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Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 1 – Sidewalk to Catwalk: Review & Power Ranking

July 15, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the first episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – “Sidewalk to Catwalk”!

Canada’s Drag Race often feels a little more real than the American edition. It could be the editing style. It might also be that Canada’s queens come from a smaller pool of performers and have fewer expectations of fame and fortune from being on the show.

This debut of Season 3 kept this feeling of realness, but it also compressed a lot of action into one hour. We had entrances, a runway mini-challenge, the ritual “first de-dragging,” a full-on design challenge, mirror chats, a final runway and judges critiques, and miniature Untucked segment back in the workroom.

While this isn’t radically different than the tight schedule of debut episodes from RuPaul’s Drag Race Seasons 3-5, here it felt rushed. It’s not unusual for the safe queens in a debut to get very little camera time, but it felt as though we didn’t even get to know two of the queens in the top three!

Adding to that lack of balance, it felt like two of the safe queens were dominant narrators despite not being featured outside of confessional, and one of the bottom queens wound up the star of the episode despite having the least to offer.

That made this episode feel unsatisfying, even if this cast of queens are all distinct characters with memorable personalities. I’m not sure I’ve ever committed everyone in a cast to memory so quickly! It’s a group of artists heavy with talent and, past a handful of struggling queens, light on obvious weak spots.

What does that mean for the eleven surviving queens’ chances for winning the crown? Below I break down my reaction to their initial challenge performance and re-rank them from my Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Pre-Season Power Rankings from earlier this week.

If you want to watch Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 outside of Canada and the UK you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. I don’t get any kind of cut off of that – I just want you to watch Drag Race! (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win!

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

July 13, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my pre-season Power Rankings of the queens of Canada’s Drag Race, Season 3!

Canada’s Drag Race kicks off with a first episode tomorrow, which means now is the time to cement our first impressions of their cast of 12 drag artists.

If you’ve never watched Canada’s Drag Race, both of the first two seasons have been high quality, delivering some of the franchises most memorable challenges and lip syncs and a pair of iconic winners.

In fact, both prior casts were thoroughly memorable, and it didn’t take long for their Canadian kindness to give way to serious competitive streaks. If Jimbo is the only Canadian export you know so far, you’re in for a treat!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 11 runner-up Brooke Lynn Hytes is the dragged up face of the show, but in practice she shares the spotlight and the hosting duties with other hosts each season – which had included supermodel Stacey McKenzie, actors Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and Amanda Brugel, sassy stylist Brad Goreski, and TV presenter Traci Melchor. Having a team of talented coaches gives the franchise a decidedly Canadian flair unique from the other Ru-hosted English-language editions.

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 released a colorful promo trailer that shows off its dozen queens much better than prior promos, which have been slightly drab. Alongside the promo trailer, they also produced a series of 90-second “Meet The Queens” interviews with the cast.

For this initial Power Ranking, I’m only going by what I can see in those 90-second interviews plus the queens’ social media accounts. I’m not even going to review the trailer a second time, since it might make obvious some of the queen’s placements based on how many outfits appear. (Nancy Drews on Reddit are already on top of that, but I’ve abstained from their detective work.)

Remember: this is all in good fun. If I had Power Ranked last season’s queens, I doubt I would’ve picked our top three! These are all outstanding drag artists, but being a great drag artist doesn’t always translate to doing well on Drag Race.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best Queen (of the North) win! [Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 3 – The French Ball: Review & Power Ranking

July 10, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the third episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “The French Ball”!

I can’t even begin to imagine how intimidating a ball challenge must be as a contestant on Drag Race. You have no control over which of the many looks in your suitcase will be worn back-to-back for your first pair of looks, and you have 12 hours or less to construct your third one! Plus, rumor has it that queens get less than one hour to make the change from each look to the next, which includes make-up alterations.

That’s a lot of stress, especially early in the season when queens are still getting used to the rhythm of TV production!

This French cast acquitted themselves well across three categories – Ma France et moi, French Clichés, and the Cannes Film Festival design challenge. It helped that the unusual material restrictions for this design challenge were actually quite loose – the queens were free to use fabric to construct their looks, as long as they had multiple beach elements incorporated.

The episode delivered looks, but it also made clear which character archetypes our queens are portraying. We have our clear front-runner, our bridesmaid-not-bride, our young queen with a growth arc, our reciprocal arcs of growing and shrinking confidence, and a queen who is unfairly maligned by the judges so she can later enjoy a comeback.

Does that mean this season is already becoming too formulaic? Or, was the casting so good that the queens are naturally snapping into familiar Drag Race tropes?

I think that’s the right question to be asking in the third week of a tight eight-episode run. With the season reaching the halfway point with Snatch Game next week, the queens who aren’t on the ascent either need to surprise us or prepare to sashay away.

