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The Vixen v Aquaria drama in Untucked was wall-to-wall unpleasantness for me, and I'm curious to see what happens next episode -- the very little downtime they get to decompress before "next week's" challenges start filming may not give them enough time to take a deep breath and just let it go. Right now, I'm very torn on The Vixen. The first two weeks I thought her bitchery was accurate and necessary. But this week...I don't know. Aquaria's not my fave, and it was dumb as hell to provoke The Vixen after getting her ass served to her a few times already by now, but The Vixen's clapbacks made less and less sense. It got juvenile, and I think we had to rely on the peanut gallery to really sell and explain her points. I think I get why The Vixen was so set off by Aquaria's combination of "you're negative" and tears -- and she was right, that does set a Venus flytrap for the show and the fandom to create a racially-charged villain narrative. But it was just a mess, and also I'm still trying to wrap my head around how she can be so conscious of the "angry black queen" phenomenon and also literally from the jump frame herself as being here to fight. Not "I will read a bitch", or "I'm a shady queen", but here to fight. And that's what she's been doing, really, there hasn't been any of the subtlety or cutting wit of shade or reading, it's just been confrontation. And I'm here for that too...as long as it makes sense. This week's Untucked was messy as all hell and I hope she takes a second to breathe and reset -- on her own, not because anyone told her to. Aquaria is still a very worthy target imo, but she needs to get back to not letting her get away with bullshit instead of piling on a bunch of disjointed tactics to "win" a fight.

Monique’s runway look was the most stunning for me, but her middle placement was fair given the challenge performance. I was really worried for Mayhem, but now I’m rooting for her harder than ever. She murdered that lip sync. Watching the two of them square off cracked me up — when I was in middle school lip syncing to probably that exact song in the mirror, I was aiming for Mayhem but was much more Uhua for sure. Not the easiest song to lip sync to, but that was a sad attempt. Aquaria’s runway really reminded me of a Gaga look — am I crazy? I thought it was from the “art film” intro to the GUY video but I just skimmed through it and I don’t think that’s it.

First of all, your footnote made me literally snort. I too am a part of this tribe. And Nina's drag was not really appealing to me and I came to like her anyway because of her whole Eeyore thing. She's my sister, and I am positive I would have come across the same or worse in that situation. I think what bothers me about Eureka is her sadness and angst is so performative. I know it comes from a real place, but she can't really sell it to me as authentic. She just pushes too hard to be noticed in all ways. Whether it's trying to be funny, or having a raw emotional moment, I feel like I see a lot of effort there. She has many reasons to be a mess right now, but a lot of it to me reads as keening for attention. It was telling that when the group moved on from comforting her she got a little bratty. In some ways I get it, we all have these moments, but Eureka seems to never not want as much attention as possible, same as in Season 9.

So far I'm really loving Vixen the shit-stirrer. She's striking the right balance right now, being a shrewd team player and friendly at times, then calling shit out when needed. I also think she's been spot-on in her arguments against a backpedaling Aquaria, both tonight in the main show and last week in Untucked. A quick-thinking, smart bitch is my kind of bitch. I'm still very on the fence about Eureka. She's really whiny. There's always a grating quality to her voice - for me, anyway - and when she gets upset it gets a million billion times worse. And I'm still waiting for her to bring something to the table.

Eh, no. Women are not drag queens. No matter how high the sense of straight entitlement to the experiences of others may run. Women can have a drag queen personality, but that's a whole different thing. Wendy Ho would probably object to that, as would many of the cis women (of all sexual orientations) who came up in the ball scene. This isn't something new; it's not like Drag Race got on TV and suddenly cis women wanted to join in on the fun, it's been going on for a very long time. This same black-and-white attitude that ignores what's actually already very prevalent in the drag scene is what got Ru in trouble when she essentially said Peppermint was allowed to compete before she had breast augmentation surgery and after that she'd be a woman. Ru is entitled to screen contestants however she wants, but the larger drag world is accepting of all gender identities - cis, trans, fluid, nonbinary - and that's a positive thing. Putting judgmental boundaries on drag is kind of antithetical to the long-running spirit of it. It's art, not gender.

