annewithaneee

Well, that was an interesting post-script. I expected at least some reference to the allegations, even if they copiously used the words "allegedly" and "sexual misconduct" rather than "accused rapist". I guess the show wants us to continue delighting in the craziness of the broken women that disgusting motherfucker that monster preys on rather than his own vileness. I firmly believe that Thomas's type isn't "crazy women" so much as he's a classic abuser who consciously or not goes after women who are vulnerable and can be controlled/manipulated. Also, good on Kathryn. She didn't handle that elegantly, but she didn't fully take the bait. I really think Thomas and Ashley were determined to provoke Kathryn into hitting Ashley at some point this season, since she was about to complete that year-long parenting plan and gain 50/50 custody.

Maybe it's in the editing, but I think I see what brought Hanna and Conrad together, other than the lustbunnies -- they both loathe Captain Sandy. I've gotten the vibe that since day one of filming this season, Sandy was being incredibly unsubtle about wanting to come down hard on Hanna and probably find a solid excuse to fire her. If it's the same as Below Deck Mothership, Sandy has no say in who the casting team hires, but she does get to fire. It's probably a mixture of professional dislike and resentment from the charter-guest-makeout session last season and the fact that those two are basically rivals for carrying this franchise. Hanna's been around since Season 1 with that one captain whose name I've forgotten and has been the only constant fixture all along. And Sandy is clearly all about that cameratime, branding, and catchphrase bullshit. It was painful when she showed up on WWHL with some sadass tshirt about dry toast. And in the storyline about Jaoa and Conrad, Sandy's preferences are also equally unsubtle. I totally get why both would despise her as a boss, and that's always the strongest sort of bond be it in romance or friendship -- shared hatred. And to that end, yeah they're not doing themselves any favors by pairing off to vent or make out a lot, but also I get it. I really, really do. I've always disliked Hanna, and there's still a lot to not like there, but this season I've gotten the vibe that she is well aware of the bullshit going on - Sandy's axe to grind, Adam's glee in finding a way to blame her for literally anything even if the guests aren't really complaining yet - and is trying her level best to keep her head down and not flip out on anyone. She's been doing a lot more walking away from the bullshit than she's ever done before. It doesn't look like that's what happens next week, though, and that's a bummer.

The more I think about it, the more I feel badly for Asia and really hope this is the last season where they do a sudden-death knockout round of LYSFYL's in the finale. The show's production should have absolutely not allowed that to go forward. Multiple different people on production had to have seen Asia preparing backstage, and whoever it was supplying the butterflies coming in with them. And anyone who knew that was part of her costume should have immediately said "yeah no, you can't have live insects in your lip sync, sorry about it". If they keep the sudden-death lip syncs as a taped-live finale tradition, it's gonna end in tears at some point. We've already seen that the queens take this as an opportunity to out-gag the previous season....it feels very likely that at some point somebody's going to accidentally set their wig on fire or something. WoW hasn't shown themselves as a professional enough outfit to keep doing it this way. They should thank their lucky stars the only casualties so far have been a bunch of butterfly corpses, and quit while they're ahead. Also, I just don't think it makes for good TV, and it changes the spirit of the competition. America's next drag superstar shouldn't be the queen who used their post-filming time to get the best team together to help her present the best gag of them all. I could maybe see it working if they had a LYSFL tournament to whittle down the semi-finalists to a top three or two on the runway (actually, way better idea than the pointless "all four of you listlessly lip sync to a Ru song prior to nobody getting eliminated"), but not the finale.

Oh, Asia. As someone who's gone to too many bad weddings, as soon as I understood what she was trying to do I was like "....she knows those butterflies are gonna be sleepy as fuck and not fly, right?". I've seen a few brides (all of them at dry weddings, too, so it was so paaaainful) try similar stunts and they never, ever worked. I'm guessing she didn't practice that, which she reeeeeally should have. Also, kinda really fucked up to have living things in the fray of a LSFYL, I bet at least one of them ended up on the bottom of a size 14 pump. They gotta figure something else out for these finales. That final three lip sync was a fucking mess, and wasn't at all fun to watch imo.