Now that Drag Race France has settled into it’s regular release day, I’ve moved my recap up to Sunday so I don’t have to wait a full week after each episode to recap the next one! We’ll see how that schedule shakes out with Drag Race Canada in the mix starting next week, with Drag Race Philippines following soon thereafter.

If you want to watch Drag Race France you can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to watch the many worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

With my general impressions of the episode out of the way, let’s get to my Drag Race France Episode 3 Power Rankings for The French Ball! The middle layer of the rankings has had a shuffle from my week two power rankings – with last week’s bottom queens on very different trajectories!

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 9 – Dance Like a Drag Queen: recap & power ranking!

July 9, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the ninth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Dance Like a Drag Queen, a combination branding challenge and dancing challenge to create viral social media videos.

I overlap in several skills and talents with the typical cast of Drag Race, but this challenges hits on a pair of areas where I am sorely lacking: choreography and brief, viral videos.

Sure, I love to hit the dancefloor and I’ve taken my fair share of dance fitness classes, but I haven’t tried my hand at making up coherent choreography since I was 10 years old on my grandmother’s front stoop dancing to “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic!

And, despite several forays into video over the past few years, I simply don’t understand what makes a video viral. I’m not sure I’ve ever shared one, and as the video formats grow shorter and shorter I care less and less.

I point this out not to outline how bad I’d be at Drag Race, but to point out who this challenge is targeting: youths. It’s not that no one older than 30 has ever shared a viral video or done a dance challenge, but this week’s concept is clearly aimed at a TikTok generation who racks up tens of millions of views on brief snippets of endlessly loopable video.

This is a cast of seasoned all-winners who trend at least half a decade older than the typical early-20s queens that are being cast on recent seasons. To be RuPaul’s Queen of Queens, our winner needs to be able to connect with every portion of the audience – especially the rising one who loves brevity combined with absurdity.

Were all of our queens able to keep up with the times in this challenge where brevity is the soul of wit? Find out in my full-episode recap, below. Plus, at the end of the recap I have an extensively mathematic update to my Episode 8 rankings to explain who can make it into the finale and how. (Want to skip right to the power rankings? Go for it!)

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen… win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 9 – Dance Like a Drag Queen: recap & power ranking!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 2 – Queen Pour Cent: Review & Power Ranking

July 6, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the second episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “Queen Pour Cent”

It was fascinating to watch this episode back-to-back with this week’s “Santa’s School For Girls” episode of All Stars Season 7. On one hand, you have a cast of all-winners and a professional film director turning out a serviceable comedy scene. On the other, you have the second episode of a new franchise directed by a French comedian turning out a farce that was… dare I say… funnier than the All-Winners challenge?!

It could be that the language barrier of my remedial French means I was reacting more to the silliness of the French queens than their delivery. However, I think it was more the case that their scene was structured for broad comedy and inexperienced actors. It didn’t have as much plot and rarely had more than three queens on stage at the same time. The entire concept was to anchor it with a pair of droll characters and then rotate through a number of ridiculous, stereotypical third wheels to their comedy tricycle.

It was a fun exercise to watch, both in rehearsal and in the final edit. And, speaking of things this franchise is already improving upon, I believe it is the first version of Drag Race to feature Drag Kings(!!!) for its rock bank mini-challenge (which was otherwise inconsequential).

On the runway, Dites-le avec des fleurs (“say it with flowers”), I think there was a noticeable gap between queens with artsy-craftsy presentations versus those with more-elevated fashion looks. I’m not current on my French drag and queer culture, so I can’t present any well-formed theories on that.

However, my guess would be that a lot of cabaret drag is effectively burlesque drag – with an emphasis on dancing, strip-teasing, and humor. It’s clear that a queen like La Grande Dame is coming from a different fashion perspective than cerebral players like Paloma and Elips. Neither are bad, but they have different origins.

One surprise this episode delivered was that Lolita Banana may be the queen to tip-toe between both sides of that performer vs. fashion divide. Her runway garment and presentation was memorable and she is one of the full-time showgirls in this cast alongside La Briochée and La Big Bertha.

I will be curious to see if this runway gap tightens or widens as the season wears on, and how that might effect who sticks around. Based on this episode, runway counts for a lot! It placed one fine queen in the bottom and saved one of the worst queens from the lip sync.

Want to watch Drag Race France? You can sign up for WowPresentsPlus to see this and the many other worldwide Drag Race franchises for $4.99 a month or $50 a year. (Note that if you’re in the US you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see the US Franchise.)

With my general impressions of the episode out of the way, let’s get to my Drag Race France Episode 2 Power Rankings! There’s quite the shake-up from my week one power rankings – especially considering 3 of my Top 4 got tough critiques in this episode!

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!