And she never bitched about Sasha Velour's signature eyebrows either! Michelle Visage can be a real asshole when she wants to be, IMO. Yes!! I'm so happy I'm not alone in this. As the seasons have worn on I have started to disagree with her more and more. She's the 'tell it like it is' judge, except she's very inconsistent and will randomly get shitty about certain queens and types of drag. She has definitely bought into her own hype and it wears very thin for me.

I don't think she was ever a drag queen. She has always been a trans woman. Sure, she performed in drag shows, but Candis presented and lived as a girl. Never wore drag. And she transitioned ages ago. Decades. I've already clarified this, but to be clear, I never questioned her gender identity or when she transitioned. All gender identities can be drag queens and do drag. Drag queen is not a gender. My larger point was I'm pretty sure Alyssa will be the first queen on the show as a mentor and/or guest judge, except for maybe Candis, but I'm not sure she does drag anymore. I don't follow her so I don't know if she ever performs at Mickey's or anything or still calls herself a drag queen. If I remember right, it was way back in S1 or S2, Ru introduced her as a trans performer, so basically yeah Alyssa will be the first, especially because that scene with Candis was very short and she wasn't really featured. And she was a drag queen for a long spell in the nineties, both before and after she began identifying as trans. She was in the amazing HBO documentary, Dragtime, where she makes no mention of her gender identity but she's definitely a self-described drag queen. NY Times did a good profile on her from back in 2015 when she was on I Am Cait. She explains in her own words there that she was doing drag before coming to grips with her gender identity.

Oh I didn’t mean to misgender her, I know she identifies as a (beautiful, talented) woman. I just don’t know if she still does any drag performances or if she still considers herself a drag queen as an occupation, basically. And it’s not just past Drag Race queens I want to see on the show as mentors and/or judges...more than that I’d really love to see other legendary queens pop in from time to time. At least once. Why was Lady Bunny relegated to Drag U and never brought back? Why hasn’t Coco Peru been a coach for a comedy challenge? Obviously Ru has to be the star, but in a decade you’d think she’d allow one of her peers just a sliver of the spotlight.

Oh, and I'm so excited the preview shows that Alyssa will be the choreographer next week! I was just thinking how strange and kinda off-putting it is that we've never had another drag queen as a guest judge, or really as a coach/mentor either (Candis Cayne might be the only one, and I'm not sure if she's calling herself a drag queen these days?), so I'm so ready to see what she brings to the episode. Also, I need a break from Todrick.

I haven't nearly enough time to shake off AS3 and reset, so I'm still pretty annoyed at Ru even when her runway jumpsuit was everything. And the episode was objectively fantastic -- love bringing all the old queens back, and while I will always pine for Mike Ruiz photoshoots (or really any photoshoot challenges), that runway was really fun and it was nice to see how supportive and interactive the vets were. Jinkx joking about being happy to have screentime had me rolling. I haven't done really any Meet the Queens studying (because of AS3 pissiness) so I still can't tell a lot of these queens apart and I'm forgetting a lot of names. Judging from the talking heads, we have 2-3 Violet Chachki-out-of-drags. The Aquaria/Cracker beef for me is funny right now but I can see it getting old really quickly. It's reminding me a lot of the Instagram fashion influencers who were in a plagiarism feud, including the part where neither of them are nearly as fabulous or influential as they think they are. I hope it's like those two look-alikes from season three whose look-a-like storyline was both hilarious and super-short because they were both early outs. The only queen I had any pre-awareness of is Mayhem (from Willam and Morgan) and Blair (because she's a local girl....I think? I'm in Indy and I haven't seen or heard of her, but in fairness I haven't seen any local queens in the past year or so, so she would've been underage). I don't think that Blair has the legs to go far, but I'm glad she did well this first time out! And Mayhem I continue to adore....she is so sweet, and I think she really killed the mini challenge runway, and her maxi challenge look was amazing -- like Raja levels of amazing. I'm excited to see her hopefully flourish. I mostly feel bad for Vanessa's out in that Ru kept trying to make "bam!" her signature, and I don't think that's actually Vanessa's thing, it's just a memorable line of Alexis's from several years ago? Her exit was a little bizarre and a lot sad. On a similar note, I was a little annoyed that Michelle was so fucking quick to hop on Dusty Ray Bottoms for the face dots. It's not really my cup of soup either, but a lot of queens have makeup signatures. And why wouldn't she trot out her signature look out of the gate? That seemed like a weird thing to get shady about, and it might rattle Dusty unnecessarily. I'm okay with challenging a queen to break a mold if they've repeated it a couple times, but doing it this quick seems a little unfair. Like, Milk and Max got to go much further into their seasons before they were challenged to switch it up...and bomb and get eliminated, and it would kinda suck if that happened to a queen on week two.

