edit” music video than I was with her verse. I don’t really go for a slow-drawled verse over singing or a rap, so it was never going to click with me. However, I also have some lyrical quibbles with her verse.

Bad bitch body, I don’t come to play
Best believe when I stepped on the scene shady hoes just run away
Dream-chaser, style-maker, game-changer, bank-maker
Crack the code, now y’all know
Sasha Colby run the show, ah

I love the first line. Every good rap feature benefits from an “announcement” of who has arrived. I also love “believe / scene” in the second line, but it has too many syllables. Also, “shady hoes” feels like such a weak phrase to me. Then, in her “four of a thing” line she uses “maker” twice. That bugs for me. In a verse this short, efficiency of words is important.

Even if I didn’t love the verse, it was indisputably proficient. And, Sasha’s appearance in the music video was expert level. Not only did she quickly pick up all of the choreography, but her ability to work the camera in her solo shots was the mark of a seasoned professional. Sasha knows her angles and she knows how she will look in-camera. I had the distinct sense of the other queens just throwing lots of poses to see what would stick, while Sasha had a specific direction and aesthetic in mind.

I think Luxx Noir London easily stood up to Sasha in the video challenge. That means giving Sasha the win sends a clear message. After a few weeks of letting Anetra build up some momentum, this is our reminder that Sasha Colby is still the front-runner of the season. Even if she didn’t absolutely deserve this win, there are several episodes where she could have won and didn’t.

Over the course of the season I got the sense that Sasha is so good at drag and such a creative powerhouse that it was hard to grasp the true breadth of her talent within the limits of the Drag Race format. That reminds me of another Sasha, one of my all-time favorite Drag Race queens: Sasha Velour. At the time, people under-valued Sasha Velour’s track record because she only had a pair of shared wins. Yet, her easy dominance of the season was impossible to ignore – as evidenced by the fact that I was one of the few writers and fans to have her with equal odds with Shea Coulée heading into the Season 9 finale.

When Sasha Velour handily won the first Lip Sync For the Crown, it made sense that a queen who runs a theatrical cabaret show and edits a drag magazine would do just fine at Drag Race but wouldn’t get to show the full range of her skills on its limited reality show format.

I feel the same way about Sasha Colby, even though she’s a more-obvious frontrunner than Ms. Velour ever was. I think we got a small taste of that in how she directed herself in the music video, but also in how she carried herself in her talk with Ru and Michelle. She was in the driver’s seat the entire time. The finale is going to be the first time most viewers get a true glimpse of the full force of Sasha Colby’s powers. Having seen her Continental-winning performance from a decade before she shot Drag Race, I cannot imagine anything or anyone keeping her away from the crown.

#2. Anetra – 3 Wins, 3 Lip Syncs (2.92 avg; was #1, 1, 5, 3, 3, 2, 3, 5, 6, 3, 3, 1, Pre-Season #2)

Anetra delivered a fine verse, strong dance moves, and finally brought high glam to the runway at the perfect moment. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to escape the bottom half of this four-queen cast due to an all-around flawless performance from Luxx Noir London. What I predicted last week came to pass: I said even if Anetra skipped the challenge and wore sweatpants to the runway, she would be passed through to the finale. Instead, she made on the strength of yet another memorable lip sync.

There are several things that work about Anetra’s “Drag Excellence” runway and one thing that really doesn’t.

The first thing that is really working for me is the spiky hair. Not only is it unusual, but it breaks Anetra’s trend of relatively small, flat wigs. Given her stature and lean body, I am convinced that bigger hair looks better on her. In fact, I think we could increase the size of this wig by another 50% and it would look even better on her!

The second thing that’s working for me is that Anetra made a velvet-y fabric look expensive. Velvet sucks up the Drag Race stage lights in a way that often makes it look flat. Anetra wisely embellished her dress with lots of shimmer to avoid that fate. She also used all of her stoning and beading to create contour lines on the dress so the shape of her body wouldn’t get lost. And, parts of is have unique, interesting tailoring – including the peaked shoulders and the trumpet skirt. That gave her extra motion and different angles to play with on the runway.

A version of this dress without this amount of stoning, shoulders, or skirt would’ve been a BOOT.

The one GLARING problem of this outfit has to do with how easily Anetra slipped off the skirt for her lip sync. If you watch her runway closely, you’ll realize that the waist of the skirt cuts off the detailing on her torso right in the middle of the beading! Once I saw it I couldn’t unsee it. It immediately cheapened the look for me, because all I could see were badly-matched separates.

I completely understood how Anetra wound up in the bottom half of this “Blame It On The Edit” RuMix challenge. Everything about her performance was fine and nothing about it screamed star in the way her runway presentations so often do. It feels like when you take away Anetra’s ability to improvise that she loses a certain spark.

