Me being an absolute menace in any and every PE class going.
At last, a Drag Race Ball Challenge that doesn’t involve a minimum of 36 looks!
Pulling Your LEGendary Legend Stars
My biggest fear with the new All Stars format was that it was going to rob the competition of a sense of jeopardy and tension and seemingly Shea thought that might be the case too and proceeded to just make up a twist that only those that have experienced the Platinum Plunger would understand
this was so stupid and I loved EVERY SECOND of it freaking the other queens out because luckily Trinity took the bait and just played along with the whole thing
I just hope Jinkx continues it into the next episode – I want it to get to the last episode when only 1 queen hasn’t experienced being blocked and they’re just panicking about what the Plunger Twist is. Would it probably leave somebody with severe trust issues in the future? Yes, but this is RuPaul’s Stanford Prison Experiment after all, you practically sign up to leave with a neurosis.
A Wheel-y Good Time
It was of course a Ball Episode, this time very loosely themed around Game Shows – the first category being an ode to Vanna White, the second one being a look that mashes up two things which share a common word: Moby Dick van Dyke, Gemma Collins Dictionary, Jane Seymour Krelborn – the list goes on. I don’t know how silly they could get with it, like would The UndertaKermit The Frog be acceptable? Kylie MinoGuernsey Cow? Angelina BalleRina Sawayama? Because, as you can see, I have ideas. And then the last category was Realness of Fortune Eleganza in which they would have to spin the wheel to choose a destination from around the world whose name had a colour in it, that would reflect what materials they each got
and there was money on offer too – I really think they should have had a Legendary Legend Star spot too, I think we just need to really lean in. But each time a destination was chosen, it would be replaced by a triangle of jeopardy, most notably the Bankrupt sign
the first few spins were very uneventful: Jinkx gets purple, Shea gets white, Monet is back to being Irish with green
Jaida gets black and Raja does the daintiest spin you’ve ever seen just because she really wanted to guarantee that she would be working with the gold materials – and with her being the only South East Asian winner of the American franchise, it was fitting that the theme was based on the Golden Pagoda of Myanmar.
And then we got to Yvie who raked in ALL of the cash prizes
and then very promptly lost it all, sending her to the back of the queue
but you know, she got the £100,000 for winning Season 11, so it was quite nice that The Vivienne, who went home with a handful of enamel badges and a web series that not a single soul ever watched, got the money in the end
and she managed not to bankrupt herself, ending up with the blue fabrics. The money being won didn’t however mean that the Bankruptcy triangle left, and Trinity landed on it which does make this Bianca del Rio tweet that much funnier
then she and Yvie proceeded to spin for what I’m sure was an eternity before Yvie ended up with the pink fabrics and Trinity got red!
To recap:
Jinkx: Purple
Shea: White
Monet: Green
Jaida: Black
Raja: Gold
The Vivienne: Blue
Yvie: Pink
Trinity: Red
Vanna White Party
The first category of the Realness of Fortune Ball was for the queens to serve their best Vanna White Realness – which did mostly amount to just wearing a sparkly dress and big, blown back hair – but it was a joy of a runway purely for the reaction from the queens when they realised that Vanna White was standing off to the side
well everyone except Yvie who I am 100% sure had to actively have her attention drawn to Vanna. I do wish they had done more with her – let her pick her favourite Vanna White look and give that queen a Legendary Legend Star – I cannot stress enough how much I want them to get really stupid with the star system and give the queens a few more opportunities to rack ’em up.
First up was Jinkx who had opted for a black dress, which in her own words wasn’t particularly Vanna White and it wasn’t really giving Vanna so much as it was Glamorous Woman Who Conducts Seances in the 40s
but luck was on her side as Vanna had shown up in a black dress, and at least Jinkx’s was sequined which certainly helped in this category. Shea on the other hand hadn’t gone for sequins which meant her white, almost Audrey Hepburn-esque look, read much more bridal than it did Glamorous Game Show Host
I’m also not in love with droopy pelvic bow, it looks like she’s holding her clutch bag in front of a red wine stain – which I am certainly not taking from personal experience… But my God her makeup is just top tier and I do like the under eye stones.
Monet had also gone for a white silk dress, but it certainly wasn’t reading as bridal because it was Leg City
I really want to love this dress but I do think the leg slit is a little too wide – it’s gone beyond being called a slit, that’s just a hole and the bodice did seem just a touch too tight so it’s pulling in weird places, but I love the applique on her shoulder – I just wish her hair was a little bigger and not swept around the side to give the full effect of the asymmetrical neckline.
