Photo: MTV
I saw Goody Charles dancing with the devil, and the devil ran off with RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’s momentum! It’s a new bracket this week and the vibes are way off. The new queens aren’t entirely to blame, but this is a bracket already floundering for a narrative. Let’s start with the positive and just get into the queens.
Denali is a contestant that fans have been very vocally clamoring to get an All Stars return, and she immediately announces herself as one to watch. Why did it take so long for Denali to come back? Because her calling the four-year gap between seasons “an Olympic cycle” is branding so good you bow down to it. A confession: Was I as enamored as everyone else was with Denali’s first run? Not particularly. Did she get me onboard the instant she made her main-stage return? Fully, wholeheartedly. After the actual drag itself got overshadowed in the last bracket, Denali’s icy—you could say “crystalline”—vision promises that won’t be happening again.
But Acid Betty is more overdue for an All Stars return than anyone competing this season. Do I understand her buff neon minotaur (?) entrance look? No, and I don’t care! However, given her high-concept drag aesthetic and the already outsize expectations of what queens are supposed to deliver on All Stars, I can’t help but immediately worry that the bar for success will be higher for Acid than for her competitors. If big, bold, and beyond imagination is already your whole deal, folks will expect the All Stars version of that to be in the stratosphere. Fingers crossed.
Making a strong impression with her strappy entrance look, Alyssa Hunter nevertheless comes to All Stars a bundle of anxieties. You can tell she is very worried that we don’t remember her. But with a paint as gorgeously severe as hers, her potential is obvious, even if her taste level is less so. Emblazoning one’s confessional look with the word trade is about as bluntly “party supply” as, well, a money gun in a lip sync. Alyssa, honey, I’m worried.
Like doughnuts in the break room or Kim Dickens playing a real salt-of-the-earth type, I will never turn down another go with Cynthia Lee Fontaine. Her earnest brand of for-its-own-sake maximalism and crazed optimism may not add a lot of story to her seasons of Drag Race, but she’s always an antidote to queens who take themselves too seriously (or pretend that they don’t). Look, if you stay ready to see her cucu, you don’t have to get ready to see her cucu. I’m ready for beaucoup cucu.
This bracket is the first to have more than one former finalist, and the first of them is Daya Betty. I’ve always been a bit dubious of dubbing simply opinionated queens as overt villains, but I already sense that we will be clinging to Daya’s harshness for dear life this bracket. If Bosco was giving “hottest chick at the mall” in bracket one, Daya’s refined punk headphones-and-boots entrance promises us “meanest goth at the mall.” More queens bringing respect back to the institution that is the Mall!
The other returning finalist is Ginger Minj. Yes, like the Drag Race version of Mercury retrograde, Ginger Minj is back, back, back, back again. Now on her fourth time competing, Ginger Minj has appeared in more Drag Race episodes than jokes about bottoming. I’m not sure if we’re in store for anything we haven’t seen before based on her entrance look or her rebuttals to the lingering critiques of her canned, “over-rehearsed” persona, but you also can’t argue with the star quality she adds to this bracket.
But as Drag Race reaches 16 years on television, how many times competing on Drag Race is too many times? Jujubee, Alexis Mateo, and Eureka have all competed as many times, if you include global-extension seasons (Ginger’s are all U.S. airing). Compare that to Survivor, which has had nearly two dozen more seasons and only a handful of contestants have competed this many times, with only one — grumble, grumble Boston Rob — competing five times. At this point in the franchise, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Ginger has already had her shot and other queens should be given that chance. Third time’s a charm? Fourth time’s a harm.
The queens are tasked to team up — an All Stars 1 reference?! Teleport us to Mars! — and design dueling witch looks in honor of Wicked: For Good. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s Wicked press tour really is like the bus from Speed; if they lose pace for even a second, everyone on this very gay bus will die. It’s not a surprise that everyone wants to work with Acid Betty when she has the most seasoned design chops and her aesthetic already fits comfortably into the villain role. But this challenge is the first sign that this bracket is off to a rocky start. By forcing the queens into pairs, there’s less room to hear about their personal stories. There’s no real established stakes or axes the queens have to grind; all of them separately confess that their motivation this time is some version of “focus on the competition” and “trust myself.” It’s really difficult to tell who we’re supposed to root for in this bracket and (more important) why we’re supposed to root for them, and that is the show’s fault, not the queens’.