That would be the best. Oooh, and get David to replace Mikey as Erika's brand ambassador/choreographer/errand boy, I feel like his whole thing would improve Erika's storyline a billion percent.

So I've been trying to figure out who it is that Dorit reminds me of so strongly, and I've finally cracked it. She gives me Moira Rose from Schitt's Creek so much!! The never-ending wardrobe of wigs, the affected inconsistent accent, the fashion choices, and even Moira's screaming reminds me of Dorit's bizarre squawking. And I get the vibe that PK and Dorit are destined for a Rose-like descent into financial ruin, like, any minute now.

I can never tell if Housewives who are so obviously being cold-read are pulling these "oh! my! GOD!" faces for real, or if they're feigning enthusiasm and going over the top like they do over Lisa's dusters -- since those psychics are clearly being brought in by their long-time Housewife friend or regular customer as some promo...but I can't imagine why they'd play along that much for someone who isn't their actual castmate. Maybe they are just really, really dumb. I also find the cold reads themselves just really odd, over the top grifter behavior. I've done a handful of cheap psychic readings that were miles more authentic-feeling than any of these shows. No questions, no obvious fishing, just straight-forward tarot spreads (I read my own cards from time to time so I can at least gauge the semi-accurate interpretations of the cards), and I find that so much more fun and interesting than someone pretending my dead relative whose name was like Nelson or Nellie or Natalie or Norman is in the room with us.

It sucks that we live in an era when anyone who's a member of a minority group will be subjected to crazy bigoted online rants if they do anything that angers TV fans. But I don't think Trixie is the best example to be used here of Kennedy being held to an unfair standard. Trixie's look is an instantly recognizable, extremely memorable brand. Kennedy's look isn't a brand - it's just a standard Texas pageant look. Sometimes she looks polished, and sometimes she looks blah. That's a good point. I'm aware that Trixie's part Native American, and should have considered that in the comparison -- I was trying to think of non-black queens from this season that have a very consistent look. Sasha might be more apt? I'm not sure she ever changed her lipstick shade, and her silhouettes were the same every single time. It's tough. I think it's good to have discussions about this stuff, which there's been a lot of in this thread, rather than discounting one way of interpreting things as absurd. I mostly just get frustrated with Kennedy's looks and talent being discounted as "one-note". It's a criticism that seems reserved for pageant girls and old school drag, and I don't see why that has to be so sneered at. Especially as the seasons have moved on, most queens hew to one style, silhouette, and even something as specific as basically a makeup template where maybe the eyeshadow color will change a bit but that's it. There should be a place for everybody, and I think it's worth examining where criticism might be coming from. I'm far from a Kennedy stan, but I'm struggling to come up with any other pageant queen who has shown as much versatility as she has. The fact that she's done well in at least three comedy challenges (Bitchelor, 7th season Snatch Game, and I believe she did pretty well in the 7th season John Waters as well) really speaks well of her. Having off-the-cuff wit and humor is really difficult even for a comedy queen, and she has outperformed a few of them at their own game. Alyssa certainly can't claim that.

