On RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, it’s Zen And The Art Of That Vulnerability The Judges Are Looking For
The judging goes wonky again, but the emotional storytelling (and the pattern-mixing) are on point
TV Reviews Kate
It becomes increasingly clear, week after week, that this All Stars cast is among the show’s best to date. And that’s not due to drag excellence, although there’s plenty of that. It’s because there are so many grown-ups in the room. From the very beginning, Drag Race has been interested, sometimes too interested, in the emotional lives of the queens. This show just loves the vanquishment of an inner saboteur, a step necessary to achieve that most precious reality TV qualities: authenticity. The show has often pursued those arcs and moments relentlessly (and, ironically, often inauthentically.) Fans love to joke about Michelle and Ru patiently waiting for the queens to trot out whatever trauma they feel like sharing that day, and while that’s led to some incredible moments, it’s made for some uncomfy ones as well. There’s capital-D Drama (heathers vs. boogers, Derrick vs. India, etc.) but there’s also real pain, and it’s not always handled well by the show.
For the most part, this season has dodged uncomfortably vulnerable moments, because most (though not all) of the queens are seasoned and secure in who they are. Self-awareness and emotional fortitude are things that the vast majority of us have to work toward; they don’t appear overnight, and they require maintenance. They’ll get you through life as well as reality TV. But when you’re navigating the latter, there’s another reason they’re useful: they are essential to finding the perfect level of performed authenticity. It’s how you show “the vulnerability the judges are looking for” without having a total emotional breakdown. It allows you to bring your authentic “self” into an inherently false world. Latrice Royale is a master of performed authenticity. So are Shea Coulée, Chad Michaels, Bianca Del Rio, Jujubee, the list goes on. In “Pink Table Talk,” most of the queens nail that balance, but for those that don’t, it’s disastrous.
The results aren’t uniformly stellar, but still: What a great challenge. “Pink Table Talk” asks the queens to separate into teams and host their own chat shows, in the style of Red Table Talk, The View, and The Talk, on which guest judge Aisha Tyler appeared. Each team gets a topic—Ginger and Scarlet rock-paper-scissors for motherhood, which the former is drawn to because of their own impending parenthood, while the latter’s “two moms” make it an attractive subject. But all three teams could easily handle any of these topics, since we all have bodies, are all impacted by sex in some way, and were all born. The topic isn’t the key here. It’s about being able to have a genuine conversation and be entertaining at the same time.
That’s where performed authenticity comes in, and it’s a quality you can really master only when you know exactly who you are. And it really trips up Jan and Scarlet.
Let’s start with the great stuff, though. As with last week, there’s a clear top team. A’keria, Trinity, and Ra’Jah’s growing friendship has been a highlight of the season, and it comes in handy here for the first two, who team up with Eureka to talk about sex. They’re all “on,” but it feels like they’re trying to make each other laugh, not trying to prove how charming they are. Add in the fact that each has a different but equally compelling perspective and their victory is all but assured. But—twist!—the victorious team does not include the week’s winner.
I imagine some fans may quibble, but while some of the judging seems off here (as it did last week), I actually like Ginger’s victory a lot. Moderating conversations isn’t easy, and Ginger is far and away the best moderator of the episode. She keeps things moving, asks smart questions, and sets both Pandora and Jan up to shine. (When they stumble, it’s certainly not because of the lead-ins they’re getting.) But she also doesn’t fade into the background, and instead sets the pace. It’s really well done. Not flashy, but really well-handled. And her runway look is great. Sounds like a win to me. Ra’Jah also does well; while Ginger was the best moderator, Ra’Jah and Kylie are responsible for the best moment, when the latter responds compassionately and thoughtfully when the former breaks down a little while discussing her mother.
And yet Kylie winds up in the bottom! Between that wonderful moment, a great challenge look, and a terrific runway, her lipstick eligibility doesn’t track. As with A’keria’s placement in the bottom last week, it smacks of Rigga Morris. The same can’t be said of Scarlet, whose gorgeous and personal runway look can’t make up for the fact that she seems to fundamentally misunderstand the brief. She waffles back and forth between playing a character and speaking sincerely, and the whiplash makes it hard to invest in the lovely story she’s telling. (Her response to the critique, especially in Untucked, can’t help much with her fellow All Stars, either; taking it personally is understandable, but not endearing, and Trinity is right to say that someone has to go home.)
