RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE ALL STARS: Screen Queens

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The queens were tasked with creating their own TV series trailers in this season’s acting challenge, but first they had to faux-fuck the Pit Crew. We believe in getting right to the point ’round these parts.

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Did we lie? We’ve seen some grumblings about the Pit Crew over the years, the most recent one being that they’re somehow being exploited or sidelined because they don’t get to speak or tell us about themselves. That is, of course, the entire point to them; not just because of what they embody, but also because it would be dumb to center the voices of muscular cis men in a show that’s entirely devoted to the gender nonconforming. Our favorite chapter of Legendary Children (possibly because we had to research a century of homoerotic imagery in order to write it) is the one that explains the history behind the Pit Crew and how they evoke the image of the historic gay male beauty ideal. That’s why they’re mostly naked and greased up in every one of their appearances.

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They’re portraying the dominant sexual fantasy figure for men who are attracted to men. They’re not “everymen.” They’re not supposed to be. We’ve seen some calls for body diversity among the Pit Crew and some versions of Drag Race have committed to that idea, but we always appreciated that the show was more or less paying homage to one of the central images of drag: a queen surrounded by semi-naked muscle boys. It’s an image you’ll find in promotional art for drag shows going back 70 years, and it was a practice largely lifted from the cabaret acts of drag queen inspirations Mae West and Jayne Mansfield, who similarly employed bodybuilders as set dressing, although it also has its roots in the gay bar scene, where drag acts and go go boys were the main attractions. It’s an image you’ll see in every single Pride parade in existence. And when Drag Race, which has become more and more watered down over the years, gives us a scene like this one, it feels like the show remembering just how gay it’s supposed to be. We don’t see how anyone can watch Bryce or Bruno in a scene like this and think they’re silently suffering through it. And while we’d never argue against injecting more body diversity into Drag Race, we like that the franchise has continued to center the imagery of queer male desire.

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The balloon fucks determined the teams, which then led to the usual “How am I going to work with/make my voice heard/not get thrown under the bus by these bitches?” Not much came from them, because most of these girls know that getting into major fights on camera can actually hurt their careers. It’s also historically not a good sign for any team in any challenge. Everyone knows the rules and the pitfalls by now. Even so, Kandy got a little red hot with her teammates and it felt like Darienne was trying way too hard to be impressive and in control, aware of how much she’s floundering in the competition.

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Darienne’s concept for a show took its cues from Lost, which didn’t strike us as the most timely of inspirations, but given how stale the pop culture references tend to be on this show, it probably didn’t hurt them much.

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What did hurt them was the fact that the concept of a mysterious island where dead celebrities live was a little too complicated to get across in a trailer. Performance-wise, they were all fine and fully committed to the bit. While we can understand why they wound up in the bottom, they actually had the least cliched and most developed concept, even if it was a little muddy in its execution.

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Once again, we have to point out that, in an All-Stars season, the differences between the worst and the best of each week tend to be negligible. Sure, Jimbo was funny and gave her murderous nerdgirl everything she had, but the concept of a Mean Girls-style parody is such a stale cliche at this point.

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Not that we’re expecting shockingly creative new takes, but even these queens realized that a high school parody had been done too many times on Drag Race already. Jessica and Kandy were fine, but they didn’t look anything like high schoolers and we honestly can’t remember one joke or line from this sketch. It was all about Jimbo eating the scenery.

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We’re still not sure what Kahanna, LaLa and Heidi were trying to do with this one. It was about a … magic pair of tucking panties? Something like that.

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We’d say it was smart of them to just let Kahanna stand there and be pretty while LaLa and Heidi did all of the heavy lifting. Again, playing a busted-ass drag queen in a comedy sketch is something of a cliche on Drag Race, but we really have to hand it to Heidi for finding a way to do it that felt original and uniquely her. We probably would have given her the win over Jimbo, although they both took stock Drag Race characters and managed to make them entirely their own. Even so, we laugh just looking at Heidi here.

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The runway category was “Ass the World Turns,” which gave the queens free rein to display their best padding, if not their actual asses.

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We’ve really got to hand it to Jaymes. She’s clearly here to show people that she’s more than just a ditzy blonde stock character and she’s pulling it off. This was an unexpected flex from her. Darienne really wants to be a body queen this season, and we’re fully supportive of that, but we don’t think her costumes are particularly flattering to her. Alexis’ bridal ass was cute and sassy, but it wasn’t a very interesting costume.

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Kandy’s look was amazing. Our only issue was that the legs and ass were really wrinkled when she walked. Jessica went for a relatively simple “look at my booty” look, which was fine, but not one of her better efforts. Jimbo’s ass tits were hilarious and we loved her whole look.

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Heidi’s ass take was extremely clever and vaguely disturbing. We wonder what the line is that separates doing drag from being a furry. Wherever it’s located, Heidi is straddling it with this one. The bodysuit could’ve been a bit more fabulous. Kahanna served beauty and a little bit of camp. LaLa’s look was okay, although we really couldn’t tell if the brown back was meant to mimic her skin tone or if she was wearing half-chaps.

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Jimbo is clearly Ru’s pet, to Heidi’s consternation. She racked up another win. Darienne and Jaymes wound up on the bottom. We can sort of see why they’d place Darienne there (helped considerably by Alexis eagerly throwing her under the bus), but we’re not sure why Jaymes wound up there.

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They brought back Shannel from season one and she was kind enough to dress like it’s 2009 for the occasion. It was a pretty lackluster lip sync and we blame Jimbo for that one. She had the look down, she had the best possible song chosen for her (Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”) and… she did nothing with it. It seems strange to us that a clown queen can’t figure out how to apply those skills to her lip syncing, but she always seems completely disconnected from the song.

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Shannel won the lip sync and revealed that the queens had chosen Darienne, which wasn’t exactly a surprise since so many of them had chosen her for last week’s elimination. She’s a talented queen, but she seemed pretty unsteady in her time here. We would imagine that a 200-lb weight loss probably requires a drag queen to completely rethink her approach to her art and we got the impression that she just hasn’t worked out who the new Darienne is yet.

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 2020 by NPR is on sale wherever fine books are sold!

[Photo Credit: Paramount Plus via Tom and Lorenzo]

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