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Drag Race España Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

April 6, 2023 by krisis

Arranquen sus motores! Just as one of our Drag Race seasons draws to a close tomorrow with finale of Drag Race Belgique and another airs its penultimate episode with the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 reunion, a new season looms on the horizon. It’s Drag Race España Season 3, which debuts on April 16! That means it’s time to meet a cast of 12 drag artists for my Pre-Season Power Rankings!

What is there to rank before we have seen a single second of this new season? Drag Race España released perhaps the most epic pre-season promo of all time, with a campy 60s sci-fi theme and two minutes for each queen to distinguish herself from her competitors.

These combination interview + fashion shoot videos are called “Meet The Queens,” a phrase which España didn’t even translate for these videos (perhaps in a nod to the fact that they are largely for consumption by global audiences rather than local ones).

In addition to trying to divine some hints at how each queen will perform based on their Meet The Queens segments, I also spend a few minutes perusing each of their social channels to scope out their makeup skills, fashion, and performance style.

Remember: I write these pre-season power rankings purely for fun, which is the same reason I recap all of the many Drag Race franchises week after week. If I make any critiques of these incredibly accomplished drag artists, those critiques are purely within the framework of what the show expects of them.

Being good at Drag Race is just one way to be good at the art of drag. The fun of writing these analyses is not to tear queens down, but to spend hours of time and thousands of words on an art form that needs celebration and support now more than ever.

In the case of Pre-Season power rankings, my rankings double as a placement prediction. I have a pretty good track record this past year, including predicting all 3 Français finalists (and the winner), 3 out of 4 American finalists, 2 out of 3 Belgique finalists. Will my psychic powers continue for this Drag Race España Season 3? I have my doubts.

España is revered by many fans as the best of the many global franchises of the show. A lot of that is down to the wildly over-the-top fashions brought by its competitors, which are consistently some of the most elaborate, glamourous, and high-impact looks across all of Drag Race. Yet, España can also be the most unpredictable franchise. It holds queens to an incredibly high standard, which can lead to heartbreaking and sometimes shocking eliminations without ever seeming to be unfair or rigged.

So far, two seasons of España have placed an emphasis on crowning professionals. Season 1 winner Carmen Farala was a nearly-flawless competitor with the poise and graciousness of a real-life monarch, and Season 2 champion Sharonne was a seasoned reality show competitor and talented singer. Will the show keep up that trend this year by crowning another peerless professional? Or is it finally time to get a little weirder to embrace the wildly creative art of Spain’s drag scene?

Lectores, start your engines. Y que gane la mejor drag queen! [Read more…] about Drag Race España Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings

Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 5 – “The Dragodi Festival” Review & Power Ranking

April 4, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fifth episode of Drag Race Sverige (AKA Drag Race Sweden) Season 1 – “The Dragodi Festival.” It’s a Girl Groups challenge in the form of a Eurovision qualifying round, with a reveals-on-reveals runway theme.

This season of RuPaul’s Drag Race featured one of the most-obvious frontrunners of all time in Sasha Colby, but it still felt competitive and fun. Even if Sasha is the obvious winner, we still got to see some other high-achieving queens do well for themselves. The show never cut Sasha any slack and made sure to bring the fiercest-of-the-fierce competition to the finale.

Don’t worry, you’re reading the right post: this is about Drag Race Sverige! However, I bring up Sasha and her winning run because production’s hand in steering a Sasha-friendly outcome could not often be felt. That’s not the case here on Sverige, which seems to be doing anything within its power to produce a result that honors the local drag legends over edgy upstarts or newer queens.

I don’t know how else to explain the totally nonsensical judging of the past few episodes. There’s making each episode count on its own, and then there’s totally ignoring the challenge and runway criteria to produce the result that favors your slightly-boring designated frontrunner.

Last episode, Imaa Queen had one of the worst three Snatch Game performances but one of the best runways, and was sent to lip sync. That makes sense – even the best runway cannot save you from a bad challenge performance! Yet, tonight the best runway saved one of the worst challenge performances, and another weak challenge performance with a weak runway was saved from lip syncing.

The chaotic judging means we’ve lost the two most-revolutionary queens in a row, leaving us with three competent but slightly-dull showgirls as front-runners and a pair of younger queens who lack the nerve (and style) to win the season. To be fair, two of those top three were my top picks at the start of the season, and the third I said could surprise us if her drag wasn’t too boring.

As it turns out, slightly-boring drag might be exactly what this season is looking for. Okay, maybe that’s a little bit cruel. What I mean is that the judging might be telling us something about Sweden’s drag culture that promo photo shoots and social media can’t. It feels like Sverige is very focused on longevity. It has paid homage to classics and idols, both in how it addresses its queens and in the way it has treated its guest judges. Perhaps as a first season in a drag season with a clear divide between traditional showgirls and punk queens there was never any way for the latter to defeat the former.