Yeah, I'm also sad about Aja -- she might be the biggest "real winner" of them all, as I think she had the most ground to cover in terms of growth and winning people over, and she really pulled it off. The more I think about it, the more I think basically nobody "deserved" the win after Dela left. Because the vast majority of the challenges were stupid and gave the queens little opportunity to have a transcendent moment. If I'm judging by the challenges where the queens were able to spring themselves free from a horribly-written templated skit or group lip sync or whatever, the three most entertaining episodes that gave the queens a chance to actually create a character/moment were: talent show, Snatch Game, and the Bitchelor (and the Bitchelor only kinda, because of the roles being assigned and there being some unevenness in what was clearly in the queen's wheelhouse, and/or what made little sense for the parody). And from those three challenges, I think the top four performed: Talent: Shangela and Kennedy were great, Trixie was good, I don't even remember what Bebe did. Snatch Game: I'd put Shangie and Bebe at a tie for me -- Shangie was consistently goodish but with nothing super memorable, Bebe had a funny opener and then nothing much, and if it hadn't been such an awful Snatch Game I think they both would have been in the middle/safe. Kennedy was bad, Trixie was painful. Bitchelor: Kennedy was fantastic. Trixie was hampered by a terrible scene partner but even aside from Milk some of her jokes felt forced, but many landed. Bebe had a funny premise and brought a unique take to her assignment, but it was one-note and not really funny past the limo arrival. Shangela had a bad scene partner and a bad role assigned to her but she didn't really make any effort to create a story and her jokes were bad -- nothing came close to landing imo. So now that I think through it, on performance and casting aside all the stuff about pity votes and likeability, it was probably Trixie that took Shangela's spot, not Kennedy. Trixie for me was overall third and Bebe fourth. However, I don't think Ru would have agreed with me and the final two would've probably been Trixie and Shangela. But on many levels Ru and the show fucked it all up, so it doesn't matter. Based on the above, I'm good with Kennedy's finish as runner-up, but not okay with Trixie winning. And I'm still not a Shangela fan, she's not my cup of tea, but she got undeniably fucked over. I hope Kennedy does get a long-term boost from this instead of more shit from the fandom, because I think she would have been a perfectly fine performance-based vote, too, but as the one-pointer to a two-point Shangela.

Raven's Paris Hilton was pretty bad as was Sonique's completely anemic Lady Gaga. Tyra's Beyonce was basically Beyonce. The thing people forget about Beyonce is that she tends to give boring very pageant-y interviews because she's been doing this since she was a kid, she's not dumb, and she wasn't raised by trash bags like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or Paris Hilton were. As an aside, has anyone ever done Lindsay on Snatch Game? She's a mess and would be hilarious. As much as Chad's constantly changing Cher killed, a constantly changing Madonna would be epic especially if it covered all of her various style iterations including her nonsense accent changes. Tyra bombing Snatch Game and still winning her season is a bit of an outlier because it was the first Snatch Game ever and it seemed like basically no one but Tati understood what the challenge even was -- and that was back when immunity was still a thing, so Tyra's officially standing in the judge's eyes on that challenge doesn't count...she couldn't be in the bottom two. Her Beyonce was terrible though. Her whole rationale was that she (Tyra) was just like Beyonce already so all she had to do was sit there and say nice things. So yeah, she completely flopped on Snatch game but so did basically everyone else, so it kinda doesn't count.

