Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 4 – RDR Live & Night of 1,000 Chers Power Rankings

January 28, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 4 gave us another rendition of RDR Live – their spoof on Saturday Night Live – with with an all-time great “Night of 1,000 Chers” runway branded as “Everything Every-Cher All At Once.” The combo led to some great television, a shocking win, and some shake-ups in the power ranking!

This episode emphasized our tightly-grouped trio of front-runners, but it also allowed several queens from the middle of the pack to make a case for why they should stick around until the back half of the season. There was no “I was rooting for us” levels of disastrous performances here, although one queen in particular completely missed the reference of her skit.

RDR Live is actually an interesting bit of illusion. Because it is satirizing Saturday Night Live, it’s easy to think of it as an improv challenge where queens have some control over their fate. However, it’s really just a scripted comedy acting challenge like Daytona Wind, which means certain roles are locked in as mediocre or even risky based on the script.

(Here’s another interesting tidbit to mull over: These queens may have shot this “RDR Live” challenge without even seeing the All Stars Season 8 version, which aired around the same time this cast was sequestered. Of course, you don’t have to see a spoof of SNL to know how to play a spoof of SNL, but it meant that they were choosing roles without any intel of how Ru and the judges reacted to similar choices from another cast of queens.)

The result was the three front-runner queens making wise choices and doing well for themselves, one upstart taking a risk and paying it off big-time, and a handful of potential cannon fodder queens doing their best to break out of the pack of early-outs.

That yielded a Bottom Two that surprised me with a shocking elimination that I claimed would be impossible in my Power Rankings of the Mother of All Balls last week. Not only was this episode’s “Sashay Away” a shocker, but it also slightly jostled our pack of front-runners with a potential new narrative.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 2 – “Queen Choice Awards” Power Rankings

January 14, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race has delivered the second half of its split premiere with Season 16 Episode 2, “Queen Choice Awards.” This continues the throwback MTV theme wrapped around a standard talent show and a reveal runway retitled to “Made Ya Look.”

There’s this idea that it’s no longer enough to just be good at drag to do well on Drag Race – that the show has come too far, and demands too much.

I think that idea is a fiction. If you look at winners of Drag Race back to BeBe Zahara Benet, they have always done the most. Even when looks were closer to off-the-rack than runway-ready, every queen who has won this show has been impressive not only in charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, but on some intrinsic conceptual level as well.

I mention that because the divide between the haves and have-nots in this cast when it comes to that conceptual x-factor seems to be a stark one. There are a number of charming, talented queens in this cast who I am already beginning to adore who don’t seem to have the pure imagination it takes to win Drag Race.

Or, maybe I’m wrong! Sometimes I’m wrong. I completely missed out on [spoiler!] Ginger Johnson being the one queen to rule them all on Drag Race UK, and on Drag Race Down Under I initially had the runner up as my pick over the winner. There are times that the core concept of a queen just doesn’t come across for me under the pressure of a first episode.

But… I also have a tremendous recent track record of picking finalists (Drag Race UK aside).

I’ll be curious to see how this race develops with all fourteen queens sharing screen time next week – especially when faced with a Ball challenge, one of the ultimate tests of a queen’s ability to manifest her conceptual vision on the stage. Have I correctly guessed the haves and have-nots when it comes to being high-concept?

Now that we have the second half of our split premiere in hand, I’m power ranking all 14 queens for the first time this week! Yes, I’ve shuffled all of the queens from my Week 1 “Rate-a-Queen” power ranking into the mix (and reshuffled one of them lower now that we know the next challenge is a Ball). Who are my picks for high-concept obvious finalists? And, who do I think will be our first outs of the season?

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

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

January 7, 2024 by krisis

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!

Drag Race España Season 3, Episode 2 – “Drag Vision” Review & Power Rankings

April 27, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review and power rankings for Drag Race España Season 3 Episode Two – “Drag Vision.” It’s a Eurovision-themed group choreography challenge to “SloMo” by Chanel where no one came out on top after the queens were thoroughly chastised for their messy performance by the judges.

They weren’t angry, just disappointed.

Seriously – you think RuPaul screaming about H&M is scary? Try watching all five España judges very calmly read their contestants for filth for their lumpy pads, ill-considered tights, clockable wig lines, and approximate dancing in the “Drag Vision” choreography challenge.

I didn’t need the disappointed judges to inform me that this was a lackluster maxi-challenge performance. It was obvious to see that nearly all of the queens were out of sync with each other and struggling with their wigs.

However, I was surprised to hear the judges reading the queens for their looks (and lumpy pads), considering all of the “Drag Vision” dance costumes were obviously supplied by the show. I suppose the message was, “every detail matters.” Supremme and the other judges don’t want the queens resting on their laurels when production hands them something to use in a challenge.

Of course, that begs the question of how much production had a hand in the outcome of an under-rehearsed dance routine and rushed dance costumes. On an American season I’d immediately assume that the drama was manufactured. On España, I’m more willing to believe it happened organically.

Between the wobbly maxi-challenge and an “España en Eurovisión” runway that invited imitation over haute couture, there’s not much to discuss about individual queen placements this week, though it did introduce some major shakeups compared to the premiere episode Power Rankings. I did correctly call our second elimination, and I suspect I have the next one right… but the rest of the ranking feels uncertain. Are a few favored queens and potential front-runners beginning to emerge?

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

Lectores, start your engines. Y que gane la mejor drag queen!
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