Also, again with that freaking spiked rugby helmet from her entrance look! It messes up her proportions so badly. It makes her look like she has a giant egg for a head.

Anetra’s lyrics were fine – plenty of ballroom references and branding. She completed the assignment, but she doesn’t have the experience on the mic of Luxx to dress it up with harmony and she didn’t sell it hard enough in the video.

Stompin’ on roaches
And walking thеse ducks
Make my way on the runway
Anеtra ’bout to pump
I twist, I whip, I dip, hair flip
Slash that eye, gloss that lip, a total ten
Your girl’s a hit

I’m sure Ru and the producers would have been happy to pass Anetra through to the finale without yet another lip sync, but there was just no way to position Luxx as having done worse in the challenge. For me, Anetra was the clear winner of the lip sync – I thought Mistress Isabelle struggled mightily to maneuver given the weight of her dress. Yet, even if MIB delivered a perfect performance, I got that same level of connected electricity from Anetra that we’ve seen in every lip sync so far this season. Beyond the voguing and the tricks she’s just watchable.

I think it’s obvious that Anetra has been positioned as the potential spoiler to Sasha Colby heading into the finale in two weeks. The question is if she really has a chance at winning, or if she exists only to give Sasha a good fight. I think more than usual her potential for a win will come down to what she brings to the finale outside of a final lip sync performance. Usually all of that other stuff – runway, interview, song performance – is all for show. In Anetra’s case, I think bringing a cohesive package will prove she is an upstart who has what it takes to stop Sasha from snatching the crown.

#3. Mistress Isabelle Brooks – 1 Win, 1 Lip Sync (3.23 avg; was #4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 4, 1, 2, 4, 4, 4, 2, Pre-Season #6)

Mistress Isabelle Brooks had both the worst and the best week out of the final four, depending on how you look at things. She was the only queen to truly stumble in the music video and she lip synced against late-breaking front-runner Anetra. Yet, mother Ru declared “Shanté you both stay” and brought Mistress Isabelle along to the finale! There was zero reason to make that choice unless Mistress has a shot at actually winning the season.

Mistress Isabelle Brooks served up pure “Drag Excellence” in this final runway. I loved this cheetah-print beaded dress, and how the print was actual in the beading, so it moved and swayed right along with MIB as she walked. In her voiceover she said that the dress weighed as much as sixty pounds, which is absolutely wild. I have a 22-pound weighted blanket and sometimes I can’t even hold it up to fold it. It’s not that 22 pounds is so heavy, but that it’s a lot of weight for something that flows and moves on its own. MIB must have a lot of strength and stamina to make it work.

Also, I appreciated that Mistress Isabelle wore her hair up in a loaf for this look. One of my few critiques of her on the runway this season has been that when she wears her hair down it messes up her proportions by squashing her head, neck, and shoulders.

If I have one critique of this look, it’s the makeup. MIB’s super-bright “the spotlight is on me” style of contouring the middle of her face is sometimes too much for TV cameras. Between that and her sharp nose contour, I don’t think this is the loveliest she has looked on the runway this season.

There’s no denying that Mistress Isabelle Brooks was on the Struggle Bus in the “Blame It On the Edit” video shoot. She’s slow to pick up choreography even on her best day, but it also seemed like the massive shoulders of her dance costume made it physically difficult for her to raise her arms higher than her chest.

I always marvel at the fact that we rarely see a queen outright fail at dancing in one of these final challenges. I feel like that would be my fate, because it takes me forever to absorb choreography. Yet, MIB came pretty close to a complete wipeout in this one. Luckily, it was somewhat saved by her solo material, where she looked lovely and worked the camera well.

I am undecided on how I feel about Mistress Isabelle’s verse. Rapping in double-time to this beat is a choice, and I’m not sure if MIB has the musicality to make it work perfectly. Yet, in terms of snapping this dense set of lyrics into the rhythm, she actually did a strong job.

MIB, I’m the MVP
It makes sense why all these girls envy me
‘Cause I’ma clock the tea, and I don’t give a tuck
Excuse me, why you mad?
Like a bitch from west bum tuck
But guess what, yes, I said it and I made it, too
I’m the next in line, Kingdom Mama Ru
And if you step outta line, I’ma gather you
Make room ’cause a big girl’s coming through

I think the problem is less with the rhythm and more with the diction. “West bum tuck” is a hard trio of syllables to say clearly – they’re not “cellar door.” Especially at the end of the line, it’s really difficult to get them out of your mouth. Even “east bum tuck” would’ve been easier to get out of the mouth. MIB had similar struggles on the next two lines.

It takes a lot of songwriting experience to realize you have the right rhythm but the wrong word order. To many ears, getting the rhythm right will be enough to declare success. I think swapping a word or two in those lines to make the diction slightly clearer would have made the entire verse feel less crowded.

