Canada's Drag Race

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the eighth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – the Masquerade Ball, a classic Drag Race ball episode requiring three runway looks, including one constructed in the workroom.

I often comment that Canada’s Drag Race feels like old-school RuPaul’s Drag Race from the era of it airing on Logo TV. You could ask, “Is that a read?” about it feeling low budget compared to the current flagship franchise. For me, it’s more about the show having a certain scrappy, DIY energy.

Also, sometimes it’s unforgivingly difficult.

When I think about Drag Race at its hardest, I always flash back to RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 3 as the most-difficult season of all time, where the queens looked like they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Ru announced the “Money Ball” hot on the heels of the “Hair Ball.”

I imagine that’s what the five remaining queens of Canada’s Drag Race must have felt when they heard the final hurdle before the finale was the Masquerade Ball – a third design challenge in just eight competitive episodes. That’s not only difficult, but also surprising, since it means this season left out not one but two staple challenges of Canada that would be welcomed by several of these queens: an acting challenge and their phenomenally heartfelt makeover challenge, which have been the highlights of the past two seasons.

Sending the queens back to their sewing machines and glue guns for a third time yielded interesting results. Our two seamstresses backslid while two of the remaining trio of Glue Gun Girls stepped up their games in a major way.

Maybe the seamstresses had design fatigue at this point. Or, maybe Masquerade Ball is just a difficult category to design – as were both of the ball categories paired with it! We wound up with a shakey set of constructed looks, a surprising winner, a shocking entrant in the bottom two, and one of the biggest lip sync bops of the season.

Next week is the finale of Canada’s Drag Race! Did any queen manage to jostle her way into a new spot compared to last week’s rankings? And, who do I think is most-likely to take the crown? Read on to find out!

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. (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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 8 – Masquerade Ball, Review & Power Ranking

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the sixth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Cosmetic Queens, a combination make-up and branding challenge.

Every season of Drag Race comes with some form of branding challenge, but it’s rare that queens are given a make-up maxi-challenge outside of making over someone else. While they have to dress themselves up for different roles in Rusicals and Snatch Game, I feel like there’s an unspoken rule that a queen’s beat is a queen’s beat. Outside of critiques aimed at improvement, the show isn’t looking to change that.

This challenge wasn’t looking to change how the queens do their make-up, but it came with some restrictions. Each queen chose a palette of six signature colors to craft a product, an accompanying face of make-up for a marketing photo, and a 20-second commercial to sell the product.

This is more relevant than ever with make-up products from drag queens turning into big business around the world. In America, Season 8’s Kim Chi recently expanded her make-up line into CVS stores around the country! Even for queens who aren’t going to start their own business, the ability to quickly assemble a pitch for a potential brand collab is an essential skill for all Drag Race graduates.

That yielded a wide range of results from the queens. Some of them were more focused on comedy than sales, while others were obsessed with creating a personal story. The queens who did the best in the challenge were uniformly the ones who didn’t do anything all that different with their make-up, but who also didn’t forget to sell the make-up.

(Also, I have to point out that co-host Traci Melchor had a sudden breakthrough in this episode! Typically, Traci sounds very scripted, to the point of being stilted. This week but she was an outstanding director who helped queens realize their vision. She gave so many good tips about how to position themselves, how to work the camera, and how to deliver lines. Her status as a veteran TV presenter really shone through. And, she was genuinely emotional during the runway segment. Let’s not forget: hosts and presenters are people, too! I think it’s exciting to see Traci level up in her Drag Race skills just as watching Brooke’s looseness as a host this season has been a real joy.)

The challenge gave us an unsurprising elimination, even if it was a queen who wasn’t at the bottom of my ranks last week, plus one meteoric rise of a queen gunning for a spot in the finals. Do we actually have our final three locked in? Perhaps…

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. (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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 6 – Cosmetic Queens: Review & Power Ranking

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fifth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Snatch Game!

This was a classic Snatch Game with a clear top group of performers and a few obvious bottoms. The funniest queens were very funny, and the unfunniest queens were very bad. That lead to a shocking elimination.

