annewithaneee

Ha! Same here. I don't know Milk's entire chart, but having a hard exterior and being very sensitive underneath it all is a very Cancerian trait. (In Willam's book, he mentions how many Drag Race girls and reality TV people are Cancers -- including himself and Bianca del Rio). Ugh, it makes me cringe hearing all this Cancer talk that is so dead-on. For the longest time I thought I was a Bianca - a witty asshole who means no actual harm - and was definitely instead an irritating try-hard with little self-awareness. Gaining that self-awareness? No fun at all. I guess I have to have some sympathy for Milk, but she makes it real hard.

I don't really follow all the queens off-season, but Ben was reintroduced to us as having been doing drag less and experimental theater more. Of course, someone who was staging plays and could still afford to bring along a bunch of looks (presumably a lot of it new, as most girls get things made custom after hearing the litany of potential challenge/runway briefs ahead of time), may have a non-drag-related fount of personal wealth. I know these queens, at least the ones doing all the RPDR-related tours (again, not something Dela's been doing really that I'm aware of) and grabbing all the bookings, are financially way better off than drag queens who haven't had exposure and are still performing for little to no show pay and $20 in tips -- but I can't imagine any of them are affluent enough that $100 G's even heavily taxed wouldn't be a huge windfall. You'd have to be potentially RuPaul rich for that to only be pocket change. I'm sure all of them can afford rent, food, and some fabulous outfits now, and don't need the extra cash to survive, but they could easily put it to very good use. And the check basically already had Dela's name on it.

That is horrifying if true, and it seems likely true since queens being swarmed with post-elimination-of-faves death threats has been a thing since at least Season 7. And that was for perceived "sending their fave home" via winning a lip sync, not eliminating them. I feel like this shitty twist just further provokes the crazies. Again, imo, let's call it a day with queens eliminating queens. It's not good for the show for a myriad of ways, and at this point production should realize it's actually fanning the flames of the most unhinged and obnoxious corners of the fandom. Ru and the rest signed on for being judges, the girls didn't, and most of the judges can afford security (Ru certainly can) and aren't weekly at publicized events in crowded night clubs. I kinda feel like Shangie also hasn't seen Game of Thrones, but Dela just (spoiler alert, if you're almost a year behind?) Tommen-ed herself on out of there.

Hoooooly shit! Holy. Shit. I really hope Ben just broke this stupid ass "queens voting for queens" twist for good. Bring back LSFYLives! Make Ru the decider again. Unless she's independently wealthy I do think it was silly to walk away from an almost all-but-assured check, but I think Dela feared the fandom and edit more than she wanted the title. And seriously, fuck this twist for putting queens in that position. I think picking Morgan over Aja was a compassionate and thoughtful choice. I don't really see Morgan sticking around for more than another episode or two - I think she, like Alyssa and Coco before her, are built for the traditional format where they can stun with their lip sync assassin ways - but her bookability can benefit from a return far more than Aja, who has already redeemed herself a couple times over, was on just last season, and probably won't win any more fans than she already had when she got kicked off last week.

I'm most excited for Mayhem Miller finally making it through. She's like Courtney Act for me -- someone I know because Willam has featured her prominently in videos and projects over the years, which should speak well of her. She seems completely fabulous. Kameron Michaels and her huge muscles intrigue me, as does Yuhua Hamasaki with her costuming prowess (which one has to wonder if it's much of an asset in these later seasons which have far fewer sewing challenges, and some of the seamstress queens - LaShawn Beyond, ChiChi - lack in the improv and performance areas which has been much more the emphasis for a while now, group skits and lip syncs and whatnot).

John Tesar was also involved, and gave his response to the question. John was raked over the coals for it - but as many folks pointed out, what could he say --- he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn't, simply because he was a white guy - even if his mother had marched in solidarity with Black folks. I too kinda was over Top Chef during the Charleston season -- I didn't like the format of half vets versus half rookies, I'm not sure I've ever seen a reality show pull off that format very successfully, and yes some of the "embracing Charleston's heritage/history" stuff like that plantation thing made me physically recoil, and all of that is on the producers, not the hosts for asking the awkward and inappropriate questions, not either chef for how they answered. I'm at least watching this season all the way through, unlike Charleston, it's been a better group -- but I've still disliked a lot of the production choices and challenges. The camping overnight in cold snowy altitude, the dumb Olympics-themed challenge, the Logan Paul of it all...it's been middling to good for me, but an improvement over last season for sure.

