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RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 7 – “The Daytona Wind 2” acting challenge, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “The Daytona Wind 2,” a sequel to last season’s surprisingly well-written melodramatic acting challenge. It was paired with a “Puffer Please” runway theme, where the queens were challenged with making puffer jacket elements look high fashion.

On Season 14, “The Daytona Wind” was a standout episode that helped to solidify the fact that we were watching a cast full of standout performers. However, that wasn’t just because the cast was so great. It was also because they were given a script that made sense and were allowed to act it in a straight-forward way – with jokes inserted later.

If Season 14 was an acting challenge high point, this Season 15 “Daytona Wind” redux was a low one. The queens were saddled with a script that was nothing but Drag Race references that left no room for character choices.

Though some of the humor was inserted later in the edit just like last season, it was the anti-humor of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! I think it’s a tough prospect to deliver a standout performance for that sort of humor if you’re blithely unaware of the style while you are performing.

After Season 14 and All Winners, I think we can all agree that Drag Race is at its best when it sets its queens up for success with strong material and doesn’t try to squash them into obvious archetypes in the edit. Instead, this felt like return to the Drag Race riggory of seasons 11-13, where any challenge could be bent to create any result the producers wanted. That feels unwelcome after getting a breath of fresh air from the franchise in 2021.

Between the painfully awkward challenge and the continued short runtime, this wasn’t an enjoyable episode of Drag Race for me. It also didn’t do much to shake up the existing power ranking divide between the haves and have nots. (The “haves” in this instance are the all-too-obvious group of potential finalists). However, within those two halves of the cast, things did get shuffled a bit – both due to this week’s performances and the news of an impending Lalaparuza Lip Sync smackdown on the next episode.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 7 – “The Daytona Wind 2” acting challenge, Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 6 – “Old Friends Gold” Girl Groups Challenge, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the sixth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “Old Friends Gold,” a girl group challenge with the twist of playing elderly Golden Girls singing in unlikely genres.

I found it hard to react to this episode because there was barely anything to react to. While we did get some recording footage of the queens, their runways were five seconds each and we still haven’t seen any of the judges’ private deliberations.

What we did see was a cast of queens who did a perfectly fine job at playing old ladies, with one or two obvious standouts. I’m sure some of the singing queens like Luxx, Marcia, and Salina felt put-out that the perennial Girl Groups challenge went a comedy route (though I’m sure it pleased Loosey). We wound up with a surprising winner, a shocking performance from the runner up, and two queens who have been invisible in the edit lip syncing to see who will be invisible for another week before being dismissed.

Did this cramped episode edit shake up my Power Rankings after last weeks’ “House of Fashion” design challenge? Absolutely! We’ve got some jostling in the top ranks as well as some shuffling in the bottom. We’re five challenges into this season with at least seven more to go, but right now it feels like there are only four queens in serious contention for the crown. Can anyone else break through?

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 6 – “Old Friends Gold” Girl Groups Challenge, Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 5 – House of Fashion, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fifth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – House of Fashion. It’s an unconventional material design challenge with a twist: the queens are split into three groups and have to present cohesive runway collections for the House of (Michelle) Visage, the House of (Carson) Kressley, and the House of (Ross) Matthews.

This episode lacked a certain spark, and it’s hard to decide if that was down to the 40-minute runtime or the peculiar version of this familiar challenge. Seasons 3, 4, & 5 each opened with and iconic unconventional materials episode with a full cast of queens.

Season 4’s “RuPocalypse Now!” is probably the best of the bunch – packed with Sharon’s zombie look, Jiggly’s baked potato couture, and LaShawn Beyond’s classic “Post-Apopaloctic” line. It’s a 63-minute edit, but 20 of those minutes are entrances and a length photo shoot challenge! That means the meat of the design challenge (including the whole “wrestling with zombies for clothes” bit) still fit into 40 minutes, and it included both a walkaround with Ru and the private judges deliberations.

Of everything that feels squeezed by these 40-minute edits, I think the element that is most-sorely missing are those private judges deliberations. Without them, we don’t have any sense of RuPaul as a character on her own show. It also complete defangs Michelle Visage if we can’t hear her cutting opinions in private. Finally, it renders the guest judges completely pointless, since we don’t get to hear their unbiased opinions as they go to bat for the queens.

It was especially cruel to miss out on those deliberations in this episode, where Michelle and Ross had queens representing their brands and the guest judge was Janelle Monae, who knows something about fashion!

