As people who were documenting it at the time, let us tell you a little story about the early days of RuPaul’s Drag Race, when it was on a queer cable channel no one watched, shot in low definition on poorly lit sets, with some of the roughest-looking drag queens you ever set eyes on.
Circa 1882
It was dimly lit and unsure of what it even was, trying at first to offer a parody of the then-popular Project Runway and America’s Top Model. There were no boogers then; no back rolls or Party City wigs, no “Is the bus still running?” or death-defying lip syncs. No Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews or Carson Kressley; just Ru and Santino and Merle, trying to figure it out. There wasn’t even a Snatch Game. None of what we now consider to be essential to Drag Race was locked into the format yet.
What Drag Race had in spades was energy and hunger. Ru famously said at the close of the first episode that “We’re bringing drag back to where it belongs, at the very top.” In other words, Drag Race, as an entity, had a burning need to prove itself. Sure, it helped that the audience had no expectations and the competitors were coming into it completely cold, with no idea what to expect. Reality competitions always diminish when they get locked into their formats and the players come in with strategies. In many ways, it’s impossible for any show – reality competition or not – to keep that level up once it starts approaching its third decade on the air.
But that doesn’t excuse how lazy RuPaul’s Drag Race has become as entertainment. Ru seems mostly checked out from the proceedings, a robot spitting out platitudes and encouragement but at several arms’ lengths from the queens and the audience. Worse, the material that the queens are being given has declined dramatically in the last few years; terrible songs and incomprehensible sketches that they are more often than not forced to interpret without any coaching or directing. They used to bring in fashion photographers to teach them how to pose and now they just throw the shittiest scripts at them and expect them all to figure it out. It’s all so cheap. And the results are terrible every time.
We did a podcast last year about Project Runway and why we don’t want to recap it anymore (aside from just being completely tapped out on it): it’s because we realized that the show had no interest in finding, let alone nurturing the next great fashion designer. It had no interest in fashion at all. It morphed into a game show where impossible tasks are placed on contestants, the contestants melt down, and then a bunch of fashion experts yell at them for fucking up the impossible tasks they were given. Drag Race isn’t at that “yell at them for fucking up” stage and probably won’t ever get there given the fan base, but it’s definitely giving that late-stage vibe of not caring about the queens and not caring about the entertainment they’re putting out. It’s “Here’s a shitty challenge. Figure it out, then put on a gorgeous outfit and then we’ll send one of you home.” That’s all the show is now.
What makes it even more frustrating is that this cast is exactly the kind of cast Drag Race needs right now: a mish-mash of rough queens, polished queens and baby queens, all of whom are desperate to prove themselves. We felt terrible for them, watching them work so hard to figure out this material and then bomb so bad because Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner on their best days would have struggled through this unfunny crap.
And to compound the offense even further, poorly conceived challenges that produce absolutely no good work means whoever winds up in the bottom is there for largely arbitrary reasons. We’ll give Jane and Juicy some credit for being fairly competent in their portrayals, but it’s not like there was a wide gap in quality between the tops and the bottoms. Everyone was bad because the material was terrible and no one was directing them.
There’s also the extreme discomfort of watching unseasoned performers pretend that they’re playing to an audience that isn’t there. It never works. Given that they couldn’t even work in a couple of cutaways, we assume the judges weren’t even present when all of this was going on. Honestly, the RDR Live challenge is probably the worst of them and should be retired if they can’t hire decent writers and fill up an actual audience. It’s coming across more low rent than when the show was actually low rent. Don’t even get us started on Ru’s embarrassing lip syncing and stand-and-point choreo. Feh. Enough ranting. Let’s look at some drag queens.
Category Is: Animal Attraction! Which lewk are you going wild for? #DragRace pic.twitter.com/Mmu8Rw2CQd
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) January 17, 2026
Running through the safe girls: Discord’s albino alligator was an admirably bizarre choice with some genuinely weird touches, like the bag with her face on it. It wasn’t pretty, but it was interesting at least. The judges remain charmed by her walk. We know we’re going to sound like sour bitches, because Discord’s walk is pretty funny, but it’s also bad. There was a time when they would actually coach her on how to walk. Mia’s pink poodle was cute and we love how big and exuberant her drag is. Athena’s white barn owl was gorgeous, although we questioned the choice of wearing pants. It looked a little Elvis from the waist down. Nini’s poison dart frog look was a stunner. Tiger’s look was gorgeous, but her drag is getting very samey. Ciara’s chameleon was freakish, but honestly, given all the talk about her love of prosthetics, we were expecting more. Really didn’t get Myki’s cheetah-cowgirl thing. As for the tops and bottoms…
Mandy’s drag is conceptually interesting, but there’s an awkwardness to it. The skirt is gorgeous, but the mushrooms and embellishments on the end were so heavy that it destroyed any sense of drape. Like last week’s table, she wound up dragging it around. Darlene’s cow, like her performance, was wildly overpraised. It’s fine, but the cape makes no sense.
Briar’s swan isn’t a particularly fresh or interesting design, but it’s very pretty. Vita’s zebra was another stunner and the claw marks did a nice job of telling a story.
Jane’s macaw is gorgeous. She’s got the goods. Juicy’s pangolin was the best of the bunch, however; rightly praised to the rafters by the judges. That, combined with a pleasantly surprising competency in the sketch, gave her the win. We can’t say we have a problem with the choice, although we probably would have favored Jane in this one. 
Similarly, while we sort of understood the choice to send Mandy home, she kinda bodied that lip sync. Briar has more potential as a competitor, not just because her drag is better but she’s likely to provide more drama.
We didn’t really mind the outcome of the judging, mostly because the challenge failed to provide any stakes. Sure, give it to Juicy. Send Mandy home. Maybe hire some new writers and directors while you’re at it. And give Ru her vitamin shot.
Girl, if you ever thought we were going to stop plugging our book, you weren’t paying attention: 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 (like at this link)! It’s also available in Italian and Spanish language editions, darlings! Because we’re fabulous on an INTERNATIONAL level.
[Still Credit: MTV]
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