snakenax

It will be interesting to see the trajectory of Violet's career. Tyra was a lame duck look winner too.. but IME she's still extraordinarily popular among black gay men(and if you look at the show, the more pageanty/look queens are often latino/black and Southern because those are where that is really popular). Violet.. i'm just not sure if she has the same built in audience and unless she learns how to speak to people i'm not sure she can grow very much, because difficulty speaking without sounding rude, insensitive or dismissive(even in written interviews) is IMO her biggest hurdle to get over if she wants to expand her skills to hosting and other things that actually bring in money.

So I guess we officially have Tyra Sanchez 2.0 as the winner.

Given that Alaska's current style is all about breaking the illusion, big messy obvious wigs, make up that deliberately doesn't work to paint a realistic face etc I think the obvious breastplate is completely in keeping with it. As seen with his Wintour persona he can do that when he wants to, but the Alaska persona is all about not doing that.

Miss Fame in the show complains their outfit was off the rack.

I think Pearl is hot for a Drag Race contestant, but only mildly above average for the general public and waaaay below your average model/actor/singer(let alone a specifically hunky one). And i'm not really sure i'd call him the hottest Drag Race contestant, though probably in the top five(Milk, PhiPhi, Willam and Ivy being good contenders to beat him, especially since all of them have better bodies).

Fake production bullshit, Ginger can sew, and pretty well from the look of her kitty outfit. She can certainly sew better than Pearl from what we're shown(Kennedy can sew as well, just like Detox her questionable level of taste hinders her when she's creating). Admittedly, none of the challenges this season challenge people much on look creation, since there were only three design challenges and one was a nude illusion that was 90% nude body suits, one was heavily constrained by the conjoined concept and the 'Ball' involved only designing one actual look out of what is frankly shit material.

If Colton Haynes had left for Arrow while season 2 was still filming, rather than shortly before season 3 was set to film, i'm pretty sure he would have died as well. Crystal Reed specifically asked for her character to die.

My favorite line of the episode was Sharon's 'Girl, we all hate Michelle Visage. We just don't say it with cameras around.'.

Damphair has technically already been cast, he makes a short appearance in season 2 baptizing Theon. Like Kevan Lannister, they could just bring the actor they already have back to play him.

A working drag queen? Oh hell no. A working drag queen is, despite what this show often pretends when it's being more of a transvestite beauty contest than a drag competition, 90% comedy(rolling hosting, funny lip syncs and other duties where you need to be quickwitted and humorous into it) and 9.9% performance art, the 'fashion queens' are all trying to squeeze into that fairly unprofitable .01% left behind. Drag Race has done a lot to make drag more profitable and accessable than before.. but real world drag now is still pretty much the same thing it was before Drag Race. Put simple, if you can't host, do comedy or really rock a performance you'll spend your entire career as the warm up act for people who can(It's too bad the show never really highlights hosting skills, since from what the queens I know say, hosting is where the money is at). Of course some of these people are questionable as 'working drag queens' go, Pearl is pretty much just club kid and Fame is a Youtube celebrity for makeup tutorials.

Kennedy has definitely had some huge stinkers, but I think her look in this episode and the Snatch Game are probably top 5 of the season and among the best we've ever seen pageant girls put out. Like a lot of the pageant girls on the show, she was extremely hit or miss in looks. But yeah, Katya was definitely the most versatile in her styling, even if she had a strong pull towards what I can only call 'whore chic'. Overall I wish if everyone was going to be some repetitive this year on the runway, they would at least remember that Bianca looks were flawless despite the repetition.

I think Ginger is good at communicating with her aesthetic.. it's just not a very hip or modern aesthetic and it's pretty limited, as it's largely built around the Hairspray aesthetic and doesn't really explore much outside that field(which is why I suspect a John Waters episode means they were always pulling for a Ginger win). But she's good at pulling that look off and knows how to make it work for her. Which is true of most of the queens this season, variety just hasn't been a strong suit of any of them. At least for me, I found the 100th cinched corset lingerie look of Violet just as boring as Ginger's 100th big hair '50s inspired dress or Pearl's 100th garter belt and panty look or Miss Fame's 100th simple gown or Max's 100th old Hollywood glam or Jaidynn's 100th bodysuit with a choker etc. No one this season really managed to wow me with runway, both because of a strong lack of variety and because none of them know how to properly walk a runway.

What a boring season. The only final runway look I found noteworthy was Kennedy's, Ginger's was IMO one of the worst looks she has had all season(it looked to fit really poorly, especially in the lip sync), Violet's just looked like a worse version of Raja's amazing final runway look in season 3 and Pearl's was also quite possible the worst look she's put out on the runway, and what is the point of all that draping material if you do nothing with it and throw it away for the lip sync? The music video portion was embarrassing even by the low standards of the music video finales. The acting portion was just god awful and nobody shined in it, which is really sad because the acting portion of the finale was a highlight of the last three seasons. I fastforwarded through the Ru talks because they've always been boring, i don't expect that to change now. The final lip sync was pretty much what I expect of the finale lip sync: really boring and low energy to a song that is hard to perform to. Sharon Needles is IMO the only one to really pull off being notable in the finale lip sync.