The Jury of their Queers also played to Kennedy's strengths. She is a pageant queen. I believe she's won several and has competed for years. She even said she was approaching the jury as if they were a pageant panel. I think she was at ease with that format and it came through. Thorgy said as much. I don't think she needed to beg. I think she just made her point better than the other 3. The Jury concept was the issue. I love Kennedy but agree that she shouldn't have been in the top 2 over Shangela. But this format played to her strength. My guess is had Ben remained he would have been knocked out at this stage which would have been equally tragic. I guess Ru wanted the jury for the gag but it turned into a lame one IMO because of the result. I wonder what would have happened if they included this in AS2. My guess is Alaska would not have made that final 2. So again it seems like the show pulls some very obvious strings to get their winner. What was weird was after a season of essentially all of those eliminated queens rolling their eyes at Dela's perpetual Miss Congeniality, they all did the same damn thing by not voting based off of performance but what they deemed would make them look the most compassionate/charitable. But, it's still the show's fault, I think. If you look at shows that have jury votes - Survivor and Big Brother being the most prominent US examples - the jury interview is a part of the game. But both of those games are consistently about how you convince others of your cause: its a mixture of physical and social game. That's not what a talent competition reality show is. The show should never have given them that role, because it fundamentally changes what it means to be good enough to win Drag Race. I guess it's not necessarily the queens' bad for considering who presented the most compelling case according to a completely subjective individual rubric. That's the show's big fuck-up. And I've only been exposed to drag pageants from a couple documentaries so I have no idea how the system works, but I have a feeling they have much tighter standards than this bullshit too: that interview is a weighted score and combined with other elements of the competition (talent, runway, etc), and that the judges are given a few different measures to judge against during the interview. This was just idiotic hubris on production's side. You can't make ANTM/Project Runway and Survivor mix. They're two very different beasts. Also, I think in AS2 it would have come down to Alaska and Katya anyway. Since their final four was Katya vs Rolaskatoxxx...there was a palpable fear from the other queens of pissing off the Katya fandom, and even though Alaska did make a couple absolutely BS elimination decisions, I'm not sure any of them would have wanted Detox or Roxxxy instead, and Alaska had the track record.

I could get in the weeds about how my statement about black queens was countered with generalizations about all non-white queens, but whatever. It factor is subjective. Kennedy has proven that she can excel at improv, acting, and dancing across her two seasons. What is “one note” on her runway presentation is an aesthetic/brand for Trixie. What is dour and whiny on her made some fans worship Pearl. Sometimes a cigar is a dog whistle.

And this is why I feel shitty for Kennedy. Had this season been a legitimate one with LYSFYL's and the judges/Ru deciding the bottom two and eliminating, Kennedy could have made it to the finals anyway. Yes, it sucks that social media and the fandom has largely fucked up this show and made it so black queens like Kennedy get an absurd amount of hate and left out in the cold for meet and greets. But that's no reason to advance her to the final two -- she could have earned it, had the show trusted in the queens' talents enough to make an entertaining show. Kennedy did not deserve to be put in the position of a pity vote and presumably taking Shangela's spot. She really is a talented queen. Not the best in the field necessarily, but I think had this been more of a straightforward competition we also would have seen more reason to root for her rather than feel sorry for her. Ugh, I just hate this. I was admittedly pretty annoyed Alaska got away with on-camera attempting to bribe her way out of an elimination - something that would have been an automatic DQ on most competition shows with contestants eliminating each other - and now this...Chad isn't my favorite queen to win All Stars, but she's now my favorite win, if that makes any sense. And AS1 was terrible.

Also I sincerely doubt that "Kitty Girls" was actually performed in one take in one and only one try. The production on this show is seriously suspect at this point so I don't believe anything they tell us, plus other than Bebe - the music-cued queen to hate of the remaining four - there wasn't a single flub or someone searching for their mark. Also we would have seen cameras not getting shots so perfectly. Shenanigans. Yeah, there was no cut there, but that wasn't the only take. Thorgy continued to not win me over. I'm so white I'm see through, but did anyone else think her hat/headpiece looked like a Coming to America-style vaguely tribal ripoff? Not a fan of what seems to be casual and thoughtless and unattractive appropriation. That whole ensemble was ugly.

