‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race 14×13’ Review
Just over two years ago I and my Aunty decided to plan and French-themed night so I could watch, for the first time, the hit musical Les Miserables. Despite being a massive musical theatre fan, I had never seen the West End’s longest-running production and so my Aunty made it a must that we enjoyed it together. We have dressed up in our French-est attires and bought some baguettes and Profiteroles for our mid-show snack. We were all set up ready to turn the musical on … only to realise that someone had borrowed the DVD and not given it back! We had to quickly adapts and lucky were able to find a recording of the wonderfully eccentric French, cabaret inspired musical Moulin Rouge. This was my first exposure to the totally unique movie and I thought it could not get any more outrè but Ru Paul’s Drag Race proved me wrong! As a massive musical theatre fan, I thought that last week’s musical inspired challenge was one of the best episodes in Drag Race history! The musical challenge infused the musical motifs we have come to love from the one of a kind musical Moulin Rouge and some iconic Drag Race moments including many of Ru Paul’s most famous songs. Not only was the actual movie performance excellent but the clever inclusion of drama really made for a very exciting episode. The fight between Bosco and Lady Camden for the lead role which the former eventually claimed only to end at the bottom (with the latter actually being crowned the winner of the episode) was perfectly orchestrated and the choice to include the always decisively question “who should go home?” helped to add a bit more drama between the bottom two queens, Bosco and Jorgeous. There was another twist as Jorgeous was declared safe which meant Bosco had to reveal if she had the magic chocolate bar which would grant her another chance in the competition. It turned out that she had in fact been in possession of the golden chocolate bar and so last week was another episode where no one went home.
This week’s episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race began with the queens competing in an extremely fun mini-challenge of recreating the iconic portraits of Ru Paul and Dolly Parton in North Carolina which, when revealed, caused a lot of controversies. This challenge was sponsored by Novena and had the queens using a paint palette inspired by this make-up brand’s newest palette and had to use the most oversized brushes to paint the massive portraits. I really enjoyed the over-the-topness of this challenge which was completely separate from the normal expectations of drag queens. I thought that this low stakes but the extremely entertaining challenge was great not only from a TV perspective but also was fantastic product placement and including popular couture which was very clever! I want to see more mini-challenges like this on drag race! The winning team of Bosco, Daya Betty, Deja Skye and Lady Camden created an interesting portrait of Dolly Parton and so were given the tactical advantage of being able to decide the order of this week’s main challenge.
For the rest of this episode, the queens had to prepare for a roast of the hilarious guest judge Ross Mathews. If you are not familiar with the roasting format it is essentially insult based humour but delivered through a pre-prepared, stand up style performance. The two queens who last week fought tooth and nail for the lead role were now going to book end this week’s performance with Bosco opening and Lady Camden closing the whole show. These are clearly the two most difficult spots in any lineup and I know that I personally would not want to be in either of these two queens’ (high-heeled) shoes! I am constantly amazed by the range of layers that Willow Pill sheds from week to week. She clearly showed during this week’s episode that she is a very clever and calculating queen who has a strategy going into every challenge. Willow made a point to make sure that she was immediately after Jorgeous as she was sure that this queen would struggle and therefore make Willow look even better and she was spot on! The queen dubbed by Ru Paul as “born to do drag” Jorgeous was clearly not comfortable in this form of comedy challenge and during her performance stumbled over many of her jokes. She did have some hilarious jokes but her performance of them was not what we have come to expect from these talented queens. She was visibly seen to be extremely overwhelmed throughout the episode. Angeria Paris Van Michaels however was almost the complete opposite of Jorgeous where she had very few jokes but her stage presence helped keep everyone entertained despite the lack of funny insults. It was also very clear that Deja also really struggled with this format of insult comedy.
The runway theme for this week’s episode was “tutu much” where the queens had to somehow creatively showcase a tutu skirt. I thoroughly enjoyed Bosco’s buzzsaw ballerina which looked absolutely stunning! Not only was it very glamorous but the inclusion of razor-sharp blades and sparkly blood added a wonderful sense of horror to the look. The highlight for me however was the incredible blonde wig that was sculpted around a buzz saw that split her skull in half. This was one of my favourite looks from Bosco this season and came at a time when people are pointing out that many of her looks are very similar with the bra, pantie and boot combo being worn for almost three episodes in a row. Even days after seeing it for the first time, I still think that Willow Pill’s outfit this episode was a show-stealer! She wore a black and white outfit with a wonderful splash of matching pink gloves and boots which all blended together perfectly. She had the most exaggerated loops that were a clear reference to Amanda Lepore with her outfit being a reference to Cruella De Vile which was an unusual hybrid of two iconic personalities that just worked perfectly in one unique outfit. Going into this runway category I was excited to see what Lady Camden would bring as she has become known for her incredible ballet skills. She wore an incredible sparkly tutu that played on her dance experience where she looked flawlessly elegant! Daya Betty also went for a ballet-inspired look with instance eleven-inch ballet heels that I thought looked amazing but at the same time extremely difficult to walk in!
It was declared by Ru Paul that Bosco was the winner of this week’s episode of Ru Paul’s Drag Race and in a shocking twist Daya, Deja and Jorgeous would be lip-syncing against each other with two queens going home. What is really striking about this line-up is that Deja Skye was referred to as a lip-sync assassin earlier in the session by head judge Ru Paul; and all the other queens have dubbed Jorgeous as one of the best lip-syncers to ever appear on the show which meant that Daya went into this as an almost underdog. On top of this, there has been a lot of outrage online directed toward Daya surrounding her negative attitude on the show, so it came as a total shock when it was announced that Daya would be staying in the competition with the other lip-sync ‘experts’ being told to go home. Usually, I assume that the queens feel deflated after a lip-sync that there were so close to going home but I think that after sending two performing powerhouses home this would serve as ammunition to get Daya to the top of the season.
Overall, this episode saw some good roast performances with some queens clearly struggling. I think the runway was the highlight of this week’s episode with many queens showcasing incredible looks!