But she still draws on breasts and uses clearly drag make up in clearly drag make up ways. Her style is draglesque, which tends to lean towards androgyny and played up glitz and make up with show girl/fetish/pin up/vintage styling. And she is really good at it. Though if she wanted to do fishy, she could easily, since the fishiest queens are often those that could pass for women simple by wearing women's clothes and I could easily see Violet doing that, not quite to the level of Kenya, Stacy, Jade or Tatiana.

Though that really isn't uncommon, IMO. Most seasons have had a baby queen getting graded on a curve because of 'improvement', deliberately to keep them in the game against stronger queens. Just off the top of my head you have Tatiana, PhiPhi, Shangela and Adore as well. Though admittedly, Pearl doesn't have the strong personality of any of them or the reserves of talent Shangela and Adore had. She isn't totally psycho like PhiPhi which is a nice benefit though.

It is interesting how things change when it comes to 'look drag'. Just two seasons ago it was all about being fishy, that is looking like a real women with as few of the telltale signs of drag as possible, and even last season spent a lot of time crowing on about fish. Now the look queens pancake on huge amounts of obvious make up, to Milk levels in the case of Pearl, and draw on breasts. Actually this might be the first season with no fishy queens at all.

I don't really see it, they seem pretty standard of the more experienced and draggedy queens the show has had. Like I could see most of their shade coming out of the mouth of Raja or Raven or Alexis or Sharon or Alaska or Willam or Alyssa etc. Heck, even some of the queens known for being nice were pretty damn shady when they felt like it, like Latrice. It's part of the character of the culture. Now admittedly this is the first season where reading and throwing shade seem foreign to most of the contestants, but i'd call that a weakness in their drag resume rather than a indictment of those who can perform.

Favorite was 2, though 3B comes close, least favorite was season 4(it felt like a season that had to be written, cast and filmed within two months because basically every script and idea could have used a couple more passes at least).

Yeah, I thought she did quite well, too. The 'put my mouth to the words and portray them' is really meaningful with a strong song with a lot of power to it.. but Roar is pure mediocre mush with a good beat. Dancing to the beat and playing up her dancer schtick was really the only good way to approach it.

I could see Pearl or Violet as warm up acts, they're still underbaked so I can't really see them as strong headliners(especially with their limited comedy and lip sync skills, since despite what RPDR lets people think actual drag business is 99% those two with comedy being the biggest one). Kennedy is not likely to expand much out of her current circuit, but her popularity will likely sharply increase within it and her booking fees accordingly. Ginger though will likely go on to be really big she was already a skilled performer with a lot of experience before the show and she'll likely become a new fixture of the WoW tours.

Well the normal routes for shaking things up for a competition reality show are: All stars(and variations thereof, like mix of veterans and newbies or all villains etc), more gimmicks(multiple returning contestants, permanent teams, sudden death eliminations) and changing up the kinds of contestants(maybe a all baby drag season etc). Whatever they do, I hope it works. Because I previously thought Drag Race was one of those reality shows where the process and formula of it could beat even the worst group of contestants, like the Amazing Race or Face Off, but instead it turns out that it's much closer to Top Chef: without the right mix of technical skill and personalities and challenges that allow the expression of both it's nigh unwatchable.

So is this the drag ball this season? If so, i'm disappointed. Only two categories instead of three and very limited ones that didn't allow a lot of creativity or showing off one's designing skills. And i'm guessing the Siamese Twins episode was the Drag Baby episode, though i'm not going to cry too much about that one since the Drag Baby episodes are usually hot messes. So are we having another four person finale next episode or are they doing another main challenge before the finale?

I think the main reason Katya isn't going to win is that she makes me think of Milk, that is someone who's drag isn't really the kind of safer, tamer, mainstream drag Drag Race is looking for but forgot to self censor the way Alaska, Detox, Willam, Sharon and even Bianca did. Which is part of why I love her, but against Ginger I don't see her making it(this is also why I think Violet could make top 3 but definitely won't win, 'fetish burlesque' while overall a bit normative in general drag is more high sexed than Drag Race likes to go).

This is my overall feel of all the look queens this season, just so much old Hollywood glam mixed with burlesque it all just blurs together into one boredom of lace and corsets and garters and lingerie. The look queens of past seasons tended to have a much stronger versatility in what they brought, from Raja's variety of living art to Trinity doing pageant gown to carnivale to flower child to alien princess to Sharon Needles going in wildly different directions every episode to Alyssa's absolute insanity. Which I guess is a general part of the well.. underbaked feeling, these people are look queens who haven't worked out the kinks in their style and figured out their art yet. Pearls knows he wants to be in all white with heavy clown face on, i'm just not sure he's figured out how that translates to something more and the best way to work it. Though I kind of guffaw at Pearl or Fame calling themselves 'fashion' queens. They aren't neeeeeearly genderfuck enough to fit into the category. And they need to learn how to walk a damn runway. What happened this season that nobody knows how to walk a runway?

I think if judged solo, Kennedy would have had a strong chance of winning because she was by far the best dancer(though judging a duet singularly is itself a messy prospect, since most of it comes to how well the two work in tandem). But Trixie was no where near the top, at best she would have been saved from the bottom two if they thought Pearl did worse.