House of Visage

House of Kressley

House of Matthews

Looking beyond the edit, there was also the unusual nature of this iteration of the unconventional material challenge. First, since the queens were in teams it meant there was no apparent fighting over materials – sharing was in their best interest. Aside from losing the prurient fun of the catty fighting over who gets what leopard-print pillow, what was really lacking was a feeling of scarcity.

Part of what makes unconventional material challenges truly challenging is the queens trying to figure out what they can construct out of things other than fabric. Yet, in this challenge there was enough for nearly every queen to make a cape!

If I had to award a team win, it’d go to the House of Matthews. Even if their collection trended a little bit casual, it was cohesive and there wasn’t a bad look in the bunch. The judges seemed to agree, giving half the group a high placement and calling the other two safe.

What did this unconventional version of the unconventional materials design challenge mean for my power rankings? While the very top remains the same as last week’s Snatch Game ranking, there are some major shake-ups in the middle of the pack as the queens without wins jostle for positive critiques and screen time.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 5 – House of Fashion, Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – a supersized version of Snatch Game, the Drag Race game show challenge of impersonation, comedy, and quick wit.

I think we had more than one potential Hall of Fame performance in this Snatch Game, which is always exciting to see! The first round of the game was more all-around entertaining, but the second round had had a trio of standouts.

Maybe this solidifies the argument for front-loading the season with Snatch Game as well as a Ball challenge within the first few episodes. We really ought to see a queen make it through these Drag Race fundamentals before she sashays away.

Surprisingly, this episode may have also made an argument in favor of the tight 40-minute edit of this season’s episodes. We never saw Ru’s walkaround where he attempts to undermine the queens’ characters choices, insisting that everyone would be funnier if they did Cher. It doesn’t add anything to the show. I much prefer to watch Snatch Game unfurl without a preview of how Ru might be biased for or against any of their choices.

Of course, Snatch Game is the one Drag Race challenge that has such a straightforward format where you can easily cut minutes out of the process of explaining it and it still turns out the same. Next week we’re due for a design challenge, and I fear that we’ll see very little of each queen as they design and construct their garments.

Did the crowd of strong Season 15 Snatch Game performances shake up my power rankings from last week? We had a major fall and a major lift, but not too much jostling between them.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 4 – Snatch Game, Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 3 – “All Queens Go To Heaven” Review & Power Ranking

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Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – All Drag Queens Go To Heaven, a peculiar sketch comedy infomercial about the drag afterlife.

Or, as Ru calls it, “The Queerafter.”

The hot topic coming out of this episode isn’t any of the performances – it’s the show’s editing. After a pair of hour-long episodes last week, this episode was just 40 minutes and 57 seconds of content. We haven’t had a Drag Race episode that short since Season 9!

With fifteen queens and three commercials to get through, the tightness caused by losing those 20 minutes of screentime was apparent.

That wasn’t all bad. When it came to shooting the challenge, it meant fewer pointless “gotcha!” moments of a queen dropping one line and Michelle acting like it was the end of the world. While it can sometimes be fun to see the queens in their creative process, I don’t think anything of value was lost by cutting back on those scenes.

On the other hand, runways were rushed and for the first time I can remember there was no private deliberation between the judges that ended with “Bring Back My Girls”!

This is all a result of MTV trying to launch a vapid new knockoff of the already vapid Real Housewives in the timeslot after Drag Race, as if MTV has so many important shows on their schedule that they couldn’t eek out another 30 minutes of airtime.

No matter the reason, the unfortunate result is less airtime for this huge cast of queens.

That’s not the bill of goods that has been sold to queens who apply to Drag Race. If anything, the past few seasons have promise them more screentime, more runways before anyone is eliminated, and more chance to connect with Ru. The combination of production rushing to make early, permanent eliminations combined with this rushed edit has rendered half the cast virtually invisible. In this episode, either your story was important to the edit or you didn’t get a single line.

That sucks for this group of the most talented performers on television. It’s not just that we are missing out on memorable moments they each may have created in the workroom or on the runway. It’s also that viewers are getting less time to learn their quirks and fall in love with them. That’s going to hit the queens where it hurts the most – the wallet – as it will undoubtably lead to less merch sales and weaker live support for some of the early outs.

I feel like that’s all the more reason to write at length about each one of these queens in these posts. We might see them for only a minute or two in an episode, but they’ve been working their whole lives to have these moments. Each one of them deserves a damn novella.

Did a rushed episode mean that the rankings stayed mostly the same as in the double-episode premiere? Absolutely not! We have a new top queen, some jostling for a spot in the finale, and a ru-vised bottom half.

Readers, start your engines! And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 3 – “All Queens Go To Heaven” Review & Power Ranking