We return to the safety of Sparkle Harbour with Jaida who was perhaps the most smitten by Vanna White because she did not take her eyes off her, it was like she feared that if she looked away she might disappear
it’s a beautiful dress and I always appreciate it when Jaida has her shoulders out – they are after all certifiably the most beautiful shoulders in America. I was slightly fascinated by the makeup because she did not look like Jaida AT ALL, it was giving me serious Kahanna Montrese vibes
I think it’s mostly because of the slightly dead-eyed contact lenses that make their eyes look like they’re drifting further and further apart from one another, we call it Benedict Cumberbatch Syndrome.
As far as transforming into Vanna White went, I think Raja did the best job because this was quite uncanny
it’s deliciously 80s, which is the Vanna White I always picture in my head – mostly because those were the only episodes that Challenge seemed to have access to when I was a 13 year old obsessed with TV game shows. Also for no real reason but Raja swearing in front of Vanna White was very funny to me
she should have been in the top purely for that to be quite honest.
And from one end of the Vanna White spectrum to… absolutely nowhere on the Vanna White spectrum is Yvie Oddly dressed as a Versace cavewoman
do I kind of love the dress? Yeah, I enjoy the textures and different fabric combinations – but I can only assume that the choice of wig was down to one of the other queens saying Vanna was known for big hair and this was just the biggest hair Yvie owned so she went with it.
It also took The Vivienne a fair amount of time to cotton on to the fact that Vanna White was actually in the room but I did enjoy her saying “Hello me!” to her – her outfit was kind of just alright
she looks absolutely beautiful, and I love the pop or turquoise in her eye makeup and I don’t think the dress is wholly unVanna but to me she just looks like a B-Tier Royal Family member going to a formal luncheon and I think it’s mostly down to the hair.
Lastly we have Trinity whose dress I think was absolutely the most Vanna White of the bunch
and it really was gorgeous, but something about her hair and makeup just didn’t look right
every single colour is clashing – I think it’s very hard to make navy blue eyeshadow work with any sort of lipcolour and then throwing the green earrings and very pink blush into the mix as well just makes it all a little chaotic. I get she was trying to match to the colours of the rhinestones but… maybe don’t do that?
A Vanna White Realness Ranking
- Raja’s 80s Timewarp
- Jaida’s Fixed Stare
- Trinity’s Dress
- Princess Eugenie at a Charity Auction
- Madame la Mort’s Seance Dinner
- Shea’s Second Wedding
- Monet Outdoing Angelina Jolie
- Trinity’s Makeup
- Prehistoric Versace
Only Connected
The second category was the Before and After, which might be one my favourite runway categories of all time and I really hope we see it again, or just see queens replicating it for other runways. Personally, I would have done Edgar Alan Poe From The Teletubbies if I could get away with misspelling Po’s name and if not I would settle for Eva Green Day.
Jinkx was first and had gone for maximum chaos with her Whatever Happened To Baby Jane Fonda look
I think what I love most about this is that it looks like something someone would draw The Joker wearing in some slutty fanart, and if I hadn’t recently been exposed to so much Biker Mice From Mars furry art in the name of this blog, I would search for some to illustrate. Albeit, that’s probably not a compliment but I think Jinkx looked great and the whole thing fit her perfectly.
Shea was next and there’s already a little bit of drama with this look because apparently production told her that she couldn’t use celebrity names – only fictional unlicensed characters were allowed, which is a weird note to give a queen given the Snatch Game rules, I imagine Jaida got the same note. So that’s why Shea was The Gold Tooth Fairy and not Janet Jackson Pollock as she originally intended
it’s not a bad look but it certainly lacks a little direction – quite why her arms are covered in watches I cannot tell you (perhaps we should just be happy her gloves weren’t covered in gilded teeth) and the safety pins on the dress, while obviously going for a nod to Versace, aren’t big or numerous enough to make it read as anything other than a sewing error. But I really loved her hair and makeup – and the dark lip really helped accentuate the face she kept having to pull to show she had a gold tooth.
I think Monet’s combination of Bob the Drag Queen and Queen ELizabeth might have been my favourite look from this category – I think it was an absolutely inspired choice and the looks she chose to mash-up worked very well, as slightly odd a choice as Bob’s Neon Runway look is – my only wish was that the paint drip was perhaps a little more visible
I would have been tempted to do the the robotic morph suit she bought off of Amazon for their roller skates runway
mostly because a rollerskating robot Queen Elizabeth is a mental image that I am quite enjoying at the moment, but probably for the best not to risk ANOTHER ankle injury on the show.
