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Where is our regular commentariat here? I want to hear your opinions.
I was worried I wasn't going to be too taken with this year's group of queens and the first episode proved me wrong, but after last night's episode I'm not totally sold (though hopefully all 13 of them being together and doing a non-talent show challenge will help with that). Don't really have anything to note about the entrances other than Plane Jane came off way too strong in her intentional bitchiness that felt ridiculous. The set design budget apparently dropped significantly between last week's doorbell camera shoot and this week's DMV shoot. I felt genuinely moved by Hershii's stories of being a gay father, I did not feel moved by Plasma moaning about feeling underestimated. I'm glad Becky G stopped by to demonstrate just how comparatively well-spoken Charlize Theron was last week by saying something totally incoherent about representation and then immediately leaving.
The talent show...hmm. Nobody seemed to like Mhi'ya's stunt demonstration which is odd since everyone loved Mirage's heel click thing last week. What the queens do like appears to be terrible songs, which is the only explanation I have for this. Geneva's "La diva más latina" was grating and the dancing was underwhelming and Hershii's "whiplash" song proves that her sister Kornbread should stay away from songwriting as much as possible. Megami gives great sad face but that lip sync was underwhelming and Plane Jane finally demonstrated some semblance of actual bitchiness by saying "Did she give us anything to protect?", which was insane. (Side note: how many conservatives are watching Drag Race on TV? I am fascinated by how many people fall into this demographic that Megami is apparently trying to convince to stop voting Republican.) However, I hated her "burger finger" song and while the judges love stupid this did not feel particularly stupid or funny until the very end when she kept squeezing those condiment bottles on her breastplate. Speaking of, by constantly hammering the "authentically Russian" thing it's clear she's trying to position herself as the anti-Katya but she's really just the American Jimbo except waaaaay less funny.
Runways: I want to like her but I'm already sick of Nymphia's banana thing, Megami following up her middling performance by not doing a reveal for a reveal runway was hilarious, I did like how disjointed Plane Jane's first and second outfits were, but I do think Geneva had my favorite runway. Based on the talent show performances I probably would've put Mhi'ya and Plasma in the top (sorry, Michelle, Plasma may have done a lot but she also demonstrated she actually, in fact, had several talents!), but instead we got to see Geneva prove she is a terrible lipsyncer once again and Plasma only win just because her boob unintentionally fell out (no nipple censoring too...interesting). "Shower" is a pretty good song and it deserved better than that lipsync. We also (probably) deserved a better episode than this.
In short, I liked the first group of queens more than last night’s group. And I agree with you that PJ came a bit too strong trying to be a villain. Curious to see how it’s gonna go rest of the season.
The problem is though that the winner and the loser seemed incredibly clear. Nymphia's 3 outfits were great, and the 3D crinkled tie pieces were absolutely incredible. and while Hershii did inspire the honestly hilarious in spite of my misgivings with Mommie Dearest "I own 51% of this Chico's", she did not have a great night tonight. I understand her frustrations in Untucked though. I think I've said this before but RPDR is basically the only reality show where virtually every contestant can jumpstart an often quite well-paid entertainment career in its own cottage industry, and knowing you will likely be the first one to go home has to be devastating. She seemed very nice though and probably did have more to give and I wish her well.
I am struggling to remember all the other runways so I don't know what more to comment on with regards to that. I refuse to acknowledge gay use of the word "mother" so I was not thrilled with the number of people who picked "significant mothers" that are...not well known for being mothers. Salma Hayek? Audrey Hepburn? Lil Kim? But, sure, whatever, at least they are all actual mothers. But fucking Lady Gaga?? other than that I distinctly remember liking Sapphira's pumpkin stem hair and Xunami's cracked egg reveal.
I am glad I stuck around long enough in Untucked to see Plane Jane hilariously coming for Amanda for no reason. All of her fights feel basically no stakes because she appears to have no other point of view other than "being mean" so nobody takes any criticism from her personally or seriously and while at first I hated it but....in small doses it's pretty funny. However, underrated funny moment: visibly starting to see Loosey LaDuca/Jan-like cracks already starting to form in Plasma's psyche. And I didn't even hate the Tweedledee/Tweedledum look!
TV censorship watch: we're not censoring nipples at all anymore (good), and apparently cursing in Spanish is more permissible than it is in English (huh)?
The problem is though that the winner and the loser seemed incredibly clear. Nymphia's 3 outfits were great, and the 3D crinkled tie pieces were absolutely incredible. and while Hershii did inspire the honestly hilarious in spite of my misgivings with Mommie Dearest "I own 51% of this Chico's", she did not have a great night tonight. I understand her frustrations in Untucked though. I think I've said this before but RPDR is basically the only reality show where virtually every contestant can jumpstart an often quite well-paid entertainment career in its own cottage industry, and knowing you will likely be the first one to go home has to be devastating. She seemed very nice though and probably did have more to give and I wish her well.
