RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 1 – “Rate-a-Queen” Power Rankings

January 7, 2024 by krisis 1 Comment

RuPaul’s Drag Race is back with the first episode of Season 16, Rate-A-Queen – complete with an MTV Spring Break Talent show and a “RuVeal Yourself” runway! When I saw the episode title I couldn’t resist making my return to do the same thing, rating and power ranking the amazing drag artists featured on the show!

Drag Race officially got out of control in 2023, with more franchises than I could even keep up with! In addition to the US flagship and its All Stars edition, in 2023 there was also UK, Canada, Down Under, España, France, Philippines, Belgique, Sverige, Germany, Mexico, & Brazil – plus Queen of the Universe. That’s over a dozen winners in a single year!

All but two of those franchises are expected to return in 2024 (sorry Sverige and Queen of the Universe), plus we have another season of UK vs. The World incoming, a new España All-Stars, the return of Drag Race Thailand, and another new Ru-hosted series.

There isn’t even enough time in my day to watch all of these incredible drag artists from around the world, let alone rank and recap them all! But, when it comes to meeting the new American queens and watching them battle to be America’s Next Drag Superstar, I can always find a little time in my schedule.

With so many drag artist finding their way onto our screens every year, it’s starting to feel like Drag Race has become a game of archetypes. As a dozen dozen queens walk through the workroom doors each year, it’s more important than every to have a defined brand without being stuck in a box.

A successful drag artist needs to know the mold they fit into best and also must understand how to shatter the weight of those expectations. Looking at this past year of winners, we’ve had beauty queens who can do it all, dancers who are funny, and experienced showgirls with a youthful attitude.

This week we had the first part of a split premiere, with seven queens showing off their entrance looks, talent show, and a “Ruveal Yourself” runway before doing their own power rankings with a special Rate-a-Queen gimmick. How did they stack up? Keep reading for my totally personal, totally subjective power rankings of this first half of the cast.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 16 – Season 15 Grande Finale review & season retrospective

April 15, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review of the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 Grande Finale! Plus, a retrospective on each queen and their performances this season.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 has a thrilling winner and many standout performances, but when it comes to the full season it felt a bit dull.

Some people might suggest that’s down to Sasha Colby’s dominance of the season, but I’d say it due to the entire Top 4. At no point after the first episode was anyone edited as serious competition for the crown outside of those four queens – even Loosey Laduca and her many mini-challenge wins never felt like a realistic contender.

Was that down to the editing being squeezed by the 60-minute on-air runtime, or was this season actually stacked with mostly weak queens too early in their development as sacrifices to the alter of Goddess Colby?

Similarly, the finale never felt like a real competition between the three non-Sasha queens as to who would attempt to take her down in the final lip sync. The lip sync performances and clip packages were all for naught, since it’s clear Anetra was pre-ordained for the spot.

I’m happy that the new Lalaparuza mid-season showcase has removed the somewhat arbitrary lip sync for the crown tournaments from the finale. However, I still think the show can do better than writing a 90-second song for each of its contestants. Especially on a season like this one full of dancers, songwriters, and martial artists, it feels like the finale ought to be a redux of the Talent Show – where the queens can show off anything they want.

Of course, the secret of this finale format is that you can show off anything you want during the lip sync, but only Sasha Colby with her 20 years of drag experience seemed to fully understand that assignment.

There is a lot to be said about the significance of having a trans woman win Drag Race at the peak of its popularity and pop cultural exposure at this moment in time. Right now, conservatives and trans-exclusionary feminists all around the world want to hate people like Sasha right out of existence.

I don’t think winning Drag Race means a queen must become a political activist. Being seen in drag is inherently political. Yet, it also feels like Sasha Colby is the right queen at the right time who is ready to be political in her words and her actions in addition to her drag. There are people in the world right now who know they want to love someone they aren’t supposed to love or be someone who they aren’t supposed to be. The world can feel like a small and dangerous place for them, and that’s literal in some places like Texas and Florida.

Sasha has the opportunity be a voice for those queer people who are under attack across America right now, but also to remind everyone that trans people are our siblings, our colleagues, our friends, and our loved ones. They are us and they deserve all the same rights and love that everyone does.

This is the end of Season 15 but not the end of my Drag Race coverage! There are still two more episodes of Drag Race Sverige to cover before their first winner is crowned, next week starts my Drag Race España Season 3 power rankings (did you read my pre-season post?), and we’ll have an announcement of our All Stars Season 8 contestants before the week is up!

Before we can enjoy all of that drag, it’s time to talk about our entire cast of Season 15 queens one last time, to compare their final placements and performance to my original pre-season rankings. Which prediction was my biggest miss? Which queens left exactly when I said they would? And, why do I think I should have been the winner of “Fantasy Drag Race” across everyone writing about the show on the entire internet?!

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 15 – “Reunited” fashion power rankings

April 8, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my power rankings of the fashion from the fifteenth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Reunited.” It’s a Season 15 reunion to bring the queens back together to reawaken their conflicts, hammer home the plot point you need to remember for the finale, and give early out queens one last crack at proving they are worth bringing back for All Stars.