Jaida was in a similar position as Shea going going with Bag Lady In Red, I really love the dress, which does remind me a lot of Kandy Muse’s red look from the Season 13 finalé ball when she decided she was just going to do The Bag Ball from several episodes prior all over again
I just wish she had done more with the Lady in Red portion of the concept other than it all just being red, it’s like she just just found another concept with “lady” in the title and didn’t look much further into it. To me a “Lady in Red” is always the ghost of a woman that was murdered by a lover and I think she could have done something really cool and interesting with that. Hi, yes, I did spend an incredible amount of my life as a teenager watching Supernatural, who told you?
Raja was next and this was a little disappointing purely because it could have been so much better
even of the moustache had been darker and more obvious, I still think that wouldn’t have been enough. Given that Sandy’s whole thing in Grease is this big makeover she has, I think if she had come out in a Sandy-style dress in a print that matched one of John Waters’s iconic suits, and THEN revealed to the black outfit.
Having slightly fumbled the first category, Yvie was right up with a God Tier take with Cardi B. Arthur
everything about this stupidly good and I adored the reveal
Yvie does these very off the wall runway prompts so well, so it doesn’t surprised me that she excelled here and not in Wear Something Family Friendly and Pretty.
The Vivienne was combining Princess Diana and Diana Ross and I GASPED when she came out because at first I did think she was wearing a neckbrace
it is in fact just a scarf designed to look like it’s blowing in the wind – I’m not *entirely* sure why but I thought this was a pretty great look over all and I did like her presentation of it on the runway, although her coyness was toeing the line of being Princess Diana and Emma Roberts in that very weird viral video. I did in fact paused writing this for several minutes thinking of a way of doing Emma Roberts for this runway and could only think of Moral DilEmma Roberts or Emma RoBertson Gladstone. Not sure they’d go down great.
Lastly we have Trinity who had a great concept in RuPaul Charles II, however I hate the look
I just really don’t get the fact she added the downward spikes to her under eyes because that just makes it look like she’s doing clown makeup? She was also really proud of the bloomers she was wearing which should have been significantly frillier if she was going to insist on showing them off so much
but I did like the blouse (show me big nonsense sleeves and I’m putty in your hands) and I appreciated the drama of it all when she sat down on the runway
but I’m not entirely sure it was enough to fully save the look in my eyes.
The Hues Are Alive
In the grand tradition of not learning from past mistakes, Jinkx Monsoon has, in the last 9 years, dedicated absolutely no time to learning how to sew and spent the majority of this design challenge either looking like she was a gazelle being hunted by a carnivorous sewing machine
or just flat out depressed
luckily due to the way the format is structured, Trinity was very quick to swoop in and help her hot glue a dress together that looks like a combination of her Season 5 promo look and her Top 3 runway outfit, so perhaps she shouldn’t thank Trinity *too much*
it was nice of her to so explicitly tell the judges that Trinity helped her and if she hadn’t they would have ended up with Jinkx walking the runway draped in nothing but a Rapunzel braid of fabric
considering the rough time she had with it, it’s really not a bad look but it does very much look like a glue gun had a panic attack while making it. Also, I adore the fact she clearly didn’t have enough time to remove the Baby Jane makeup so she just put a gauzy piece of tulle over her face
It’s like Bette Davis is ready to fight crime in the DC Cinematic Universe.
Jinkx was at least a little bit happy with the challenge because she had blocked Shea, who does know how to sew. Although Shea was having worries of her own having ended up with the white materials, all of which were leading her down the bridal path, which she tried to resist by sketching a… Handbag? A fruit pastille with antennae? The face of an ant?
her biggest worry was that she had already done a bridal look for a design challenge in All Stars 5 – it’s debatable if all it takes for something to be bridal is a veil and flowers
but try as she might she just couldn’t resist the call of the bride
at least it’s good bridal this time! I almost wish the veil was much smaller so that the head wrap would feel like more of a statement, or just used it to give the skirt a little more volume, I just found what she had done with the tulle to be a little messy looking, at least on camera.
I can’t remember if they ever had to do a design challenge on All Stars 4 – there was of course the Makeover Challenge but those were all pre-bought in because everyone knows how to game the system now. So Monet’s last design challenges was the infamous birthing of the Sponge Dress and the Martian Ball which landed her in the bottom, so at least she has a 33.3333333% hit rate because I LOVED this look
the bra top is questionable and looks a bit like somebody attempted origami with some lettuce leaves, but the rest of it is stellar! The pants moved great and she was having a great time living her 70s fantasy.
I am of the opinion that Jaida Essence Hall not winning the Season 12 ball for her soap bubble dress is one of the biggest robberies since the Hatton Garden Heist
Gigi Goode wore 2 tailored coats and glued some balls to a shirt dress she made in 10 minutes!
