In this latest installment of RuPaul’s Interminable All-Stars, the producers learn about puppy play and we may or may not have uttered the phrase “Oh fuck, it’s an improv challenge.”
But first: yadda yadda yadda. Blah blah blah. Points points points. As we noted before, the bracket format has been fun, but the third bracket has suffered both from a lack of chemistry among the queens, but mainly because the audience is tired of these same conversations playing out.
We’ll just say this, with the proviso that of course you can’t know the true personality of someone based on their reality television appearance: we thought Daya was giving personality disorder right from the jump and she sure didn’t do anything to disabuse us of that notion. We’re always somewhat pleasantly surprised when a queen makes it clear that she either doesn’t care or is unaware of how she’s coming across, but Daya’s haranguing of Alyssa over one fucking point got beyond tiresome.
In related news, Denali is clearly feeling some kind of way about the attention Ginger is getting, but it’s to her credit that she isn’t making an issue of it on camera.
We’re sorry, but this is an almost criminal use of Zane Phillips.
We don’t claim to know the guy (although he did send us a lovely message once, telling us he’s been reading us since high school and that can’t be a humblebrag because it made us feel ancient) but we’re pretty sure he’d have been ready, willing and able to go full-on leather puppy play and there was a time when this show would have let him do it.
Here is how everyone looked for the challenge:
We’re not going to rate their performances because we couldn’t sit through them. We’re just being honest here. We saw about 30% of each queen’s effort before moving on to the next and our limited exposure to them would have placed Ginger, Acid and Daya in the top, in that order. We’re not fans of improv even when it’s good, but we find it excruciating when it has that smug, wink-wink quality that literally everyone involved here found themselves doing.
Category Is: Paper Dolls! #AllStars10 is now streaming on @paramountplus pic.twitter.com/v51XNYxO3N
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) June 28, 2025
5/6 of the queens did an amazing job with this one, but the standouts for us were Denali and Acid Betty’s, both for being beautifully rendered and also original. Ginger’s was also quite gorgeous and witty and we liked Daya’s. We have no critique’s of Alyssa’s, although it looked the most papery of the costumes – except for Cynthia’s, of course. That’s just not acceptable. Even if we go with the excuse that the queens don’t all have huge costume budgets, that’s literally a Party City costume and it couldn’t have cost her more than 20 bucks. But the judges don’t offer true critiques on All-Stars and Cucu has some serious armor protecting her (her personality and backstory), so it didn’t hurt her in the long run.
We suppose some of the other queens might get bent out of shape that Ginger placed in the top again, but this one was inarguable. She was the only one who knew how to do improv. We think Daya got there because she’s giving drama queen to the producers, quite frankly. She was okay during the challenge, but we think Acid was loads better and we might even have accepted Denali in the top over her.
This is definitely the season where being a drama bitch pays off.
Of the three brackets, we think the third has the least likely semi-finalists. Ginger was a given, but we’d have put Denali and Acid in the slots under her. One thing’s for sure: Aja, Mistress and Daya in one room at the same time is going to be either highly entertaining or pure hell.
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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