RuPaul's Drag Race Season 16

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 12 – Bathroom Hunties Power Rankings

March 25, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 12 was called “Bathroom Hunties,” an interior design challenge with a heavy helping of improv. On the runway, the theme was “Chain Reaction” – and a few queens served imaginative chained-up looks different from anything we’ve seen before.

Drag Race occasionally serves these oddball “experiential” challenges that profess to be about giving the judges a live walkthrough of interior design. We’ve seen it before in “Queen of Clubs” on All Stars Season 4 (whispers “club 96″) and “Get A Room!” on All Stars Season 5.

What some fans – and queens – miss about these challenges is they’re not about design. The challenge is never to design the best room or create the most credible commercial. They’re either about improv or branding. Maybe both! The brief is basically “what would you do with an empty room,” in the same way that many of the marketing commercial challenges are “what would you do with a green screen.” Queens who get mired in painting the walls are missing the forest for the trees.

Of course, there’s also something to be said for the fact that Trixie Mattel is one of the very few queens to sell her own solo show with Trixie Motel – an interior design show! It’s not unusual for Drag Race to borrow from the success of their favorite alums to inspire challenges, and I think that was intentional here.

It was no surprise to see the two queens with the strongest brands easily win this challenge, although watching their process revealed some interesting things about them both. While they retained their spots compared to last week’s “Corporate Queens” drag seminars challenge power rankings, the rest of the semi-finalists shuffled their standings as they vie for the chance to be second-runner-up.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 11 – Corporate Queens & DragCon 1980 runway Power Rankings

March 18, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 11 was called “Corporate Queens,” which required the queens to balance a buttoned-up drag seminar with stand-up comedy. On the runway, the theme was “Flashback: DragCon 1980” – offering a dragged up look that would fit a Drag Convention in the early 80s.

This is the point in a 14+ queen season where things can start to… well, drag. Even though there’s tiny bit of tension here about who will make the cut to Top 4, the fact that we have two queens with no decisive solo wins in the Top 6 makes it feel like we ought to hurry through the next two eliminations rather than savouring the drama.

What wasn’t a drag to me was this absurd “Corporate Queens” drag seminar challenge concept. Many people might have preferred a traditional roast for a comedy challenge over this. For me, it was a lot more reflective of the sort of weird branded gigs these queens are going to have the opportunity to book in the real world.

The success of queens like Trixie, Monét, Courtney Act, and even Tia Kofi has shown that you have to be able to bring the power of your drag out of the nightclub and into corporate settings if you want to score the kind of bookings that expose you to the broader audience of the non-queer mainstream.

That said… I do think “Drag in the Workplace” is a pretty tough nut to crack, from a comedy perspective. It certainly wasn’t an easy challenge!

The result was that we have an even-more solidified front-runner than we had last week in the Werq the World “Power” performance power rankings, but the rest of the queens are still jockeying for the other three spots in the finale.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 10 – Werq the World “Power” & True Colors runway Power Rankings

March 10, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 10 was a mash-up of a Girl Groups songwriting challenge and an election year voting challenge with Werq the World “Power” – a legit funk tune produced by Leland with a message of empowerment. Plus, a “True Colors” runway that let the queens play to their strengths (even when that turned out to be a weakness).

As a rock music nerd, I cannot tell you how excited I was to see a band on Drag Race credibly miming along to a track. “Power” is a legit funk pop and I love the nasty hook that uses Dorian Mode to give us a tritone of the major sixth against the minor third.

(The melody on the hook is E – F# – G – D – C#. In E-Minor, that C# would be a C. An E-Minor scale with a sharp 6th is called Dorian Mode. The G-(D)-C# leap is a tritone – it’s using the flatted 5th of the G to make a discordant sound even though they’re both a part of the Dorian Mode scale. Think “The SIMP sons” but as “The sons SIMP.”)

Pushing the queens to put on a high-energy performance to such a rocking track gave us one of the most energetic, entertaining music challenges we’ve had on the show. I’m only able to make some of the nitpicks I do in the Power Rankings below because I’ve rewatched this so many times!

This funky challenge proved the power queens have to control their own fate on this show when it comes to challenges that hinge on pure talent. In last week’s Neo-Goth design challenge Power Rankings I had Morphine Love Dion locked in for elimination because the judges weren’t giving her many positive notes. She week she delivered a decisive win, schooling the entire cast on what it means to show up and show out in a singing performance while other queens struggled. That means some major shake-ups in the Power Rankings… and not from the queen you might expect.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 9 – “See You Next Wednesday” Neo-Goth design challenge Power Rankings

March 3, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 9 was a third design challenge – a “See You Next Wednesday” Neo-Goth look inspired heavily by Netflix’s Wednesday series.

This has never once come up in over 23 years of blogging, but I was once a teenage goth! I wasn’t living the full-time goth lifestyle, but when I was at the start of my glam rock phase I wanted to be in all black, all the time with a pale white lip. I was all about looking svelte in black vinyl, pleather, or satin pants with diaphanous black shirts.

That meant my version of glam was always teetering on the edge of Goth – and, in Philly teen counter-culture at the time there was a strong Goth + Glam + Punk alliance. Or, at least, that’s what a typical night on South Street looked like, And, as luck would have it, the one Philly club that had an underage night had a room spinning all goth music!

I think a lot of queens mistook the “Neo-Goth” brief to mean “all black” and it hurt their presentations. Goth looks aren’t about being black all the time – they are about starkness. You can get away with white, red, brown, purple – even pops of brighter colors! However, Goth looks aren’t about being loud – and that’s true even when they are all black. For me, Goth is about selling a certain amount of austerity and drawing the viewer in. Neo-Goth is just a more casual, ready-to-wear version of that – a slightly preppier, ready-for-daylight version of classic Goth fashion.

What does yet another design challenge mean for our Power Rankings compared to last week’s Season 16 Snatch Game Power Ranking? Not only did we lose a front-runner, but one queen lost a bit of momentum and another one started to get her groove back. However, the real story is that we’re now into the top half of the placements! That means every queen is under scrutiny with little room to be safe. For queens who aren’t a lock for the finale, surviving each week is a careful dance of game theory in hoping the right combination of other queens fail while you succeed.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 8 – Snatch Game Power Rankings

February 26, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 8 was the Season 16 Snatch Game! That meant we also got our annual “The Library is Open” reading challenge – plus, an unusually animated Dancing Queens runway theme.

It’s incredible that an oddball challenge spoofing old game shows from way back in RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2 has become the most iconic challenge on every franchise of the show – and also the most harrowing gauntlet for its contestants.

Hearing Drag Race queens talk about their Snatch Game experiences is like hearing war stories, even when they are from queens who do well.

No matter how well you prepare for Snatch Game by working on your impression and your improv skills, there’s just no way to completely anticipate how Ru will react and volley with your character. Planning answers and bits ahead of time isn’t always the wisest move, because you’ve got to be able to follow Ru’s lead in the room and pick up on what she finds amusing.

I was fascinated to see some strong queens miss these hints, while one in particular snatched every one.

What does that mean for our Power Rankings compared to last week’s epic “The Sound of Rusic” Rusical performance power rankings? Things have been truly shaken up, with one unlikely queen pushing into contention for the finale while a previous surefire winner sags in the rankings. Plus, we have a new supreme as a certain Russian doll turned into a real live queen over the course of this episode.

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