RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars

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

July 31, 2022 by krisis

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!

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 11 – Drag Race Gives Back Variety Extravaganza recap & power ranking!

July 23, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the eleventh episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Drag Race Gives Back Variety Extravaganza, a talent show where everything is on the line since the pair of winners will get three Legendary Legend stars each!

I’ve been struggling with how to recap this episode for you for two different reasons – because of how it shook up the power rankings of the season due to its multiple-stars twist and because of the nature of “talent” on Drag Race.

After thinking about it for a while and reviewing my extended power ranking math from last week, I’ve come to realize that the only way to produce a satisfying ending was to award 3 stars to the winners.

I know that’s a radical proposal. I’ll explain more about it below. First, I want to talk about talent.

If you want, you can skip my pair of essays on stars and talent to get to how I’d rank the queens on their talents and rate their chances in the twin final Lip Sync tournaments:

As a reminder, here’s where 10 weeks of Power Ranking left the queens standing headed into this episode. Note that my power rankings are not necessarily based on how they performed in each episode, but where I thought they would place based on their performances and the teaser for the next challenge:

Jinkx Monsoon – 4 Stars from 5 Wins, 2 Block (1.4 Avg. Rank, #1 Pre-Season Rank, 4-8 wins predicted)
Trinity The Tuck – 3 stars from 4 Wins, 1 Block (3.3 Avg. Rank, #3 Pre-Season Rank, 2-6 wins predicted)
Jaida Essence Hall – 3 stars from 2 Wins + 1 Bonus, 1 Block (3.9 Avg. Rank, #6 Pre-Season Rank, 1-3 wins predicted)
Monét X Change – 2 stars from 2 Wins, 1 Block (4 Avg. Rank, #4 Pre-Season Rank, 2-7 wins predicted)
Shea Coulée – 1 star from 1 Win, 1 Block (4.4 Avg Rank, #2 Pre-Season Rank, 3-6 wins predicted)
The Vivienne – 2 stars from 3 Wins, 1 Block (5.7 Avg. Rank ,#7 Pre-Season Rank, 0-3 wins predicted)
Yvie Oddly – 2 stars from 1 Win + 1 Bonus, 1 Block (6.3 Avg. Rank, #8 Pre-Season Rank, 0-3 wins predicted)
Raja – 2 stars from 2 Wins, 1 Block (7.1 Avg. Rank, #5 Pre-Season Rank, 1-3 wins predicted)

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 10 –The Kennedy Davenport Center Honors Hall of Shade recap & power ranking!

July 16, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the tenth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – The Kennedy Davenport Center Honors Hall of Shade, a roast where the comedy barbs are directed at the rest of the cast, plus an unusual light-up runway.

One of the first things I ever wanted to be as a child was a comedian, long before I ever set foot on stage to discover my love of performing.

Mostly I think I appreciated it when adults were laughing with me instead of laughing at me because I loved watching stand-up specials from all-time greats like Robin Williams and George Carlin.

Later, I realized that being intentionally funny is an incredibly hard task – much too difficult and unpredictable to pin career aspirations upon.

Many drag queens have a similar realization during their runs on Drag Race.

While a sense of humor is essential for almost any queen to survive her early days performing for tips in local bars, that off-the-cuff self-deprecation isn’t the same as the improv and roasting required to make it through a season of Drag Race. We’ve seen many a queen arrive on the show assuming they are hilarious who then fall flat in comedy challenges.

If you’ve ever thought that queens tend to be funnier when they return for All Stars, that’s because they are cheating. It’s an open secret that while queens are prepping outfits for their return runs, they are also turning to their funnier peers and to actual career comedians to supply them with a stock of jokes about other queens most-likely to return to the show. Many queens who have cleaned up in an All Stars library session or roast challenge were working entirely from pre-written material.

That’s why I’m not surprised that this challenge is not about roasting a random honoree, like Lady Bunny or even the titular Kennedy Davenport. This season has taken every opportunity to let its winners be well-prepared for the challenges, and this is no exception. Even if the queens didn’t have a single back-channel source on which other winners to expect, the pool of possible queens was small and mostly full of friendly faces.

Did Monét workshop her set with Bob? Absolutely. Did Shea ring up Peppermint or Miss Cracker? I wouldn’t be surprised. Even a powerhouse like Jinkx might’ve ran some lines with Ben de la Creme.

