If Silky doesn’t walk away from this season with a dairy brand deal I will be fuming.
Have we reached franchise saturation? Yes. Did we need something to wipe the collective memory of Drag Race Down Under? YES.
Making Quite The Entrance
Kicking off the whole premature shebang is A’keria Davenport who is taking mask precautions very seriously
Stan a responsible queen.
I really like A’keria, except for that damn roaming apostrophe! I think she was maybe the only tolerable person on Season 11 and I’m glad to have her around, especially if all her looks are going to be to this callibre
This is straight up drag excellence.
I am slightly sad that she traded in her Lydia Deetz confessional look in season 11, but I can’t really be mad at the new look because it’s very 90s Nickelodeon to me
If you give me the opportunity to make a Rocket Power reference, I’m putty in your hands.
And next up is the first of our two trans queens – Jiggly Caliente, looking PHENOMENAL
The legs! The wig! The slightly Versace 2018 dress? It’s all very correct. I’m really excited to see what she gets to do now that she’s kind of processed the baggage that was hindering her so much on season 4 – or at least I was but there was some questionable judging in episode 2… Spoilers.
And now for the most recent of the Drag Race alumni, Jan, or as she shall be affectionately known: Purple Rosé
She claims that she’s managed to process her unhinged energy that ate her alive in season 12 – I personally don’t believe that for a second given she spoke entirely in Drag Race memes and gave a musical performance that I can only describe as a theatre kid infested with bees – by episode 4 she will be an absolute mess as the pressure of the All Stars format completely takes over.
And then The Moment arrives, one Miss Ra’jah O’Hara and both of her apostrophes
I mostly admire Ra’jah for her ability to always find new and intriguing ways of writing her own name on her garments which I believe is mostly so that people stop calling her “Raja”.
This is a great entrance look too and I’m thrilled to see that she’s in a much better place, although I maintain that she was magnificent entertainment value on Season 11 and I will not tolerate any Ra’jah slander because she killed it in these first two episodes.
And now we take a break from The Fashion for Ginger Minj who came dressed as the backdrop of 90s DOS game Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure
It’s Ginger, it’s stupid, it’s purposeful, I love it.
I don’t believe that this season was set up for anything other than a Ginger Minj win given that the general online opinion was that she was robbed in Season 7 and done incredibly dirty on All Stars 2, so we might as well start engraving her name on the plaque right now lads, I mean she’s got her crown all ready to go
This better not age badly, Ginger.
Although Ginger might want to not get herself too ready because Yara Sofia is also a returning All Star and did show up looking like a gilded chihuahua
I am going to need everyone to temporarily take a break from these Abraham Levy designs – there were 3 in this episode alone (This, A’keria’s entrance and Jan’s performance look)
All I want from Yara is for her to make it to the Snatch Game episode, I need to hear her attempting an English accent again. I’m manifesting that.
Following Yara was none other than Silky Nutmeg Ganache, who looked mostly amazing
The bodice isn’t wonderfully constructed but I enjoy the frothy tulle demi-skirt and, I cannot be mad at this wonderfully ridiculous wig – it’s like her Season 11 promo look turned up to 11
Silky obviously comes with a lot of baggage, I personally didn’t hate her as much as everyone else did during her run on Season 11 – I don’t think she was in the wrong as much as everyone made out that she was, that No Scrubs lipsync aside. She has also, unarguably, faced some of the worst post-show abuse that any queen on the show has faced, bar maybe one ex-PhiPhi, so let’s not go too in on her.
Also, this is Silky reborn and how can you be mad at someone THAT TOOK A GLASS OF MILK OUT OF HER CLEAVAGE
Why didn’t she just do that for her talent show performance!?
It would also be remiss not to mention her confessional look
Where on earth *is* Carmen Sandiego Nutmeg Ganache?
And now for ANOTHER All Stars returnee, this time with 100% less Mimi Imfurst
Pandora looks great, I’m a little cool on her – mostly because of the subset of the internet that calls her Aunty Pandy entirely unironically – something about it just makes me wretch. But this look is great, I like sparkly things and I like Bette Davis, what more can I say?
Bringing our Season 11 trio into a quartet is Scarlet Envy, who you might remember has a certain reputation for bad entrance looks LEST WE FORGET
I think about this look at least once a day – the little dangling vaginal gem lives in my head rent free.
So, it should be no surprise to you that Scarlet rocked up wearing a new kind of ugly
She looks like a mushroom inspired Digimon – the garish colours and the entirely baffling organic shapes? It’s pure 90s Toei Animation.
And now for Serena Cha Cha who hadn’t even entered the room before they started playing the awkward accordion music, you could have waited till after she fumbled her little “OLÉ!”
I adore that they cast her on this season, it was very obvious she was destined to go home first but mostly because she and A’keria had a BIG social media fall out because Serena made A’keria’s promo wig and it was HORRIFIC so I can only imagine the conversations that could have been had but alas, were never meant to be.
As for her look, it’s perfectly lovely, who doesn’t love some flared ABBA trousers?
It’s also just a really good colour on her, the addition of the purple does veer slightly into Cadbury’s Chocolate Eclairs though.