My take on this was people turned against him early on for a quip/comment he made, with a twinkle in his eye, in a talking head about Padma having his meat in her mouth... something along those lines. (Plus, the elaborate moustache.) Given Padma has spent the entire season making dirty jokes of a similar nature, I think people overeacted. I have always liked him, for the warm twinkle in his eyes and his comments and sprightly attitude throughout. He's clearly devoted to his cooking, and I think very accomplished as a chef. How anyone could dislike him having seen him as a little boy, lit up with joy, sitting naked in the bubble water of his family's kitchen sink, this ep, I don't know. I don't like him. Couple caveats: I dislike him less than I disliked Claudette (pretty significantly), and he probably wouldn't rate in my Top 10 most disliked TC characters. Both he and Bruce were my "ugh, could they maybe go home already" chefs, so he's the last one standing. I didn't like him starting in episode one, where yes I believe he made an unfunny innuendo about his meat re: Padma's mouth and seemed obnoxiously pleased with himself. I was more annoyed at the hipster styling and self-satisfaction of said stupid joke than the offensiveness of it. He also made what could have been an honest observation but still seemed snide about how great it was to see Tanya, whose food and restaurant he admired (cool, cool), and then something along the lines of "It's so great to see someone still at it even when they're older/at her age/something along those lines". It was smirky, and if he was trying to be pithy again, rude, and even if it was well-intentioned, tactless. In one of those early episodes, he was also one of those people who seemed annoying to have in a group challenge, dictating everything, backseat driving other people's cooking, etc. I believe Chris at the time had a talking head about how he (Mustache) was just in his young overconfident asshole chef years and that he (Chris) wasn't going to be pushed around or phased by it. He was also outright dismissive of that very sweet but mild (to a fault) Alaskan chef whose name I'm forgetting. His edit throughout the season, I think, has changed to pivot from "this guy maybe doesn't play well with others, makes some smug talking heads, hipster nonsense, etc" to one where he definitely started putting out some mediocre to bad dishes and was squeaking by while other chefs that I liked better and seemed - based on the edited judge's critiques - to have maybe been more deserving of staying. And then at some point during the middle there was also the beginnings of a winner's edit with Tragic Backstory starting to be sprinkled in. Also, for me, dude has a punchable face. This is of course the most YMMV of all reflexes/observations, but I think even if his early episodes edit had been different I would still roll my eyes at him. Finally, this past episode I'd really just had it with the editing of his mom stuff. I really don't blame him. I genuinely think it's awful what happened to her, and he couldn't control how often he was asked about her in interviews, or how much the editors chose to air him struggling with his grief while also being exhausted and having those wounds prodded at. But IMO the editors are overdoing it. This isn't the first time they've leaned pretty heavily in on this particular backstory, and it completely dominated last night's show. It was given all of the heft. Looking at the comments here, maybe the editors did a good job and didn't lay it on too thick, and I'm just a cranky outlier. But for me, I wish they'd shown more restraint, it would have actually emotionally resonated with me. Instead it left me wondering if the ghost of Joe's mom was going to win or get eliminated. They haven't done this with anyone else to this degree, so it feels like a winner's edit, and I'm not a fan. It's a little exploitative and emotionally manipulative, and also, it doesn't override the overall aura of pretentiousness and smarminess that I get with him.

Can't wait to see what the ghost of Moustache Joe's mom cooks up next week, will she make it to the finale???? I know this is on the editors, and not Joe himself - I don't like him, I'm not rooting for him, however it does genuinely suck that he lost his mother - but god am I sick of that sob story. I wish reality competition shows would knock this shit off.