The name of this episode cracks me up because I was waiting for Anfisa's therapist to have a Big Little Lies moment and have a frank and quiet conversation about how and when to escape Jorge's clutches. I know it's not actually a Perry/Celeste situation (that we know of), but if I were her therapist I'd be yelling RUN at her. Which is probably why I'm not a therapist, it's what I'd be saying to 75% of my clients. I'm so curious what Chantel on her laziest, shlubbiest, sweatpantsiest day looks like. Maybe if she loses the lashes, drag queen level paint, and what has to be industrial strength shapewear, she actually has some energy and the tiniest hint of a personality.

I didn't watch this live, I watched Southern Charm instead (which says a lot about my current level of enthusiasm for Drag Race and also my trash tastes in general), and today I watched about the first half of it on DVR and I don't really plan on finishing it. First it made me really uncomfortable, then it made me indifferent. I'm hoping there's a long hiatus between seasons -- if there isn't, I'll probably impose one on myself. It was very interesting to see both Vixen and Asia (Asia, especially) get actually confrontational with Ru. I think this show is hitting an interesting balancing of the scales -- each season, it feels like the show, its queens and the fandom are growing exponentially, while at the same time Ru keeps showing her ass with transphobic and other ignorant remarks -- where some of these girls may see Ru more as a sister than a venerated untouchable mother/goddess. I'm just really, really sick of the pat nonsense with Ru. No, she didn't come from the exact same place as the Vixen. That whole rant showed a lot of her flaws quite clearly. There's no room for introspection, for nuance, for true empathy. She's sure that she has everything and everyone figured out...and it's starting to feel real gross. At least Tyra's "WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU!!!!" was quick and concise, y'know?

"I don't want you to feel like you can't come to me about something," says What's-her-face, who brought a camera crew to do a "wellness check" on Kathryn, then continued reiterating shit on camera that could be interpreted as her being at risk of overdose or suicide. Well shit, if I were going through real, not "reality" real mental health struggles and I've got craven camera hogs trying to bust in to catch my relapse/overdose/nervous breakdown in the midst of an ongoing battle to regain non-supervised custody of my own children, I'd sure as fuck feel like I couldn't come to her about anything, either. If they were real friends and not just castmates, they would have found time to check in on her - sure, by any means necessary if it came to it - on my own free non-show time. A real friend of Kathryn's would know she doesn't need a bunch of stagey bullshit about relapsing and calling the cops. That said, good on Kathryn for talking about major depressive episodes and ill-advised medication vacations. Hope she has an actual therapist.

While Eureka definitely had an advantage from appearing on a previous season, her outfits last season impressed me just as much as the ones we've seen this season. She's been a big deal pageant queen since before the show, and she came into season 9 with a remarkable wardrobe. Completely agree to disagree on that one. Her entrance look was fabulous, her Gaga look was simple but polished, her Princess Fantasy was good, the rest was super meh or outright bad. She had a couple of (likely) custom latex outfits that fit like a glove and were cute, but outside of that it was a lot of leotards or catsuits and most weren't a good look. This season you can tell that she was able to pull a lot of great custom stuff for every runway theme that wasn't a DIY deal. She stepped her pussy up quite a bit and I'm sure the receipts match. And hey, good on her, but she was able to prepare for this season like it was All Stars - actually, much more than All Stars queens can, since not only was she a returnee but she knew a year-plus in advance since Ru offered her a S10 spot during her elimination - and she did. And it'll make me a little sad if the first big queen had an unprecedented - and likely unrepeatable - leg up on the rest of the field.