I’ll be honest: reunion episodes hold little allure for me as a viewer. I’m into Drag Race for the artistry rather than the reality show trappings, and Reunion specials are all about reliving the drama.

If there’s one point with the Venn Diagram of my interests and the Reunions goals overlap, it’s the fashion! The reunion is one of two last chances for each queen to sell their visual brand to an audience who might quickly forget them once the season ends. While queens are stuck doing eleganza drag for the actual finale, the reunion allows them a free play to wear anything they want.

For some queens, that means getting redemption for their fashion fails from the season. For others, it means hewing close to their established brand. And, sometimes it means wearing something completely outlandish just for the sheer chaos of it!

This year’s reunion looks were all relatively tame compared to what we’ve seen in past years – everything from massive cartoon coats to burnt up horror prosthetics. There’s not a single boundary-pushing look in this bunch, and really only a pair that feel slightly subversive.

Did these queens get a note from producers to keep things simple and classy for the viewing audience on MTV given the climate around drag in America at the moment, or did they each come to that conclusion on their own?

Even in a crowd of unsurprising looks, a few queens managed to distinguish themselves – and several got their much-desired moment of fashion redemption.

I can’t say the same for the actual content of the reunion. Aside from running commentary from Irene Dubois and a pair of touching moments with Loosey LaDuca, the rest of the cast felt invisible up until the final chat with the finalists. RuPaul seemed intent to turn almost the entirety of the proceedings over to Mistress Isabelle Brooks to let her stir up drama.

It wasn’t a good look for either of them. It made Ru seem even more aloof and uninterested in his cast than usual.

Worse, to me it felt like it confirmed that Mistress Isabelle Brooks had been deliberate in pushing everyone’s buttons all season long. For a queen who talks a big talk about wanting to see other queens be their genuine selves, that behavior feels strangely out of sync with what she expects from others. It seems obvious that she wears her catty drag persona as armor to protect a lot of trauma and insecurities that lie beneath. Yet, if the case, why would she be so unkind to Loosey LaDuca for being the same?

I suppose it all works out in the end, since I’m sure Mistress Isabelle Brooks secured her future spot on All Stars with this showing if she doesn’t win next week. However, I feel like I’m less of a fan of her now after seeing this episode than I was during the season.

(By contrast, Luxx Noir London leaned hard into her persona of, “I’m just a girl who is obsessed with myself, is there anything wrong with that?” Even if she came off as an instigator at points in the season, here at the conclusion she comes off as cheerful, self-aware, and mostly-harmless.)

Read on for my countdown of the sixteen fashions of this episode and find out the surprising trio of queens who snagged the top spots! I’ll be back next week with a final retrospective on the season, looking at the queens final placements and performances compared to my initial pre-season predictions.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!

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!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 13 – “Teacher Makeovers” Review & Power Ranking

March 25, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the thirteenth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Teacher Makeovers,” a makeover challenge with a quintet of local women teachers who are members of or allies to the LGBTQA* community.

Let’s be honest about Makeover Challenges on Drag Race: it’s often a “free play” week that allows the show to create whatever narrative works best for the remainder of the season.

Few queens utterly fail at the makeover (though we had one tonight!) and even when they do they can be sent to lip sync with just about anyone else in the cast to ensure the desired result. And, good makeovers tend to be similar in their strength, which means picking a winner can come down to arbitrary details. It’s rare to see a total blowout in either direction.

This has lead to many questionable Makeover episode placements over the years, from Divina winning while Cheryl went home in UK Season 1 to Trinity The Tuck not being in the top for the All Stars Season 4 make-over in favor of Monét. Heck, even Canada does it, putting Icesis in the bottom for a spectacular makeover on Season 2 just for not using matching colors on obviously similar dresses.

That’s why the makeover challenge tends to come late in the season (along with other challenges with extremely subjective measures of success). You can hand out a questionable win in a makeover to much less scrutiny from the cast and the fans than you can for Snatch Game.

That can make for a somewhat miserable episode for the queens, who are usually exhausted by this point in the season. A little bit of rigger morris goes a long long way to cracking competitors who are already on the verge of a breakdown.

The positive that comes along with this is that Makeover Challenges bring outside influences into the workroom. That can shake up tense dynamics within the cast and bring new stories to light. This episode’s makeover focused on five women teachers from around the Los Angeles area, each with their own connection to Drag Race and the LGBTQA* community. These women are already champions, from a mom of queer children to an art teacher on her own coming out journey to a kindergarten teacher who emphasizes that “love is love” to her youngsters.

All five teachers were willing to put in an A+ effort for their queens, but one queen wasn’t in the mood to match her partner’s enthusiasm for group work. That lead to an obvious bottom placement and a preordained lip sync. What it didn’t do is shake up the power rankings at all from last week’s Rusical rankings. Production has made some deliberate storytelling choices heading into next week’s semi-final. We’ll see if they all pay off.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win!