S11.E14: Grand Finale

[DisneyBoy]

On 5/30/2019 at 10:36 PM, Temperance said:

It does seem kind of rigged that it came down to Brooke versus Yvie! 

...um...how? I don't think either of the other two deserved to be in the final lip sync. Silky was a huge freaking mess in the lip sync department. I was embarrassed to see her in the finale, I really was. I don't mean to be a hater, I wanted to find something to like about her, but it felt like the producers were happy to let her be an obnoxious insecure child for the sake of "drama" and ratings. She ate up 50% of this season's screentime and was carried into the finale...

...whereas Brooke and Yvie were both put together queens who clearly showed up to fight for the crown and do their thing. I just wish there had been a third queen on Brooke and Yvie's level to battle it out with them in the finale instead of two girls we knew weren't going to win. I really liked Nina, but I don't even feel like she was operating at a high enough level to win the crown. Vanjie neither. Plastique Tiara could have been a strong contender if she was more comfortable being an entertainer instead of a runway model.

Out of everyone in the finale, Yvie earned the highest marks for me. Her muscle tissue dress at the beginning was cool, her plushie Sesame Street monster dress was cool, and I liked aspects of her final dress, particularly the mirrors on either side of her face. But I kept waiting for some bigger reveal or cool move. All she kept doing was bending over backwards, and as we all know you can't pull the same move over and over again and expect the audience to be as excited as the first time you tried it. The mask on the back of her head was cute but it didn't do that much for me. And a brown dress? Really?

I think Brooke fought too hard against Silky. She should have saved that standing on her head move for the final lip sync. All she had to do was be competent and confident while Silky flailed around tearing her clothes off and looking completely lost. She did not have to do much to beat her. I fully believe Silky would willingly choose Brooke because....well, she's kind of an idiot. I don't think much of her intelligence and I think her ego is so big that she would believe herself capable of beating Brooke without any skill to back it up.

She's like that little kid in elementary school who talks real big but doesn't have a clue what's going on. You can see the fear and insecurity in her eyes, and I'm kind of surprised most of the other queens didn't immediately pick up on that earlier on in the season and give her sympathetic looks. She did calm down as the show went on, but not enough for me to forgive all of the nonsense I was forced to watch. God help us if she gets a spin-off. I may even tune out an All-Star season that features her.

Yvie won because she was well branded. Her name and her aesthetic completely gel and you know what you can expect from her, which is something surprising and polished. Brooke is a little bit boring. Maybe if she had really knocked it out of the park with the Snatch Game and with her choreography in the finale, then she would have deserved the crown. And I really don't buy her as the Queen of the North. There isn't all that much Canadian about her and it feels like she just trotted her citizenship out in a failed attempt to compensate for her yet-to-be defined personality.

I honestly didn't really enjoy this season that much. The fact that they featured one lip sync where Ru ordered six different girls to justify their presence in the competition all at once, and another lip sync that ended with a "meh" really says it all.

[Temperance]

6 hours ago, stormy weather said:

- As for Silky's choice of Brooke for the lip sync, I called the producers pulling the strings when Ru asked her who she wanted to go against instead of just spinning the wheel one more time to get a random opponent. Okay, I get why they did it, but if you're afraid that by choosing random opponents you'll risk having your two best queens battle each other at the first round and have a mediocre last round, maaaaaybe it means you sent the wrong people to the finale. 

They never spin the wheel twice, maybe in case it lands on the same person? 

They started this format and tradition in season 9. The wheel was spun: Trinity the Tuck Taylor (Tied Winner of AS4) was landed on by the wheel and she picked Peppermint as her opponent. Peppermint won. Shea Coulee was left to battle Sasha Valour. Sasha won. Sasha verus Peppermint. Sasha won.

In season 10, the wheel landed on Kameron Michaels and she picked Asia O'Hara for her opponent.  Kameron won. Then Eureka O'Hara versus Aquaria and it's declared a tie. Eureka, Aquaria, and Kameron all lip sync for the crown and Aquaria wins. 

[Rosenrot]

Well, the right person won (although I would've been content with Brooke as well). But… was this just the most underwhelming, lackluster, and MEH season ever? I mean… season 10 was still pretty good - although Aquaria was the blah-est winner since Violet Chachki -, and I just don't know what happened since then.  ??