Yeah, I feel like Latrice was far more of a "body positivity" advocate than Eureka. Eureka regularly makes fun of herself with how big she is and how much she eats, an obvious defense mechanism. Latrice was like "I am GORGEOUS, bitches. Period." So much this. Every time I start to think about "big girl" queens in Drag Race, my brain shoots in so many different directions and I'm pretty sure I could write a meandering mess of a thesis about it. But I think with Eureka, what disappoints me about her run this season and especially if she wins -- it's gonna suck if the first big girl was a returning contestant. Because it tells me what she had that Latrice, Ginger, Delta, Darienne, etc didn't have, and really what probably made all the difference: post Drag Race $$$$ and connections. I'm not sure I can even put into words without going on a long walk making plenty of caveats and couching things, but it's frustrating that the downfall of basically every big girl before her was turning out looks. It's sorta hard to remember now, because present-day Latrice has it fully together (because she's in that post-Race tax bracket now), but on the show even though she had C.U.N.T. in spades, she wore those same ugly ass boots and got eliminated in the ball challenge. And then you look at the Ginger of it all, and again I'm having to summarize like 8 billion tangled thoughts in a nutshell -- as Drag Race has become this massive hit and we're seeing more and more queens who got into drag because of the show, we see a lot of queens who are ultra-thin, have seemingly deep pockets, try to scrub their personalities free of any controversy and sharp edges as much as possible to stay on the right side of the fandom, and prior to casting have followings bigger than winners of the early seasons currently have. Because of this, Drag Race feels to me like it mirrors culture a lot more than counter-culture these days. A lot of these queens seem to mirror the hot cis ladies that make millions off of being already gorgeous and rich and having an Instagram. And cool, there's a place for that, but...I miss Drag Race feeling much messier. I'm not Eureka's fan for a lot of other reasons, but it's gonna suck if it turns out the only fat queen to win had already sold merch at two Drag Cons and had a wardrobe full of shit that could finally rival the girls who are rich (or have access to bigass loans), gorgeous, and anti-bitchy. That feels gross.

I don't think anyone other than World of Wonder's production and social media team can know for sure, but...I don't think the #teamwhoever has any impact other than getting the show trending and inflating their social mentions. There's no accountability or tracking for it, at any rate. My pet theory is that massive fandom reactions may matter, and that the queen's overall social media reach may matter. I think one or both of those things made Ginger Minj lose Season 7 to Violet. It could be what pushes Aquaria over the top -- her following is consistently massive, from before she was cast up until now, and probably even trumps Eureka's, though I haven't run them through SocialBlade or whatever so I don't actually know. And while fan reaction does kinda figure into the #teamwhoever shit, I figure it's bigger than that. And also I just really doubt that anyone could be bothered to actually tabulate, or even guesstimate, those "results" across all platforms. It's probably not even possible even if you had all the fucks to give, and I really doubt WoW gives very many fucks about it other than increasing their brand's engagement.

I have no idea what the hell this means, but it's hilarious. This is a thing, right?? That somebody can just sound like they drank a full glass of whole milk after demolishing a bunch of Baby Bels. Sort of the same as if they're stuffed up, but instead of mucus, it's ice cream? As I elaborate, that sure as hell sounds like a fat joke, but....I just think too-much-dairy voice is a thing lol. But it probably isn't.

Boo on the editors for including "I've decided who to eliminate..." (or whatever the exact quote was) in the teaser. These penultimate episodes often feel long and anticlimactic on their own, they didn't need to telegraph from the jump that it was going to be a non-elimination episode. They could have at least had Ru do a bit more of a misdirect than that, it was crystal clear the end of that sentence was "...no one!", so I spent most of the episode just waiting for them to cut to the chase, as all the tension had been immediately removed. I might be rooting for Kameron now? I mean, as much as I'm rooting for anyone, it's her. Her aesthetic has really grown on me as I realize what so many of her looks remind me of -- when she gussies up, she has the look and fashion sense of a WWE and/or MMA girl. Not just with draping a gown on a very muscular body, but it's that same trashy warrior princess thing and while it's not as Insta-ready as Aquaria's, I'm into it. More than that, I think she's been set a very clear challenge and pushed through it -- she kept up in the acting/comedy challenges and showed plenty of personality and charisma during her LSFYLs if nothing else. For me, she had the most clear deficit laid bare for her in critique, and overcame it. It's kinda the show's fault that we have no storyline like that for someone like Aquaria. We were never really shown Ru and/or the judges pushing her toward something, so while she's been pretty consistently good, I see her as skating through a lot. During her talking heads tonight, I finally realized what my problem with Eureka is. I'm not sure if it's a couple cold sores or a drag injury of some sort, but I couldn't stop staring at the cuts/sores/whatever on her lips! And in a weird way, that made everything clear -- she's the grown-up version of that snotty little kid on the playground with fruit punch mouth. The nasal/too-much-dairy voice, the loudness, the mugging, just everything really...that's fruit punch mouth kid. I guess that makes her Honey Boo Boo Snatch Game pick about as natural as Adore's Anna Nicole.

