‘Drag Race Canada vs The World 2×02’ Review
Despite having only competed in her original season under a year ago, Vanity Milan returned with a vengeance in the opening episode of Drag Race Canada vs The World! During the musical challenge, she delivered a powerful message about the injustices POC queens experience including calling out the BBC media team who recently came under fire for putting the wrong name of a black queen during one of the exit interviews of Drag Race UK season four! During the runway section of the episode, she decided to showcase an incredibly elegant, golden outfit made from duvets which looked absolutely incredible on her! After finding herself in the top two alongside Rita Baga, Vanity delivered a lip-sync performance that utilised every one of her mind-blowing dance skills that claimed her place as the overall winner of the episode. Rita decided to channel a much more comedic performance also mimicking the incredible stunts of her opponent. As she won the episode, Vanity was given the opportunity to decide who would be the first queen to go home on this international where in a shocking twist ended up being Kendall Gender who originally finished in the top three of her original season! Seeing such a successful queen go home in the first episode is extremely shocking and gives the impression that anything can happen this season!
This week’s episode opened with a very interesting conversation between Victoria Scone and Stephanie Prince over the use of the term ‘fishy.’ As the first-ever cis-gendered AFAB queen on the show (assigned female at birth), Victoria discussed how the connection between the genitalia and an odour is damaging for all those with this certain body part. Stephanie talked about how in her culture this is a common term for cross-dressers but Victoria (quite politely might I ask) took the time to educate her on how controversial this term can be.
The first mini-challenge of this season saw the return of the usually iconic reading challenge where the queens were supposed to showcase the most comedic insults of one another. Usually, Ru tells the queens who would be the first up to open up the comedy mini-challenge but in a shocking twist, Ru asked the competitors who would like to go first which was answered by the aforementioned Victoria Scone. There is a reason why we have seen this challenge appear on every single season of Drag Race without fail and that’s because usually, this is one of the more memorable mini-challenges but generally speaking this was one of the most awkward iterations of the ‘Paris is burning’ inspired challenge. Having had a near-flawless performance across the board last episode it was devastating to see Vanity really struggle in this comedy challenge. Many of her jokes did not seem to land and in fact were rather chaotic especially when she turned to Stephanie to say “your skill set is abysmal, I’m surprised you can even walk” which I have to admit I still don’t quite understand. I thought it was very clever that Silky brought up the fact that she really struggled during her original performance on season eleven. Considering the low standard of the other performers, purposefully setting the bar low for her own personal experience can only make her look better. In all honesty, the only queen that did fairly well was Anita Wigl’it with her read calling silky “Priscilla Queen of the deserts” was not only a nice nod to her heritage but was also a very clever play of words! It was an obvious choice that Anita was crowned as the winner of the mini-challenge!
The maxi-challenge this week also saw the return of yet another iconic Drag Race staple, the snatch game! When it was announced that this week the queens would be busting out their best celebrity impressions, the advantage instantly was awarded to Silky Nutmeg Gnache and Anita Wigl’it as they previously won the challenge during their original season but this benefit proved very useless. On the previous Drag Race vs The World season, we saw the snatch game return with a Family Fortune-style twist with the two teams being captained by Katie Price and Michelle Visage. This season’s snatch game was given a political style influence with the judges posing issues to the contestants having to improvise hilarious and in-character responses. After her iconic performance as Queen Elizabeth the first during Drag Race Down Under season one, Anita decided to take on the character of Adele and promised a flirty and divorced version of the Northern singer however this wasn’t totally what we were given. The other snatch game-winner Silky decided to impersonate the brilliant Lizzo where she looked like the “Juice” singer but the actual character work was something she clearly really struggled with. The acting job was essentially Silky’s usual character but have a habit of talking for long periods of time with very limited comedic moments. The best moment of the entire performance saw Silky bust out a flute and begin twerking which did have me laughing out loud. The funniest jokes of the episode (including during the disappointing reading challenge) happened when Silky said that Anita’s performance as Adele and the singer’s Vegas residency are very similar as neither of them showed up which I personally thought was brilliant!