That means I went into this episode with incredibly high expectations. An All-Winners roast should be all hits, and no Farrah Moans. Did every queen rise to the challenge? Find out in my full-episode recap, below. Plus, at the end of the recap I have a deep game theory update to my Episode 9 rankings to explain who can make it into the finale and how. (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 10 –The Kennedy Davenport Center Honors Hall of Shade recap & power ranking!

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 9 – Dance Like a Drag Queen: recap & power ranking!

July 9, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the ninth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Dance Like a Drag Queen, a combination branding challenge and dancing challenge to create viral social media videos.

I overlap in several skills and talents with the typical cast of Drag Race, but this challenges hits on a pair of areas where I am sorely lacking: choreography and brief, viral videos.

Sure, I love to hit the dancefloor and I’ve taken my fair share of dance fitness classes, but I haven’t tried my hand at making up coherent choreography since I was 10 years old on my grandmother’s front stoop dancing to “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic!

And, despite several forays into video over the past few years, I simply don’t understand what makes a video viral. I’m not sure I’ve ever shared one, and as the video formats grow shorter and shorter I care less and less.

I point this out not to outline how bad I’d be at Drag Race, but to point out who this challenge is targeting: youths. It’s not that no one older than 30 has ever shared a viral video or done a dance challenge, but this week’s concept is clearly aimed at a TikTok generation who racks up tens of millions of views on brief snippets of endlessly loopable video.

This is a cast of seasoned all-winners who trend at least half a decade older than the typical early-20s queens that are being cast on recent seasons. To be RuPaul’s Queen of Queens, our winner needs to be able to connect with every portion of the audience – especially the rising one who loves brevity combined with absurdity.

Were all of our queens able to keep up with the times in this challenge where brevity is the soul of wit? Find out in my full-episode recap, below. Plus, at the end of the recap I have an extensively mathematic update to my Episode 8 rankings to explain who can make it into the finale and how. (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 9 – Dance Like a Drag Queen: recap & power ranking!

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7, Episode 8 – Santa’s School For Girls: recap & power ranking!

July 2, 2022 by krisis

Welcome to my recap of the eighth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 7 – Santa’s School For Girls, an acting challenge that’s part holiday movie, part Mean Girls, part slasher flick.

Of all the many types of challenges on RuPaul’s Drag Race, acting challenges are consistently the lowest quality but with the highest meme-ability. It’s much easier to pay a songwriter to write a song that captures the essence of “He Had It Coming” or “Bye Bye Bye” than it is to hire a screenwriter to write a script that has the vibe of Scream but with the references of Mean Girls.

In earlier seasons, these challenges were about memorizing lines and being ridiculous. As the years have pressed on, Drag Race has begun to treat them as actual challenges of acting that require characterization and melodrama. Yet, they still tend to receive the same lackadaisical direction from Ru, a regular judge, or a sitcom-starring guest judge – all of whom are there more to flummox the queens as they are to create a great final product.

This week’s challenge is different because it is directed by Janicza Bravo. She’s not a household name, but she’s an actual director of movies. I’ll get into the results of that below, but the thing that leapt out at me was that these queens were getting the experience of actually being directed. Bravo’s comments were not just about slamming the punchlines and playing to cameras, but establishing the pace and embodying the characters.

Could the show pull off this same high-calibre direction with the uneven skill levels of queens on a regular season? I would argue that it ought to try. If we view Drag Race less as a reality competition and more as “RuPaul’s Finishing School for Drag Queens,” then the ability to take direction on set from someone with a singular vision is a huge part of what will make these competitors employable after the show.

Drag Race brings in star choreographers for dance challenges, real music producers for their girl groups, and fashion industry figures to judge the queen’s workroom creations. I’d say it’s time to level up their acting challenges an equal amount … even if the scripts still come off like a Mad Lib assembled over the weekend by an intern on a bender.

That’s a lot of build-up of this challenge from me, but did the queens pay it off in their performance? Find out in my full-episode recap, below. Plus, at the end of the recap I’ll update my Episode 7 power rankings to show where the queens stand with just three more challenges of Legendary Legend stars left to earn. (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 8 – Santa’s School For Girls: recap & power ranking!