zenithwit

Good point about the seemingly large number of contestants who are stylists and not actually designers. Makes you wonder about the talent pool for this show - or that the producers casted for drama instead of talent.

I've watched the first few episodes of this and honestly... it's not great. The designs have been meh, the runway presentations have been confusing and the contestants seem more interested in petty drama than actually producing good work. This is all unfortunate because the overall concept of the show isn't bad. Focusing on stage presentations for music artists is a strong idea for a fashion design show. But the execution has been rough. For the JoJo Siwa episode, it was so confusing whether they were designing for her or one of her back up dancers - especially since they were assigned a mix of male and female models. None of the designs looked like they were actually for JoJo and the winning design had exposed nipples. Even though JoJo is trying to change her image, I still can't see her wearing a shirt with an exposed chest like the winning design. And the bottom design was criticized for having too many elements... uh, have you seen what JoJo has been wearing lately? The bottom design wasn't well-executed but it was probably more on brand than the rest of the designs. One beacon of light is that the show has gotten marginally better with each progressive episode. The designs for Toni Braxton actually looked like they were trying to design for her. But even here the runway presentation did little favors to the designers. I wish sometimes they would do a "normal" runway so that you could actually see the designs. I may or may not keep watching this show. Depends on if there is something better on.

Wayne Brady: The Family Remix Candid Reality Freeform / Hulu / Disney+ Premiered July 24, 2024

Dress My Tour Competitive Reality Hulu / Disney+ Released July 23, 2024

Lalaparuza episodes are typically my least favorite each season. I don't think this episode was an exception. Overall, I found the episode lukewarm but I did enjoy that we got an old school Drag performance for the final lip sync. So many of the lip sync battles in recent years have been about tricks and death drops whether it makes sense with the song or not. So it was nice (and dare I say refreshing) to see queens just connect with the song in a way that makes sense to them. You could really tell the difference in the Roxxxy/Jorgeous and Shannel/Vanjie lip syncs where both Jorgeous and Vanjie had kinda blank facial expressions and Roxxy/Shannel were truly emoting. Also for anyone who's interested, here's a performance of "Holding out for a hero" by Roxxxy's Drag grandmother Tandi Andrews:

A (sort of) sequel to Trixie Motel: Here's the trailer:

Daniel Tosh had a pretty major controversy over a decade ago that tanked his career. This show is probably the best gig he's had in years. For context: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/us-news-blog/2012/jul/11/daniel-tosh-apologises-rape-joke

Just watched the first three episodes and so far, this has been a fun, silly and frivolous show. I like it when the show itself is in on the joke and doesn't take itself too seriously. I was pleasantly surprised that I actually knew most of the contestants, including those from lesser known reality shows (like CJ from Fboy Island). I was so excited to see Alyssa Edwards on this. It's always nice to see the Drag Race girls branch out to other reality shows that are not connected to RuPaul. And boy did she bring the drama! Though Justin's last comment to Kristen was a low blow. I think Da'Vonne's mistake in the third episode is assuming she's the strongest strategic player because of her resume. Clearly Wendall is just as (if not more) strategic as evidenced by his resume (what's the "survivor" counter at now? Lol). But there are others, like Jason, who are actually pretty strategic but are unassuming - which is a dangerous combination. Jason's plan of feeding everyone good food is an excellent strategy in itself and he single-handedly convinced Tayshia to change her vote to keep him. I think Jason may go deep in this game.

Damn, this season was so bad that Michelle didn't even bother to show up for the finale. With her voiceover work, this whole season was probably less than a day's work for her. Congrats to Olivia/Brandon! I didn't think he would actually go for the strategic block but his logic that blocking Myles would lower QT's rating made sense. And it looks like it lowered Kyle's rating too. So it ended up being a pretty good move. Loved Kyle's reaction when he met "Olivia".

Just watched the first episode. It's eccentric but kinda in a good way? I like that they are giving the designers free reign to be creative and the critiques are more based on the concept/vision of the piece. It would have been nice if the designers had more than a day to construct their main pieces. I didn't like a lot of the scripted dialogue, especially for Julia and Law. It sounded like they were trying too hard to be trendy. Hopefully the dialogue gets better as time goes on and Julia/Law relax a bit in their roles.

Well this last batch of episodes was marginally better than the earlier ones mostly due to Jordan's messiness. Though that might have been the most pathetic naughty and nice game ever. Almost every naughty photo, I was like "wait, that isn't the nice one?" I feel like Olivia is going to give Jordan the boot next week. If she boots QT, I think this group will figure out that Olivia is the Super Secret Influencer and that would ruin her "nice" brand and might cause some (i.e. Myles) to downvote her in the ranking. Plus I think Jordan would do his final rankings in reverse order (i.e. put who he thinks is going to win on the bottom) to bolster his own ranking. So I'm not sure how much help he would be to Olivia.

Season 4 premiered yesterday (April 26th). I still need to watch the episode but here is the season trailer in the meantime:

What happened to The Circle? This season is #Trash. How is it possible that after 8 episodes, we've only had one traditional blocking? Also, why would one of Kyle or Paul sacrifice themselves for the other? There needs to be a better incentive - like if you "sacrifice" yourself for the other player, you get to come back as a catfish.