Mistress Isabelle Brooks could have easily been dismissed from this lip sync. She served good face and solid sync skills, but there was no one moment of her performance that screamed, “Wow, this queen must go through to the finale.” Pair that with her struggle bus ride through the music video, and it seemed incredibly obvious that she could be eliminated this episode.

The fact that RuPaul decided to hand out a double shanté speaks highly of how much she enjoy’s MIB’s take on classic drag as well as her personality. She is by far the biggest personality and the funniest narrator left in the cast. That will make good TV at the finale and – especially – at the reunion. Plus, if either Anetra or Sasha makes a major stumble at the finale, Mistress’s sheer consistency this season makes her a solid contender as runner up to the champion.

#4. Luxx Noir London – 2 Wins, 1 Lip Sync (3.28 avg; was #3, 3, 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 3, 3, 5, 2, 6, Pre-Season #3)

Luxx Noir London had both the best and the worst week out of the final four, in a reverse of her sister Mistress Isabelle Brooks. Luxx crushed the Rumix challenge with the best verse and the sharpest dance moves. Yet, RuPaul didn’t deem it necessary to give her a win to even the odds between Luxx, Sasha, and Anetra. That seemed like the clearest possible signal that Luxx has no shot at actually winning the season.

I’ll be honest: I loved this Luxx Noir London “Drag Excellence” look, but it was giving me wedding dress. I think it would be very hard to wear a flowing white dress like this and not give nuptials. That’s on top of how washed-out it looks under the runway lights.

Imagine how gorgeous this would’ve been if the dress was hot pink, cobalt blue, or a rich purple!

I wouldn’t say this look failed or did not meet the brief, but it’s just hard to get excited about it – especially given the kinds of fashion we’ve seen Luxx from this season. I’d say her Michelle Visage inspired design challenge look with the zebra-print pants was much more chic than this dress.

Also, what is with the limp folks of fabric to suggest a hip pannier? That’s giving me very Marcia Marcia Marcia.

Lucky for Luxx Noir London, she utterly devoured the other queens in the “Blame It On The Edit” music video. She was the best dancer (even better than Sasha), she understood how to work the camera, her lyrics were terrific, and her vocal performance was incredible. It’s seriously a “no notes” situation. Luxx came prepared for her pop star moment and she fully delivered fierce, flawless performance.

Lookin’ just like a dream
Mug so fierce I be causin’ a scene
When I step on the runway
You already know all eyes on me
Ate these bitches, left no crumbs
Did it in designer pumps
So when they ask about Luxx
Let them know that she’s the one

Even if Luxx got some coaching and production assistance on how to place the hits of harmony on her first four lines, you can’t fake the buttery melody and sense of musicality that she brings to this verse. The perfect triplets. The way she hangs on a note in the first half only to climb in the second. The appreciated chord on “step on the runway.” The classic R&B cadence on “all eyes on me.”

We have so many queens claim to be singers, but Luxx is one of the exceedingly few queens who can honestly say she is a songwriter. Also, I noted the massive difference in gloss between this and her solo music. Luxx’s talent shone through for me on all of the songs she has released prior to the show (I bought them all), but adding this minor level of extra production gloss makes her sound like an absolute star.

I was puzzled at how Luxx didn’t snatch the win for this episode based on that overwhelming performance. A win for Luxx would have tied her with Sasha and Anetra heading into the finale, which would’ve made things feel incredibly tight! Did Ru really hate her “Drag Excellence” runway that much? Or, is it that Luxx never had any chance of winning the challenge because she has no chance of winning the season?

I saw Luxx as a potential spoiler to Sasha Colby for the first half of the season, but it feels like once the show got its sights set on Anetra after the Lalaparuza Luxx stopped being a formidable opponent in their eyes – even if they did hand her another win. That the show had the chance to go forward with a final three with equal wins, but instead pushed ahead with a final four with lopsided track records says it all about Luxx’s placement in two weeks. I would be utterly shocked if we even see her in the final lip sync, and I’d say she has zero chances at a win.

The question I always ask in these heavily-rigged situations is: why? Sometimes it simply comes down to a likability gap with RuPaul, as we’ve seen with proficient contestants like Rosé who failed to thrill Ru on a personal level. Yet, it seems like she was highly entertained by Luxx all season long. It could be that Ru simply sees a queen who will grow even fiercer with more time to simmer now that she has increased exposure and the budget that comes with it. Drag Race has always been weirdly uninterested in launching a mainstream pop act out of a regular season, but Luxx Noir London could be perfectly position to break out into mainstream appeal if they let her develop until she is ready for a return on All Stars or Queen of the Universe.