Or maybe I'm just becoming more of a cynical asshole as I get older. 

Edited June 1, 2019 by Rosenrot
typos

[DisneyBoy]

You're not. It was meh.

[Gothish520]

I really enjoyed it, but I'm a newb, I just started watching last season. 

[Blakeston]

8 hours ago, Rosenrot said:

Well, the right person won (although I would've been content with Brooke as well). But… was this just the most underwhelming, lackluster, and MEH season ever? I mean… season 10 was still pretty good - although Aquaria was the blah-est winner since Violet Chachki -, and I just don't know what happened since then.  ??

Or maybe I'm just becoming more of a cynical asshole as I get older. 

This season had a lot of drama, but very little joy. I spent most of it just being aggravated with Silky and Ra'Jah, the terrible judging decisions, and Ru's general shadiness.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 5/31/2019 at 2:17 PM, Blakeston said:

I would have expected the production people to encourage Silky to choose Yvie, rather than Brooke Lynn.

The ideal scenario, drama-wise, would have been for Silky and Yvie to finally face off, and then they could give us the inevitable Yvie/Brooke Lynn finale.

I wonder if Silky's choice was just (wildly misguided) bravado - trying to prove that she isn't afraid to take on the best dancer in the competition, even though she was clearly scared shitless.

I agree that there would have been more drama from Silky vs. Yvie then Silky vs. Brooke. Therefore,  I don't think the producers had anything to do with Silky's choice.

I also agree with those who said that Silky didn't want to choose A'Keria because they were good friends.

ETA: in the video someone posted above where the 4 finalists are watching the finale broadcast,  A'Keria even says that she did Silky's hair for the finale!  No way was Silky going to volunteer to try to knock her out in a lip synch. I do wonder what A'Keria would have done if the choice had been hers, since Silky would have been the least challenging opponent. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by ItCouldBeWorse

[smores]

On 5/30/2019 at 9:48 PM, Kanner said:

Though I was rooting for Brooke Lyn, I think based off of lil syncs the right person won. Yvie was my second favorite. 

Congrats Yvie!

I really liked Yvie’s minimal take in the last lip sync. I also liked Brooke’s “obvious” reveal. 

I felt Silky was doing too much in her lip sync and I knew Brooke won it when she did the handstand. 

Was not crazy about the second lip sync. 

Silky seemed like she was just throwing every possible stunt into her lip sync because she knew she had no substance.  She also had no sense of when to add things, or maybe just go with 2 wigs instead of all 3, because the song doesn't need all of it.  Instead of coming across as a polished performance, it was just kind of a manic thing.

On 5/31/2019 at 2:44 PM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I finally realized why I dislike Silky's lip syncs so much. As someone with dance training (and as someone who has secondhand gymnastics training thanks to my sister being a gymnast), technique is important which is why I  cringe when I watch dance competitions. Many of the dancers go to competition studios where the emphasis is on learning tricks that the judges like. This often results in kids who are doing tricks but with terrible technique (which causes injuries). I have been known to squeak when watching little kids to bad back handsprings because it's so obvious that they're a hair away from hurting themselves. I get that same feeling when I watch Silky slam herself into the splits and do other dance moves. Technically, yes, she is doing them, but with such bad technique and uncontrolled energy that it makes me flinch.

This.  I also think that Silky has to recognize the appearance of the elements she's using.  While it's not the most tactful thing to say, because of her shape, she ends up looking like a beach ball rolling around on the stage when she does certain moves.  Brooke rolling across the stage and scissoring her legs through the air looked like it was deliberate and precise.  Silky doing the same thing behind her looked sloppy and out of control.  And she doesn't have the ability to pop back up gracefully from being on the floor, so she needs to consider that when she's doing a death drop or splits.  She needs to time those elements for when she won't need to bounce right back onto her feet.

On 5/31/2019 at 7:31 PM, Mayberry said:

Yvie's reaction is great! 

I don't know what to make of Silky anymore. I think a lot of her behaviour this past season has been a defence mechanism. She attacks quite hard when she feels threatened etc. She always is defending herself about being "messy" and "obnoxious". But, in reality, she is messy and obnoxious! She knows she is and knows that is the criticism she is getting. She tried to portray herself as lively and bubbly when in reality she wasn't like that most of the time. There was other stuff going on there. What she does with all that now, I don't know...

