teevee

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2, Episode 1 – Cagey Queens: Review & Power Ranking

August 7, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

Kia ora and welcome to my review and power rankings for the second episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 – “Cagey Queens” – a particularly wretched acting challenge.

Despite living in New Zealand for five years, I haven’t seen a single lick of New Zealand TV – so, I couldn’t tell you if this prison skit is a spoof of anything specific about Down Under television.

(In fact, there have been some well-regarded Aussie prison shows to pull from – namely, Prisoner and its modern reboot Wentworth – but I can’t say whether it references either.)

Just based on what I’ve absorbed from conversational context, it feels like a more apt acting challenge would be a Soap Opera spoof of Home and Away or Neighbours, a high school drama, a parody of Xena, a nature programme, or even a badly-imported reality TV show.

(Too meta?)

Yet, here we are with a prison script that sincerely has no plot and no jokes. Much like the “here’s some leaves” design challenge last episode, it feels like these Aussie and Kiwi queens are being given nothing to work worth.

In the immortal words of India Ferrah: “Girl… prison, honey.”

Yet, once again this cast somehow managed to shine despite that. Aside from two queens who were particularly lost in this scene, everyone delivered something ranging from a decent performance to laugh-out-loud comedy.

Pair that with a particularly-strong insect-themed runway and it feels like the cast made good episode by sheer force of will. They certainly weren’t aided by a downright surly Michelle Visage, or the typically-hilarious Lucy Lawless as a guest judge. She gets the chance to say maybe two sentences throughout the entire episode.

This criminally bad acting challenge has shaken up the power rankings significantly from my Week One rankings – with one low queen on a meteoric rise and another queen seemingly doomed to be the next out no matter what she does. Do you agree or disagree? Sound off in the comments below.

If you want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 outside of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada 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 home country of a franchise you will need to use a VPN to “visit” another country to see that content.)

Readers, start your engines… and may the best Down Under drag queen win!

Drag Race France Season 1 Episode 7 – Sororité makeover challenge: Review & Power Ranking

August 6, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

Bonjour bonjour bonjour, mes chers lecteurs! Welcome to my review and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race France Season 1 – “Sororité,” a Drag Race France makeover challenge all about sisterhood.

Makeover challenges have fallen out of being Drag Race mainstays over the past few years. While you might be tempted to blame that on the pandemic, it actually started earlier than that – possibly because of spoilers. With the show’s popularity growing every year, it gets harder and harder to pull in random strangers for a makeover challenge just like it gets more challenging to have an in-studio audience for a challenge.

Drag Race France skirts the issue by relying on close friends as make-over partners, and this elite group of top four queens rises to the occasion. You really get the sense that they were energized by working with their best friends, because each of them delivered on the runway.

Did they deliver so well that the only choice was to forgo awarding a win in favor of a lip sync tournament? I’m not sure. It seemed clear there was a top two and a bottom two in this runway presentation. The problem was that Lolita Banana was in the top two, and La Grande Dame was in the bottom two.

Of course, the show knew there was a one-in-two shot of Lolita winding up in the top for the challenge. Despite the judges beating up on her the past few weeks, she has proven to be a competitive queen and her distinct mug meant she’d have a natural advantage in a makeover challenge. You can’t fabricate a lip sync tournament out of nowhere, because all of the queens need to be prepared on all three of the songs – which means the queens likely had some inkling of this twist even before Nicky Doll announced it on the runway.

Even if there was a clear top two and the twist was telegraphed, it didn’t feel unfair. This is an indisputably strong top four and it made sense to ask them all to prove themselves one more time rather than simply relying on the challenge to determine a lip sync and a final three.

What felt unfair was dismissing a stronger lip sync performer in the final elimination. Alas, that’s the theme of the past week of Drag Race! There’s only so much you can do in the edit to make a losing queen seem like she slayed the performance. While lip sync tournaments make for exciting episodes, the secret truth is they almost always take some amount of past performance into account – even in a blow-out.

We’re left with one of the most evenly-matched top trios in Drag Race herstory – but who is most-likely to take home the crown? I have one final power ranking for you, and it’s not the same as last week’s Episode 6 power rankings. Do you agree on my predicted winner? Let me know in the comments below.

If you want to watch Drag Race France 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.)

Lecteurs, start your engines. Et, que la meilleure Drag Queen gagne!

Canada’s Drag Race Season 3 Episode 4 – Bitch Stole My Look: Review & Power Ranking

August 5, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

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!

RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2, Episode 1 – Grand Opening: Review & Power Ranking

August 1, 2022 by krisis 1 Comment

Kia ora and welcome to my review and power rankings for the first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 – “Grand Opening” – featuring drag queens from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand!

Drag Race almost always starts out with a look challenge on the first episode. Sometimes that involves a minor “ball” challenge of showing multiple looks on the runway. Other times, as in this episode, it involves a design challenge with a theme and/or using unconventional materials.

This design challenge theme let everyone down – both queens and viewers. The Down Under queens were supposedly offered some native bush of Aotearoa and Australia, but it looks like they only scored a minor assortment of leaves. And… recyclable materials? Including bike tires and a used mattress?

