Drag Race World - RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs. The World S2E03

It’s another week of the Olympics of Drag Race! RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 3 was “Drag Race World,” a tricky commercial challenge that paired personal branding with creating a marketable immerse experience. It was paired with a franchise-favorite “Ruveal Yourself” runway.

This was one of those “is the challenge bad or are the queens not getting it” weeks of Drag Race for me.

The assignment was to advertise an experiential VIP fan experience unique to the brand of each queen’s drag. Effectively, queens had to make commercials for themselves – and for what it would be like to meet them in person.

Some queens got the VIP experience part, and some queens got the brand part, but only a handful of queens were able to marry them in a way that made sense, was funny, and also was something sellable.

That lead one queen to ruveal more than just a runway look, but also a previously-secret talent she has kept under wraps through her entire Drag Race experience. It also gave us a fresh pair of winners, one surprisingly near-flop, and two very different senses of humor on the runway from a pair of UK queens. That lead to a number of shakeups in our power ranking compared to last week’s fairytale-themed “Happy Ending Ball” challenge.

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best international drag superstar 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 am obsessed with drag and the people who create it.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World, Season 2, Episode 3 – Drag Race World

Before we get to this week’s Power Rankings, let’s appreciate a pair of intriguing fashions from Ru.

First, the workroom, Ru was serving… something. We didn’t get any close full-body shots of this look, but even the mid-shots were a bit peculiar. It almost looked like this shirt was backwards the way the very peculiar center panel draped down Ru’s body. Maybe that’s why she added the ridiculous bow.

By contrast, she was a bombshell in her black-and-silver runway look… except for the rudely out-of-place nude illusion panel. It would have looked better if it was simply black or silver.

#1 – La Grande Dame (was #2, 1) [DRFr-S01 Runner Up, Pre-Season #2]

(Instagram | Spotify | TikTok | Twitter | YouTube)

La Grande Dame struggled with communicating her ideas in English when it came to shooting her commercial, yet her wit was still evident in the final product.

La Grande Dame understood the fundamentals of the Drag Race World assignment: to let fans in on what makes you and your drag special. Her version of that was more fantastical than most, with an offer to meet all of the iconic French fashion influencers that helped her establish her taste – like Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld.

It’s an experience she couldn’t actually offer for sale. Yet, her parodies of them were sharply observed and the rhythm of the entire sequence worked.

The problem for La Grande Dame came not from her finished product, but from getting there. In her commercial shoot, we saw her messing up the delivery of nearly every single line in the commercial. It’s not easy to remember the script you just wrote an hour ago without using a teleprompter, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like for me if I was doing it in French.

Even if LGD’s stumble was easy to sympathize with, it also meant that she took up almost twice the allotted amount of time for her shoot, leaving Hannah Conda and Jonbers Blonde scrambling to complete their commercials in mere minutes.

Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of this Miss World / World Piss Ruveal Yourself runway.

I suppose the fabric of the dress is supposed to be giving some sort of toilet paper or diaper couture, but it didn’t feel up to La Grand Dame’s typical standards. Also, I absolutely hate any reveal that is a reveal to text. If she had simply revealed to her nude silhouette beneath, ot or her panties, or if the dress had disintegrated, or something … the piss joke would have still landed. Instead, this reveal just made the dress uglier.

(This will be a consistent theme tonight.)

Despite La Grande Dame’s slip-ups in shooting her commercial, I don’t think this wobble has done anything to alter her status as our front-runner. No matter how difficult the process, the judges still loved her commercial and her runway. Next week is Snatch Game and La Grande Dame is one of two Snatch Game winners in this cast. Even if she struggles to be as funny in English as she was in French, there are many other queens more likely to be eliminated (and, I doubt anyone would be ruthless enough to eliminate LGD on her first trip to the bottom two).

#2 – Tia Kofi (was #6, 6) [RPDRUK-S02 7th, Pre-Season #4]

Tia Kofi finally had a chance to stand and deliver some deadpan comedy and she didn’t waste a second of it. She will be hard to beat in challenges based on comedy, because Ru absolutely lives for Tia’s sense of humor.