And now for Kylie Sonique Love, Queen of my heart
I adore her – her coming out as trans in the season 2 reunion was the first time I had ever seen an even remotely positive portrayal of a transwoman and it gave little closeted 18 year old Ariadne *SO MUCH* hope, so she means A LOT to me, also she’s so pretty
Like, pure transition goals. What a Goddess.
Also, the little nails in the confessional?
Obsessed.
Then we have Trinity K Bonet, who I have been LONGING to see get an All Stars run
The look is… baffling and somehow in an outfit with spider monkey sleeves, some VERY suspicious hip padding, a fedora and those weirdly proportioned glasses the strangest part are the ankle sock heels. It makes me *very* excited to see what sort of a fashion journey we go on with Trinity because I expect it will be turbulent, but the lipsyncs will be out of this world provided she can win a challenge.
Lastly we have Eureka! (Who still seems to believe her made up origin of the word “eureka”) I don’t think I’ll ever be a very big fan of hers, I find her energy to be exhausting and maybe I am biased, but this is the ugliest combination of colours I’ve ever seen, and I include whatever Scarlet had on in that statement
I’m perplexed by the use of what looks like hunter camo with bright red, which might have been fine but then the enormous hip laded birdcages THAT HAVE FLOORS with the ruffled shoulders that have completely eaten her neck? It’s like someone got drunk and fell asleep while watching a documentary about the French revolution on the History channel and didn’t notice it had ended and an episode of Duck Dynasty had started.
An All Stars 6 Entrance Look Ranking
- Silky’s Wig
- A’Keria’s Golden Safety Standards
- Ra’Jah’s Signed Boots
- Sonique’s Akira but FASHION
- Yara’s Crufts Winning Chihuahua
- Ginger The Super Toad
- Jiggly’s Little Leather Dress
- Pandora Boxx in Bette Davis: The Broadway Musical
- Serena’s Cadbury’s Advert
- Silky’s Blue Milk Outfit
- Jan’s Thing Is Purple
- Scarlet Envy’s Mushroom Trip
- Trinity K Bonet’s Confused Cruella
- I Still Don’t Understand Eureka’s Outfit
The Library is… Condemned.
As ever we’re doing the Reading Challenge in the first episode which I personally hate because the queens haven’t built up the sort of rapport as a group beyond the queens they’ve worked with outside of the show. That being said, we knew the cast list like 4 weeks before filming started so there was more than enough time for each of them to do enough basic research to not keep chugging out “Nobody knows who you are!” jokes. I think the only ones I did laugh at were Eureka calling Jiggly “Sags and Droops”, Sonique telling Ginger that she was shaped like a deep breath, Scarlet calling A’keria the realest bitch from the waist up and Ginger’s joke about Silky putting her ass on backwards.
The only real bombs were Serena whose reads just weren’t concise enough, Jan who just flat out told Trinity that she had bad teeth, a bad personality and a bad attitude and then of course Silky who called Jan fat and whose read about Eureka’s hairline being the only thing thinner than Eureka just didn’t make sense given Eureka is quite openly proud of the fact she’s “The Big Girl”.
It wasn’t a particularly good outing and I doubt it’ll be remembered but Ginger Minj manages to scrape the win.
Variety Is The Spice of Life
In the grand tradition of All Stars premiers, the maxi challenge is of course the Variety Show performance, by which we always mean Mostly Singing and Dancing and you would think that Jan would put on the most stage musical production of the lot and yet Sonique came out doing some sort cabaret-country hybrid while looking a lot like Madonna
everyone in the studio seemed to love it, I wasn’t that wowed by the whole thing but it was cute enough and she was very engaging.
Jan’s performance was weird because the song was manic and yet her stage presence was kind of understated and low energy? It was a very strange experience watching her belt out the notes over a slightly overpowering backing track and yet not doing a single thing with her body.
Ginger Minj also did live singing and put on a perfectly cute little performance and looked cute
She got a raw deal going right at the end of the show because by this point I think everyone was just really bored of singing and dancing, and how does one really follow the pure manic energy of Serena Cha Cha dancing like she was trying to do the Big Brother dance routine to Daft Punk’s Technologic and someone playing Bop It! while drunk
it was really quite something. I also don’t know if it was truly one of the worst routines, it was just a little hard to parse and nothing about it felt particularly authentic. I suppose we should mostly just be relieved that she spared us the ordeal of her putting on a live production of her single Drag Money… Thoroughly suggest checking that on YouTube.
This might be slightly rude (ME? Never.) but there’s just something about Serena’s makeup that always reminds me of Lluvy from ANTM in that Zodiac photoshoot where her photograph got deemed “The Worst Photo in ANTM History”
I cannot explain why, it’s just what I see every time I look at her.
To cap off the live singers, Silky decided that she was going to turn the whole studio into an impromptu Sunday School lesson and sang This Little Light of Mine while playing the piano and yes, it was as dull as you’d think that was. I was fully expecting her to do a full on Sister Act choral breakdown in the middle but NOPE! All she did was sit at that piano, playing it quite well while everyone clapped in a sort of cult-like trance.
