RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 3 – Drag Race World Power Rankings

February 24, 2024 by krisis

It’s another week of the Olympics of Drag Race! RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 3 was “Drag Race World,” a tricky commercial challenge that paired personal branding with creating a marketable immerse experience. It was paired with a franchise-favorite “Ruveal Yourself” runway.

This was one of those “is the challenge bad or are the queens not getting it” weeks of Drag Race for me.

The assignment was to advertise an experiential VIP fan experience unique to the brand of each queen’s drag. Effectively, queens had to make commercials for themselves – and for what it would be like to meet them in person.

Some queens got the VIP experience part, and some queens got the brand part, but only a handful of queens were able to marry them in a way that made sense, was funny, and also was something sellable.

That lead one queen to ruveal more than just a runway look, but also a previously-secret talent she has kept under wraps through her entire Drag Race experience. It also gave us a fresh pair of winners, one surprisingly near-flop, and two very different senses of humor on the runway from a pair of UK queens. That lead to a number of shakeups in our power ranking compared to last week’s fairytale-themed “Happy Ending Ball” challenge.

(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 7 – The Sound of Rusic Rusical Power Rankings

February 18, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 7 was our annual Rusical! “The Sound of Rusic” recast familiar tropes from The Sound of Music as a pop music musical set in a high stakes pageant in a remote town.

It was paired with a “I Can Buy Myself Flowers” runway themed to match the lip sync tune “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus’s recent Grammy-winner for Record of the Year

We’re at a point in the evolution of Drag Race where not only every contestant comes ready to smash the Rusical, but the show itself has a vested interest in the Rusical looking amazing. Even though this was unseen to us, it’s a virtual guarantee that the queens had an extra 1-2 days to rehearse this show “off camera” between when we saw them go home on Day 1 and when they hit the runway on “Day 2.”

As with “Wigloose” last year, that resulted in a musical with no obvious worst performance, unless we’re going to get nitpicky about a wardrobe malfunction. That means we do have to get nitpicky, not only about that, but about whether people looked alive behind the eyes or made the most out of their little bits of business.

That lead to a cutthroat and somewhat hard to predict set of bottom queens. However, it was the runway that confirmed our top queens, as three of our drag artists had the objective best looks of the night (and a fourth queen’s fashionable runway may have saved her from the bottom).

What does that mean for our Power Rankings compared to last week’s “Welcome to the DollHouse”? One queen fights her way back into the Top 3 while another queen falls out of the Top 4 for the first time, and the four queens marooned outside of the Top 5 are going to have to get serious about their game theory to see if they can last long enough to play spoiler against a frontrunner.

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

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 6 – Welcome to the DollHouse Power Rankings

February 11, 2024 by krisis

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, Episode 6 was a two-for-one “Welcome to the DollHouse” challenge that tested the queens in both design and branding as they had to create an outfit for themselves and their own special edition dolls.

This was the first chance this season we’ve had to see the queens flex their intelligence and aptitude for marketing, and it yielded some interesting results.

Many RuPaul’s Drag Race veterans (including Trixie) love to say that the real race begins after the season ends. We’ve seen Drag Race finalists disappear from view and from fan conversation. We’ve also seen early outs lean into their personal brands to become cult favorites amongst the fandom – including Katya and Trixie trailblazing with YouTube content nearly a decade ago, Yuhua Hamasaki with Bootleg Opinions, and Maddy Morphosis with Give It To Me Straight.

That’s why I love it every time the queens are handed a challenge with a marketing element, and this one is one of the best. It’s not about designing an energy drink or making an inane commercial. It’s literally about the queens selling themselves in the form of their own dolls! We’ve seen RuPaul, Manilla Luzon, Alaska, and Trixie all sell their own dolls over the years

The secret to winning this challenge wasn’t just designing a gorgeous garment. The queens needed to figure out a way to create a “Special Edition” of themselves that felt both essential and toyetic. Even if none of them have the chance to create their own dolls, the ability to boil down their brand to a single image will serve them in all of their future merchandising endeavors.

I was delighted to discover that almost this entire cast of queens was up to the challenge, giving us a week with many strong contenders and only a few certified peg-warmers. OMG, get your mind out of the gutter! A “peg warmer” means the figure in a toyline that no one buys, though it stays “warming” the metal pegs that products hang from in a toy story.

So, which queens were a sell-out and which ones, um… got pegged? The results were interesting, and they caused some surprising shuffling compared to last week’s Girl Groups Power Rankings as the picture of our Top 6 becomes increasingly clear.

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

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2, Episode 1 – Queens’ Variety Show Power Rankings

February 10, 2024 by krisis

The Olympics of Drag Race is back! It’s RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs. The World Season 2 Episode 1 – a Queen’s Variety Show talent performance and a national pride “For Queen and Country” runway.

That allowed 11 queens from 7 different Drag Race franchises to show off their brands and how they’ve grown since their original run (or, in a few cases, how they stayed exactly the same).

The entire point of the Talent Show as a challenge on Drag Race is for each queen to have a minute of uninterrupted stage time to show off the idiosyncrasies of her personality and aesthetic.

Very few queens actually manage to do that.

Across many franchises, we’ve seen dozens of queens misunderstand this challenge as “deliver your club performance (without using a licensed track).” Really, the challenge is, “give us a commercial for your brand that people will always remember you by.”

Think of some of the most-impactful talent show performances we’ve seen on Ru-hosted franchises. For me, that includes Tatianna, Willow Pill, Anetra, & Jimbo. They were all unique, slightly surreal, and surprising while also making complete sense once we got to know the queens better. Tatianna is about unclockable realness with moments of silliness. Willow Pill is about making light of morbidity. Anetra is about being a ballroom-imitating martial artist.

And Jimbo is about… baloney?

Those performances can be endlessly imitated, but the original magic will never quite be recaptured because each one was as much about talent as it was about brand and personality.

Three queens figured that formula out on this episode, and it was unsurprising to see all three of them in the top of the critiques.

The same thing is true about any kind of runway about local or national pride. It’s not about dressing as a cheesesteak if you’re from Philly. It’s about showing your home and what it means to you as seen through your own unique lens of drag.

What did that mean for our power rankings compared to my pre-season prognosticating? Two queens quickly vaulted to the top, a shaky queen solidified her standing, and one predicted finalist didn’t have the intense glow-up I was expecting.

(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!