Well, at least we tried something new. For much of this season, we’ve just been circling the drain. How many ways can one season of television not work? All-Stars 8’s answer seemed to be just one, and that one way was protracted over an entire season. The season has been an extended ode to Jimbo’s dominance without her ever faltering and the futile attempts by the other queens to catch up. It plodded along, slowly eliminating the competition without much incident or drama. The queens were mostly doing just okay, and few seemed to be motivated to the level that would cause any real pathos. Now, for the first time, this season has innovated, figuring out a new way to be mediocre.
I’m talking, of course, about having a competitive episode dedicated to the top three, bringing the final down to the top two. Drag Race has never done this before, but if there was any season to try it, it makes sense that it’s this one. As you continue along the stretch of any competition show, the goal is for the season to become more and more competitive with the queens who can’t handle the competition or don’t have a shot at winning winnowed down to a group of high-level performers who are handed increasingly difficult challenges and expected to knock them out of the park anyway. When you have a season like this one, where that group of high-level competitors is relatively small, and you need to fulfill an episode count, it makes sense not to bring back a queen (which they often do on All-Stars seasons) and instead opt to have that top group just continue to compete. I get it. Unfortunately, it didn’t bear out in the episode.
Part of the issue is that the makeovers just aren’t that exciting. Makeover challenges, as I wrote about in the season 15 recaps, are about two things: Being able to imbue your partner with the inspirational message of drag and having a distinct enough visual brand that your newfound “sister†is recognizably from your family. In recent years, the queens have been walking in with their makeover outfits already in tow, which in some ways is just a talented queen being prepared, but doesn’t necessarily make for good television. When they do that, we, as viewers, don’t get any insight into the queens’ creative processes; we watch them put on outfits. So instead, all of the attention gets put on personal transformations due to drag’s inherent inspirational value, which can either be incredible or pretty disappointing.
This week, the only queen forced to show us any part of her visual creative process is Jimbo, whose partner’s only goal is to be sexy. Jimbo works with the idea of “sexuality†in her act, but it’s such a heightened sexuality that it can’t really be construed as actually sexy. It’s interesting to watch her completely fold in response to her partner’s need to be sexy and create her most boring runways of the season in response. But because it, spoiler, is not a success story, it’s a disappointment to have that be the only moment of visual creation we get to see.
The challenge is to make over lesbians, which is something the show has done before, way back in season one of the original Drag Race. It’s not a bad idea for a challenge, combining different views on femininity and masculinity — the most interesting moments of the episode are when the lesbians talk about how they were denied access to masculinity in the same way the queens talk about being denied access to femininity growing up. But also … nobody really connects those dots? As the lesbian makeover subjects grew worried about stepping into femininity, I was surprised that nobody pointed out that drag is not the version of femininity that their mothers were thrusting upon them growing up. This is a queer femininity, a parody, a heightening. A conservative mind-set doesn’t like this version of femininity either. For all the show’s talk of the need for connection between lesbians and gay men, I wasn’t convinced that the connection was particularly interesting or at least as interesting as it could have and perhaps should have been.
Instead, we get the group talking through who is allowed to say “fag†and who is allowed to say “dyke.†Honestly, I found this conversation to be pretty tedious. I’d imagine the producers fed it to the contestants, and, as a way of connecting, this kind of litigation is so surface-level. Everyone will have different levels of comfortability — some gay men don’t even like to say or hear the word — and all it led to was inevitable platitudes about the need for connection. The much more powerful and interesting content came from the contestants’ personal connections. I loved hearing more about Kandy’s relationship with her butch mother, for example. That’s the kind of individualized moment that this challenge was designed to showcase. It’s not that I wanted more trauma (this show is never lacking for trauma), but I did want more of a sense of the specific relationship each member of the group had to the idea of gay-lesbian solidarity, especially since that solidarity was what the episode’s purported goal was.