I'll give the editors this, essentially making the captain an antagonist this season is making it more interesting. The showmances have never been that compelling, especially since they're so expected and extra-contrived now, so having Sandy seemingly in a one-sided blood-feud with her chief stew is kinda novel. I'll stick around for at least a bit of WWHL tonight to see if anyone puts her on the spot, but I'm guessing not.

Family Chantal reminds me of some classic Judge Judy defendants, thinking that with some (hilariously bad) styling and plenty of two-dollar words nobody will be able to see through their BS. Her mom with all that "be it, or otherwise, monetarily" nonsense, just amazing. What was the wine they ended up pairing with dinner, Mountain Dew??? It was bright yellow and full of ice cubes. They truly are the epitome of class.

Bleh. Second season in a row where I won't be mad or especially thrilled with whoever they choose for the winner. Eureka's runway looks were extra weak to me because they sort of evoked Clueless but not even good Eureka's was the right color -- yellow is iconic, pink is more early 2000's Limited Too nonsense. Asia was my favorite of the night, but calling her evil twin North Korea made me viscerally uncomfortable. Like, I get it, but also...yeesh? The balloons were a great touch, though -- and her "good" look was no more basic than Aquaria's, imo, and I was way more into the evil look. I feel like nobody will ever top Raja's Marie Antoinette, but Cracker's velour housedress version was an especially bad attempt.

Kasey needs to lay off the fake tan and what looks like blonde-in-a-box. Her skin tone and hair are nearly the same color, and it's not a good shade. I'm shocked at how much I like Hannah so far this season. I mean, she's basically doing what she can to keep Sandy off her back -- I feel like we've seen her on hand for every meal service so far as well as prep for early, mid, and late shifts and I buy that she's pulling 20 hour days, she's keeping her head down and not responding to Sandy and Adam's bullshit, and she's being kinder to her coworkers than in seasons past. I mean, that can all change on a dime and I'll be back to disliking her again, but it makes me sad to see her beating a hasty retreat to cry. And her and the baby bosun are actually kind of cute??? And I never, ever like these showmances. Adam's back to blaming everyone else for his mediocrity whether it makes sense or not (I'm so sure Hannah's supposed to find a way to "manipulate" the female guests into not taking for-fucking-ever finishing their makeup, as we all do in service positions, making customers conform to their personal chef's preferred timetable). Is it somehow interior's fault that he thinks Chinese chicken salad is a luxury-vacation worthy dish??? It looked like some half-assed Wendy's bullshit. Maybe he's just bad at his job, but it really feels like he worked at an Applebee's for a summer and then applied for this show with a fake-ass resume. Who does any time in food service and doesn't know the basics of kosher, halal, etc? Surely as a private cook knowing the ins and outs of all common dietary restrictions - religious, allergies, vegan/vegetarian, etc - is some pretty basic shit.

I agree with the point about Thomas at least. The cast has always ignored or joked about his vile, abhorrent, occasionally frightening behavior, and instead aims their barbs mainly at the women in his orbit (Kathryn, Landon, Ashley). The men are even worse IMO because they usually explicitly condone his hideous bullshit, and get digs in on the women too. I think it’s just layers upon layers of conditioned sexism, and it’s not a good look. I wonder what this reunion will be like. Have they filmed it yet? Are they even having one?

