'...and DON'T *bleep* IT UP!' -- the RuPaul's Drag Race thread

I think at this point THE PIT STOP is what I look forward to the most each week and the actual episode is just sort a formality that I have to watch before I can get to the good stuff.

I never disliked Monique Heart but I did always kinda find her a bit hollow and a bit too performative (sometimes gratingly so), and I was amazed at how at-ease and effortlessly charming she was this past week. All of the queens this season have had such incredible chemistry with Trixie (except maybe Manila which kinda surprised me but even she was still great).

multiple times over the last week I have simply thought about "Sheryl Canning" and started laughing.

Yeah I need to catch up on those but what I caught of Monique's episode was a treat!

Envy Peru on Drag Race Espana of course ruled.

Trinity’s Beyonce was beyond belief, she was fkn robbed. who cares about normcore tryhard Jan.

and yes Pit Stop is life

Monique is so great as a guest on anything. I love her, she’s hilarious. Her and Monet together is guaranteed lols

Odd little episode, like it wanted to be more serious in the challenge instead of having that be the side talk. Which is not bad! But still.

The lip sync assassin bit was top notch though!

Meantime the grind never ends: Drag Race Holland Season 2 starts up August 6. (Wonder why no Canada…yet)

Yeah it's like they punished the bottom girl for making one funny face, because it had to be SERIOUS. I would be confused too when they usually want so much overacting and making Ru laugh.

My BIL works in Canadian tv (not DR though) and it got pretty detailed by COVID lockdowns. Hilariously though he has a friend who does work on the show and through that connection was able to get his first shot in March much earlier than me as an “essential worker”.. so something must have been filmed/is filming!

Cool!

My BIL is a little bit safer this year because of the power of drag 🤣
I did mean derailed up there, oops!

I was wondering if it's actually an advantage to do well enough in your original season to get to the finale but not win, so that you can double dip into being an All-Star. Judging solely by how much I see them, Alaska > Jinkx, Trixie and Katya > Violet.

that episode genuinely felt like an attempt to gaslight the audience. In no world was the winning queen the deserved winner.

the winning team is … These losers!
because the WINNER is… HER from that losing team!

WE HATE EVERYONE

it was an interesting challenge though, i just think the concept needed to be cooked slightly at the brainstorming stage

ru’s critique of scarlet was omg burn ward.
i mean, i dont disagree in a way but it was so BITCH FIX YOURSELF as to feel unfair & personal
and scarlet just blew right by it & went home to write her manifesto

If you ask me, we should be on the third week in a row of Trinity being the winner.

100%

I often find the judging to be weird and opaque, but I thought it made a lot of sense this week. Even with the little connection between Kylie and Ra'Jah, their whole conversation was mainly about Scarlet's two moms finding love with each other, which had nothing to do with the topic of motherhood at all. Although I thought A'keriah should have won. Mind you, I thought A'keriah's Prince performance was really unfairly slated last week.

i still don't understand what made rupaul uncomfortable... listening to ginger talk about how she couldn't shit for like 2 minutes sure made me uncomfortable

ok that sketch was like 900 years long wtf

v glad for winner this wk
but if Jan hurts herself in any way as a result of this show it will be on their heads, man they are fucking with her

also Peppermint was on Pitstop this wk and trixie reminded her of this MAJESTIC hilarity with Bob from last year’s pitstop ie “It’s fashion”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBJwONPe6NU

That acting challenge was both 900 years long and also maybe the most excruciatingly boring challenge in RPDR history, I cannot BELIEVE they actually aired that

It was so bad. The runway was fantastic, though.

yeah that was a killer runway

i am bummed pandora didnt get a bit more love, i thought she was really great this week in challenge & runway

Unfortunately the challenge was so horribly written that even Pandora and Ginger couldn’t really elevate it beyond merely amusing. I actually dug the “I’m your biggest fan” choice Eureka made there, and can’t really imagine it being read any other way that would’ve been better so A+ producer-thwarting on her part there by refusing to give them any alternative takes. Willam would’ve been proud.

