Last week, I complained that there was too much RuPaul’s Drag Race, and this week I’m going to complain that there’s not enough. Sorry, not sorry — I’m a greedy little Goldilocks who cannot be satisfied until I’ve got just the right amount of drag queen on my TV each week. Following back-to-back premiere episodes that were both one hour long, this rest of this season will be majorly condensed, the first since season nine with 45-minute episodes (each running an hour long with commercial breaks). Part of me looked forward to that change. After all, seasons four through six are the best the show has ever had, and they were 45 minutes. Maybe the running time is the secret to that quality. And yet, what was true during season nine is also true now: Drag Race can no longer edit 45-minute episodes.
If you cast your mind back to season nine (the season of Shea Coulee, Valentina, Sasha Velour, and many other icons), you may remember that it was when Drag Race moved from Logo to VH1, and you may also remember that it was a season completely dominated by “mirror chats†about serious subjects. During season nine, the editing would prioritize, for example, talking about homophobia and transphobia in Russia over showing true gems like the deleted scene of the queens singing about wanting a dick in their mouths. At the time, the choice to talk about trauma over displaying the stupid, sexual fun the queens were having felt like a play for the larger (read: straight) audiences that came with VH1, getting these new viewers to empathize with the queens through sadness rather than joy. When season ten came, the show ended up stretching to an hour and a half with commercials and, though it has never again reached the heights of the average Logo season, settled into a comfortable rhythm.
Now the show has moved to MTV, and the episodes are back down to 45 minutes to make room for The Real Friends of Weho!, a gay Real Housewives–style reality show premiering next week starring Drag Race judging alumni such as Todrick Hall and Brad Goreski. It’s been reported that MTV is looking to make Fridays a gay “destination night†by sticking Real Friends in between Drag Race and Untucked. I cannot imagine this will work as nobody I know is particularly thrilled by the idea of watching Todrick (especially after his disastrous stint on Celebrity Big Brother), but who knows! What I do know is that this, the inaugural 45-minute episode of season 15, feels rushed.
The episode opens and almost immediately feels off. We’re given no time with the cast doing the now-customary “Congrats to the winner†moment, instead heading directly into Amethyst and Robin Fierce talking about their former relationship. Reality competitions like Drag Race are predicated on replicating similar rhythms week after week — it’s why Ethel Cain tweeted, “rupauls drag race is cocomelon for adults.†These rhythms are comforting. Later in the episode, the filming scenes are quick and refuse to acknowledge success for any of the queens in favor of making them all seem terrible for the sake of suspense. The runway is shortened (not quite down to the quick hits they used to occasionally do in the Logo era but still short), and the deliberations are cut. I don’t know if they knew about the time change when filming the season, but 16 queens (now 15) is a bad match for this format. As we near a more reasonably sized cast each week, I’m hoping for better. For now, the rhythm is off.
But what of the actual content of the episode, you ask? It’s okay. After the relationship therapy, Ru wastes no time coming into the Werk Room and announcing the challenge: A self-written commercial advertising your version of Gay Heaven. Anetra and Amethyst, as the winners of last week’s challenge and lip sync, respectively, are given the opportunity to choose their five-person teams, leaving one group of five as the “leftovers.†It’s a fun way of picking teams, though with Anetra being a talented performer and then getting her first pick of four queens to go along with her, it’s not really a surprise when they dominate the week. The teams end up as:
• Team Anetra: Anetra, Luxx Noir London, Sasha Colby, Salina EsTitties, Marcia x3
• Team Amethyst: Amethyst, Loosey LaDuca, Aura Mayari, Spice, Princess Poppy
• Team Leftovers: Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Malaysia Babydoll Foxx, Jax, Robin Fierce, Sugar
Looking that over, I’m surprised by how much stronger Team Leftovers looks than Team Amethyst despite being, well, leftovers. Including herself, Amethyst ends up with three white twinks, and three people all playing ditzy is a recipe for “one note.†Team Leftovers isn’t great, certainly not the best of the episode, but it’s hard to say any of them are predisposed to ending up “forgettable,†which is the worst thing you can be on this show.
On Team Leftovers, Sugar is spouting ideas that seem to be universally agreed upon by the team as “bad,†prompting Jax to push Sugar to the side of the conversation, which seems universally agreed upon by the team as “rude.†Jax has a pretty rough go of it this week, but on the grand scale of drag-queen behavior, this seems not that bad to me. She ends up writing most of the script, which is not a great idea because she’s not funny, but I’m not sure there would have been a script at all without Jax stepping up, and Robin says as much on Untucked. Mistress says she decided to step back because of Jax dominating, but my read on the situation is that they got pretty far without any structure and that Mistress, who I’d imagine is the funniest of the group (along with having the best relationship with Sugar), could have pulled them together.
