Drag Race RuCap: "Drag Queens for Change"

The Meek(s) shall inherit the Earth! Myki will get her revenge!!!

NICK TAYLOR: Cláudio, your assertion that the end of last week’s episode snapped the season into place has already bore fruit in the competition. On the one hand, this week’s winner and the eliminated queen feel in some way like RuPaul tipping the scales back from a Rate-A-Queen result she didn’t agree with. On the other, the judge’s choices were very correct, and the queen’s performances in the maxi challenge were almost uniformly strong, with one glaring exception. It’s hard to believe we’re not even halfway through this pack of queens, but the margin for error grows slimmer by the day. 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: I’ve either been blessed with Apollo’s gift or just spent too much time watching Drag Race franchises over the years, sinking into the depths of pattern recognition and reality TV cynicism…

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Drag Race RuCap: "The Rate-A-Queen Talent Show, Part 2"

The face of a proud Greek mother whose plans are falling into place.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Those Emmy losses to The Traitors have really done a number on the Drag Race producers and editors. Because this week, the entire episode felt like it should have been unfolding in a Scottish Castle rather than the WOW studios. In other words, it was juicy reality TV, but perhaps a bit less rewarding as a RuPaul’s Drag Race episode. For those, like me, who feel the series is at its best when embracing the form of a drag variety showcase, an hour that felt more about alliances and internal cast politics than about talent or drag pageantry is bound to leave one a tiny bit dissatisfied. At the same time, a pretty shapeless season suddenly slotted into place, narratives writing themselves into existence, arcs, heroes and villains, underdogs and whatnot. 

NICK TAYLOR: It’s fabulous character drama, and a great bit of comeuppance for all my bitching about the alliance shenanigans or whether the talent show needed to be two episodes. The queen’s choices really mattered! We got some fun drag from the runways, and Nini Coco would have trounced this group pretty handily if she’d performed this week, but everything whack about the final ratings felt like the end of Act One in a major way...

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Drag Race RuCap: "The Rate-A-Queen Talent Show, Part 1"

Nest week, on DRAG RACE, Isabella Rossellini will be suing Nini Coco for copyright infringement.

NICK TAYLOR: Fuck me, how long has it been since we got a lip sync this explosive this early in the season? Both those divas turned it, and the best queens in the talent show (not coincidentally, the three best lip sync battle performers we’ve seen this season!) made the peaks here worth celebrating. There's a lot of shenanigans leading up to it, and dear god, this better be the worst runway we’ll get all season. Why the fuck was it satin? And while I like shaking up the talent show from a premiere challenge, why not wait until there’s a small enough crowd to cram it into one episode? Not a necessarily great episode of Drag Race, but the Rate-A-Queen judging is fairly just, and it sticks the landing in a way the past two episodes haven’t. Next week’s results might even make this split episode format worth it somehow. Are we in the same boat, or are the valleys pulling you further down?

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Splitting an already reduced talent show into two episodes, without on-stage critiques to pad things out, makes this hour feel a tad insubstantial. Even so, it was a whole lot of fun because those girls were at the top of their game. Be it the lip sync, the Green Porno revival, the silliest strategizing this franchise has ever seen, they delivered the goods and then some…

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Drag Race RuCap: "Red Carpet Mash Up"

Law Roach is THAT GIRL! She is MOTHER!!! Just look at the material.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: After a couple of great first episodes, season 18 of RuPaul’s Drag Race seemed to fall off a cliff with the advent of its first comedy challenge. While this fourth installment still leaves much to be desired, it’s a marked improvement, full of drama and strong work by the queens. Sure, the judging’s still fucked and some of the conflict skewed nasty rather than entertaining, but it was better than that “RDR Live!” trainwreck. And, at least, this week, Law Roach added some needed sanity to the judges’ panel, delivering good if catty critiques, showing he’s getting better and better at this Drag Race gig. There really is no better critical eye for a challenge this focused on celebrity red carpet fashion, a refreshing spin on the team’s design challenge from DRUK season 2 that was a tad complicated but not nearly as frustrating as I initially assumed. Following my grumpiness last time, I’m ready to be the good cop to your bad, dear Nick.

NICK TAYLOR: What if we’re both on a similar wavelength?...

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Drag Race RuCap: “RDR Live Returns!”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves continue to follow and recap and despair over the new RuPaul’s Drag Race season…

Live, from Tuckahoe, it's RDR Live! And yes, that's a threat.

NICK TAYLOR: Well diva, here we are. Another week where this fun cast of queens did their level best with a very fun runway prompt and a new maxi challenge staple. Another week where Mandy Mango is improbably fucked over to save a presumptive frontrunner from potentially being sent home, only this time I found almost all of the judge’s critiques baffling as hell. When was the last time the show worked this hard to eliminate one of its contestants this early in the game? I mourn for Mandy, and really, I feel so gaslit by the last 15 minutes that an otherwise solid episode is retroactively rendered meaningless. If Ru’s not watching the challenges, I’m not sure why I should either.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Especially when those challenges are as desultory as RDR Live continues to be. Three weeks in, season 18 delivers its first truly bad episode, a trainwreck that’s only saved by the queens who do their level best to keep a sinking ship afloat…

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