That lip sync song choice was total Rigor Morris, it made me chuckle. Well-deserved top two finish for Trixie, glad she pulled out of that nasty tailspin. And to make a jumpsuit within those time constraints?? It looked as good if not better than your average Project Runway effort, and those contestants are there just to sew shit. I personally don't think the Aja boot was fair. Shangela's ridiculously shitty execution of her disco look was worse than Aja's good execution of a bad idea. I also don't think it matters that it was this Survivor-style elimination versus a judges/Ru boot: I have a feeling Aja would have gone regardless, and it would've been just one of those unfair-feeling eliminations where a queen stayed because Ru has a soft spot for her, or production has a larger plan. But we would have seen Aja vs Shangela LSFYL. And it could have been explosively wonderful and legendary, or a car crash of desperation and eight million death drops. I wish we'd seen that instead. Also, come on, where is this promise of the judges keeping it real and not taking it easy on the queens because it's All Stars? It might be that the editors are leaving it all on the cutting room floor, but if ever there was a time for Michelle to go all in on someone, it's Shangela. She's had three seasons to not fuck up a sewing challenge, and she still fucked it up. Come on. And the alliance-strategery and Danaerys talk is so, so tired. It's Milk levels of delusional at this point...you're the only one attempting to scheme, sis, you're playing a half-assed game of chess against yourself.

Nope. Just Chastity talking about how much progress they're making towards friendship. And you know whose word I wouldn't trust on that even with photographic evidence of them together at the gym one time? Chastity's. Probably the most scandalous/interesting bit of this wasn't addressed at all - probably because she wouldn't participate in filming, but she did presumably sign-off on having her picture in the episode? - what is going on with Mandy's sister?? Is she pissed her sister swiped her pictures? Did Chastity go on to create another profile to catfish the real Mandy's sister after she realized she was catfishing Mandy by mistake? And apparently not only was she having sex with Mandy's then-boyfriend, but she's somehow sketchily in the mix with their cousin's supposedly criminal baby daddy? I feel like whoever she is, Mandy's sister is a brassy mess and I wish we could've met her.

I think with snatch game its more about the Character,Paul Lynde is a campy character so it worked I dont think you could do a non campy male and make it work... Right, Thorgy's MJ didn't work because he's not camp. Paul Lynde didn't really work for me personally, not in the way Little Richard did, it was just the funniest in a crowd of largely unfunny characters. I personally don't think Lynde was really worth the risk of boy drag, but Dela lucked out because everyone else was terrible -- up against Mae West and Bjork from AS2 that would have been safe for sure, with probably some snarky talking heads from other queens about the choice.

I'm all for the deep pulls on Snatch Game. Carol Channing (both Pandora and Bob), and Little Edie are some of the all-time best, and I don't really care if the very young straight girl contingent of the viewing audience have no idea who they are -- hell, all the better if that inspires some fans to actually get to know these cultural touch points. I didn't love the Paul Lynde pick, though. I think my least favorite Snatch Game choice is queens doing other Drag Race queens, and right after that is queens picking men. Kennedy's Little Richard will probably always be the one amazing exception to the rule. And it's just weird to me that if Dela was going to go into deep cut territory, why not pick an actual Match Game regular? Brett Somers or Betty White could be fantastic and seem well within Dela's wheelhouse. I don't know...Snatch Game as a whole has been on a downward trajectory since Season 6 where there were three absolutely hysterical performances. It seems like we never really get more than 2-3 good ones, with the rest flat or downright cringey. Maybe they should try to narrow the parameters one year and give them a theme, to see if that helps steer some of them away from outright terrible ideas? I don't know.

Shangela is just so on all the time that I still can't quite get with her - the never-ending supply of strained Game of Thrones metaphors, how she seemed more Shangela than Jennifer Lewis and any other character she ever does - but I died laughing at some of her talking heads tonight, especially her blaming the internet for Trixie thinking her RuPaul is the shit thing. I did think her drawn-out "I'm alluding to Trixie here, do you get it, do ya???" speech was a little annoying. She's a self-producer, basically, and those are never my faves. Man, poor Trixie. I'm thinking she doesn't have much of a chance of turning this around because the call is coming from so deep inside the house. I've noticed it all season, from her workroom intro banter to even the Bitchelor -- she's pushing too hard, clearly having rehearsed certain sound bites and punch lines in her head, throwing them all at the wall and only some land. I mean, you can even sense it in her stuff with Katya; you can sense her pushing, and interrupting her more effortless partner to try and get a bit more in. She has the natural charm and self-deprecation that it's not nearly as irritating as someone like Eureka (who especially in the first couple episodes of S9 was exhausting with how hard she was trying to be funny), but I'm not sure she's going to be capable of suddenly gaining the confidence to just relax and trust in her natural wit. It's probably an insecurity a lifetime in the making and won't be overcome in a few days, which sucks because I do love her. That Snatch Game was such a flatline, so disappointing. Bebe I think almost did better than Shangela, but both performances were basically just passable. And I didn't even like Dela's! It was alright, but held up against the winners of basically any other season's Snatch Game it would have probably been the weakest winning performance. Sad to see ChiChi go, but I'm glad they didn't drag her through like Roxxxy. I think her strength was LSFYLs, and of course that's an absolute non-factor here. Oh -- I watched the last ten minutes of last week's before this one started, and Kennedy's lip sync made me cry. It did last week, too. Granted I well up pretty easily, but she really did take us to church...I think she's who I'm rooting for. I'm fine with Dela winning, too, but it won't be at all suspenseful, and it's all feeling very template-y at this point. Same silhouette, same hair, same comical elderly characters. She does it well, but the Hall of Fame is kinda lacking in excitement already? Chad and Alaska were both also clear winners from the jump, and had an ultra-polished almost sanitized veneer (Alaska's full-on tantrum meltdown aside). I'd like this season to feel a little more up for grabs, and I think Kennedy and Shangela are her biggest competition...and I'm not ready to root for Shangie yet.

