Drag Race

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!

Welcome to my recap of the eighth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Santa’s School For Girls, an acting challenge that’s part holiday movie, part Mean Girls, part slasher flick.

Of all the many types of challenges on RuPaul’s Drag Race, acting challenges are consistently the lowest quality but with the highest meme-ability. It’s much easier to pay a songwriter to write a song that captures the essence of “He Had It Coming” or “Bye Bye Bye” than it is to hire a screenwriter to write a script that has the vibe of Scream but with the references of Mean Girls.

In earlier seasons, these challenges were about memorizing lines and being ridiculous. As the years have pressed on, Drag Race has begun to treat them as actual challenges of acting that require characterization and melodrama. Yet, they still tend to receive the same lackadaisical direction from Ru, a regular judge, or a sitcom-starring guest judge – all of whom are there more to flummox the queens as they are to create a great final product.

This week’s challenge is different because it is directed by Janicza Bravo. She’s not a household name, but she’s an actual director of movies. I’ll get into the results of that below, but the thing that leapt out at me was that these queens were getting the experience of actually being directed. Bravo’s comments were not just about slamming the punchlines and playing to cameras, but establishing the pace and embodying the characters.

Could the show pull off this same high-calibre direction with the uneven skill levels of queens on a regular season? I would argue that it ought to try. If we view Drag Race less as a reality competition and more as “RuPaul’s Finishing School for Drag Queens,” then the ability to take direction on set from someone with a singular vision is a huge part of what will make these competitors employable after the show.

Drag Race brings in star choreographers for dance challenges, real music producers for their girl groups, and fashion industry figures to judge the queen’s workroom creations. I’d say it’s time to level up their acting challenges an equal amount … even if the scripts still come off like a Mad Lib assembled over the weekend by an intern on a bender.

That’s a lot of build-up of this challenge from me, but did the queens pay it off in their performance? Find out in my full-episode recap, below. Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 7 power rankings to show where the queens stand with just three more challenges of Legendary Legend stars left to earn. (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 8 – Santa’s School For Girls: recap & power ranking!

Welcome to my recap of the seventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Legendary Legend Looks, a design challenge of making a kissing cousin of an iconic RuPaul look that doesn’t have too close of a family resemblance.

What do you want from a reality competition TV show? Your answer may reveal if this no-eliminations All-Winners season is right up your alley or leaving you down in the doldrums.

Personally, I watch reality competitions for excellence. Whether that’s physical prowess on American Ninja Warrior, mesmerizing glass blowers on Netflix’s Blown Away, or the O.G. reality competition winner Kelly Clarkson on American Idol, I want to see someone plucked from relative obscurity and elevated to the height of their industry to show off skills that would otherwise go unseen. I also love

That’s not what everyone is looking for! Some people delight in the drama, the flubs, the flops, and the un-self-aware cringe of reality competitions, cheering when an ill-equipped underdog makes a deep run. This is a crowd who loves the gamesmanship of Big Brother and slow-moving train-wrecks like The Masked Singer.

I’m not saying this pair of preferences are completely mutually exclusive of each other. You can love a superstar talent and a crash-and-burn!

The thing is: this season of Drag Race is completely free of crash-and-burn. We’re watching a showcase of eight of the best-on-TV drag queens in the world whose camera skills have been battle-hardened by one or two passes through the Drag Race machine. Yes, there’s a competition happening, but without eliminations the show is much more about watching the process of drag excellence unfold than it is about the tops and flops of the week.

That’s everything I’ve always wanted from reality TV. No loveable underdogs. No shocking eliminations. Eleven episodes of excellence that hopefully ends with a deserving winner. Imaging getting to see Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood go head-to-head for an entire season of American Idol.

At the same time, I can understand how that is absolutely exhausting for someone who needs the spiciness of some cringe – or, at least some tough judges critiques – to liven up their reality TV.

Which side do you come down on? And, how did you feel about yet another challenge where no one was horrible.

Well, maybe one person was horrible, but we’ll get to that in a moment! Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 6 power rankings to show where the queens stand after another week of Legendary Legend badges. (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 7 – Legendary Legend Looks: recap & power ranking!