What does that mean for our Power Rankings? Who cares! Only one queen maintains her ranking compared to Snatch Game, but much like Snatch Game we’re playing a game where show where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

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

Läsare, start your engines. Och må den bästa Drag Queen vinna!

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 7 – “Discour de Reine” public speaking challenge Review and Power Ranking

April 2, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – Discour de Reine, or “Queen’s Speech.” Each of the Top 4 had to deliver their own coronation speech as Belgium’s queen for a day, and then walk the runway wearing “Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute.“

A “public speaking but make it funny” challenge is one of those late-season episodes where the judging can be very subjective.

Here I felt that the opposite happened – the judging seemed the most level-headed it had been all season.

Part of that is that the queens easily self-selected into the perfect four roles for a semi-final episode: the overconfident queen who goes over time, the brainy queen finally hitting her mark, the queen who plays it to safe one too many times, and the anxious queen struggling to make herself heard.

The judges had to go by the stratification of the challenge itself, because the runway wasn’t much help. Everyone looked good, but the bigger problem was the judges themselves couldn’t seem to agree on what the theme meant! Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute is a seaside resort town, and the judges seemed to be split on if they were looking for the actual glamour of the region (which they felt was something more chic than eleganza) or just something glamourous that suggested the region with a nautical theme.

It seemed like that made the queens somewhat immune to hearing the tough runway critiques they’ve encountered earlier in the season, with Susan especially benefiting from the indecision. Ultimately that yielded an unsurprising lip sync, a fair result, and a Top 3 I’ve been rooting for since the pre-season. That means there is zero shake-up from last week’s makeover rankings as we head into the finale next week.

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

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 14 – “Blame It On The Edit” Review & Power Ranking

April 1, 2023 by krisis

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!

Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 4 – “Snatch Game” & Mitt Liv Som Tant runway Review & Power Ranking

March 28, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race Sverige (AKA Drag Race Sweden) Season 1 – “Snatch Game,” Sweden’s first try at the iconic Drag Race improv comedy challenge. It was paired with a Mitt Liv Som Tant runway, which translates literally to “My Life as an Aunt” but in the subtitles was “My Life as a Golden Girl.”

Content warning for this episode: the “Elimination Day” workroom scene after Snatch Game and before the runway includes a graphic discussion of sexual assault and sexual violence.

I get frustrated when Drag Race is an entertaining reality show first and a serious competition second. I react negatively whenever a season trends towards making things a game of random chance.

This episode combined two elements that tend to turn me off: bringing back an eliminated queen and making a surprising elimination.

Bringing back an eliminated queen doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. It’s what gave us more of Trixie in Season 7. It created amazing dramatic tension with Latrice’s return in All Stars Season 4 and Silky’s battle to conquer lip sync island on All Stars Season 6.

It’s a mechanic best used when a season has seen some queens eliminated early who felt like they they had more to offer to the show – either as drag queens or as personalities. Even less notable returns from Carmen Carrera or Joe Black still gave us iconic Drag Race moments, because they brought back great characters.

Yet, on Sverige it has felt like all three queens left with reasonable justification: Almighty Aphroditey for being too green, Antonina Nutshell for struggling with the runways, and Endigo for struggling to show confidence while in drag. All three of them brought some amount of certain “not ready for prime time” awkwardness to the show that the other queens never displayed. That’s not a statement about the quality of their drag, just about how prepared they and their packaged seemed to be for the rigors of Drag Race.

As a result, we had a Top 6 who felt like the strongest competitors in this race. Even if the show had already accounted for a returning queen mechanism, if ever there was a time to hold that in reserve an episode longer this was it! No matter who left this episode, they would be someone who had more to show.

Instead, we have a returning queen who already feels hopelessly outmatched by the competition. She proceeded to bomb Snatch Game and the Mitt Liv Som Tant old lady runway, but she was kept by Robert Fux and the judges thanks to a desperate, over-the-top lip sync win against the show’s frontrunner.

I’m not arguing in favor of protecting an early front-runner who makes a stumble – that winds up just as frustrating as an unfair early elimination! However, as a viewer I feel like I’ve lost the chance to see more of the best drag Sweden has to offer.

That outcome detracts from what was a solid, entertaining first Snatch Game from Sweden! Not only did several queens deliver comedic performances, but Robert Fux was a delightful host who upheld his end of the absurd game of improv with both the queens and the Snatch Game “contestants.”

Of course, the unusual developments of this episode shook up my power rankings from last week’s design challenge. With our front-running no longer in the race it’s not only a toss-up for who will come out on top, but there’s a sudden chance for a safe queen to sneak her way into the top three of the season.

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

Läsare, start your engines. Och må den bästa Drag Queen vinna!