It's often been the case that the actual rehearsal/filming footage of these things is way more watchable than the actual final result, and boy did it show.

i always hate the rehearsal moments where michelle gets to michellesplain, in the cuntiest way imaginable, the *dumbest* things

like what a lisp is lmao

thanks michelle

they keep throwing pandora softball after softball and it's like why are you still here and yara is gone

fucking rupaul's rigged race

i truly dislike michelle, she's just not even cunty in a fun way, just a bitch who thinks she's smarter than she actually is

Race Chaser/Hot Goss wondered yesterday if the ‘game within a game’ involves Snatch Game

Also Drag Race España final tomorrow! Say it again, that’s been a great first season and a real treat.

i like that bob and thorgy in the pit stop said pandora seems like she doesn't want to be there at all, agree 100%

also that ryan murphy thing was fucking embarrassing, probably the worst acting challenge

Now that I know how onerous the contract terms are with regards to being called back for later shows, I wouldn't be surprised if Pandora didn't want to be there. (It would also explain why they brought Bianca in to do basically nothing so that they could reset her timer). I know that "contestants treated badly in reality TV show SHOCKER" is not exactly headline news, but other shows don't have that veneer of "we're all one big drag family."

I've been rewatching some of the early seasons, and it seems obvious now that one of the reasons they don't do so many sewing challenges any more is that they just take too long. It's obviously much easier and quicker to give everyone an hour or two to learn a song or some terrible dialogue and let them get into drag that they brought with them, rather than have them make things from scratch.

Which, a pity, I love all that sewing work.

Anyway, I would like to coin a new term after yesterday's episode: "Jangst."

(So when is this game-within-a-game starting anyway, because now there's more people gone than are still in it!)

yeah wtf they are def dragging that out

lol pun intended i guess

The game within a game -- everyone's eliminated one by one and then they have to start all over again, thus stretching the show out through the rest of the year, in time for the new regular season to start in the New Year.

haha

I'm hoping the game-within-a-game is rock paper scissors just to see Ginger's face

I think another reason for scrapping the sewing/design challenges is that they are a lot harder to edit into the production narratives. You can make it seem like eg someone's jokes have bombed by using the rattlesnake sound effect and a cut to Michelle Visage looking stony, whereas you can't really disguise a good or a bad costume the same way.

And another queen down. But Trinity reacting to Tina was great.

STILL nothing about this game within a game and I’m wondering if my joke last week was…right? Nothing given away in the teaser for the next episode either and after that it’s just four competitors.

Rajah’s LaToya snuck up on me

When pandora said she was doing kim cattrall i heard the sound of five suitcases being zipped closed. why would she do that? i just. ugh.

also vaguest shades of night of a thousand madonna kimonos in these fkn warhol pop art dresses WTF CMON

game within a game: galaxy brain
everyone gets eliminated!
& they roll right into a new season with the same set of queens all over again
repeat into infinity

this is fkn game AFTER a game
there has to be another game happening for it to be within
liars

I've become mildly obsessed with the Pit Stop, specifically the tea you get in the comments. It feeds my confirmation bias something terrible.

I don't watch the pit stop religiously, by any stretch, but caught a few recent ones for all-stars 6, Monique and Violet ones were fun. Trixie is such a personable host, tho, I feel she genuinely loves her sisters art . Her uncanny ability to talk to you, the viewer, like she's your best friend from waybaack gets me all the time. I also love her ability to be very funny without needing to be really shady or rude.

Yeah, she gets a lot of flak from haters because of her RuPaul-style endless hustle, but (like RuPaul herself, I'd argue) the hustle is successful because she's so funny and likeable.

yeah, that's interesting because I do think Trixie is the true drag daughter of Ru, she's the one who left the show ( after a disappointing, middling 1st stint on the show, remember) but crucially took on board and implemented every damn thing ru says to all the girls, in terms of capitalising on the fame and getting on it with the business side...hunty shebettaworkdherassoff#

Trixie haters can take a jump, Trixie is a sweetheart, a very rich sweetheart and it's pleasing to see the wealth has only made her more confidently Trixie and more able to be shiny star she is

Yeah Trixie managing multiple brands of whatever is going on as well as keeping the partnership with Katya going even after the thoroughly well documented mental break the latter had, I mean...it's remarkable mini-empire stuff at this point. (I remain intrigued that that they ended up with their podcast NOT being part of the massively MoM/Forever Dog family tree.)

also vaguest shades of night of a thousand madonna kimonos in these fkn warhol pop art dresses WTF CMON

Yeah the fact that none of the judges mentioned it was baffling.

Kylie being secretly hilarious has been one of the many great revelations of this season, as is her looking back at the mirror/camera after voting to check out herself out again.

Yeah she's amazing value throughout.

Drag Race Holland has also kicked off its new season -- seems like a good bunch of queens, sewing challenge next week. They've rejigged the prizes -- they're getting money now as well, plus apparently the big bonus is getting one's own stage at this thing next year:

https://www.milkshakefestival.com/

And in cross-branding fun, the founder of the festival will be the new Michelle Visage type for the season, I gather. (Pity, kinda liked the woman who they had last year in that role but hey.)