New challenges unexpectedly appear! And promptly shut our whore mouths!
We’ve spent years bitching and moaning that Drag Race desperately needed to shake up its format and introduce newer, weirder, more unexpected challenges for the queens to execute. In our opinion, the competition got stale once every queen started walking through the door knowing ahead of time that she’d be doing a roast, a Snatch, a ball, a reading challenge, a Rusical, a DIY drag challenge, etc.
So when Ru tasked the queens with a mini-challenge combining Mad Libs and the Library, with results that yielded some of the funniest lines of the season, we clapped our hands with glee. We got the impression that even Ru was surprised by how funny some of the respnses were. After that, things got a little dicey.
We miss the days when the Pit Crew was far more of a presence on this show. Not just because they’re fun to look at, but because there’s always been a long tradition of drag queens and semi-naked boys performing together and we miss the show celebrating that dynamic. We’re not sure why we see so little of them anymore, but we think it’s been to the show’s detriment.
Anyway, we were even more intrigued when another new challenge was unveiled based on The Vagina Monologues (because Drag Race will always be a timely show, so long as the time is thirty years ago). The queens paired themselves off after each of them received a writing prompt and were promptly informed that each partner will be required to interpret the other’s monologue through interpretive dance.
Honestly, it was a pretty goofy/funny idea on paper, no doubt fueled by the various attempts at spoken-word and interpretive dance in the talent show challenge over the years. We were ready for some creative, interesting takes and excited to see what the queens might do with a challenge they never expected.
As we said, our whore mouths were shut. There were only six queens competing, but it felt like sitting through one of those first-week challenges with sixteen queens, half of whom clearly need to go home immediately. It was interminable. The problem wasn’t that these queens were bad. If anything, they were all admirably smooth in their deliveries. It’s just that it was all so po-faced and serious. It might not be fair to say so, but we got the impression (from the editing, admittedly) that a lot of the queens in the Werk Room were looking at Suzie to see how to do it and bless her heart, that theater queen is a little full of herself, which means all of the monologues had that same head-held-high, “I’m still here” theater queen delivery, which Ru absolutely HATES.
As Ru rightly noted, very few of them actually dragged it up and made it stupid. Almost all of them played it straight, you’ll pardon the expression. As we see it, a challenge like this could work really well for Drag Race and yield funny, entertaining, Drag Race-worthy results, but there were two problems with the setup.
We hope this doesn’t sound condescending, but when you ask a bunch of queens in their twenties to write a meaningful monologue about something that happened in their life, their youth is going to inevitably have them settling on dramas such as “I flunked a spelling bee,” “Someone was mean to me in high school,” “Someone was mean to me online,” and “I came out.” Every once in a while, a biography-related challenge will yield a truly interesting story, but you have to have that combination of a colorful or painful background and the ability to write about it effectively.
The judges seemed legitimately surprised by how serious most of the monologues were, but we tend to think those costumes – which don’t exactly lend themselves to wacky interpretations or drag stupidity – were part of the problem, along with the fact that no one actually told the queens that they were supposed to make it all funny and dumb. To Onya and Lexi’s credit, they delivered. Onya is a superb stage performer who delivered her monologue beautifully and Lexi is a natural physical clown who couldn’t help but make the accompanying dance a spotlight grabber. When they switched places, they weren’t as strong, but they were both better than the other performances.
To commemorate years of the Ugliest Dress Ever… Category Is: Ugliest Dress Ever! Which lewk gets the golden boot? #DragRace pic.twitter.com/d0MkLcbYpB
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) March 22, 2025
We were so confused by the runway results. For an ugly dress contest, it seemed like half of them weren’t ugly and half of them weren’t dresses.
We think if you asked random people to describe what Suzie’s wearing, the majority would use the word “costume” rather than “dress.” We have to admit we laughed when Michelle seemed a little put out that Jewels would consider her ’80s prom dress to be ugly, although we kind of agreed with her. Being out of style isn’t the same thing as being ugly. It’s not a great dress, but it doesn’t come off like a deliberately ugly one.
Again, would anyone looking at Onya describe her as a person wearing a dress? We loved Lexi’s look, but it’s another one that’s less about being objectively ugly and more about what the wearer would most hate to have to wear. This is the most covered up she’s been all season. To her, that’s ugly.
Sam wore a dress that’s not ugly. Lana wore a dress that’s already walked that runway and we can’t understand why she thought that was a good idea.
Well-deserved on both their parts. They each brought out something good in the other one. In related news, it was gratifying to see all of the queens realize at the same time that Onya has always been the frontrunner.
Sam and Lana wound up in the bottom, but we would have put Suzie there over Sam. It seems the judging was team-based this time. We did NOT expect to see the most epic lip sync of the season to come down to these two, but they both delivered beautifully. In fact, we really thought Ru was going to do a double-save to go with the double-win.
She’s sweet, but like a lot of the really young queens who come on the show, she’s just a little unformed. She needs time and seasoning, but if nothing else, she got to sashay away serving up sickening body the whole way and that’s not nothing.
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: MTV via Tom and Lorenzo]
Previous post:
Has SEVERANCE Actually Made its Core Argument? Next Post:
Cast of SEVERANCE at the 2025 PaleyFest LA
Has SEVERANCE Actually Made its Core Argument? Next Post:
Cast of SEVERANCE at the 2025 PaleyFest LA
-
Pop Style Opinionfest: HOUSE OF GUINNESS & Happy Birthday ROCKY HORROR
-
MTV Video Music Awards 2025 Red Carpet Rundown
-
MTV Video Music Awards 2025 Style File: Ariana Grande in Fendi, Steve O Smith, Tamara...
Please review our Community Guidelines before posting a comment. Thank you!
