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We’re late and for that we apologize, but we have a really good excuse: we’re lazy and we’re pretty much done after the Met Gala. Okay, maybe that’s not a very good excuse, but it’s the one we have. We will have these replays in the weekend schedule going forward. Now, let’s break down these two passages.
EPISODE 1: BREAK DANCIN’ 2 ELECTRIC RUGALOO
We will release thoughts and observations as we go. These episodes are about 65% full at the moment.
MORPHINE LOVE DION
A fun, high-concept look that’s well-rendered in drag. The interesting thing about Morphine is that you play with a headache, but only up to a certain point. He retreated quickly. It sounds like he’s gone through it since we last saw him.
GOOD LUCK STARZZZ
Love seeing Lucky’s weird ass drag again, which Ru calls cosplay, in a tone that doesn’t sound like a compliment. We hope she’s here to cash in and increase her booking fee because she’s unlikely to win, given the long-standing preferences of the judges and showrunners.
MYSTYQUE SUMMERS
The original bitch from Chicago is invisible, and we’re not just talking about her weight loss and transformation. In fact, his draw still has a lot of external appearance issues, but he’s clearly here to redeem himself and hopefully he’ll get the chance. He tries to play up his history with Morgan, but it doesn’t look like those wounds have fully healed.
MORGAN MCMICHAELS
This looks bad. I’m really sorry about that, Morgan. We’re glad to see him again, to be honest. It’s great to not only have top queens in the mix, but also those who have their PhDs from competing on Drag Race. He’s obviously strategic, but he’s also extremely camera-savvy.
MORNING
Pussy is very raised and curious.
A’KERIA C. DAVENPORT
The most polished queens in this group, and considering her history, almost a season.
All-Stars is a formula, in the sense that there is a formula, but it changes every few seasons. The formula this time around continues to be bracket mode, which can be read generously as a way to give each queen more time to shine or resentfully as a lazy way to produce a television season, stuffing it with filler.
But we’re not complete curmudgeons here. It’s great to see queens re-introducing or reconnecting. Like we said, some hatchets aren’t completely buried and it might be interesting to see how that plays out, though it doesn’t look like Mystique will be the last.
Once again, a lot of queens who were born after falling in love with Ru pop culture had to be happy in another way to them. Everyone was… okay. We would rate Lucky and Mystique as weak, but we didn’t have strong thoughts on who should be on top.
The queens did their best with the necessary restrictions that were put in place to congratulate LaToya Jackson, as she doesn’t have an impressive book of celebrity dresses to her name. A’keria’s look was sweet, with a silly bent to it. It came to kill, not to play. Her looks are top notch this time and she shows an understanding that no matter how weird and creative your drag may be, the judges on Drag Race will want to see the glamor.
This is a lesson Lucky hasn’t learned – or doesn’t care to. This is a good effort, but the interpretation of the stage costume should be more offensive than the original. Morgan’s appearance was flawless entertainment.
Morphine’s girl homage was great, but now we’re starting to think that casting Mystique this season is cruel. He obviously has a commitment to the type of drag the average woman has and more power to him if that’s where his skills lie, but his drag will always look like l0w-rent when he’s standing next to queens in thousands of dollars in the best stage costumes money can buy. Anyway, putting aside any question of money or drag styles, this just looks awful, right down to the black tights and chorus girls’ shoes.
Morgan and Dawn faced off in a lip sync as the top contenders, and we have no problem with that matchup, even if we were to give Dawn the win over Morgan.
PART 2: BAR QUEEN COUTURE
Everyone quickly got into their feelings over the points system, which is what it was designed to do, but in the end, everyone just gave points to everyone else so no one was without. Morphine seemed a little bent so her attempts at unity didn’t move as well as she would have liked, but then again, she tends to back down from these things quickly.
Later, this happened.
We’ve always said that mini challenges should be in every episode and it’s better if the challenges are something silly and silly. We eat those words now. On paper, a little challenge for the big girls is a good idea, but they should have tested this one earlier. No one won and it wasn’t very good to watch them try.
On an unrelated note, what the hell are some of you nerds wearing in the Werk Room?
The challenge was a traditional DIY pull, with a nice twist that each queen would be looking for a specific type of bar.
There’s no more drama to be found in the Werk Room, so the episode is turned around for more time to watch the queens do their work. There’s certainly nothing wrong with showing the creative process, but the show tends to limit how much of that you’ll see because they don’t want to reveal too much of what the queens are working on before they hit the big stage. Raven and Ru came in briefly to pretend they were interested and we got the usual “I don’t know what I’m doing” moments, but for the most part, everything went as expected. Do we sound bored? We try not to.
WillowDAWN and A’keria were the top girls in this batch. If you showed us these looks without any context, we wouldn’t consider the idea that they were made quickly instead of the result of weeks of work. Incredibly detailed, highly dramatic, pure drag – both. It is to A’keria’s credit that he was able to put this together when he first faced such difficult problems.
If you put aside what Nina Garcia will call “a matter of taste,” Mystique’s appearance is all badly measured against her. That skirt is unflattering and her love of matte black tights is baffling. Morgan’s appearance was very impressive, but A’keria and Dawn completely outclassed him, so he was never in contention to win this week, although he may have been on a different team.
Morphine’s appearance was very bad. He didn’t have the best options and he was obviously annoyed by the tropical bar brochure he was given, but in the end, that’s how he decided to use the bunch he was given and nothing good about it. Luck would have been the convenor of this challenge if he had just done the one thing he refused to do: organize himself. This look was incredibly creative and fun, but it gave the judges a chance to watch. Take it easy, girl. We know it won’t.
Dawn and A’Keria faced off in a lip sync, which A’keria won. While episode padding and lazy challenge planning haven’t gotten things off to a great start, it’s not a bad time to watch a bunch of queens return to the competition and try to find it.
Girl, if you ever thought we were going to stop linking our book, you weren’t paying attention:Fairytale Kids: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life,the New York Times selection of “New and Notable”, recommended by The Washington Post “because the world needs authenticity in its stories,” and was selected as one of theBest Books of the Yearvia NPRis somethingfor sale wherever good books are sold (like this link)!Also available atItalianagainSpanishgrammar, dear! Because we are very good at the INTERNATIONAL level.
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