drag

Krisis covers RuPaul's Drag Race, international Drag Race, Dragula, and more in their incredibly in-depth essays and recaps on Drag.

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 7 – “Discour de Reine” public speaking challenge Review and Power Ranking

April 2, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the seventh episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – Discour de Reine, or “Queen’s Speech.” Each of the Top 4 had to deliver their own coronation speech as Belgium’s queen for a day, and then walk the runway wearing “Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute.“

A “public speaking but make it funny” challenge is one of those late-season episodes where the judging can be very subjective.

Here I felt that the opposite happened – the judging seemed the most level-headed it had been all season.

Part of that is that the queens easily self-selected into the perfect four roles for a semi-final episode: the overconfident queen who goes over time, the brainy queen finally hitting her mark, the queen who plays it to safe one too many times, and the anxious queen struggling to make herself heard.

The judges had to go by the stratification of the challenge itself, because the runway wasn’t much help. Everyone looked good, but the bigger problem was the judges themselves couldn’t seem to agree on what the theme meant! Glamour à Knokke-le-Zoute is a seaside resort town, and the judges seemed to be split on if they were looking for the actual glamour of the region (which they felt was something more chic than eleganza) or just something glamourous that suggested the region with a nautical theme.

It seemed like that made the queens somewhat immune to hearing the tough runway critiques they’ve encountered earlier in the season, with Susan especially benefiting from the indecision. Ultimately that yielded an unsurprising lip sync, a fair result, and a Top 3 I’ve been rooting for since the pre-season. That means there is zero shake-up from last week’s makeover rankings as we head into the finale next week.

(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 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!

Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 4 – “Snatch Game” & Mitt Liv Som Tant runway Review & Power Ranking

March 28, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the fourth episode of Drag Race Sverige (AKA Drag Race Sweden) Season 1 – “Snatch Game,” Sweden’s first try at the iconic Drag Race improv comedy challenge. It was paired with a Mitt Liv Som Tant runway, which translates literally to “My Life as an Aunt” but in the subtitles was “My Life as a Golden Girl.”

Content warning for this episode: the “Elimination Day” workroom scene after Snatch Game and before the runway includes a graphic discussion of sexual assault and sexual violence.

I get frustrated when Drag Race is an entertaining reality show first and a serious competition second. I react negatively whenever a season trends towards making things a game of random chance.

This episode combined two elements that tend to turn me off: bringing back an eliminated queen and making a surprising elimination.

Bringing back an eliminated queen doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. It’s what gave us more of Trixie in Season 7. It created amazing dramatic tension with Latrice’s return in All Stars Season 4 and Silky’s battle to conquer lip sync island on All Stars Season 6.

It’s a mechanic best used when a season has seen some queens eliminated early who felt like they they had more to offer to the show – either as drag queens or as personalities. Even less notable returns from Carmen Carrera or Joe Black still gave us iconic Drag Race moments, because they brought back great characters.

Yet, on Sverige it has felt like all three queens left with reasonable justification: Almighty Aphroditey for being too green, Antonina Nutshell for struggling with the runways, and Endigo for struggling to show confidence while in drag. All three of them brought some amount of certain “not ready for prime time” awkwardness to the show that the other queens never displayed. That’s not a statement about the quality of their drag, just about how prepared they and their packaged seemed to be for the rigors of Drag Race.

As a result, we had a Top 6 who felt like the strongest competitors in this race. Even if the show had already accounted for a returning queen mechanism, if ever there was a time to hold that in reserve an episode longer this was it! No matter who left this episode, they would be someone who had more to show.

Instead, we have a returning queen who already feels hopelessly outmatched by the competition. She proceeded to bomb Snatch Game and the Mitt Liv Som Tant old lady runway, but she was kept by Robert Fux and the judges thanks to a desperate, over-the-top lip sync win against the show’s frontrunner.

I’m not arguing in favor of protecting an early front-runner who makes a stumble – that winds up just as frustrating as an unfair early elimination! However, as a viewer I feel like I’ve lost the chance to see more of the best drag Sweden has to offer.

That outcome detracts from what was a solid, entertaining first Snatch Game from Sweden! Not only did several queens deliver comedic performances, but Robert Fux was a delightful host who upheld his end of the absurd game of improv with both the queens and the Snatch Game “contestants.”

Of course, the unusual developments of this episode shook up my power rankings from last week’s design challenge. With our front-running no longer in the race it’s not only a toss-up for who will come out on top, but there’s a sudden chance for a safe queen to sneak her way into the top three of the season.

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

Läsare, start your engines. Och må den bästa Drag Queen vinna!

Drag Race Belgique Season 1, Episode 6 – “A deux c’est mieu!” makeover challenge Review and Power Ranking

March 26, 2023 by krisis

Welcome to my review, recap, and power rankings of the sixth episode of Drag Race Belgique Season 1 – A deux c’est mieu! That translates as “Two is better [than one].” That’s the perfect title for Belgium’s first makeover challenge as the queens partnered with five presenters from Radio-télévision belge de la Communauté française – or RTBF (Belgium’s version of NPR & PBS).

If you follow my RuPaul’s Drag Race coverage, you’ve just read my thoughts on the mercurial nature of makeover challenges from yesterday’s “Teacher Makeovers.” Makeovers give production carte blanche to make any placement decisions they please, but sometimes that involves less interference and more going with the flow of the narrative.

That’s exactly what happened in A deux c’est mieu, with each queen producing the exact result you’d expect. The excellent queens delivered excellence, the contentious queen delivered contested results, and the low-key queens had nowhere left to hide from the judge’s critiques in such a slim field free of anyone making a mess of things.

That resulted in a satisfying episode, even if it highlighted the particular deficiencies of Lufy as a judge.

In her workroom walkthrough it was obvious that Lufy was playing the Michelle Visage role of giving pushy, counter-intuitive advice that could easily backfire. However, Michelle backs that up with the utter conviction of being right all the time. If her advice turned out to lead a queen astray, she simply doubles down that if what she said was done correctly things would’ve turned out fine.

Lufy is a much less experienced media personality. She couldn’t deliver on the much-needed judging punchline when one queen one faltered because of her advice and another succeeded despite it.

Even if the judging this season feels inexperienced, Drag Race Belgique more than makes up for it with a stellar cast of professional, entertaining, personable queens. We had two queens exchange rankings compared to last week’s Snatch Game line-up, but we’re heading into the semi-final with the three queens I predicted for the Top 3 in the pre-season and a fourth who I was most hoping to see succeed.

(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 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!