That leaves Pandora and Jan, who have the same struggle but arrive there from opposite directions. I am a Pandora fan from way back, but her performance seemed like clear bottom three material to me; it’s as if she knows exactly what she wants and needs to talk about, but keeps shying away from it like a candleflame. Jan, on the other hand, pushes way too hard, playing joyful self-confidence rather than exuding it. (Watch this week’s Untucked.) That said, Pandora’s runway look, a gorgeous Nightmare Before Christmas homage, is more striking than Jan’s shopping spree look (also good), so maybe that’s the difference.
Ginger’s challenge victory leads to a lip sync victory, netting her $30,000 when she bests the marvelous Mayhem Miller in a top-notch lip-sync to Lizzo’s “Phone.” And while she still has to eliminate someone, she also takes the opportunity to give $2,500 of her winnings to each of her teammates. Hopefully that takes some of the sting out.
As I mentioned above, Untucked is well worth your time this week, thanks largely to Jan’s confusion about what it is she’s missing and the kindly way her fellow All Stars try to help her understand. In those scenes, Jan really taps into “that vulnerability the judges are looking for”, a phrase she repeats several times this episode. Let’s hope she can bring some more of that to the mainstage next week, in a way that’s healthy and positive, not heartbreaking and frustrating. She deserves another win, from the show, and from herself.
Stray observations
- Kate’s corner: “I really enjoyed this maxi challenge. One of Drag Race’s biggest strengths is its earnest heart-to-hearts, and this challenge played right into that. Well done Ginger, Trinity, Eureka, and A’keria. It’s hard to say goodbye to Scarlet, who’s been underappreciated all season, but this was not her challenge. As for the lip-sync, what a waste of a Bianca appearance! Fortunately, the episode recovered with that battle. It’s great to see queens slay a lip-sync without relying on tricks and reveals. Congrats Ginger, nice work and welcome back Mayhem, and let’s keep this ride rolling. All Stars 6 is killing it.”
- Untucked: continues to be great. That was Jan’s best edit of the season so far. Very sympathetic, incredibly relatable. Made me say, “Oh god, It’s very similar to LaGanja’s struggle to understand what “real” is, but a lot less extreme and much gentler. And TKB is just killing Untucked.
- “I will run with it. No, I won’t run with it, but I will walk briskly until I get winded and then I’ll sit down.”
- “Oh, I didn’t realize all of us were so fucked up.”
- The backfiring-strategy thing for Jan ended up being nothing, although she’d probably have avoided some of the tension had she just said “You’re amazing, but I had to pick someone, and Yara had a win.”
- My gif-t to you for the week:
43 Comments
I actually enjoyed the challenge while it was happening, but it made me feel kind of deflated having the girls be judged for being as vulnerable as they know how. It is kind of part of the gig though nowadays, and I felt like I was watching a grade school book report on Scarletts moms lol.Jan is Jan, she’s fine, ain’t nothing too deep there so judges gotta stop digging her a grave. Speaking of being able to connect as a queen, Trinity is nailing it challenge wise, but then weirdly hard to connect with the rest of show?
It becomes increasingly clear, week after week, that this All Stars cast is among the show’s best to date.Uh, I wouldn’t go quite that far, sis. There have been moments that I thoroughly enjoyed, but Bianca’s shade was not off the mark – quite a few queens in the cast were not what I would personally consider to be ‘All-Stars.’ Some of them were clearly second and even third choices, because from what I understand quite a few queens declined the invitation to come back and compete again.That said, I do think quite a few of the remaining queens have shown tremendous growth and maturity since their first stints on RPDR, and it’s great to see.Next, I agree 100% about the assessment of Rigga Morris; there’s no way Kylie Sonique should have been in the bottom this week, but we know how Ru and Co do.Lastly, I think Ginger did well in the challenge itself and the lip sync, and her runway was better than most of what we’ve seen from her on this season, so I can’t argue with her win. (Though it must be said, that was NOT a great song for a lip sync; sometimes it’s clear where production is cutting its’ costs.)