I am struggling to remember all the other runways so I don't know what more to comment on with regards to that. I refuse to acknowledge gay use of the word "mother" so I was not thrilled with the number of people who picked "significant mothers" that are...not well known for being mothers. Salma Hayek? Audrey Hepburn? Lil Kim? But, sure, whatever, at least they are all actual mothers. But fucking Lady Gaga?? other than that I distinctly remember liking Sapphira's pumpkin stem hair and Xunami's cracked egg reveal.
I am glad I stuck around long enough in Untucked to see Plane Jane hilariously coming for Amanda for no reason. All of her fights feel basically no stakes because she appears to have no other point of view other than "being mean" so nobody takes any criticism from her personally or seriously and while at first I hated it but....in small doses it's pretty funny. However, underrated funny moment: visibly starting to see Loosey LaDuca/Jan-like cracks already starting to form in Plasma's psyche. And I didn't even hate the Tweedledee/Tweedledum look!
TV censorship watch: we're not censoring nipples at all anymore (good), and apparently cursing in Spanish is more permissible than it is in English (huh)?
I need the herd to be culled a bit more before I even start remembering who went home. Also I haven't been impressed by any of the lip syncs yet, and that's a bummer. Especially considering they had a freaking BEYONCE song.
Rough episode, for a couple reasons. I was working late and missed the first third of the episode, so I guess I missed the non-drama of Plasma getting stuck with the Barbra Streisand character, which I plainly do not care about. The RDR Live stuff was bad all across the board, though the "feminine mistake" joke about The Hilarious Ross Mathews did make me laugh. (Mhi'ya's "I have no idea who Cher is" Cher impression was of course the funniest part of the whole episode though.) Cher runways were generally really good. I would've had Q win the challenge, and I would not have put Mirage in the bottom just because the hair was slightly longer than it should have been. (??) Mirage's lip sync was really good too, aside from, well, that one thing, and I did feel genuinely heartbroken for her after her on stage breakdown. excited to see Amanda murder Plane Jane on live television next week.
Rough episode, for a couple reasons. I was working late and missed the first third of the episode, so I guess I missed the non-drama of Plasma getting stuck with the Barbra Streisand character, which I plainly do not care about. The RDR Live stuff was bad all across the board, though the "feminine mistake" joke about The Hilarious Ross Mathews did make me laugh. (Mhi'ya's "I have no idea who Cher is" Cher impression was of course the funniest part of the whole episode though.) Cher runways were generally really good. I would've had Q win the challenge, and I would not have put Mirage in the bottom just because the hair was slightly longer than it should have been. (??) Mirage's lip sync was really good too, aside from, well, that one thing, and I did feel genuinely heartbroken for her after her on stage breakdown. excited to see Amanda murder Plane Jane on live television next week.
I agree Mirage didn't deserve to be on the bottom. And I guess she agreed because she didn't study that song for even a minute lol.
Hope this season picks up soon.
ALSO, does anyone else watch on the MTV app? The commercials are UNREAL. I swear it's at least 30% as much as the actual episode. And I hate that it keeps pestering me that the MTV app will be no more next month, and to go over to P+ instead... when current RPDR isn't even on the P+ app! Annoying AF.
No, fortunately I'm able to use my brother in law's YouTube TV subscription exclusively just to watch this show lol. My only explanation for why it's not on any other streaming service is that MTV has to be singlehandedly reaping its annual budget from ad revenues from captive audiences at gay bars across the country.
The funny thing is I find these episodes incredibly frustrating, but seemingly not for the reasons everyone on Reddit or Twitter or whatever does. Let me start off with the big one off the top: contrary to apparently 95% of public opinion, I think that lipsync was basically an even match and that Amanda did not do dramatically better. However, again, I don't think Amanda should have been in the bottom at all just because RuPaul didn't get the look; I thought it was pretty obvious what the joke was, it could have maybe been slightly executed better, but Amanda did not explain it well at all. I think that was dumb, and it's dumb that we're getting zero closure on the Amanda/Plane (also the insistence that her first name is 'Plane' is delightfully stupid lmao) story. But arguably this should prove that there's less producer interference than people think!