Since the ratings have been high and Ru's getting those Emmys, I doubt it will happen, but people need to be straight-up fired after this season. I've felt like the most recent seasons have been a steady decline, but this was some absolute nonsense that undermined the thesis and purpose of the entire show. I'm actually disgusted by the show that normally gives me so much joy. For the finale, a half hour was dedicated to the preparation and presentation of the final performance and runway? Are you fucking kidding me?!?! Fine, this is a reality show, and not the actual Olympics. They need to tell a story as well as crowning a winner. But they were fucking awful at telling a story this season. Nobody really had an arc, especially not one pushed and reinforced by judging. Where was Bebe being told to show vulnerability? Why wasn't Shangela given any encouragement for something to improve? Trixie's "stretching herself" arc was sold by her and her alone. Shit. I haven't been feeling great about Ru lately since she decided yet again to shove her foot in her mouth about trans issues, but she sold off her credibility. Making the other contestants pick the final two? Get the fuck outta here. That shit has no place in a talent competition stocked with a panel full of judges. What are they there for?!?!? The real losers here are really all of the queens. Trixie gets a win with an asterisk. Bebe's return was a big swing and miss. Kennedy is probably going to be seen as taking Shangela's place. Shangela got fucking robbed. Just awful. Also...the Hall of Fame conceit made a glaring lack of sense when Bebe was told to argue for her place in it. She's already there! The fictitious "Hall of Fame" should include all winners. Regular seasons are unarguably harder to win -- longer, more girls, frequently more difficult challenges, and the contestants have never been through the unique grind of filming the show before, and most of them are much poorer and don't have a wardrobe full of custom outfits. Especially after this shit show, All Stars deserves less hype than the vanilla seasons, really.

I think Bebe was joking in her talking head about that, personally. Like "Who, me? Regal? I don't see it...". I thought it was a little weird that she got the note to be louder and more pronounced and then she did....we didn't see Ross ask for even more or to try something different with her character. We did with Morgan, who I think to her credit did incorporate his notes and commit. In the end, it's not like it really mattered -- the skit was bad, it was a bad idea, badly written, and imo I don't know that anyone shone as much as Shangela and Trixie made the material just bad instead of awful? And Morgan was going home anyway unless she won. Having a queen return for the penultimate episode of the season was just dumb. Like, even reality shows that have the returning hopefuls doing separate challenges (Redemption Island on Survivor, Last Chance Kitchen on Top Chef) to prove they've earned the right to return (vs just being sequestered in a hotel room which I'm guessing is what, at most, they did with these queens...though I wouldn't be surprised if WoW just released them into the wild because they couldn't be bothered with paying for hotel rooms and handlers) wouldn't bring somebody back the episode before the finals. The whole thing was just dumb, and it was super obvious Morgan was going to be out. She could have won, except she's not an acting challenge queen anyway. She's a lip sync assassin. Which All Stars has no place for, but they keep casting queens whose previous most legendary moments have been LSYFLs (Coco, ChiChi, Kennedy, Morgan, arguably Alyssa and Roxxxy, etc).