Uh, I wouldn’t go quite that far, sis.There have been moments that I thoroughly enjoyed, but Bianca’s shade was not off the mark – quite a few queens in the cast were not what I would personally consider to be ‘All-Stars.’ Some of them were clearly second and even third choices, because from what I understand quite a few queens declined the invitation to come back and compete again.I took Allison’s point to mean more that the casting has worked brilliantly because there were no obvious frontrunners from the get-go, and that this provided more opportunity for genuine surprises, rather than this being a dream cast of contestants that we’d all longed to see return. AS has increasingly suffered a sense that it exists to reward queens who were robbed on their original seasons. I love Shea (although I was hoping for a Jujubee win last season), but she seemed like a lock at this point on AS5, and her win, though very much deserved, felt expected. Perhaps we needed a cast of second- and third- choice picks to turn this show back into a real competition again. I note that there has been a different main challenge winner for each of the first five episodes. That’s got to be some kind of record.
You are hereby ungrayed.
Good points, all.
For a moment I read your comment as “ungayed” and thought “well, that’s ironic for a Drag Race comment!”. Thanks, as always.
“ungayed”That’s hilarious (not to mention impossible.) I mean they’re a great cast, for the television show that is Drag Race. Fair point.
Shea’s expected win totally killed AS5. I wish Cracker had the guts to eliminate her when she had the chance but of course the fandom would have dragged her to hell and back.
Agreed, but I should probably point out that AS5 also suffered from being inexcusably boring. I mean, by episode 3 I was sticking around only mainly to see Jujubee.
That is indeed my point. I don’t mean they are the most uniformly talented, I mean they’re a great cast, for the television show that is Drag Race. Great chemistry together, great conversations, lots of variety in winners.
“It looks like there was a fire at the zoo.” Great line by Bianca.In terms of growth, I’ve been blown away by how much Trinity has developed since her season. It’s like seeing a whole different person, and I like it.Kylie being in the bottom was bullshit. It may not have been her strongest performance, but it was solid, and her look was great.
I thought it was one of the best lip sync choices in a while and Ginger acted it out perfectly, a well deserved win with a well chosen, fun song
*shrugsMore power to you; I don’t agree about the song.I do agree that Ginger slayed the lip sync, regardless.
All Stars 6 has been excellent so far, but this episode felt heavily produced, which is an unwelcome return to form after what has been, perhaps, a brief foray into authenticity reasonable edits by reality TV standards. I’m hoping against hope that Kylie isn’t being set up for a Finding Her Voice edit with a win next week and then an Untimely Exit the week after.Scarlet’s been sorely underappreciated this season, but I suppose that, if you’re not going to win the whole shebang, leaving before you wear out your welcome is about as much as a gift as you can get these days.
I’m glad Scarlet is gone, if only because I was getting distracted by seeing Pearl’s face on another queen week after week.
Child…I don’t think that Pearl would have been caught dead wearing a Betty Ford bouffant from 1974. But then, Scarlet has looked beautiful on the runway. Pearl could not be budged from her Silent Film Star on Cocaine drag, aside from the few times that she was adventurous and gave us Frank-n-Furter instead. I hated Pearl’s paint on S7.
Untucked: continues to be great.Eureka deserves an enormous amount of credit for extending “Pink Table Talk” on to the Untucked set and letting A’Keria and TKB share more of their lives with the audience. I’m happy that Ginger won…but I wouldn’t have been sad to see Eureka win the main challenge, either.
Weird that both Monet and A’Keria seemed to benefit from Eureka’s natural easy charisma in front of a camera after a few troubling weeks in the bottom. Maybe they just make it easier to ‘be real’ or whatever
Weird that both Monet and A’Keria seemed to benefit from Eureka’s natural easy charisma in front of a camera
Monet?
You mean TKB?
Oh I meant the drag con panels they did back in S10 that gave Monet a much needed boost after 2 bottom placements in a row, much like A’Keria.
Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying…
Jan is testament to the fact that being very capable and talented is not the same as being a star. She’s kind of master of noned herself into being… bland. Her thought process of choosing the lipstick was probably the most revealing thing she’s presented on the show across her two seasons: someone desperate not to make any waves in any way and someone who wants to give people what she thinks they want, rather than offering up what is uniquely herself.
I haven’t really liked Jan so far (haven’t seen her original season though), but the lipstick thing made me lose what respect I had for her. Make a choice and be prepared to defend it. Don’t try to choose who you think everyone else will just to be in the girls’ good books. As was plainly shown, it’ll backfire anyway.