Sure, those things can be recycled, but that’s not the first pile of stuff I think of when I hear “sustainability.” I’d expect much more paper and plastic.

Altogether, the theme didn’t feel especially green in a natural way or green in a sustainable way. This stuff was uncommonly difficult to work with, even for an unconventional materials challenge. Also, by telling the queens the theme was nature and then throwing in the recyclable trash as an afterthought, it felt to me like they were being discouraged to use it for the majority of their looks lest they get a “this really isn’t the theme” comment on the runway.

That’s the show’s prerogative, but for a version of the franchise that might’ve had the most-hated first season of all time I’d think production would be keen to show all of queens in the best possible light for this Season 2 debut. Even the best of their outfits were a bit of a sad trombone compared to most unconventional materials challenges, save for a particular standout.

At least the mini-challenge photo-shoot felt a little more culturally relevant. Sausage Sizzles are enough of a Kiwi staple that even a ovo-lacto-pescatarian shut-in like me has been to a few. They’re the standard fundraiser fodder in New Zealand – effectively, the Kiwi equivalent of selling Girl Scout Cookies or having a bake sale. You run into them at school events, community fundraisers, and even sometimes randomly outside of a grocery store.

And, yes, they sometimes really do just hand over a sausage wrapped in a piece of white bread. The mini-challenge worked because it was something commonly understood by the queens and Ru didn’t need too much specific cultural humor to make and appreciate sausage jokes.

(She missed a The Warehouse joke on the runway – I’m surprised the editors let the free advertising slip through!)

My initial Power Ranking is completely backwards from my pre-season ranking. Bottoms are at the the top and tops are at the bottom! That includes some controversial choices – like listing a pair of bottom queens above a pair of safe ones. HOW COULD I? You’ll have to read on to see if agree on my thoughts on the power of the edit to say things on RuPaul’s behalf.

Readers, start your engines… and may the best (antipodean) drag queen win! Leave me a comment below if you’d rank the queens differently than I did – I’d love to know your thoughts.

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Every All-Winners Lip Sync Ranked!

July 31, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

We now have a Queen of Queens! RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 came to a close with a decidedly anti-climactic lip sync tournament that crowned my top power-ranked queen. She shall reign supreme over the entirety of RuPaul’s empire of English language franchises!

Since there are no more queens to rank, for this special edition I’m going to rank every one of the 17 lip syncs of the season – including the six lip syncs from this week’s final dual tournaments.

Over the past six seasons of All Stars, Drag Race has reversed its existing lip sync formula from regular seasons. Instead of seeing the queens at risk for elimination lip sync for their lives, we see the top queens of the week lip sync for their legacy.

This has yielded many remarkable lip syncs, but also a number of unremarkable flops. That’s down to two factors that make an All Stars lip sync very different from a regular season one.

First, the obvious: survival isn’t on the line in an All Stars lip sync. Instead, it’s a victory lap. A queen is typically awarded with $10,000 and the chance to chop a competitor (or, this season, to block them).

That’s not a do-or-die situation, so it produces different results. Even though everyone loves a fresh 10k, many queens are ambivalent or outright opposed to the doing the chopping. That seems to be especially true after they get their first taste of it (unless their name is Alaska or Shangela).

Plus, if a queen cuts a fan favorite, they could easily lose more than 10k in their next few years of booking fees due fans who now view them as a villain. And, we’ve seen that some queens don’t prep as hard after a victory as they do out of fear. Whether it’s being shaky on the words or not having as many tricks planned, several All Stars lip syncs have been somewhat… approximate.

The second reason All Stars lip syncs are different is the nature of repeated lip syncs.

In a typical season, a potential season winner can get away with lip syncing for their lives once – maybe twice – before their chances of winning the crown are greatly diminished. In fact, on the RuPaul-hosted franchises, we’ve only had one winner who lip sync for their life multiple times: Symone.

(I don’t count Willow as a two-timer, since she won in her first round of the Season 14 lip sync tournament and wasn’t truly at risk for elimination until her final lip sync with Angeria.)

That means that queens on a regular season are motivated to give it all they’ve got in every lip sync – not only to survive, but because if they truly plan on winning the show they won’t need to save any tricks for a second lip sync!

However, on All Stars, queens actually do plan to lip sync multiple times. Of seven All Stars winners in the “Legacy” format, all but one (Kylie Sonique Love) has won at least two challenges. That means All-Stars have further incentive to not go all-out in every lip sync, especially early in the season. They might want to save something for later – or, at least, they’re not going to force every trick they know into an ill-fitting song.

It also means there’s an amount of lip sync fatigue that sets in when someone wins three or more times, as they often do on “winner-vs-winner” legacy lip sync seasons like All Stars 2-4 & 7, as opposed to “Lip Sync Assassin” seasons like All Stars 5-6. In fact, I suspect the Assassin twist was added after Season 4 partly to reduce repeats and bring more fire to the winner in each fight.

Both of those problems were at play on the All Stars Season 7 lip syncs, but if there was an episode for them to go out the window it was this one – where everything was on the line.

That means all six of these lip syncs ought to be the best of the season, right?

…right?

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best lip syncers win! If you disagree with my ranking, comment below with your best and worst of the season. [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Every All-Winners Lip Sync Ranked!