During filming, Sasha is shown briefly struggling with the pressure of her reputation, especially coupled with the fact that her group has chosen her to be “God.†She’s not ever shown succeeding, but later in the episode she’s funny in the video, and Michelle will call her a joy to direct, so the misadventures of Sasha Colby is just a misdirect. Moving forward, I would prefer coherent storytelling to a surprise success. The other two groups are shown bumbling along, and that bears out in the final product.
On the (too fast) runway, the category is Metallics. Sasha stands out as a silver phoenix, Loosey continues to show off killer shape skills, Luxx looks gorg, and I respond really well to Robin’s javelin look. Sugar and Spice continue to match, which I’m not sure is the best choice for their continued involvement in the competition, but neither has ended up on the top or bottom yet, so we don’t know if the judges agree. Salina dresses as a lamppost in a look that does not really exist on the spectrum of “good taste†or “bad taste†and instead just “is.†I love her. Princess Poppy continues to have one silhouette.
One innovation of this season I’m enjoying: The judges are trying a new method of psychologically torturing the girl with the weaponized BFA. This time, they’re doing it by mentioning Marcia x3’s lack of makeup literally every time they see her. “It looks like she listened to the makeup comment … but only on her nose,†Michelle says during Marcia x3’s runway, following a similar comment from Ru when Marcia x3 is picked for teams. This, inevitably, causes Marcia x3 to spiral during Untucked. Good job, show! Girls with BFAs going on Drag Race is like a mouse tap-dancing in front of a cat.
And now a quick rundown of the Heaven videos:
Team Anetra: Clearly the best with solid structure (a dead Salina being walked through the amenities of the Gay After by Sasha as God)Â that makes everybody look better. Sasha is great, and everybody else acquits themselves nicely.
Team Amethyst: Terrible with Loosey as Dolly as the default high point. They should have leaned more on Loosey like Team Anetra did with Sasha. Plus Loosey just burned through a solid impression pre–Snatch Game for you people — give her the starring role!
Team Leftovers: Also terrible, though I’m glad they had an actual idea (Fag Hag Heaven run by annoyed drag queens) even if they couldn’t execute it. Part of the reason I’m not too miffed about Sugar being pushed to the side is that she is not funny in this video, but I do give her credit for committing hard. That level of commitment could get both her and her sister farther than their raw skill sets would indicate.
On the runway, Ru ends up going with a “You worked as teams, but tonight you’ll be judged individually†approach, but I would have recommended just giving the win to Team Anetra, which clearly made the best video. Sasha, Luxx, and Loosey end up in the top. Luxx feels a little random, but I think it’s a clear case of “We want to establish early on that we like this queen†rather than this performance being an individual standout. Sasha wins, as is right.
Amethyst, Princess Poppy, and Jax are bottoms with Amethyst being told that she wasn’t funny and that she contours her nose too dark, Poppy being told she was forgettable, and Jax being told that she needs to work on her looks (bad proportionizing, bad makeup, and a busted wig in the challenge) and that she didn’t speak enough in the video. Jax ends up safe, which is no surprise to me as she’s the only one of the three who has a distinct POV to her drag. Last week, I said Jax was my winner pick. That is not true any longer (betting against Sasha, who proved she can be funny this week, seems foolhardy), but I do think she’s going to last a while in this competition. Most of the judges’ critiques for her are things that can be learned, and the critiques for Amethyst and Poppy are right but also difficult to fix in a matter of weeks.
Amethyst and Poppy lip-sync to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,†and the show works overtime to convince us of Amethyst’s eventual win — beginning with Salina intoning, “Bitch! Diana Ross is like RuPaul’s idol. You can’t mess this up.†Apparently knowing this, Amethyst plays the song straight, while Poppy tries to show off her sense of humor. The editors do the thing where every time Poppy does something funny, they cut to a displeased RuPaul. If I were at the club, I would rather see Poppy’s lip sync, but this show has always been “RuPaul’s show, RuPaul’s rules,†and RuPaul holds Diana Ross sacred. So Poppy gives the more exciting lip sync and still goes home. Such is this show.
Also on Untucked …
• Untucked is fine. Maren Morris comes backstage, and it is clear that none of these queens has heard a lick of her music. I maintain that queens talking to one another is consistently more interesting than queens talking to celebrities. Poppy is pretty funny in Untucked in a manic way while also saying that if she goes home she’s fine with it. Watching Untucked, I was struck by the fact that Poppy is probably the person in the cast I’d enjoy a brunch with the most — yet another indicator she is not cut out for this room of (said with love) narcissists.
• Malaysia and Mistress share their stories regarding their upbringings and Christianity over in the Trauma Makeup Corner. I’m of the opinion that the show siloing off these conversations to the same portion of the episode each week, with the same beats and the same music, dulls their impact by rendering all the queens’ stories virtually indistinguishable from one another’s.
• Next week … 14 queens doing Snatch Game in 45 minutes. I assume they will be split into groups, but I also assume this episode will be the thing that kills me.