I feel like since Season 6, all seasons of this show I've been thinking "hey, it's not as good as it used to be, but it's still my favorite thing on TV, yay Drag Race!" I have hated this season. It has been some repetitive, lazy ass bullshit. I may have preferred AS1 to this version. At least that had that Rujubee lip sync that gives me a much-needed cry every time. The queens themselves are carrying the show's dead limp ass body on their shoulders, and I've laughed at many of the talking heads and chatter with each other (tonight's post-runway sitdown with Bebe not having seen the show* and Kennedy calling memes "mi-mis" had me roooolling), but the show itself is just so completely flaccid and I really do worry that production and Ru will have no awareness of it or motivation to improve. I'm really tired of all these templated challenges -- when the roles themselves aren't assigned, they can pick their character with an already pre-defined aesthetic. The writing for that skit was fucking terrible. It was like the Boobarella shit in Season 3, where most of the "trailer" was just the characters being shown with one line, and the interactions between the characters were just idiotic. And encouraging all five of them to overact their faces off??? Might as well make the directive "make this as fucking irritating as possible". The way they did this same challenge in AS2 was way more manageable and entertaining, splitting them off into groups of two. Two queens fighting for who can be the most is a lot better than five trying to do the same in basically the same amount of time. I honestly couldn't say that I liked really any of them in that hot ass mess, or that any of them were glaringly awful either. There wasn't enough end product to judge from! Also, maybe let's not repeat the exact same challenges! I'm sad that the Mike Ruiz photoshoots have gone away, but now we have really irritating season traditions like the big group lip syncs to weird character-voice original songs and badly written movie/TV show parodies (even in Season 4, were it not for Latrice I think the Hot in Tuckahoe sitcom parody challenge would have been forgettable at best and super grating at worst). And we're sacrificing funny mini-challenges and full runways for these tedious pointless queen deliberations. Man, I just hate it. I'm fine with Shangela winning, partly because I don't care about the LSFYLegacy in general, but I kiiiinda thought Trixie did a better job? I like the idea of the costume change, but I'm getting a little tired of the stunts and props. Shangela acted like an over the top clown -- Shangela did Shangela. Trixie I thought actually felt the song (to whatever degree you can really feel a Rupaul song -- don't get me wrong I like a lot of her tracks but they're not great to lip sync to necessarily) and went outside of her normal shtick to actually do a pretty serious attempt at a sexy dancy thing, with a much more sparing amount of humor. I think that's my remaining problem with Shangela. It made me laugh when she called out Bebe during the challenge as not doing The Queen as a character but playing Bebe. Yes, true, but for me that is such a pot/kettle situation. I have never seen Shangela portray a character that wasn't just Shangela. And because she is soooooo loud and on all the time, I find it exhausting and often pretty unfunny (like the Bitchelor thing, she was just yelling punchlines that had little to do with anything). And it's frustrating to see Trixie praised for stretching herself, because they're not asking the same of Shangie and they really should. They basically never have, in three seasons! It's maddening. And damn, was Kennedy's runway look rough. The bad makeup aside, she was padded or cinched really weird -- she looked like she was in her second trimester, it was odd. *I'm guessing Bebe's watched at least most of the seasons, but just once? Ornacia might be a deep pull at this point if you aren't suuuuper into the show, which I wouldn't necessarily blame her for. But damn that was funny.

I definitely think they need to let the talent pool simmer for a year or two before casting another All Stars. Maybe they can do something fun in between regular seasons -- I think the premise of Gay for Play and Drag U were good but the execution not so much. I'd be so down for them to take another stab at things with a rotating cast of past queens. A Hollywood Squares ripoff with drag queens (including non-Drag Race legends like Lady Bunny, Jackie Beat, Coco Peru, etc) could be so much fun (although I feel like Vh1 recently already did a Hollywood Squares thing? Still, something kitschy and uncomplicated to let their personalities shine). I love the creative alternate formats for All Stars, too, but I kinda wish they would just try a vanilla Drag Race format. Like, they're trying to fix something that is seriously not broken. It reminds me of the first couple seasons of Top Chef Masters that were just a full-on mess with trying to radically change the show and elimination format (tournament style, I think?) and it was so dull, then they just went back to basics and it was much, much better. I worry that with ratings and Emmys love World of Wonder and Ru won't really care that Ben did kinda break the format and just keep on going full steam ahead.

Bob won his season and is an entirely different type of performer than Kennedy. I think Kennedy is completely correct in her hypothesis. I feel for her, I think she's been put through the wringer and is a very talented queen who has stretched herself beyond the pageant/dancer box with very little reward for it. On Season 7, her thanks for turning out one of the most physically impressive LSYFL's were endless death threats for "sending Katya home". I think the bigger Drag Race and its rabid fandom become, the more problematic it becomes -- or maybe it's just making more apparent issues that have been there from nearly the beginning. It's just all-around strange what's become of this once very niche show. I fear it's devolving, not evolving. I'm sure people much more intelligent than me could right novel-length think pieces about it.