I just wanted to add that I think last night's episode somehow actually affected my cycle lol. A week a head of schedule, like an hour after the episode ended, had to grab a couple towels for insurance and go to bed. Erika is a stronger pull than the moon/tides, I guess?? And I'm gonna have to look into that whole mattress liner situation.

Maybe she was fully aware all day that she was going through it and should have given Teddi a head's up. Maybe some of this was influenced by how production was driving the day along. Or maybe she went from nasty cramping/fairly heavy flow, and as the evening wore on it became more like the elevator scene from The Shining and it became clear to her that an overnight stay was problematic on a lot of fronts. Periods can turn on a dime.

It's not weird that a woman going through a shockingly heavy period at an away toilet/bed situation who has the cash and means would opt to spend the night in a hotel. It's weird that several grown women thought that was weird, and obnoxious that Vanderpump minimized it. If you as a now post-menopausal woman has never had a period where you're having to tend to yourself nearly hourly and fear the very-real possibility of leaking through the sheets and into the mattress, thank your lucky fucking stars. It happens. It's not cute to be so dismissive of another woman's experience. I haven't always been the biggest Erika fan, but she's either getting a good edit or settling into herself this season in a way I identify with. I'm a crass woman who can talk about sex in the abstract all damn day, but I'm uncomfortable discussing my own stuff especially in the company of people I'm not too close with (and TV cameras??? forget about it). And good lord, when she instinctively recoiled from Teddi's touch. Been. There. She should've just explained that it wasn't anything personal and she's uncomfortable with soothing touches in certain circumstances, but she was probably too in the moment and realizing that now her heavy-ass period was very likely going to make it to air thanks to all the fussing over it and many women deciding to somehow make it about them.

My inner Thorgy is noticing that Dela and Trixie (to a lesser degree) are getting assigned roles that are really in their niche. It's especially weird given that Dela was eliminated in her season for leaning too heavily on comical old lady characters, and now that's all production's giving her. Shangela and ChiChi were given a pretty lame brief, and not one that really pulled from the thing they were parodying -- there hasn't been any couples looking for their third on the Bachelor or related shows. Had ChiChi gotten the Dela treatment and been assigned a down-home Southern girl of some type, she might have had something of a shot. I loved this challenge! The less production pre-scripts things, the more entertaining it is. It was also funny, and cringey, that the ones who bombed were serving bad college improv realness -- pulling focus, going for ten layers of crazy instead of keeping it relatively simple. Aja would have been much better off just doing a straight-forward Farrah Moan impression than combining eight million disparate, weird elements (ex-Christian for attention? wut?). I loved the lip sync, and I think it gave Kennedy the opportunity to show us she has lots of levels as a lip sync assassin -- no opportunity for dancing and insane stunts? She can just go ahead and take us to church. Still wish she'd step far, far, far away from contacts, but I'm appreciating her a lot more than I did in S7. Same for Shangela. ETA: I just rewatched the lipsync, and I didn't realize that Dela was in the foreground for most of it, doing a lot, while Kennedy stayed mostly in the middle of the stage just fucking owning it, just feeling the lyrics of the song instead of trying to add a lot of extra drama to it. Dela did well, but Kennedy's confidence was electric and wonderful. I'm definitely rooting for her now.