So I’m glad Jaida came back swinging with possibly the best design challenge outfit we’re likely to see
this just looks like something she made prior to the season, there is an insane amount of work in this, I cannot even fathom how she did it and to such a high level of finish. Somebody please put Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman in this outfit IMMEDIATELY.
While most queens had between 1 or two design challenges under their belt, Raja had four (5 if you count the makeover episode) because Season 3 was INSANE when it came to design challenges – remember when they had the Hair Ball, The Makeover Challenge and the Money Ball back-to-back and Yara Sofia lost her damn mind? I am shocked there were not lawsuits following that. Raja always excelled at them, save for the makeover challenge but she was having to makeover Matt who played baseball… Hard
I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS.
But Raja continued her reign of knocking a design challenge out of the park with this, in her own words, SHOOT of a look (prepare for the Drag Race Nuclear War when Violet Chachki boots it and Gottmik smiles and nods)
it’s beautiful – the textures and volume are great and I don’t think she’s ever looked more beautiful than this
everything was just correct – DAMN HER PENCIL THIN MOUSTACHE!
Yvie got pink, which she admitted wasn’t a colour she particularly gelled with so she was going to try her best to make it a little punk rock – and for the pure What The Fuckkery of it, I think she nailed that!
the way the mesh fabric sort of blurs under the runway lighting did make her look like some sort spectre that haunts a sex dungeon, which the mesh facekini only exacerabted
I’m kind of into the weirdness of it all.
The Vivienne wasn’t out to take risks this episode and knocked up a perfectly lovely silk dress that isn’t really much to write home about but it was well made and it fit her really well
I just wish it had one element more to it, just to make it really sing but she had at least made the little headpiece and I think she probably made the earrings too considering how well they match the dress.
Lastly we have Trinity, who much like Jaida somehow whipped up an outfit that looked like something she would have prepared before the season started
as the judges noted, the symmetry of it is excellent but it was also giving me major ContraPoints’s Lobster Queen
and as someone who frequently enters a room proclaiming “God save the Lobster Queen” – it really tickled my fancy. And we haven’t even got to the, what? 7 wigs that she must have been wearing? How many Tina Burners had to die for this thing?
I am instantly reminded of Miz Cracker showing up the Season 10 reunion dressed as Lady Godiva and massively regretting it about an hour in because she had severe neck strain and was having to actively hold her wig on
it’s one of my favourite Drag Race moments of all time.
A Realness of Fortune Eleganza Ranking
- Jaida Essence Hall as Catwoman
- God Save The Lobster Queen!
- Raja Reliving The Golden Days
- Monet’s Origami Salad Disco
- Yvie’s Sex Dungeon Spectre
- Shea’s Third Marriage
- The Vivienne’s Perfectly Ordinary Gown
- Masked Baby Jane
I was really rooting for Raja to be in the top 2 for this episode, but I can see why the judges would have gone for Trinity and Jaida given that their self-designed looks just seemed slightly more impressive given the details and their other two looks went down really well with the judges – even if I think Trinity’s RuPaul Charles II was as much of a miss as Raja’s whisper of a moustache.
Getting The Green Light
I read on Twitter that “the lipsync to Green Light was AMAZING!” and I was very confused because Lorde’s Green Light would be a rather bizarre choice for a repeat lipsync song, and I only remember the lipsync to Green Light because BenDeLaCreme got lost in her own wig during it and I still have nightmares about how uncomfortable it must have been with a full face of drag makeup on
the Green Light in question though was Beyoncé’s, so it’s nice to know that the extra prize money hasn’t been cut from the song budget as I was beginning to fear… fucking Old MacDonald…
Much like in her last lipsync, Trinity did blow her best bit very early on in the song
I haven’t been watching Untucked, please tell me there’s footage of her frantically cutting this star out backstage? And from there she seemed to panic a little bit and very much got up in Jaida’s space which made me feel even more uncomfortable than I already was because Jaida was playing an air saxophone
I thought Season 10 had taught us that we do not do air instruments on the Drag Race stage?
The rest of Jaida’s lipsync was a serve though, as much as I liked Trinity’s golden chain look there was no match for Jaida looking like the busiest little carwash
and you knew Jaida was winning when she started whipping her ponytail around and the sound mixer had bothered to dub in the sound of a helicopter’s propeller over it
Camp.
Sure enough, Jaida did win and continued the (hopefully short-lived) tradition of blocking the previous winner
Jinkx was probably a good call considering you could probably deduce from the challenges thus far being Dancing and Singing, Snatch Game and a Design Challenge that the next one would involve acting – so the best choices there would be to block either Jinkx or The Vivienne.
Hopefully we’ll eventually get someone winning 2 stars – Monét could do quite well in the acting challenge.
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