Tia Kofi may have understood what to do in this Drag Race World commercial better than anyone else in the cast. She made sure to make fun of herself and her original run on the show, but she also gave the impression that any one of us could join her for this immersive experience so we could get into quick drag and experience all of the trauma of her original run on Drag Race UK.

I despised this runway from Tia Kofi. If the theme is “Ruveal Yourself” and I can see each look peeking out from each prior reveal, than have you revealed anything?

I don’t understand why she bothered with the first coat, a copy of RuPaul’s Season 9 promo look, when it barely closed and would only be on for a second. Then, Tia’s version of RuPaul’s famous “Supermodel of the World” look was another obvious reveal garment. It looked flat in addition to not even covering her final bodysuit.

Then, the final bodysuit, a copy of RuPaul’s cover of Vanity Fair, was… fine. It is just as bejeweled as what Ru wore, but the point of Ru on that Vanity Fair cover was that she was serving body and huge hair. Tia is serving beanpole wearing a bun. The entire impact was lost.

It would be impossible for her Tia to win the week with such a failed garment on Krisis’s Drag Race. Clearly the judges are giving Tia a more positive reception than I am. Despite three weeks of different degrees of failure on the runway, I get the sense Tia will be continue to be given a pass all season as long as her looks have more stoning and embellishments than they did on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2.

Despite Tia’s professed horror over Snatch Game in the preview for next week, she is actually one of my picks to win. Even if her sense of style never really improved from her original season, Tia’s sense of comedy is sharper than ever. I think she’s going to know just what buttons to push.

#3 – Marina Summers (was #1, 3) [DRPh-S01 Runner Up, Pre-Season #3]

Marina Summers struggled to zero in on Ru’s exact requirements for this challenge, but she still managed to turn in something personal, personable, and funny. Yet, this is now two weeks in a row where Marina could not figure out how to edit herself in a way that Ru could easily consume. That’s not the good kind of “trend alert” on Drag Race.

Marina’s Drag Race World immersive experience commercial was a slightly more attainable fantasy than La Grande Dame’s. Her concept was that if you visited her in The Philippines she could show you how she honed her Drag Race skills in a humble agrarian setting. Despite the gimmick not really making sense as a VIP experience at a show like DragCon, I think she still fulfilled the brief – just in her own way.

Marina Summers also had the best Ruveal Yourself runway of the evening. Her initial volcanic dress was an interesting silhouette. It was also a complete enough garment that when she started revealing minor bursts of glittering lava it seemed for a second as though that could be her complete reveal.

Then, her actual reveal was a stunning fiery, coppery ball gown that would be satisfying as a runway all on its own.

For me, Marina was better than both La Grande Dame and Tia Kofi in this episode. And, I think it was obvious that she could have received a high placement based on what she delivered. But, she didn’t need a third critique in a row, so the judge’s gave her the night off in favor of critiquing Gothy.

Marina has had an intense glow-up from her already-gorgeous showing on Drag Race Philippines Season 1. But, after the judges misunderstood her first two ball categories last week and she slightly misinterpreted the challenge this week, I fear that overthinking might be her downfall on this season.

Snatch Game is often a point of failure for Asian queens on this show, so next episode could very well be disastrous. If she makes it through, Marina will need to attack the comedy challenges that are sure to follow with more stupidity than smarts if she wants to make her mark against a cast full of funny queens.

#4 – Scarlet Envy (was #5, 5) [RPDR-S11 10th, RPDRAS-S06 9th, Pre-Season #5]

Scarlet Envy had her strongest showing across all three of her seasons in this episode. She set aside her sometimes-ditzy persona to put her university degree to good use – as well as her keen understanding of what Ru actually looks for in a branding challenge.

Scarlet Envy didn’t drill down on her brand quite as hard as Tia Kofi did in her Drag Race World immerse experience. None of it was especially true to Scarlet’s identity or drag character.

Yet, it was undeniable that it was her direction that lead to her team having the best commercial. Plus, her turn as host (both of the commercial and as a stand-in for RuPaul) was perfectly performed and laden with jokes.

In this week’s challenge, delivering exactly what the brief requested was enough to walk away with a win.

