Prepare yourselves for a recap only slightly shorter than the episode title! We have a long history of writing things like “This will be a very short recap” and then slinging 1800 words at you because we’re so damn opinionated about everything, but this time, we mean it for real: this will be the shortest recap in the herstory of T Lo recapping Drag Race.
We suspect we won’t need to convince you of the truth of that statement because the entire Drag Race production essentially took five this week. We want to say that an entire episode of just the queens fucking around and talking is entertaining enough, but it really wasn’t. We rarely admit to this sort of thing (because we almost never do it), but we fast-forwarded through huge chunks of this episode and we were still bored by it.
The issue with this episode had less to do with its lack of an actual challenge or performances and more to do with the inescapable feeling that they production was simply running out the clock because it had no more ideas for the season. So we got ten-plus minutes on a party game and then another 15 minutes on a mini-challenge that was really a main challenge with all of the time cut out of it.
It’s fun to see the queens forced to do quick drag and it’s fun to see non-queens given makeovers (both of which we’ve already seen this season), but it’s borderline mean to make a non-queen suffer through a quick drag challenge. The point of quick drag is to see how well a queen can make an ugly, sloppy look work for them. You put non-queens in quick drag and you’re just uglying up regular people for the camera. To be fair, the crew was all very game and it really was cute seeing them interact with the queens. It would have made a perfectly acceptable main challenge if everyone had been given the time.
After that, it was off to the increasingly meaningless exit interviews. A recap of every single one of them: “You’re so strong and amazing.” “I’ve been through so much.” “Yes, but you’re so strong and amazing.” “Thank you, Mama.”
Interspersed were some short, meaningless “rehearsal” segments that were clearly staged for the camera and didn’t involve any actual rehearsing (as if Vanjie would be mapping choreo in a blazer).
Then, there was one final twist that removes any remaining tension in the competition and we’re done! Come back next week when every queen gets ten badges, no one gets eliminated, and the Top Three gets turned into a Top Eight!
Meh. Total waste of time.
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.
[Photo Credit: Paramount Plus via Tom and Lorenzo]
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