Thus does RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s 16th season end: Not with a bang, but a weird format resulting in a win we didn’t want but can’t really argue against, either.
We’ll get to the semi-shocking results in a bit, but what really struck us about this finale was the change – and cheapening – of the format. If you recap a show for fifteen years, you’re going to wind up with a whole lot of complaints piling up. It’s been a while since we whined about the finale format, but we were pretty consistent over the years, listing all of the reasons why switching to a live show format in front of a large audience was jarring. Everyone changes their entire performing and speaking style instantly – the gestures get more grandiose, the speaking voices suddenly erupt from everyone’s diaphragms — leaving you with a stage full of queens that look and sound nothing like the ones you watched every week in the competition. In addition, staging a fake finale where every finalist is taped reacting to a win that then gets decided upon weeks later always robbed the moment of its emotion. And yet the alternative, attempted with this episode, was even worse.
They probably should have waited to unveil the eye-popping new main stage until this episode. The graphics almost sell the idea that the queens are performing on a grand stage instead of in the same studio they’ve spent all season. But every time the camera cut to the “crowd” of two dozen World of Wonder employees trying their best to look excited (accompanied by a sound effect indicating a roaring crowd of about three hundred times that many), we just cringed. It looked so low rent.
It was made even odder by the choice to direct everyone as if they really were on a stage, so you had moments like the judges yelling out their “critiques” as if they were speaking across a huge expanse instead of sitting in the exact same spot where they made their critiques all season, or Ru calling out to members of the audience who were only sitting about three feet away from him. There was just too much fuckery trying to make this look like the grand live show it was in previous seasons.
Like, the queens were clearly directed to look up and out when they came out on stage, but there’s no audience up there or out there, and no one, not even Ru, is good enough at pretending that there is one. The whole thing was very strange. Our initial dislike of the live finale format (we should say that we have since seen many finales where the format worked fine) was that it robbed the show of its intimacy, but we’d rather see a less personal large-scale live show than a weird hybrid format where everyone pretends to be less personal as if there were a large audience in front of them. Anyway: entrance looks: Sapphira slayed the shit out of this one. Plane offered very basic drag. We groaned at Nymphia’s banana, but it turned into a gorgeous look.
Aside from that pretty much fatal format choice, the rest of the finale worked just fine, although there seems to be less and less time allotted to the season’s eliminated queens with each finale. We certainly didn’t mind the tribute to the world’s greatest cis female drag queen Elvira, nor did we have any problem with Sasha Colby tearing up that stage with her ass. Ru always wanted to host a variety show in the old-school Carol Burnett mode and he’ll take any chance to play down the competitive aspects of his franchise so he can get his Cher on. Having said that, his opening number was an embarrassment. Mama, maybe it’s time to stop spilling.
Each queen was given an original song to lip sync and to their collective credit, the finalists all tore the shit out of that stage. This was when we, who have been rooting for our Philly sis Sapphira to bring the crown home to Cheesesteak Town, started worrying about Nymphia. She was never the strongest stage performer during the competition, but she was on fire here.
Plane Jane’s number wound up being a salute to her own mediocrity. Sorry, that came out harsher than we intended, but a whole song pointing out how limited her drag is almost feels like the producers set her up for third place. Her performance was pretty great, but this episode really drove home the limits of her finger-in-mouth, “I’m just a harmless hot bitch” routine. We enjoyed her this season and we think she earned her top three status, but she went as far as she can go.
We breathed a sigh of relief when Sapphira’s number started. The opera bit played to her strengths and lent the moment some insane drama, but she also managed to follow it up with her most kinetic and energetic performance yet. We were a bit concerned about the costume, however. Nymphia was clearly bringing her A++ looks game to that stage. This was no time to come off craftsy or home-sewn.
After quickly (and rightly) dispensing with Jane and awarding Xunami and Sapphira the show’s first double Miss Congeniality, Sapphira and Nymphia faced off for the final lip sync, to Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam.” Again, we were a bit concerned about Sapphira’s costume, which didn’t lend itself to the kind of dance work the song was going to require, nor did it look particularly well-suited to a reveal.
We hate to say it, but it was all over for our girl when Nymphia did her bubble tea reveal. It was dramatic, gorgeous, culturally significant and the crowd went nuts for it (even if she was missing some of the lyrics). Sapphira simply had no counter, and that was the most disappointing thing.
We don’t know if she thought she had it in the bag or what, but we’ve seen her look prettier and more fabulous on that stage and we’ve seen her give much better performances than that final lip sync. What was the point of the fangs? Girl, what were you doing up there?
Having said all that, we take nothing at all away from Nymphia’s win. She looked stunning all night and she ate with both of her performances. She played the game really well all season, exposed a bit of vulnerability right when the judges wanted to hear it, and hit the final lap as strong or stronger than she was when she walked in the door. It’s a powerful win for the Asian queer community and she fought off some tough contenders to get there. Condragulations to her.
Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life, a New York Times “New and Notable” pick, praised by The Washington Post “because the world needs authenticity in its stories,” and chosen as one of the Best Books of The Year by NPR is on sale wherever fine books are sold! It’s also available in Italian and Spanish language editions, darlings! Because we’re fabulous on an INTERNATIONAL level.
ALSO: We will be doing a talk and Q&A at the National Arts Club in New York during Pride, where the topic will be drag queens, Drag Race, and queer cultural heroes of history. The details are here. See you there!
[Photo Credit: MTV via Tom and Lorenzo]
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