Just finished watching season 2 and I'm so glad that I read this season had a crazy ending because I don't think I would have been able to finish it otherwise. I really want to give Sam credit for controlling the game the way he did but honestly, I think he was blessed with a group of particularly dum dum and unstrategic faithfuls. I don't think Sam was that cunning and he had literally the same strategy every single week. It made watching the show incredibly boring. Every week since Annabel's banishment was the same: one faithful says "I think Sam is the traitor", Sam says "Well maybe you're the traitor", the rest of the faithfuls are like "oh, I never once thought of you [the other faithful] as a traitor. Maybe I should write your name down tonight." This strategy was so obvious that EVEN LIAM figured it out by the end. Maybe the only credit I'm willing to give Sam was that he was good at using the particularly extra dum dum faithfuls (i.e. Sarah and Liam) to get out the other faithfuls who had at least one strategic brain cell. Also, recruiting Camille when he did was smart. I wished Blake and Camille had stronger back bones and voted out Sam at some point. But I get that they didn't really trust each other and couldn't rely on the other faithful votes. 100% Camille is my new queen (and she was funny throughout the show too!). Camille walked into that Traitors dilemma knowing that she wasn't going to get any money. It didn't matter what she wrote on that chalkboard because there's no way in hell Sam was writing "Share" (and both Blake and Camille knew it). If you're in that situation, you might as well write "Steal" and hope for the best. Her decision was about respect, not money. Side note: I think the traitor's dilemma would be a lot more interesting with just two traitors. I think that it would require more negotiation and trust. With three traitors, it really is in each individual traitor's interest to write "Steal" and hope that at least one of the other two write "Share".

I just finished the first four episodes and it is really disappointing that there was not one blocking. The post-blocking meetup is the best part of each episode. Can't believe I'm about to say this but... I kinda wish the show had waited before telling the players that one of them was an AI bot. It would have been television gold if one of the blocked players had unknowingly walked into Max's apartment expecting to find a human and instead found a fancy box. But I wouldn't want the AI bot in there for too long. Just for a few blockings.

Just watched the first episode. So far, I think Olivia (I forget his real name) is endearing but I have no idea how she became the #1 influencer. Maybe everyone ranked each other at such extremes that her overall middle-ish rankings pushed her above everyone else? Not sure what to think of the AI bot yet. Does this mean that there won't be any physical challenges (like decorating a cake and posting a photo)? I liked those silly little challenges and would be bummed if they didn't have them because the AI bot couldn't physically compete. Maybe they'll have a twist at some point where they'll alert the players to the AI bot's presence and remove it relatively early in the game?

This really felt like a Frankenstein documentary to me. It seemed like they had two separate documentary projects and tried to mash them together. I think both parts had their merits but they really seemed to be stretching to make a connection. Sure, Brandy Melville is contributing to the glut of fast fashion and profiting off of it but there are far bigger players contributing to the swarm of clothing on that beach in Ghana. By not explicitly calling out these companies, they didn’t really hold any of those companies accountable. They did mention Zara and Shein but the commentary was kinda surface-level. For the Brandy Melville-specific parts, it felt like deja vu to me. There are so many parallels between Brandy Melville and Abercrombie & Fitch. Both companies had similar histories with a small brand pivoting to becoming more a stereotypical Americana aesthetic. Both companies were criticized for predominantly hiring conventionally attractive white people in their stores, lack sizing options (though A&F did actually have different sizes) and were run by predatory middle-age men. Considering A&F is mainly a "millennial" brand, it's interesting how the same trends are being repeated with Gen Z only with the addition of social media. I think there are some interesting connections that could be explored there. Millennials did manage to push back on A&F so I think there is some hope for pushing back on the Brandy Melville brand too. If anyone is interested, there is a documentary on Netflix called "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch".

Am I missing something? I thought Plane Jane's makeup on her dancer was horrible. I didn't think she would be in the bottom but it felt like she was given the win for coming up the Drag name "Lazy Susan" and having a partner who was down to play the part. At this point, I think the judges are straight up trolling Q. I loved the clown/mime concept and how both of their outfits had the same fabrics but mixed in different ways. And I thought having a mime-white base to both of their faces was a smart choice. It helped her create a "blank slate" in order to paint two similar faces.

Man, now this show has the politician character clearly based on Joe Biden die after not evening finishing a 5K. This show really is doing the real-life Democratic politicians dirty.

Prime Video and Amazon Freevee Premieres on May 9, 2024 Competitive Reality

Airing on E! Premieres on May 6, 2024 Competitive Reality

Dawn's outfit didn't help her either. I kept waiting for her to either remove the skirt or bring out the scissors and cut it off so that she could actually move. Or if she wasn't willing to ruin her outfit (understandably), why didn't she lean into it and pretend she was really chained up? It could be funny to imagine someone tied up in a straight jacket while trying to dance to that song. Not sure why most of the queens seem to be afraid to bring comedy to the LSFYL this season. Anyways, I would be surprised if Morphine makes it to the F4 (unless Ru is really trying to make it easy for Sapphira lol).

Surprised no one has posted this here yet. Ru and WoW are probably thanking their lucky stars that they never gave Shangela the crown (except for that random Christmas special when everyone won). https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/shangela-rupaul-drag-race-sexual-assault-1234974148/

Every season there is one queen who Ru just disproportionately loves more than anyone else and I guess Sapphira is the one this season. Usually Ru has a knack for picking a queen that the audience loathes and we suffer all season long until Ru finally has to eliminate them in the F4 to prevent a revolt from the fans. But in this case, Sapphira actually has some merit to win the crown. So this could be an interesting F4. I like Q and hopes she wins. But if she doesn't, she could ride that "always a bridesmaids" narrative straight to All Stars.

6 months later... this just dropped in the media: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/shangela-rupaul-drag-race-sexual-assault-1234974148/