When Eureka said that she had written a song for her mother, I thought she’d be live singing but it was actually just a lipsync performance while she had the lyrics projected onto her dress
it’s sweet and cute, I did unfortunately guffaw at the beginning when it was just her extremely blown out face singing on the skirt
and then there was a bit at the end where her performative, emotional belting didn’t quite match the energy of the song
but for what it was, the whole thing was perfectly sweet and I’m sure it meant a lot to her to be able to put it on.
Pandora’s lipsync was more of a Lipsinka vibe as she camped her way through a routine looking like a malfunctioning Bette Davis
I don’t know what it is about Pandora, but all I see when I look at her is Bette Davis and I’m excited to see her just doing this one look for her entire run of the competition.
Her performance was great though, the lipsync was on point and it’s really hard for anyone to top squirting silly string out of your bear fur tits
that was until Yara Sofia came along with her wildly bouncing tits
God bless her and whichever Gremlin colony is in charge of running her mind, she’s just mind numbingly stupid fun and we should treasure her forever.
Jiggly did quite a high energy lipsync, dancing performance but most notably looked incredible
she really pulls off that ice white blonde hair like nobody else. Her performance though was a little sloppy, she completely gave up on the lipsync about halfway through when the whole thing just became about how much she could slap her thighs in as little time as possible, there wasn’t really any WOW dance moves either, I’m a little surprised that she wasn’t in the bottom for it to be honest.
A’keria’s lipsync-dance number was much more successful – the song was a lot easier to make sense of for starters but her dancing was significantly more adept that Jiggly’s thigh pounding and truly nobody works a wind machine better than A’keria
it might not quite be jumping off a very high box but it’s certainly worth something.
And finally we come to the actual variety in the show as Trinity decides that she’s going to be the one to save us from the Stand Up Comedy Curse. Unfortunately she died on stage just about as soon as you possibly could – honestly, fair play to her for continuing because I’d have just walked off and packed my bags.
I can appreciate why she wanted to do this routine, she had the unexpected success in the season 6 comedy challenge and I guess thinks that’s what people remember her for? The Vibeology lipsync says HI. I do also have to somewhat admire the audacity to basically just rehash the whole routine in which the punchline is mostly just how she can say the word “light bill” in an old lady voice. Did it make sense? Mostly no. Was it funny? Not even a little.
Also, a rather baffling choice of wig to use for a skill that requires you to make eye contact with an audience
There’s a reason SIA isn’t doing stand up routines.
After Trinity’s unmitigated flop, I was worried when Ra’jah came out armed only with a sewing machine and announced that she’d be making a dress in 1 minute – don’t get me wrong, there’s nobody on this Earth that I’d rather watch do it but it’s the sort of bit that could have gone south quite easily. I really enjoyed it though and nothing brought me more joy than the way Ra’jah said “Thank you 30 seconds!” at the halfway point. And she produced a lovely little dress and looked really damn good
and her little skip at the end when she was walking off the stage because she knew she had nailed it was adorable.
Lastly we come to Scarlet Envy whose talent was blowing bubbles and innuendo
I have got to say, this was just really cool and a welcome break amongst the rest of the usual Drag race fodder, and I enjoyed the distinct sort of Country Fair vibe that the whole thing had going on and the costume reveal was great
I’ll be interested to see how far Scarlet can go in this because she’s come back incredibly strong and polished but in the line-up does seem like a filler queen.
The top 3 for the week are Yara, Pandora and Ra’Jah with Yara going on to be declared the outright winner – I’m torn, I loved Yara’s routine and thought it was hysterical but I’m not sure if I’d have put her in the top though – for me Scarlet’s was a more interesting performance or even put Ginger up there. I’d have also declared Ra’Jah the winner.
The bottom three are Trinity, Serena and Silky, which is kind of correct – Jiggly and Silky were pretty much on the same level to me with Silky’s perhaps being slightly more misguided. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because Serena and Trinity are the bottom 2 and up for elimination.
A Little Funky
The format hasn’t changed at all – it’s still the Lipsync Assassin gig from the previous season, which I quite like, especially as it gives us the return of Coco Montrese, lipsync legend
The costume is first rate, the makeup is a little generous on the powder which does make her look slightly like a haunted Victoria Grant from Victor/Victoria.
Meanwhile Yara has changed into a barely less revealing outfit for the occasion, and I imagine so that they could do at least *some* social media posts about the lipsync
Having the tits remain on didn’t really work in Yara’s favour because they had lost their novelty, but really she lost this lipsync the moment Coco came out with beaded, fringed nail tassels
You simply cannot compete.
And so Coco wins the lipsync and it turns out the group unanimously voted to eliminated Serena Cha Cha
I don’t think there’s a single parallel universe where this didn’t happen, everyone saw it from the moment the cast was announce, and certainly from the fact that between the 10 promo videos that Drag Race released on YouTube Serena clocked up a whole 23 seconds of screentime over 50 minutes of content.
The episode 2 recap will be up tomorrow!
And so, 12 All Star queens remain…
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