So while this reaction has likely been humbling for her, and she isn't the beloved figure she thought she would be at the start of the season (her own reality cooking show waiting for her and all),  I'm sure she is getting a pummelling online and from the show fans. So much so, that the mass volume of that would be entirely overwhelming. I just wonder where she goes from here.

I could sort of see Silky's behavior as a coping mechanism if we'd ever seen any humility from her.  And if we'd ever seen her do something for other people.  I never saw her try to learn from someone who had been doing something longer or had more experience with anything, she blew off all critiques from the judges with an "I have no idea why they said that, I was awesome!" attitude.  And then when people started tiring of her being in their face and sucking up all of the oxygen she suddenly started saying, oh, well, it's because of this.  There just isn't any growth, no story of, this part of the season was rough for me and I wish I could do this over again because I would have done this, and I'm glad that I have had this experience, because I've learned x or y about myself and now I know better how to handle this type of thing.  

[gritz]

On 5/31/2019 at 12:47 PM, Keywestclubkid said:

Like vanji and her silhouette Brooke is beating that preforming en pointe to death like it’s not a reveal and shocking or new and exciting when you do it every god damn time.

Yeah, but it's so sexy, though.

On 6/1/2019 at 12:28 AM, violet and green said:

Rewatching... Hat's off to the little dog in the red bouffant wig and earrings staring earnestly at the stage after SOS is announced as the next song!

That dog didn't move nor blink either time it was shown. I think it may have been stuffed - as in taxidermied. (And, I really hope I'm wrong about that.)

I felt a little bad for A'keria when Aquaria came out in that badass phoenix outfit.

Edited June 4, 2019 by gritz

[Eater of Worlds]

I"m entirely out of the loop this year, I didn't even realize this season had started until it finished.  Can someone describe Vanjie's accent to me, where are they from?  For people who don't know I"m Deaf and while I can tell someone has a different way of speaking I can't always place it.

[Blakeston]

1 hour ago, Eater of Worlds said:

I"m entirely out of the loop this year, I didn't even realize this season had started until it finished.  Can someone describe Vanjie's accent to me, where are they from?  For people who don't know I"m Deaf and while I can tell someone has a different way of speaking I can't always place it.

Vanjie is from L.A. However, her mother has a New York accent, and Vanjie definitely picked up that accent - she sounds more New York than California.

Also, most of the time she speaks in an exaggerated gruff voice, where she's practically belching out her words.

[theatremouse]

I thought in the TH section of the penultimate episode Vanjie said Florida? But yes, got the NY accent from mom. I do think Vanjie lives in LA right now, but isn't from LA.

[Blakeston]

On 6/4/2019 at 3:11 PM, theatremouse said:

I thought in the TH section of the penultimate episode Vanjie said Florida? But yes, got the NY accent from mom. I do think Vanjie lives in LA right now, but isn't from LA.

I seem to recall her mentioning a Florida connection, but this profile of her calls her an LA native. I'm not sure what the timeline is.

[Kaboom 2.0]

I know I am so late in posting but I loved that Yvie was crowned the winner and Nina is Miss Congeniality! The show finally got something right this season. Also loved seeing certain queens from past seasons onstage, seeing them again made me love them even more. 

The In Mammarium to Michelle's breasts actually made me LOL. Hope she is doing well and kudos to her for shining a light on a serious issue that (to me) does not get discussed much.

Another LOL moment was finding out Papa Oddly had his motorcycle club buddies watch RPDR to see his baby. Also, awwww!

[swanpride]

The season was just...meh. And I think the biggest problem was the judging. I mean, the line-up itself was pretty boring, there weren't many queens which stood out, but as if that wasn't bad enough, they also removed the ones which very kind of enjoyable pretty early in order to keep "drama queens" like Rajah and Silky. Rajah should have never survived the lip sync against Scarlett and Silky should have been in the bottom multiple times. I wonder if Ru felt like an idiot when she realized that Silky was terrible at lip syncs so late in the game that she couldn't really remove her without making the last episode boring. We could have figured out that way earlier in the season.

Didn't help that it was clear that Yvie would be the winner the moment she explained her condition. Not to be mean, she deserved the win, but the winner is always a queen who brings something "special" to the table or offers a good story and Yvie was both.