Okay, well, it’s been an interesting experiment to see how things shake out, but it turns out if you pay a bunch of well-established queens to come on to a season of Drag Race and completely strip the format of any personal or professional consequences (no one gets eliminated, no one gets a real critique and no one wins anything for themselves), the results in each week’s challenge are naturally going to skew toward the mediocre. There are no stakes. Everyone’s just here for camera time in order to increase their booking fees, happy to funnel whatever dollars they can to their charity.
And sure, we get that a large part of the appeal of Drag Race All-Stars is to see some old faves again and watch them all do their thing. More than any other season of the franchise, this one supports our long-held belief that it’s better to see any Drag Race episode as a variety show first and a competition second. The thing is, this season is still structured like a competition, which means everyone is forced to walk around pantomiming a stress they don’t actually have. “I have to make RuPaul laugh,” said every queen, mildly and without concern. Or what?
The Snatch Game is always the most feared challenge in the competition because so many queens have crashed and burned on those sets while others gave some of the most memorable performances or delivered the most hilarious lines of their careers. We still laugh just thinking about Jinkx’s Judy Garland pulling out her own mic and asking “Is that my camera?”
Personally, we’re not the biggest fans of the Snatch Game of Love format because it divides the queens up and works so hard to prevent them from interacting fully with each other or even with the people asking the questions. Instead of the tiered desk setting, they’re all perched a little uncomfortably on stools, forced to face forward, and the use of any props winds up being extremely limited, all of which puts restraints on the performances. Basically, the best Snatch Game of Love performance in herstory would struggle to find placement on the best Snatch Game performances of all time.
We’re not too sure about the dress, but Angeria had Marla Gibbs’ look down cold and she came with an understanding of how to play her. The jokes weren’t exactly coming fast and furious and the “sassy southern Black woman” approach felt less and less like Marla Gibbs with each line, but she was funny and unruffled throughout.
The drag was cute and she had an understanding of her character, but only in the sense that her character is horny and has a speech impediment. She wasn’t a disaster – no one really was – but like most of the attempts, hers only produced a few moments of mild amusement. There’s just not enough of a person there.
We felt really bad for Shannel here. She’s the most rusty of the queens when it comes to returning to the competition (and the came in for some ridicule the last time she was here) which means she always seems to be on her back foot. She’d never done a Snatch Game before because that’s how long ago she first competed. As drag, her Liberace was impeccable. She looked and sounded exactly like him. Unfortunately, she only managed to land a few mild jokes.
Credit to Jorgeous for making a perfect choice for herself. We can’t think of another queen better suited to bringing Chi-Chi Rodriguez to life. We’d have thought she’d be sporting her pageant-winning look from the end of the movie, but that might’ve been too grandiose for the setting. The real issue is that she didn’t have any jokes. Like Angeria’s Marla, she just defaulted to “horny Latina” settings.
Vanjie is naturally funny, which makes her one of the few queens who can enter a Snatch Game without much of a game plan and still do alright for herself. The drag was pretty great and the “I’m on my pyramid” line killed.
If you *ahem* check the chapter on the Snatch Game in our book, you’ll see we noted that Ru often rewards impersonations not because they were precise or accurate or even well-delivered but because they were, to use her favorite compliment, stupid and had high energy. Nina’s take on Liberace certainly qualified, but we found so much of it to be awkward and repetitive. She wasn’t even doing Liberace at all, she was doing Paul Lynde. She seems to have thought she was doing a regular Snatch Game, because she brought too many props with her.
Classic example of getting the look down cold and doing absolutely no work on the character or jokes.
The reference was just classic enough to intrigue Ru and just stupid enough to delight her. The drag was fantastic and she walked onto that set with the character down cold. We can’t really remember any particularly biting or witty lines, but she was consistent and silly and she knew what she was doing. Of all the queens, she’s the only one who seems in it to win it.
Category Is: A Tail and Two Titties! ✌️ Which runway is your fave? ✨ #AllStars9 pic.twitter.com/F5Ar7grdLK
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) May 24, 2024
If nothing else, you can always rely on an All-Stars episode for some sickening drag and these bitches delivered.
Angeria’s look was almost shockingly good. We’re not used to seeing these elaborate conceptual costumes on her. Roxxxy’s Jessica/Roger Rabbit hybrid was cute, but we’re not sure the hybrid character was the best choice.
Shannel’s scorpion look was chaotic and overdesigned. Jorgeous’ concept was cute, but the costume was a little lumpy and unflattering.
The look was cute and funny, even if it did feel like she just tacked a scorpion tail onto an already existing drag look.
This was pretty spectacular, not to mention original.
When it comes to looks, these two simply aren’t going to be bested. Their costume money was extremely well spent. Plastique’s look is easily the best on the runway, as it is almost every week. Gottmik’s is conceptually powerful, visually striking, and political in that way that drag does best. As a personal statement, it’s one of the most stark and powerful the show’s ever featured.
Gottmik earned her top spot, but it felt like Nina got hers by default. It wasn’t quite as energetic as Nina’s but we’d have given the win to Angeria for this one. The lip sync was an odd one with weird low energy coming from both queens. Gottmik rallied and served up a nearly inarguable win, but she seemed wildly distracted by Nina’s shenanigans. Nina’s reveals would have been cute – the whole point to the joke (because so many fans refused to get it) is that the reveals themselves aren’t that interesting or surprising. It was a fun idea, but she really should have rehearsed it better because all she did was struggle with each reveal.
Gottmik got the scissors and gave Jorgeous the snip, for reasons that elude us, although maybe it’ll make more sense when Gottmik’s and Nina’s extra badges get rewarded.
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: Paramount Plus via Tom and Lorenzo, World of Wonder Productions, Inc./Paramount+]
Previous post:
DOCTOR WHO: “73 Yards” Next Post:
T LOunge for May 28th 2024
DOCTOR WHO: “73 Yards” Next Post:
T LOunge for May 28th 2024
-
DOCTOR WHO: “The Legend of Ruby Sunday”
-
RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE ALL STARS: Property Queens
-
DOCTOR WHO: “Rogue”
Please review our Community Guidelines before posting a comment. Thank you!
