Ball Challenge

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 2 – The Happy Ending Ball Power Rankings

February 17, 2024 by krisis

It’s another week of the Olympics of Drag Race! RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 2 brought us “The Happy Ending Ball,” a fairytale-themed ball challenge with three looks – including a design challenge with conventional materials.

I am always a fan of Ball challenges being earlier in the season. Instead of being a final gauntlet for a slim group of exhausted queens as they near the finale, it becomes a chance for a much bigger pack to jostle for attention.

That makes sense to me, as it gives almost the entire cast a chance to have multiple runway walks and lets the judges make early eliminate decisions based on a wider sampling of each queen’s fashion sense.

Ball challenges on All Stars seasons bring an additional layer of complexity. They function as a proving grounds for who has had the biggest glow-up (and, who has taken the time to learn how to sew). Almost every queen in the RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 cast outperformed their original season design challenge looks in this episode, but they were doing that alongside a firm top group of fashionable heavy hitters who were not afraid to go full camp to command Ru’s attention.

That lead to a surprising queen leaping into a top power ranking compared to last week’s Queens’ Variety Show recap, while a previous potential finalist tumbled out of contention.

(Want to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World outside of the UK? For most of the world, it’s available with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 3 – “The Mother of All Balls” Power Rankings

January 21, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race is back with a full cast of 14 queens in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 3 – The Mother of All Balls! Tonight the trio of ball categories are Mother Goose (a look inspired by a nursery rhyme), Significant Mother (a look paying homage to a famous mother), and Call Me Mother/Father (an eleganza look constructed entirely from menswear).

We love an early ball challenge – or, at least, I do – because it shows off a ton of looks while also challenging the queens on their abilities to conceive, construct, and style a look under pressure. I think it’s critical that this challenge now occurs early in the season because it means we can see more of what the entire cast of queen is capable of. That tends to help the show avoid heartbreaking early cuts of potentially powerful queens. It separates the queens who are capable of a deep run from the ones that are still struggling to define themselves.

Meanwhile, alongside this episode we also had not one but TWO cast announcements this week for a pair of All Stars seasons! First, we’ll get Drag Race España All Stars Season 1, followed a week later by the Ru-hosted RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World. The casts for both shows are incredible – there are Drag Race Mexico queens on España and two of the fiercest queens from Philippines and France on UK vs. The World.

I’m not sure if there is enough time in my day to power rank BOTH of those franchises, but I absolutely cannot wait to watch them!

Back to Season 16, I am feeling slightly high on my initial rankings of this full cast from last week’s Queen Choice Awards. Not only did I clock all of the Top 3 and 2 of the Bottom 3, but I correctly called the previously top queen who wasn’t as strong as her first episode showing. My rankings aren’t just about my personal preferences, but about what the edit is saying about each queen’s narrative and how they are positioned to tackle the challenges ahead.

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

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 3 – “Festival Realness” Design Challenge Review & Power Ranking

March 5, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the third episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – “Festival Realness,” a combination ball and design challenge with just a pair of looks and a loosely-defined brief (and one of my all-time favorite songs as a lip sync).

It’s always fascinating to see the first design challenge of a season and that’s doubly true for the first design challenge for an entire franchise. Will the constructed looks trend haute couture or plaintive and practical?

I think the Festival Realness results fell somewhere in the middle of that range, partly because the brief was so vague. How exactly do you combine the pragmatism of a festival look with runway-ready fashion? I think the solution is likely something fantastical like you’d spot at Burning Man, but all of these looks are fairly conventional in form and function save for one (and it’s no coincidence it was the winner).

If the Festival Realness looks weren’t surprising, the outcome of the episode certainly was! From shocking top placements to an indecisive three-way lip sync, everything about the judging this episode was a little puzzling. What did that mean for my Power Ranking compared to last week’s comedy challenge? Honestly, it involved lot of guesswork on which way the judges would lean in the future after tonight’s unpredictable results.

I recently went on a diatribe in my write up of the US franchise’s lip sync Lalaparuza about how I find lip syncs to be a dull form of entertainment that I eschew both as a drag fan and as a potential drag performer. However, if there is ONE SONG that I have lip synced to more than ANY OTHER SONG in my life, it is Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam.” I’ve previously told the story of how I carried my boombox out to the curb of my grandparent’s house to choreograph my own performance in the middle of their tiny side street every evening after seeing the group open for Madonna on her Blonde Ambition tour.

I think my nightly pre-teen dance routine probably could’ve beaten two of the queens in this lip sync, if not all three. “Pump Up the Jam” is all about its non-stop thumping beat and rocking your body the entire time. None of these three queens lived up to that for me.

(Want to watch Drag Race Belgique outside of Belgium? For most of the world, it’s available as part with a Wow Presents Plus subscription as soon as the episode is done airing.)

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 9 – “The Crystal Ball: Episode 200” & Crystalized Eleganza design challenge Review & Power Ranking

February 25, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the ninth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 – “The Crystal Ball: Episode 200,” a ball with a Crystalized Eleganza design challenge that nods to Kennedy Davenports iconic “I had crystallized” runway for the “Death Becomes Her” theme.