Added to that lack of narrative is a limp, cliché “good witch, bad witch” design challenge. The challenges this season have been spiraling out into blandness. Can you blame the queens for all having the same “elements!” originality deficiency when the challenge is uninspiring? Forget witches — the guest judge this week could have been Captain Planet.
Planeteers Alyssa and Cynthia seem categorically opposed to making a stink about being the least desirable picks when the queens choose pairs but don’t bring the best out of each other, either. Cynthia’s gown has some beautiful elements, but the abundant cardboard dulls their effect; like Liza Minnelli, this is a sterile cucu. On the other hand, Alyssa should be commended for shooting for a more ambitious look than most of the queens, but the look is still missing something that distinguishes it.
Selling themselves on their fast (and unexpected) chemistry are Daya and Ginger, a compelling duo that could prove more powerful together than they would be apart. Daya’s villain queen looks straight out of Disney, working in more character detail than any of the queens onstage. Ginger’s dress is serviceable, but its color palette so closely matches Daya’s that there’s no “good witch” juxtaposition; given its boggy plainness, it’s clear the judges are rooting for her when they give it such high praise. But their looks matter less than how well they work together, with Daya dexterously bounding around Ginger’s silliness. I think we’re seeing the makings of this bracket’s unshakable alliance.
Meanwhile, Denali and Acid are the most impressive pair in looks and performance, finding a real harmony between Denali’s sleek simplicity and Acid’s layered fabrication. But they also make for a frustrating duo. All of the queens went for the basic “elemental” inspiration, so you think Acid and Denali would have leaned in further to their ideas around iced coffee. (Hey, it’s dumb, but at least it’s different!) Where Ginger and Daya drew something out of each other, though, Denali and Acid’s dynamic is tentative and hem-hawing. So far, it looks like they are showing up to their bracket with the best drag, but retreating in the personality department, and I think this is what kept the judges from awarding them.
Not for lack of trying on the part of our Ozian and Oscar-nominated guest judges. One of the persistent narratives this All Stars season has been the guest judges’ slow descent into mutiny with Michelle and the main panel, and it’s an increasingly alarming problem that the mainstay judges have been so consistently wrong. Cynthia and Ariana are fighting for truth, justice, and espresso — and I think they were on the right side of this one, dour dynamic or no, and they give the episode a pulse. When the best part of a Drag Race episode is the guest stars, it’s a rough week, but when it’s an episode trying to introduce a new lineup, it’s cause for dialysis.
Rare is the Broadway ballad that makes sense as a Drag Race lip sync, and, unfortunately, “Defying Gravity” is not one of them. Daya gallantly tries to emo squat to show tunes, but it’s no match for Ginger’s park-and-bark emoting, and by God, Ginger Minj has officially won a sewing challenge on Drag Race. If nothing else, I think this surprising twosome have their head in the game more than their fellow bracketeers, so we’ll see if the Messy Points can help find a pulse after this ho-hum beginning.
Extra Two Pieces and a Biscuit
• We’ve had double Brooks, and now it’s time for double Betty! But where was the discussion of the difference between the coastal and midwestern Betty lineages?
• The best look of the week wasn’t on the main stage, it was in the workroom: Acid Betty wearing her emotional support husk of Sulley from Monsters, Inc.
• You can’t have any Cynthia and Ariana Dairy-Free Ice Cream Truck until you finish your Wicked Mystery Color Macaroni and Cheese!
• Ginger sobbing over her bone-deep queer love for the musical Wicked is the only real strategic move in the entire episode and you won’t convince me otherwise.
• Official memorandum prohibiting flames as an outfit motif on Drag Race moving forward! Unless a queen wants to serve actual flames, in which case, go off.