This is probably going to be the last time I whine about it until I write an actual academic thesis about how All Stars has fucked up lip sync for your life, but another thing that pisses me off about it is: the classic LSFYL format is actually a super unique and lovely thing about this show. You can have a shit week, or have a challenge that is really not in your wheelhouse and flop, and you can save yourself by doing what is for most queens their main bread and butter the best you possibly can against another queen fighting (ideally) just as hard. The judges' critiques about the main challenge stop mattering, and it's down to Ru who turned it out the best. I can't think of any other competition reality show that does it this way -- it's like Redemption Island on Survivor, or Last Chance Kitchen on Top Chef, but it's not a post-elimination grab to jump back in, it's the weekly elimination itself, and it's fabulous. It sucks that now the only "chance" the bottom queens get to save themselves is groveling and proposing alliances with the top queens in very staged one on ones, and the fairest thing to do is vote for the girl the queens think the judges would have eliminated. I love this show, I always will no matter what romper room fuckery it does with its rules and structure, but this elimination format is awful and I was really hoping it would have gone the way of the AS1 teams -- an experiment that was never revisited. Now it's going to be the norm.

Yep, I thought that too. Dela did a much better job of it than Katya did IMO -- Katya's looked like she ran out of gas halfway through and undercut what a good performer she is. Dela managed to remain entertaining while also staying a level under Shangela. It's also an excellent reason why they should stop this LSFYLegacy shenanigans. The regular season lip syncs have been trending downward over the last couple of seasons anyway (especially S9, ugh), so why on earth are the producers sabotaging the possibility of legendary All Stars LSFYLives? I really do think the boot order would have been the same, given the girls in the bottom and the song choices, but Morgan vs ChiChi and Thorgy vs Kennedy fighting to stay could have been epic!

I feel like the Seasons 1-6 editors have been on strike and suddenly returned. This season has been so much better-paced and more entertainingly edited than any in recent memory, and I really hope they keep this going for Season 10! While it was clear that the characters were dictated to the queens well ahead of time just like they were for the Herstory challenge in AS2, this felt a lot less like a pre-prepared challenge. I'm so glad to have lengthy prepwork back, as well as getting to watch the girls beat their mugs without it being a very obviously prompted tragic tearful backstory time like Season 9. It's all just so much better to me, and I think some of that is casting - a lot of these girls aren't interested in manufacturing a likable and winning persona unlike AS2 - but I think a lot of it is in the edit. I too had to look up the Celine Met Gala look and Milk's approximation was hideous. Also, why the hell did she have a long gold chain? The solo was tepid, I didn't notice her in the background of any of the other numbers, and I thought her resemblance was as bad or worse than Kennedy's Janet; she was lucky to be safe. I can't wait for her to actually land in the bottom, I feel like it's going to be hilarious. I agreed with Dela and Shangela (who I very much dislike but she nailed Mariah and even though I didn't love her runway outfit that bubble - snow globe? - was fucking great) as the top two, but I feel like Trixie and Bebe could have swapped places, or at least if it was a top four Trixie would have been fourth. I thought she did a great job of doing a Dolly illusion in Trixie paint, she really nailed the persona, and I did notice her in the background. Rupaul's "reclaiming my lime" runway bon mot was fantastic...during ChiChi's or Thorgy's look, can't remember which.

I'm not a redditor and I don't follow the queens on social media so I don't know if this has been more clarified off of the show, but Morgan's excuse on the runway made total sense to me. She recorded that track, her first, just for the show -- presumably so she'd have something to lip sync to that didn't need to have the rights cleared. I think the prep time the girls get before the season is only a month or two at most, so I could understand being nervous and unsure with the song as it was much newer to her than it was to any of the other girls, who put out albums and have been performing those tracks across the country/globe for ages. She probably would have been better off just pulling out some other talent, though, like Katya's acrobatics from S2.

I personally love that Bebe's back because she is fabulous and deserves shine, but I don't expect we'd get an all-winners season at all or at least anytime soon. I think the risk of failure - flopping, villain edit, whatever - would outweigh the extra $$$, and most of them are well-booked enough that money probably wouldn't be enough incentive. Most of the previous winners are probably as booked and successful as they can get from the show already, so why sink the time, money, and stress into competing again and risk losing fans? Really only Bebe and Tyra Sanchez need the boost, and Tyra can kick rocks.