This episode is a celebration of all things Drag Race, which is really no different than any other episode of Drag Race. Ever since that “Lip Sync Extravaganza Eleganza” spoken word lip sync challenge back on Season 5 (10 years ago this month!), the Drag Race juggernaut has become increasingly self-referential. The show is constantly high on its own supply, which only works because it has featured so many incredible drag artists over the past 14 years and 199 prior episodes.

However, it’s that weight of history that makes it increasingly hard for each season to stand up to all that came before. It’s not like every American Idol contestant has to occasionally sing in the style of a past contestant. Do Project Runway contestants occasionally have to remake the garments of past competitors? Do housemates on Big Brother speak exclusively in quotes from past housemates?

I don’t know, because in the realm of reality TV these days I mostly only watch British shows about painting that are borderline meditative.

My point is that the more you self-reference, the more reductive and insular you get. It’s the reality-TV version of inbreeding. You want more “walk that fucking ducks” and fewer repeats of “proportionizing” and “Miss Vanjie.” Those things were hilarious to the audience the first time around, but they produce less and less positive nostalgia from every hit.

At the same time I don’t want the show to encourage repeats of past bits, I also want it (and, in particular, Michelle) to drop the “We’ve seen it before” critique for things that aren’t deliberate copies. In 199 episodes just of this main franchise we have seen a lot of concepts and gags. For every innovative plunging dress with a crystal spine like Anetra’s this episode, we’ve seen a dozen beauty pageant looks and people coughing up things on the runway.

I think that kind of repetitiveness is fine. Let’s judge these queens on the originality of their total package of drag without harping on them for imitating one little design element or runway beat of a past queen. I think that’s just another function of this show’s self-obsession.

If that sounds like a lot of complaining, perhaps it’s because I’m worn out on these hyper-speed episodes and I didn’t like many of the looks in this ball. Oh, and that was a terrible lip sync to one of my favorite Lil Nas X songs!

That lead to some minor shuffling in the ranks compared to last week’s rank of the Lalaparuza, but it’s still the same four queens in line for the finale and the same few queens wrestling over who will be the next out. The only real surprise is the one queen who seems to be improbably floating in the middle of those two groups at the moment.

Readers, start your engines. And, may the best drag queen win! [Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, Episode 9 – “The Crystal Ball: Episode 200” & Crystalized Eleganza design challenge Review & Power Ranking

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 3 – The Realness of Fortune Ball: recap & power ranking!

May 28, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the third episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – The Realness of Fortune Ball!

In this episode of this special All Winners season, each our eight crowned queens have to construct a garment from scratch corresponding to a fabulous and colorful vacation destination – the sorts of trips offered as prizes on classic game shows like Wheel of Fortune.

Making a garment from scratch might be the one standard Drag Race challenge I’ve still never tried myself!

When I first started commenting on and recapping Drag Race back in 2014 I was doing it as a complete layperson. I knew plenty about singing, songwriting, acting, and public speaking – which covered a slew of typical Drag Race challenges.

When it came to the actual drag on the runway, I knew very little about make-up or fashion that I hadn’t learned from the judges. I was going off of what was pleasing to me without being able to articulate exactly why.

This is a frequent topic of discussion in Drag Race fandom, and amongst the queens themselves. Who is qualified to critique the work of these incredible artists, who are make-up artists, costume designers, and stylists all rolled up into one. The Drag Race judging panel sometimes struggles to have the right references to understand where queens are coming from, so who are we to try?!

I’m of two minds about that.

On one hand, you don’t have to be an expert in something to talk about if it resonates with you. That’s a way people gatekeep themselves from appreciating fine art, classical music, runway fashion, or any other form of high art.

On the other hand, I think Drag Race fans have consumed so much of the Drag Race industrial complex of endless franchise seasons, recap shows, podcasts, and fashion reviews that they think they’re an expert just because they’ve heard so much from the experts. There’s a Dunning-Kruger effect there, where even though fans don’t fully understand something about drag they assume they have have as much know-how as the queens themselves.

I’ve always been sensitive to that second bit, especially because I’m qualified to seriously critique a lot of elements of Drag Race OTHER THAN the drag itself.

That’s why I’ve spent the past few years trying to actually learn about drag other than by watching the show. I’ve read up on drag history and pageants. I’ve watched countless make-up tutorials. I’ve been keeping up with fashion blogs and runway shows. And, I’ve actually done my own drag make-up – which will never see the light of day on the internet! (At least, not until I’m much better at blending.)

I don’t think all of that is required to recap Drag Race. Nor do I think following runway collections and knowing how to contour doesn’t mean I’m anywhere in the same solar system of talent compared to these All Winners!

What I do think is that if you’re going to spend to time to go past consuming art to engage with it critically, you owe it to both yourself and to the artist to better understand their art form. (And, also, engaging critical doesn’t mean hating or belittling these artists! Turning in uneven work on one episode of a TV show has no bearing on how great a drag artist you are.)

Does that mean I understand how these queens built their dresses from scratch for this week’s design challenge? Hell no! Design challenges involve the peak of a drag queen’s power to create something from nothing, and I’ll cover every step of that process in detail here! Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 2 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 3 – The Realness of Fortune Ball: recap & power ranking!