Scarlet’s Ruveal Yourself runway was… sort of a reveal.

She opened a white, robe-like wrap dress to reveal a glittering gown beneath it. The gag was that the lining of her robe was in the same fabric as the dress itself.

I think it was a fun gag, but the look would have had more impact if the interior lining of the white dress was a black glitter version of the gown’s fabric. Some contrast would have made the look really pop, though I appreciate that the same-on-same quality of the look fits with Scarlet’s sense of humor.

Scarlet sometimes wears gowns with built-in breast cups on top of a flat chest without much (or any) contour, which inevitably makes the gown look like it is riding too low even when it fits just fine. Also, I think there was something a little mismatched about Scarlet’s massive, tousled, and somewhat shiny blonde wig.

It was a clean presentation overall, but it could have excited me more – especially in comparison to the absolutely killer wig and makeup changeover that Scarlet gave for her lip sync look!

Scarlet’s gown combined with her solid commercial concept made her the most-obvious winner of the week. What intrigued me the most about her win is that it is one of the few times Ru has been specifically enamored with Scarlet’s own sense of humor. On the flipside, it’s also the best example of Scarlet fully understanding an assignment and delivering exactly what was required rather than getting caught in her own French Vanilla Fantasy. Even on this runway, Scarlet went with her own personal injoke rather than something that would be more impactful. Luckily, it didn’t cost her the win.

As much as Scarlet loves to play the “am I the drama” card, I think she stands to gain a lot by attacking the rest of this season through the lens of her Marketing Design degree just as she did on this episode. There are a lot of queens in this cast who don’t know how to edit themselves. There’s a chance that Scarlet could muscle her way into her first finale if she keeps her focus this tight on every challenge.

#5 – Hannah Conda (was #3, 4) [RPDRDU-S02 Runner Up, Pre-Season #1]

Hannah Conda looked like she would have a win easily wrapped up in another green screen tour de force after her greatest-of-all-time effort on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2. But Hannah’s plans were scuttled when La Grande Dame went into overtime shooting her segment.

It’s clear that Hannah’s initally-planned gags for her “Hannah’s Cove” Drag Race World immersive experience were going to be a lot more involved than doing parkour with a yoga ball. We could see her cutting out additional props and setups in real time as she rushed to get her shots covered with Michelle.

Even in a hurry she churned out the deeply hilarious bit of her providing a “complementary recording of Hannah’s cackle on a device of their choosing.” With more time on her hands, I have no doubt Hannah would have turned in the best commercial.

I think Hannah’s Ruveal Yourself runway was clean but disconnected. I didn’t really see a story between her pope look and her green fairy saloon showgirl. There could have been more of a connection than “what if the pope was a drag queen?”

Maybe if the showgirl look had more of a specific transgressive, unholy quality to it (think 90s Madonna) it would have landed.

This week’s result is a major bummer for Hannah, because she missed scoring on one of her strongest challenges. However, her other strongest challenge is next week – Snatch Game! I very much expect to see her in the winning lip sync next week unless she gets boxed out by Tia Kofi and an unexpected strong turn from someone else. That would be an awful result for Hannah, who needs some momentum as we already approach the midpoint of the season. But, I think Hannah’s reliable swiftness with churning out punchlines will help her avoid that fate.

#6 – Keta Minaj (was #7, 2) [DRHol-S02 4th, Pre-Season #7]

Keta Minaj went from the top in last week’s episode straight to the bottom this week.

Keta fell into a common trap when it comes to Drag Race branding challenges. She became obsessed with advertising the thing that inspired her rather than herself. We’ve seen queens do this repeatedly with everything from travel to soda. As soon as the advertisement stops being at least 50% about yourself, you’ve failed the challenge.

Plus, her commercial wasn’t even a good advertisement for The Netherlands! Keta’s bit with the paint splatter wound up consuming all of her time in the shoot and in the final edit, but it barely made a lick of sense. I felt as though she was relying on her country’s reputation as a home to famous artists but undersold the joke.

I can envision the same edit of the commercial with a different voiceover that made the paint-rolling sequence funny. What if the voiceover on that entire segment was something more like this?