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the bigger reason Amanda shouldn't have been in the bottom: this challenge should not have been judged in groups. While it is fascinating that RuPaul apparently has a song out called "ASMR Lover", that group was so dull and utterly carried by Nymphia, and even then I can't tell if I love or hate that she clearly was the brains behind the idea for them to all wear yellow just so she could do some more self-branding. Mhi'ya gets a pass for her dancing in spite of that wig, but Megami and Geneva did nothing, and beyond that, Megami's runway tonight was essentially just a slight wig and makeup change from being identical to her Lady Gaga look? What? I would have had Nymphia win this challenge (with bonus points for that fantastic runway) but it really should've been Megami or Geneva and Q in the bottom tonight. Two other notes. One, I think 10 years ago Xunami would've been read for looking super butch in that matador look, so that's an interesting sign of the times. And two, once again all these queens' rap verses are all fucking terrible! They all have identical flows, that flow is utter dogshit because they try and cram so many branding words into short lines that it sounds like a cluttered mess and doesn't allow any room for interesting vocal delivery! Problematic as they may have become, at least Nicki and Azealia (who are the two closest people in my mind that I can think of that these queens are trying to emulate, which is maybe giving them too much credit) did interesting things with their rapping at one point. But that doesn't matter since by and large I once again basically cannot understand what these queens are saying and do not give a shit.
Can we have Law Roach as permanent judge instead of “hilarious” Ross Matthews? Please and thank you.
I disagree here because I think Ross can provide good comedy critiques. However, I think he'd be better at giving technical fashion criticism than Style Superstar Carson Kressley, or....
...I hate to say it, Ts Madison, who looked absolutely beautiful this episode and last but continues to say almost nothing applicable with her critiques. But oh well. Two other notes on our judging: In continuing the great tradition of this show going out of its way to correct our pronunciation of celebrities' names, it's "La" Roach? Also, this is the first time I've ever seen Law Roach smiling and he has a very cute smile but wow he has really white teeth lol!
But overall I thought this was a really good episode and it felt nice to have our dumb drag TV show back to its old self again. This episode felt like a very old school Drag Race episode: although it was 'branded' as a 'branding' challenge, this was more or less a straightforward design challenge, which is fine! We don't need to reinvent the wheel constantly, and design is basically branding anyway. We got some lighthearted ribbing as everyone worked but still managed to hit some genuinely moving points for Plane and Q that finally let us get to see both of them as 3-dimensional human beings.
I felt the placements were generally correct this episode. I may have been a bit down on them in the past but I thought Megami and Morphine did a good job this week and I don't get why everyone was getting on Sapphira's case so much - there's only so many weeks you can have immunity in this competition! I'll let it slide since it was a branding challenge but once again I am so sick of Nymphia's constant yellow/banana thing, and I did actually like Plasma's outfit because I'm generally drawn to that Old Hollywood style but yeah the presentation was very off. I might have switched them but that wasn't going to happen lol. The only other I didn't like for my taste was Dawn's outfit but yeah it was very avant-garde and 'fashion' so there was no way anyone was going to touch that. I've also been down on Geneva but I also generally liked her outfit (though it didn't match the doll and yeah that was half the challenge blah blah blah) and her lipsync! Too bad this was a great lipsync song for a stunt queen to show off and Mhi'ya did exactly that. So long, Geneva, la diva más Necco Wafers All Over Your Skirt.
hey guys, I'm back! I'm alive! I'm commenting on Drag Race for once in the first free Friday night I have in forever! Spring has sprung, the season is almost over, and I'm..........not sure I have much left to say at this point! If you had told me a few weeks ago this would be the top 4, I would unhesitatingly have believed you, and mostly have been surprised Morphine lasted this long, but it's interesting to see how we get there.
As far as makeover challenge setups go, it's a good one. We have to get an obligatory tie in to the RPDR franchise elsewhere so they might as well do it like this. All of the dancers look roughly similar in terms of build age and face, and nobody has a stank-ass personality to make it not work. And, they're all dancers already so that part of the challenge barely matters! Wow! I kind of think Q should have won for having the most interesting outfit, but Lazy Susan (fine, great name) gave great face and fully embodied Plane Jane's, uh, stank-ass personality, so I have to begrudgingly hand it to her. Nymphia did fine, Sapphira was obviously the worst (and it's always fun to get a moment where RuPaul is pissed at a queen but won't say it) and jesus christ Morphine you needed to cover those shoulders what were you thinking!!!!!!!!
But we do get a great lipsync, thanks to Kelsea Ballerini's "Miss Me More", a song I never would've guessed we'd see in this show (also in my top 100 song list of the 2010s no less!). Appreciated Kelsea giving a standing ovation at the end with her borderline green screen realness pink jacket/glove combo. (This is not a read. It was so stupid how close that outfit matched the wallpaper. I loved it.)
Next week: I already have jacket envy of RuPaul's cool abstract black and white suit! He almost had me with the solid blue/leopard print shirt but I had to remind myself that looked kind of stupid.
didn't watch the finale (sorry too busy being busy on Friday nights!) but based on social media reactions it appears that people still really, really, really fucking hate Roxxxy Andrews because her friends picked her to go far in All-Stars 2 a whole 8 years ago so...sorry but that's really fucking stupid! I hope she wins now!