Seriously: this wasn’t just any shocking elimination. This is perhaps the most-shocking early-t0-mid season elimination since Morgan McMichaels back on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2! We had a front-runner sashay away who tanking Snatch Game but who was crushing the competition, who killed her runway look, and who gave a strong lip sync that could’ve credibly been declared a win.

If Brooke and Yvie hadn’t been granted a double-save on their Snatch Game, it would’ve been exactly this shocking.

For me this raises an essential question of what we want out of Drag Race. Should it shock us, or do we want it to be predictable?

If Drag Race is a fair competition where queens battle to survive every week, then it will sometimes yield surprising results as queens make their own luck. We’ve seen that many times over, but especially starting with Season 9 with the fall of Valentina and the lip sync victory from Sasha Velour. Jaida Essence Hall’s Season 12 dominance was another fair win, as was Bimini defying her early-season story on Drag Race UK Season 2 to come back to crush the back half of the show.

If Drag Race is instead structured story with clear heroes and villains, then the weekly ups and downs matter less and we occasionally get counterintuitive judges choices to preserve that storyline and protect queens when they falter. There’s no better example of this than last week’s finale of All Stars All Winners, where several competitive wins were voided in favor of awarding success based on storyline. While it is typically more subtle on regular seasons, we’ve seen this with blatant saves of certain queens, like the “Kandy wait” moment in Season 13.

For me, the examples from the “fair fight” category have all been more memorable and satisfying, and the moments from the “structured story” category all linger as disappointments. That means I have to learn to take the shocking along with the satisfying.

I think a major difference in Canada’s Drag Race is that it has never shied away from these “fair fight” moments in its first two seasons, where there have been several eliminations that were shocking not due to the weekly performance that lead to them, but because they violated our story expectations.

Even if it’s frustrating in the moment, it’s not a bad thing. It is part of what gives Canada’s Drag Race a certain underdog charm compared to the US franchise, and it often becomes a star-making turn for the queen who got the shock.

What do you think? Do you prefer a season with some shocks, or a season where the story is obvious from start to finish? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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. (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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 5 – Snatch Game: Review & Power Ranking

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the fourth episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – “Bitch Stole My Look,” an identical materials design challenge.

Canada’s Drag Race continues its streak of subtly re-imagining past Drag Race challenges to give us something that feels both classic and unique. This week, that meant a classic “what’s in the box?” design challenge where every queen received an identical box! Despite an early misdirect that they’d all have to design to different themes, they had free reign to do whatever they wanted with their same sets of materials.

The only other time on Drag Race I can recall an entire cast of queens being challenged with designing from an identical set of materials with relatively equal availability was Season 3‘s epic “Money Ball.” The magic of that challenge was the unusual material of paper money, which was plentifully available.

In this challenge, everyone received the same silver and purple fabrics and accessories, but not too much else. I understand why: the less production gave the queens, the more risk that that would produce similar outfits – which was what they were all trying to avoid.

While giving the queens a limited supply of a neutral color like silver might have prevented anyone from gaining an advantage purely due to color choice it wasn’t easy to make the shiny, flimsy, silver lamé look expansive. Also, it was either hard to line or the queens didn’t receive anything suitable to line it with, because not even the best seamstresses added lining.

I think there’s a sweet spot between giving the queens complete free reign with their resources, like on All Stars 7 – All Winners and keep them so restricted it ensures failures, as we saw last week on Drag Race Down Under. While this wasn’t quite as bad as giving everyone a box full of fern leaves and wheat grass, it does feel like we were robbed of seeing some queens turn out stronger outfits if they had just slightly more in their boxes – even if that was a plain-as-heck neutral gray fleece that they could’ve used for structure and lining.

That also robbed special guest judge Jimbo of being able to go over-the-top with his comments, which in turn robbed us as viewers of delightfully memeable moments. I love this experiment with bringing past competitors to the judging panel, but the past two challenges haven’t given them much remarkable work to judge.

After a surprising win and a narratively-driven boot this episode, we’re left with eight queens and some seriously shaken-up rankings compared to my Episode Three power rankings! Do you agree with my #1 queen and the rest of my ranks? Sound off below in the comments!

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. (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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 4 – Bitch Stole My Look: Review & Power Ranking