Van Gogh. Vermeer. Van Cartier. What do they have in common? They are all famous painters born before the year 1900.

The Netherlands has produced some of the world’s most famous classical painters and also one of the oldest Drag Race Winners. In my immersive experience, join me for the complete Netherlands experience – pretending you’re here for the art and culture, but actually wind up doing drugs and having sex the entire time.

Actually, that’s how I wind up designing most of my runway looks.

Note: drugs and sex not included. At least, not for you.

Ketamorphosis!

I’m not saying I’m a marketing genius or that I wrote anything particularly funny, but I think that kind of a voiceover running over the entire painting sequence would’ve made it much funner than whatever Keta was screaming at the time.

It’s a shame that Keta’s Drag Race World commercial was such a flop, because she had one of the best Ruveal Yourself runways of the night. It’s neck-and-neck with Marina’s runway for me. I might like it slightly more!

I loved her big-shouldered suit jacket. We’ve seen this gag several times over on Drag Race (specifically, from Willow Pill and The Vivienne), but not combined with such a nipped in waist. I loved how the jacket opened up like flower petals rather than being something she whipped off and tossed behind her. And, I love this gorgeous pile of purple hair – it was giving me “high fashion Marge Simpson” … which was unfortunate for our next queen.

Keta Minaj fell prey to the exact sort of messy “missing the point” pitfall I feared for her. She’s lucky Tia Kofi didn’t win the lip sync, as I strongly suspect Tia had her lipstick. But, she also notched a second week of runway dominance in a row. I really fear for her in next week’s Snatch Game. She’s up against a cast of comedians with the exception of Gothy Kendoll. We’ve seen many funny queens fail at Snatch Game before, and with Keta’s reserved personality I think she might need to rely on one or more of those failures happening to survive the week.

#7 – Choriza May (was #4, 7) [RPDRUK-S03 6th/7th, Pre-Season #6]

Choriza May should have had the easiest time of all of the queens with this branding challenge because her brand is so unique and indelible. Yet, even under Scarlet Envy’s directorial vision, Choriza was tripped up by her inability to edit just as much as she was on her original season.

Choriza’s Drag Race World immersive experience was clever but lacked jokes. She spent so long setting herself up as the host of the Untuck experience and getting in her “Inferno” branding that her only real joke was that the cocktails were made from the “sad sad tears of a drag queen.”

I think Choriza could have skipped her entire intro and just started with “I’m Choriza May and welcome to HELL.. I mean, the Untucked Lounge” without the entire bit that followed about “the Inferno afterparty.” It was already implied by the joke and her outfit! There were more jokes to be mined in there about why the Untucked lounge is hellish. Maybe something like how “you, too, will know the feeling of never winning a challenge” before ending with the punchline about drinking drag queen tears.

This Ruveal yourself runway was tacky and I hated it. Like, viscerally hated it so much that it made me angry. I am still angry as I am typing this.

Choriza started with the concept of Marge Simpson’s pink Chanel suit from one of the all-time classic episodes of The Simpsons.

The entire gag of the episode was that Marge kept repurposing her suit, so Choriza even had a built-in reveal concept! I would have loved a version of this runway where she just kept peeling off more and more versions of the suit to reveal similar versions beneath like Monét X Change revealing a pussycat wig to another pussycat wig. By the end, she could have been a buxom Marge Simpson in a bikini and panties – and that would have been funny.

Instead, which felt like it was the rare Drag Race runway to actual mock women’s bodies rather than celebrate them. Making Marge Simpson high fashion is much more interesting than stripping a cartoon character naked to show off an exaggerated public bush and a stocking butt with no panty. There was just something about the bare yellow breasts and exposed, exaggerated pubic bush that felt like it crossed a line to me. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Choriza was spared a bottom placement here purely on the strength of Scarlet’s editorial vision for their commercial. While Choriza might have the comedy chops to do better in this Snatch Game than she did the first time around, I feel like her days on this season are already numbered.