I'm on the fence with the custody thing, because I don't know if Kathryn is stable enough or mature enough to take care of those two kids full time, plus, she seems very detached emotionally from them - it's almost like she's afraid to do anything because she doesn't know what to do - no innate maternal instincts there. I don't necessarily think that Thomas having primary/full time custody is a good thing for the kids, either, but he has the means to hire full time nannies to hopefully give them some semblance of balance, normalcy and some love. (A shame, but it's the best situation, unless a family member can step in) I mean, we have no first-hand knowledge of her parenting skills either, sober and off-camera. We also don't know what Kathryn's safety net and support network looks like -- her own immediate family has never participated in filming that I remember, but that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't perfectly lovely grandparents and other family members to provide some childcare and extra hands as needed. Also, considering one of the people accusing Thomas is a former nanny...even a loving and competent professional isn't going to help those kids out if their environment is chaotic and their only anchor is being abused and intimidated by their father. Kathryn should probably remain patient to see how the Thomas stuff shakes out, and turn to family court instead of mediation. As kind of an aside, I can't imagine how Kathryn remained more or less composed...not only the level of vitriol coming at her, but surrounded by alcohol and watching her abomination of an ex completely wasted and screaming at women. The amount of triggers in that scene was insane. It's good that she has to get tested for drugs and alcohol regularly. It'd be real nice if he had to get randomly tested for drugs and alcohol too.

A-fucking-men. I do like seeing the women finally rally behind and support Kathryn, because I think regardless of Kathryn's fairly glaring faults it was always a very gross and frankly misogynistic (internalized, in the case of the women) to issue Thomas free pass after free pass after free pass and often explicitly call Kathryn a gold-digging whore who trapped Thomas. But...focusing on Ashley also isn't the thing to do here, because her flashy hair-flipping hostility is a perfect cover for the actual evil here. I'm not comfortable with how everyone is happily telling Ashley to STFU and go home and largely tolerating and ignoring the big, drunk, screaming at women elephant in the room. I also 100% agree with @MatildaMoody and her conspiracy theory. Thomas is both a schemer and a moron, so I think he's using Ashley as a human shield to provoke Kathryn into more iconic screaming meltdowns and looking unhinged on TV. Honestly? He might be also goading Ashley in the hopes that the two come to physical blows and Kathryn's arrested for assault. That way he can just blame his crazy girlfriend and wash his hands of it. It's pretty obvious that Thomas doesn't consider women as actual people, and honestly I'm not sure he views his own kids as people either. He certainly isn't considering their emotional well-being -- I think this whole custody and co-parenting thing is just something he wants to win at, he doesn't give a shit about any of the players except himself. True justice would be seeing him in prison again - I personally believe the allegations, and that there are many more to come - but I'm not holding my breath.

That "48 hours later" closer was everything. I cackled. I'm into Bethenny vs Carole. They're in the same weight class, literally and figuratively.

Kate's definitely come unglued, and did last season as well. The difference was that she and Captain Lee have excellent rapport on and off boat - she sees or calls him like weekly when they're not filming, definitely the closest and longest IRL personal connection on that series - and he was sympathetic from the jump to her plight, and also got dayworkers at least once to come through and clean the place while Kate focused on training. Lee saw that the interior needed support, not purely being yelled at. Casey wasn't even trainable (that we saw) during the first charter due to seasickness and is probably even greener than Jen was. Hannah's not my fave, but her situation doesn't compare neatly to Kate's -- she is undeniably less supported than Kate was. Sandy seems to not realize or care that they're effectively down a stew, and is blaming Hannah for what is essentially a staffing problem and not a management issue. I don't think on a Captain Lee boat that Casey would even still be around, or if she was, they'd have an extra hand subbing in until she was really on her feet and trained from the ground up.