So glad to have the show back! Even though my love for the show seems to have peaked in Season 6, even a lackluster episode is better than most things on TV. So, I still really dislike the "Lip Sync for Your Legacy"/queens voting twist and I was disappointed that it carried over. I do think the casting for this season is a much better fit for this format than AS2 - because half the cast isn't from the same season and there's no Rolaskatox - but I still think it's just not a great fit for this show. Except for the RuTurn episode, it entirely removes the possibility for a legendary LSFYL! I can't recall a single one from AS2 other than the fabulous Alyssa/Tatianna "Shut Up and Drive" one, and go figure that was the one where the queens were desperately trying to save themselves. With the winners lip syncing for a chance to vote out a queen, it takes away a lot of the urgency -- especially if one or both of the girls is tempted to throw it so they don't have to be the bad guy, 10k be damned (Katya basically admitted to doing this, if I remember right). But still, this isn't RuPaul's Survivor Race. The queens are so concerned with the reaction of the rabid fandom, transparently so, and it leeches any potential joy from the proceedings in a way that most other "contestants voting each other off" shows don't have to deal with. It just doesn't work, and it makes me sad that we're not seeing these seasoned and spectacular queens lipsynching to stay -- I think we're being robbed of a lot of potential epic showdowns. I really loved the variety show, but I do wish it had been possible for some of these queens to work with production to get rights cleared for a song or two. Clearly that was why Morgan had to record her own song just for this, and I get why she was uncomfortable -- more to the point, with so many of the girls doing lip sync performances to their own tracks, even though basically all of them were great, it all blurred together for me. Had any of that been a Britney song or something I think it would have woken me up. I think the average of all their performances was better than AS2, but none of them came close to the surprise of "Same Parts". More outside the box acts would have been fabulous.

I wish they'd cut a lot of that from the US version, too. I don't like the extra-long episodes anyway -- I'm so tired by the time Thursday night rolls around! But the longer and more they focused on Bruce and his new baby, the more space it gave my grouchy side to be annoyed about it. It's a family decision, and none of my damn business, but the more time they spend on reminding us that Bruce is sacrificing being there for his child's birth in what seems to be a winner's (or an attempt at a fan favorite) edit, the more I question why he participated this season. It makes me like him less and less, even if that's completely harsh of me. Yes I left it out, good point, I just felt ageism was at play here too. JMO...tastiness should always win. You both hit on what I feel re: Tanya. She was the target of an age snipe in episode one, where I decided that between that and his facial hair choices I loathe Mustache Joe, and I got the distinct impression she was very intentionally reigning in her anger in the stew room and in judging to avoid the angry black woman label. And it annoyed me too that it seemed like the challenge gimmick bore out until the end. It should've been that scoring and penalties and all that bullshit would land you in the bottom, and then it would be who made the tastier dish out of those two. The whole challenge setup was dumb, and an excuse to promote the winter games on NBC, and it always grinds my gears when my faves go home during these sorts of challenges. Tanya I think had shown us by now that she wasn't going to make it into late in the season anyway, since she was really only fantastic at her food, and her food was pretty limiting in the end, so I can only be so grouchy about it -- but it seemed like they actually preferred her dish to Claudette's, it just wasn't precise enough. Yeah, okay. Ugh.

You wouldn't consider her "get woke" comment to Carrie to be personal? Because I certainly would. I'd really have to rewatch it, and I didn't like this one overall - it just felt off and confusing to me, which knowing now that it had be heavily edited makes sense, plus I did hate the whole result - so I probably won't and I may have to concede this point. I will say it didn't hit me the same way as it seemed to many other folks here. So, maybe it was? I personally wouldn't say it definitely, certainly qualified. It was fast, it didn't contain an actual explicit insult, and it wasn't accompanied by any further commentary via a talking head. We've seen worse. I don't know -- I think more of what I was trying to say there is I think she handled her frustration in a very human way - messy, imperfect - but I admired how she kept it pretty level. Anytime someone is faced with their impending elimination and a teammate chucking them under the bus and abstains from yelling or outright insults, I think they did fine. It was no "I'm not your bitch, bitch!" for sure.