I was initially very excited when the Cardiff-based queen Victoria Scone decided to do an impersonation of the iconic TV cleaner Kim Woodburn as she has a plethora of catchphrases and has a massive, over-the-top personality. However, as the judges commented, we were waiting for Victoria to stage an explosive meltdown which Kim has become known for. Another character that had incredible potential with the snatch game format was Cardi B who was selected by Stephanie Prince. While the performance had a wonderful array of the eccentric singer’s catchphrases but her improvisational skills did require a lot of work. Her answers appeared non-sensical, especially the moments when she said the next in-trend name would be “the dangly thing that swings in the back of your throat” which is a reference to the controversial WAP lyric and the best way to attract paparazzi is to “white” none of which really made sense! Ra’jah decided to take on an impression of the queen of bounce big Frieda who dominated many of the conversations with hilarious quips. One of the best performances on this episode would have to be Icesis Couture as Donatella Versace who spent the entire challenge reading the other contestants!
In an episode of Drag Race UK vs The World, I really enjoyed the fact that the British queens took the time to help educate the international queens on some British culture. While we have not had these cultural skits in this season so far , they made sure that the country of Canada is a key influence of the season. Not only is Canada’s Drag Race vs The World judged by the usual Canadian judges but this episode invited the winner of Drag Race Canada season one Priyanka to join the judging panel. I have talked in numerous reviews about how the connection between the other iterations of Drag Race needs to be established which is exactly what this inclusion has done! However, having both Brooklyn Hytes and Priyanka as the judges this week on the snatch game episode was a strange choice as they both ended up in the bottom during their respective seasons! Additionally, the reason for the political slant on the iconic snatch game was due to the fact that the current Prime Minister made a shocking appearance in the werk room. Justin Trudeau joined the queens backstage and discussed how he was the first ever Prime Minister to appear at a pride parade and also appeared to be extremely informed about Drag Race and in fact delivered one of the funniest reads of the episode when he turned to head judge Brooklyn and asked: “when will I met Ru Paul?” It is fanatic to see the support given by Justin to the queer community and as he even commented more higher-ups should do the same!
The runway category for this week’s episode was “Celestial Bodies” which was the theme of the 2018 Met Gala. Silky decided to showcase a very beautiful galaxy jumpsuit with the most wonderfully sparkly and glow in the dark dragon puppet draped across her shoulders. This look was completed with a very unique greyscale make-up and the most over-the-top red and black hooped wig. Ra’jah decided to interpret this theme to showcase a very sleek blue velvet dress with a wonderfully sparkly Crystal white undergarment with matching white jewellery and opted to spray her natural hair white to tie the look together. My favourite look this week would have to be the one worn by Anita Wigl’it which was a fabulous galaxy-inspired fishtail gown that looked absolutely incredible on her! I really loved the foam wig/moon and star headpiece combination that carefully danced the line between camp and glamour which is my favourite interjection for drag looks! I thought that Vanity looked amazing in a mermaid sequin outfit with wonderful streaks jetting out on the shoulders and hips sections of the look. The matching thigh-high boots and intense Mohawk helped to create an extremely exciting and interesting look that would not have expected from this queen! Victoria Scone wore a wonderful sparkly jumpsuit that exaggerated her body beautifully! Even though most of her face was covered with a fun, golden rings headpiece I thought that her make-up and hair this week were absolutely stunning but I thought we could have done with the dangly sparkly rings on the belt section of the look.
It was announced that Raj’ah and Icesis were in the top this week after they were very clearly the best performers during the snatch game. They had to battle against one another to “Skater Boy” by Avril Lavigne for the right to decide if they would prefer Stephanie or Anita to leave the competition. Icesis decided to really tap into the punk rock elements of the song with her brilliantly vibrant leather jacket as she stormed across the stage and Ra’jah managed to pull out a perfectly timed split. It was announced that Icesis is the overall winner of this week’s episode and she decided that we will be saying farewell to her Canadian sister Stephanie Prince. Despite being a Canadian herself, the Canadian queens have not gotten off to the best start as the host country has lost two Canadian queens in two weeks!
Overall, having the two most iconic challenges from Drag Race in one episode was a lot of pressure which the majority of queens seemed to really struggle with. Of the queens that were shown Anita seemed to be the only queen who appeared to excel during the reading mini-challenge and even those who previously won their snatch games from their original seasons (namely Anita and Silky) gave very underwhelming performances. Although I do have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the space-inspired runway categories as the nod to the Met Gala implied a sense of extravagance which many of the queens showcased perfectly!