It's a weird feeling reading that story -- thanks @KLJ for sharing!! -- because while that sounds like a lot, and also my mom went through something similar (an unrelated nuerosurgery for chronic pain where the surgeon flagged something in her urine as questionable led to an asymptomatic malignant kidney tumor being caught and removed without issue), her talking about it on The Doctors makes me like her less. I think y'all are right and she let one season get to her head and she's going full-tilt reality star. And it's a shame, because I bet she's a good captain, but she's not a good reality show character, and it's much worse when she's trying so hard. Her inherit social awkwardness makes her laying down the law seem erratic and rude. Also, the whole breakfast with the guests thing was super off-putting. Did she even give the crew a head's up about it? It seems like one thing to have the captain at dinner, where everything is in planned courses, but it's quite another to add another seat to the made-to-order breakfast and being the only one at the table complaining about shit. Also I really am not a Hannah fan and probably never will be, but that whole thing was some bullshit. Maybe she was referring to stew service, but I swear it sounded like at least one of her outbursts was about Adam turning around the food slowly (which did seem to be one of the problems), and that Hannah needs to "control the interior". Uhhhhh? Hasn't the chef always been a more or less independent entity and not under the chief stew's control? It's not Hannah's fault his TGI Friday's ass got asked back, or that one of her stew's has been patently useless since the jump (she'd have to train her on the basics of how to be a functioning adult first, from the looks of it). I think it was clear from the reunion that Sandy had some sort of special resentment against Hannah - which she earned, but then she seemed to have no issue with other (male) crew who did loads of ridiculously unprofessional shit - and it's gotten weirdly personal. One of them should be shown the door after this season, and I kinda hope it isn't Hannah.

I have 2 phones. One is for work and work contacts and one is my private phone. Just because you work with people doesn't mean you want them to have your personal phone number. I replace my personal phone and have had my work phone for years. I would be pretty surprised if Southern Charm cared enough about their cast's privacy (about them having each other's real phone numbers) to expense each person an extra iPhone just for the show. It seems more considerate than reality TV production would be. I could see them doing it for their own convenience's sake though, if it's maybe easier for them to record both ends of conversations somehow -- but I've always assumed those were ADR'ed or filmed separately and then edited together in post. Also, Kathryn just kinda feels like a chronic phone-dropper to me. I can totally buy her personal phone looking so busted all the time, and her running out of cash and patience to keep getting it replaced. And I say that without judgment -- there are just people who drop their phones like its their hobby lol.

It'd probably be way easier to shatter a screen that way by innocuously dropping it than, like, going all Naomi Campbell with it. Sure, she could have thrown it at a wall, too, but to me the story that iPhone tells is "I dropped this on asphalt/concrete someplace and haven't bothered to replace it yet". Ashley is really a complete piece of work or she's going very overboard with self-producing this storyline. It'd be pretty funny if there were another 50 lead-ins of "if she doesn't invite me to this birthday party I will LOSE IT" scenes left on the cutting room floor, considering how many times she was aired doing it. At this point there are one hundred times more of her being nasty, paranoid, and juvenile about Kathryn than that one lunch where they both played nice for about five minutes. And yet next week we're going to hear her screaming and carrying on about how she's tried soooo hard to get along. Sure ya did.

I'm not saying they had to make it the YouTubers show - god knows the tighter the lid they keep on Frankie, the better - but other seasons have done more to integrate the makeover-ees into a storyline, and they did it with a half hour less airtime. The gay vets, the straight men being put in bridal drag, etc. Asia's partner got into it a little bit, but there was probably more to say about how these social media influencers are interacting with young kids and the LGBT community similar to Drag Race girls but not entirely. My main issue with it was they really didn't explain at all why the two straight guys were there and why they wanted to participate - it should have been all gay men, I think...Miles Jai has to be kinda annoyed he wasn't included, no? Surely Joey Graceffa wasn't busy? - and they also portrayed a couple of them outright untruthfully to build suspense. Chester See has done Broadway in a fairly dragged-out fashion and I wasn't falling for that fake-out for a second. Kingsley is an out-there character with the potential to be every bit as extroverted as the others -- he was raised in a red state, but he's been living in LA for years. And there was definitely room for the partners to riff on each other - as a bit of personality exposition, what their queens might be struggling with to make them over, etc - as they're in every bit a sister/brotherhood situation as Drag Race alums are. There was a lot of opportunity to turn the makeovers into more of a compelling story as they have in years past, and they let a lot of opportunities pass by, and I think the episode suffered because of it -- I wasn't very invested in any of the stories.