RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE: Good Morning Bitches

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The producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race clearly didn’t put much effort into this episode, so we’re going to return the favor. Short recap! Then we can all get back to our baskets of candy.

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Sorry to be blunt bitches — HAHA JUST KIDDING — but every scene with these four talking about their journeys and blahblahblah had such a weird vibe because we couldn’t escape the feeling that the actual top four was waiting just off camera. To be clear, Jane aside, we don’t necessarily think the judges made too many bad calls this season, nor do we think there’s some quartet of much more deserving queens who should be here. But we’re sorry, folks. The overwhelming vibe going into this finale is “mid.”

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That’s mean of us, we know. We’ve noted all season that this group of queens wasn’t exactly stacked with potential superstars, but that they were fairly consistent in their work across the board. That’s still true. A vibe like that makes for a somewhat pleasant and entertaining season, but it leaves the finale without any real stakes or potential drama to it. Myki, Nini, Juicy and Darlene are all talented queens with lovely personalities. But as a foursome, they’re not particularly exciting and we can’t say we have clear idea of who should win or who’s going to win.

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The exit interviews were full of the usual “I’m strong/I’m vulnerable/hear my story/feel my triumph” platitudes and pronouncements. This portion of the competition was always pretty fake, but everyone is just going through the motions at this point, saying the catch phrases that will trigger a response from Ru. The AI artwork was weird.

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At this stage in the competition, we shouldn’t be getting a “We built a set but you bitches are on your own” challenge. Sure, you could argue that putting the entire thing in the hands of the queens was a way of showing what they can do, but goddamn, these scenes were painful to sit through. We want Drag Race to put these queens through their paces, but we also want episodes that we don’t have to be restrained from fast-forwarding through.

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Having said that, the queens were fine. Not fantastic, but not a disaster either. The whole season’s been like that. Myki and Darlene were clearly the better team. The cutaways to Ross were the weirdest parts of this challenge because it seemed pretty obvious they were shot long after the queens left the set.

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Credit where it’s due: they all brought their A game to the final runway, as they should. They couldn’t have known that Teyana Taylor would be the judge, but they all wound up serving the exact kind of looks she loves the most.

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The one surprise in the entire episode was how the lip sync shook out. Nini was at a distinct disadvantage because of her costume. Juicy is better suited to the song and her choreo-based style would seem to have been the deciding factor, but there’s a point at which all the flipping and dipping feels like tricks rather than a real connection to the material. We can’t really say which one of them was more deserving, but Juicy had gone to that well a lot of times already.

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She’s sweet, pretty, and worked really hard. She’s a good drag queen and she probably should be in the final, if only because the remaining three are less dynamic performers.

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[Still Credit: MTV]

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