When it comes to the makeovers themselves, I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the results. All of them are well done, but I wouldn’t say any particularly excited me. Kandy wins the challenge, and I think that’s right. I also think she lucked into having the star of the group. Her lesbian sister Angie, who transformed into Kookie Muse, is the most fun onstage, rarely looking at Kandy for guidance and generally having fun. Part of that can be attributed to Kandy, who was clearly able to imbue Kookie with some of the signature Kandy Muse “fuckem†attitude, but part of it is just that Angie is a more natural onstage presence. The makeover itself is gorgeous in terms of the head — the wig and makeup are gorg — but the dresses are all too classic makeover fare. They’re a little box so that a lot of body types can fit into them and they were clearly made by a costume designer prior to the show, which means Kandy didn’t have to do much creative work while in the competition. And if she did, or if she had other options and chose these to suit Angie, we didn’t see that process.
Jessica, I’m sorry to say, is a little hampered by a partner who is extremely sweet but not a drag natural. Jessica opts for a shorter shoe so her girl can walk easier, and she gets read for the shoe. But the bigger issue is that it doesn’t seem like a full transformation. Kitty Wild is looking at Jessica a lot during their walk down the runway, and Jessica couldn’t coach her into a fabulous runway walk. Making matters worse is that, while the look is super-competent, but it’s also not particularly exciting.
Jimbo tones herself down significantly for a makeover partner who wants sexy before anything else. Watching her decide on a look is the only time in the whole episode that we get to see someone work creatively, but the decision was the wrong one. Rather than just capitulating, it would have been much more valuable to watch Jimbo attempt to explain the freedom and value that comes from being a full clown. Instead, we just get the least Jimbo look we’ve seen Jimbo in all season and on a challenge where the goal is to induct someone into your drag family. For the first time, there’s no wit to Jimbo’s look and no wink. They’re just girls with bright hair and black dresses. I would not be able to pick this look out of a lineup as a Jimbo look, and, for this challenge in particular, that’s a problem.
Unsurprisingly, then, Kandy wins the challenge. But I have to ask — was it worth it? This challenge, I mean. Putting the top three through their paces for another episode just yielded mediocre results, which makes sending one of them home feel anticlimactic. Rather than a battle of the titans, this week felt like yet another example of putting the queens through their paces without much spectacle. When it comes down to Jimbo or Jessica going home, I was struck by two things: (1) I really didn’t want to see either of them leave, and (2) how the situation or the choice didn’t grip me. It’s nice to see the story line of Kandy and Jimbo’s potentially shaky alliance pay off, but it’s not necessarily thrilling TV because they’ve had so little drama between them once Heidi left. And we have not been shown Jessica’s relationship with either queen, so Kandy’s choice doesn’t carry much weight on the other side. For the first-ever competitive final-three episode, it’s just not epic enough.
Similarly not epic is the lip-sync, even though I’m absolutely thrilled by the choice of lip-sync assassin. Canada’s Drag Race’s season-one winner, Priyanka, is one of the biggest stars this franchise has ever discovered, and it’s really fun to see her interact with Ru for the first time. She brings a lot of fun to the lip-sync, even if it’s no match for her legitimately iconic “I Drove All Night†lip-sync from her original season. Put her on All Winners 2 ASAP. Still, the lip-sync has no stakes other than “Will Kandy win $10,000 or not?†because either way, given that the lipsticks will obviously tie, she’ll be deciding who goes home. Kandy ends up sending Jessica Wild home, which stinks, because I wanted to see what Jessica would do in the finale, and I also just wanted Jessica in the finale generally. Still, it would have been a catastrophe if Jimbo went home, so, in some ways, I’m glad? I just don’t love that either had to leave at all.
And also on Untucked…
• We spent a lot of time with the makeover subjects and a lot of time with Zooey Deschanel. It was fine. Side note: They definitely should have gotten an iconic lesbian to judge this episode, no? Was Rosie busy?