‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race 14×12’ Review
Two long weeks ago we saw one of the worst snatch game performances in Drag Race her-story with only one of the queens doing a good job. This came as a total surprise as everyone online had been talking about how talented this group of queens are! Last week however the cast were given the opportunity to redeem themselves in a lip-sync smackdown tournament which delivered some incredible performances throughout. Everyone is still talking about THAT lip-sync between Lady Camden and Bosco to “Don’t Let Go” which was filmed perfectly. There was a moment when the camera focussed on Lady Camden during the emotionally driven song but we could still see Bosco in the background also delivering a great performance. This was a masterpiece of cinematography and is something that we need to see more of from Drag Race in the future! We also saw a slightly more positive side of this season’s villain Daya Betty who actually commented on how incredible both Daya and Jasmin Kennedy looked in their respective lip-sync. It was the latter however who needed up in the bottom of the tournament, alongside Bosco, and after a hard-fought battle, she was told to leave to competition. Jasmin Kennedy has bigged up how much of a great performer she is all season (which no one is denying!) but to see her go home on a lip-sync challenge completed her narrative a bit too well.
This week’s challenge had the queens performing in the “Moulin Ru” which was a musical episode heavily inspired by the musical on Broadway and recently landed on the West End. These musical challenges are all a highlight for me, as someone who is a fan of musicals in the real world, seeing the queens perform a full production live is always highly entertaining. The queens had to decide amongst themselves the roles they would play for the maxi challenge, which always leads to some interesting discussions. Both Lady Camden and Bosco wanted to play the same role in the show and so there were prolonged scenes where they essentially argued against one another. There was a very interesting moment where Bosco decided to pull out a very interesting persuasive technique and say that she could not physically play any other role as it would not be good. I thought that was a rather strange and almost self-deprecation technique that didn’t fit the Bosco the audience have come to love. The choice was given to the other queens to vote for who they wanted to play the lead role and Daya Betty decided to intentionally vote for Bosco which meant that the overall decision rest solely on Willow Pills’ opinion. Willow voted for Bosco which did lead to a very tense moment in the workroom but after the dust had settled this proved to be a good decision! During the rehearsal process, the queens were brought up on stage for choreography and were directed by non-other than Lesley Jordan (who actually appeared in the performance itself) and were hilarious throughout the episode! If nothing else proves that this season’s queens are highly talented then it should be that for two of the performers the choreographer simply told the queens that he would give them counts of eight and to see what they think they should do! It is clear that the queens have gotten over the disaster of the snatch game and we are back up to the untouchable divas we saw earlier in the season!
The main challenge was very heavily influenced by the iconic 2001 movie musical Moulin Rouge and promoted the new musical of the same name. The tracks were cleverly Ru Paul songs that had been mixed to include the French cabaret style that is synonymous with this move. It also included a range of iconic drag race moments such as “I’m in love with Jason Mamoa” from All-Stars six and “Bing, Bang, Bong” from Drag Race UK season 2 (which Bimini Bon Boulash has recently been nominated for a BAFTA for). Lady Camden clearly excelled in the role she initially did not want where she showcased her incredible ballet skills throughout. She was incredibly theatrical and is clearly a fantastic storyteller as she was the one driving the entire story. I also thought that she looked amazing in her sparkly red, ringmaster inspired look! As a whole Deja was not as confident in this performance but the moment that she strutted onto the stage with two dancers on leashes and rapping was so fierce! She had this amazing powerful aura about her that really captured the moment perfectly! For me, this moment was a highlight but the rest of Deja’s performance was overshadowed by her peers! Yet again Willow shows us that she is a queen with many, many, many talents where she easily picked up her choreography movements and was able to do it at increasing speeds while also portraying the comedy of her role. She took on the role of a green fairly, which is clearly based on Kylie Minogue’s role in the original film, which she looked incredible as!
The runway theme this week was “Mirror, Mirror” where Bosco walked the runway as a sexy robot with essentially metallic lingerie. While she did look incredible in this outfit that showcased her incredible body, we have seen this corset, panties and boot structure from her for three weeks in a row which is starting to become very predictable. Angeria wore a wonderful mosaic, blue glass gown which was so wonderfully pageant inspired and looked incredible on her! This outfit was very on-brand for Angeria as it not only looked amazing but fitted the classic style of drag she aims to promote. I really enjoyed Daya Betty’s Kiss-inspired look that had dramatic spikes and a fun cape. For all her attitude issues, Daya had been turning some very unique looks on the runway which always fit into her punk aesthetic which is always great to see! Every week I can almost guarantee that Jorgeous will look incredible in whatever she wears on the runway and this week was no exception. She decided to wear a Cardi B inspired ribbed dress with latex boots and matching gloves. The shimmery dress looked amazing on her and worked perfectly with the accessories and her wet wig. On the other hand, I was slightly disappointed by Deja’s look this week as she wore a black mesh base that looked great but decided to put random strips of reflective material on certain sections. Not only was it not fit well but the mirror elements seemed as if they were a second thought and did not really belong on the outfit.
It was declared that Lady Camden was the winner of this week’s episode which clearly made sense as she was a highlight during the performance. The ‘almost’ fight between Bosco and Lady Camden peered its ugly head again at the end of the episode as the queens were asked the dreaded question of who do they think should go home this week. Bosco brought up that Jorgeous had been in the bottom three times, which the latter then retorted that Bosco had been in the bottom three times in one episode during last week’s lip-sync tournament. Both these queens were then put into the bottom, where Bosco talked about the supposed favouritism of her opponent by Ru Paul. At the end of the great lip-sync by two gifted dancers Ru announce that Jorgeous was safe and Bosco is up for elimination. It had been heavily rumoured online that Bosco had in her possession the magic golden chocolate bar that stops her from being eliminated and I can confirm that this rumour was 100% true and so yet again no one had been eliminated from season fourteen!
Overall , as a musical theatre fan I throughly enjoyed the hybrid of Drag Race and musical theatre. In my opinion this was one of the most musical inspired musical challenges we have seen on Ru Paul’s Drag Race with all the queens performing at a very high standard. We had all the ingredients of a good drag race episode with a bit of drama, wonderful performance and some incredible runway fashions!