#8 – Gothy Kendoll (was #8, 8) [RPDRUK-S01 10th, Pre-Season #10]

Gothy Kendoll still comes off as a tentative young kid, yet she also knew how to get the shots she needed to fulfill the brief on her commercial. She’s outmatched by most of the rest of this cast, but it’s fun to see her do well in one of the staple Drag Race challenges.

Gothy’s Drag Race World immersive experience being all about tiger face-painting felt like the bare minimum of branding she could apply to her experience. Sure, RuPaul and Michelle latched on to Gothy’s timid “rawr” meme, but the timidity is the joke – not the tiger. Pairing that with what Michelle rightfully called out as a crusty old sex joke meant there was a limit to how successful this commercial could be.

I think this could’ve been much funnier if she said she would be giving them a “stunning mug worthy of the house of Kendoll” and then they were revealed to be wearing tiger face paint. That’s a punchline!

And yet… Gothy’s low-key, deadpan approach to life actually translated well on camera. I suppose there’s not much to translate – it’s just who she is! That deadpan delivery is as much a part of her brand as “rawr” and it added to the slightly camp vibe of her commercial.

Gothy Kendoll’s unhinged Ruveal Yourself runway was one of the best reveals of the night because it showed off her sense of humor better than anything else we’ve seen from her on the show. The pretty-in-pink quilted babydoll coat dress was fine, but the reveal…

Gothy revealed to an armored bodysuit with built-in abs and bulge, but exposed breasts that were babydoll faces.

There’s something so transfixing, provocative, and weird about this runway. We’ve seen faces-as-breasts before (notably from Abhora on Dragula), but the combination of that with this petite pink look and the genderfvck elements of the bodysuit was something notable.

Granted, many other queens would have walked this in a much more interesting way, but it’s our first real glimpse into Gothy’s brain and I love it.

Was this really a high placement for Gothy? I think Gothy was critiqued because she got close to the point of the challenge, but moreso because giving her a “positive” critique pumps her up for the next challenge and complicates the deliberations next time she is in the bottom. It’s boring if there is always an obvious next queen to eliminate.

Also, again, her runway was great and required some commentary from the judges!

Unfortunately, next week’s Snatch Game feels like it will almost certainly be the end of the road for Gothy unless two other queens have a simultaneous crash-and-burn and Gothy pulls out another delightfully weird runway. I’d love to be proven wrong, because Gothy is an underdog who makes it fun to root for her. But, to make a deeper run on this show Gothy needs to shift out of overwhelmed neophyte mode and into something a little fiercer and sharper.

Rawr.

Eliminated: 9th Place- Jonbers Blonde (was #9, 9) [RPDRUK-S04 3rd/4th, Pre-Season #9]

Jonbers Blonde fell into the exact trap I predicted last week: she assumed her brand should be limited to “parroting things that garnered Ru’s approval the first time around.”

That’s a fine line to tread, since this challenge was all about brand and making fun of yourself. Yet, Jonbers felt like her brand was about calling back to jokes RuPaul previously chuckled at, rather than mocking the jokes.

Even a queen with an outstanding original run on Drag Race is going to see ever-diminishing returns if everything on her All Stars run is simply an echo of her original run, Jonbers was invited back to the show so she could capitalize on her prior experience to show things she didn’t know how to show at the time. Instead, she just delivered more of the same.

(Imagine if the entire commercial was framed with Jonbers in a totally flat American accent saying, “I guess we’re doing Irish again, huh? Okay. Here we go.)

At least she left looking absolutely stunning, even if her garment was a lot simpler than Ru and Michelle would have you believe based on their praise.

10th Place – Arantxa Castilla La Mancha (was #10) [DREs-S01 7th, Pre-Season #11]

11th Place – Mayhem Miller [RPDR-S10 10th, RPDRAS-S05 7th, Pre-Season #8]

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Drag Race World - RuPaul's Drag Race UK vs. The World S2E03– Crushing Krisis says:

March 4, 2024 at 6:52 am

[…] biases and bad habits in the Snatch Game meant that every single queen changed rankings this week compared to last week’s Drag Race World immersive experience commercial power rankings. It feels like we have a fully-formed Top 5 with two queens on borrowed time. Will either one of […]