Canada's Drag Race

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the third episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Ruets, a two-queen team-up lip sync challenge.

This Canadian cast continued to shine as a memorable group of queens. This episode put the spotlight on some of the funniest ones in the bunch.

The mini-challenge to dress as drag kings so they could flirt with Brooke Lynn Hytes was hilarious enough that it could’ve merited an entire maxi-challenge. It also allowed a few of the quit-witted comedy queens to finally make their mark, including Vivian Vanderpuss playing an absolutely absurd character as an Australian tradie.

That gave Vivian the power to pair up queens for the “Ruets” challenge, where each pair had a day to choreograph a lip sync to one of RuPaul’s duets.

Once again, this subtle twist on a regular Drag Race challenge shows off the smarts of the Canada’s Drag Race production team. Fans love a head-to-head lip sync smackdown enough that they’re now being inserted as regular-season episodes to produce meme-able moments. Yet, lip syncing on the spot to a song for the first time isn’t actually a “real world” situation for a drag queen. Giving a pair of queens time to plan and present an act together is a surprisingly organic way to show off what the queens bring to a live show in real life.

That means we should have seen drag excellence from any of these queens who can turn it out live in a club! But, that came with the extra challenge of teamwork. Everyone did their best to join forces, but some of their efforts were much more successful than others.

Oh, and Vanessa “Miss Vanjie” Mateo was a guest judge, for some reason.

(The reason mostly being that the “duets” theme played on her showmance with Brooke, as well as her appearance being an unspoken promo for her 24 Hours of Love reality show and her upcoming run on All Star Shore without mentioning either by name.)

It felt like several of the less-visible queens got plot development, including Vivian and Giséle. The runway was universally strong, with some stunning looks. And, the lip sync was a solid, emotional performance. I really love this cast of artists and the eliminations are already getting difficult.

That leaves us with nine deserving queens with a few break-out stars and a tight middle of the pack, which includes a few big shifts from my Episode Two power rankings!

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 3 – Ruets: Review & Power Ranking

Welcome to my review and power rankings of the second episode of Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – The Who-Knows.

It’s an award-show presentation challenge whose title is a pun on Canada’s Juno Awards, widely referred to as “The Junos.” They’re the Canadian Grammy Awards, and if you live outside of Canada you’ve likely never heard of most of their winners or nominees.

One of the most consistent aspects of the first two seasons of Canada’s Drag Race has been the strength of their challenges. Even when they re-use a standard Drag Race challenge format, they’ve tended to do it with better music (“Sorry Aboot It” and “Under the Big Top”) or a better script (“Screech”) than we’ve seen on other franchises. They’ve also had fun ball concepts and two emotional makeover challenges that highlighted queer Canadians and their stories.

That’s why I was excited to see the show pick up this seemingly-forgotten Awards Show challenge theme from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7‘s “The Despy Awards” but a little dismayed in how it turned out.

This episode wisely broke the queens into small groups so we could focus on them as individual characters. However, in her kindness in pairing queens who would work well together, Chelazon Leroux somewhat sabotaged the episode. I’m not saying I wanted more drama (and we got plenty from one pairing, in particular), but pairing queens who know each other already and queens with similar vibes meant we didn’t get to learn much about the cast as they prepped for their presentations.

Was their group work really as dull as what we saw in this episode, or did the Kimmy Couture vs. Fiercalicious drama simply suck all of the air out of the edit? It’s hard to tell.

In fact, the queens not mixing it up with one another not only made for a dull episode, but it hurt them in the awards challenge. The cast has had only one episode to get to know each other and to throw shade. The best of their barbs felt surface-level.

Votes for categories like “Frostiest Queen” felt like they were based on preconceptions, and it was no coincidence that 4-out-of-5 week one tops and bottoms won awards. A segment about them talking about who they would vote for and why felt conspicuously absent.

All of that meant that the awards felt stilted, and not nearly as shady and fun as they felt back on Season 7 in the US. Luckily, the episode was saved from obscurity by a strong, vivid “Goddesses” runway and some sensible judging, which sent home an obvious bottom queen and gave an early front-runner her first speed bump.

The most memorable moment of this episode to me was Chelazon Leroux and Bombae discussing how colonization erased the celebration of queer people in both of their indigenous cultures – a practice and a safe space they are now fighting to reclaim. It was a fascinating lesson in queer history perfectly articulated, and one that might not be so obvious to those of us who are white and/or who tend to benefit from the ongoing effects of colonization.

We’re left with 10 queens where their power in the ranking feels more closely tied to their screen time in the edit than their powers of drag. Did that shake up the rankings from my Episode One ranking? 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. 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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 2 – The Who-Knows: Review & Power Ranking

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!

[Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 1 – Sidewalk to Catwalk: Review & Power Ranking

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.

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! [Read more…] about Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 – Pre-Season “Meet The Queens” Power Rankings