Jan is testament to the fact that being very capable and talented is not the same as being a star.Well, not the same as being a star on Drag Race. Jan’s immensely talented, and she really is likeable, but this is not the venue for her. This episode saw AS6 creeping back into familiar (and unwelcome) territory of toxic edits: note, this week, that we were given bits of her highly emotive confessionals expertly spliced into the show to make it appear that she’s become unbalanced. In an exception to a season with really no storylines (so far), it looks like we’re being given a clear signal that her time has come to an end: Jan got her RuDemption, and won a challenge, and now they’re going to give her the boot. A winner’s edit this is not.
Read this point elsewhere and I agree – For better or worse Jan is a much softer Rachel Berry type of queen/performer. I don’t think she’s fake but the high energy she exudes seems to come across that way and I’m reminded a lot of their critiques of Dela on her original season which feels foolish in that they’re punishing queens for…..being too pulled together? Jan can come across as awkward but that earnestness is something to root for.That said, I feel it was her week over Scarlet’s but that neither are truly meant for the winner’s circle? IDK. And there’s definitely something gross about the use of personal backstories this way and then judging people for it. Team Sex was definitely very fun at least – Eureka’s line about chubby chasing was really funny – and I do think Ginger was a excellent moderator even if this win is bizarre, like how Jujubee won that week of allstars last time very randomly.Lastly, in the immortal words of Kennedy Davenport from this week’s ‘Pit Stop’ – ‘Black stockings, white shoes shouldn’t be allowed in the chuuuurch’
Somebody needs to put that clip on a 10 minute loop.
“I’m not running anywhere!”
Oh Allison I object. This episode was good despite the challenge. The fact that they congratulated Ra’jah for being vulnerable, meaning, for crying, and alsoyou cannot blame Scarlett for taking it personally when the judges, particuarly that dead weigth in the show that is Ross Matthews, tells Jan and Scarlett that they don’t like their personality. Scarlett is like that, it is not performative, is a kind of personality that one has to learn to respect, but the show does not and I am surprised that you don’t either, thinking that it is performative.This episode made me feel dirty.Having said that, WHAT a runway (except for Jan, who I am starting to think that does not have great taste, like, at all) and what a lip sync force that is Ginger.
I almost felt like they were saying to Scarlett, “you’re not relatable because the emotional depth you expressed isn’t based on negative emotions stemming from trauma and we can’t exploit it for ratings.”
Basically “because you did not cry and were expected to”.
I respect your take but I also think you’re misreading my analysis here. Watch Scarlett in the talking-heads, where she’s great, and compare that to Pink Table Talk. Very different.
I see the same person. The only different thing is the narrative of what Drag Race sees as acceptable and real and vulnerable, which seems to be epistemologic now.
I see both points of view, and I think that part of the problem is Scarlet’s drag: she’s continuing to paint herself like a Disney villain, and those kooky antics and exaggerated faces that look so adorable (and I admit it: Scarlet is GORGEOUS both in and out of drag) on the boy look vaguely creepy and disturbing on a botoxed Joan Crawford, ca. 1959. I think that that dramatic paint is really only suited to dramatic looks, and that it doesn’t read well for challenges that demand a certain warm charisma.I would also like to state, perhaps unnecessarily, that I hated Scarlet’s “Pink Table Talk” outfit. I need to rewatch S11 to see if that’s the outfit that she used for that horrid Mariah Carey sketch.
I’ve always found Scarlet pretty unlikeable in and out of drag. I have not learned to respect her personality
“particuarly that dead weigth in the show that is Ross Matthews”Seriously this needs to be said over and over. At this point i would not be upset if they replaced him with Santino
Personally I think it was Jan’s turn to go, despite coming off a win. And her reaction to the whole lipstick thing was so over-the-top. She’s just too worried about being perfect all the time. Her reasoning for choosing A’keria was valid. It felt like Ginger had been coasting all season long on reputation but she definitely stepped up her game this episode.
I agree that narratively it made sense for this to be the time for Jan to go. And she was boiled out by Ginger Minj. Jan’s name was almost certainly on the most lipsticks
There were 3 votes for Jan and 4 for Scarlet.
Is that true? I’m notoriously dumb about these details so probably
Sad to see Scarlet go, especially since her only crime was to be sincere in her talking but over-the-top for her chat show persona, as Drag Race has asked contestants to be like for every acting challenge. Maybe if they wanted the contestants to be genuine the whole time, then don’t make them pretend to host a talk show. I’d say there’s yer problem, but what do I know.
And Jan is shallow and that’s OK. Lots of people are, they just recognise it, own it, and learn which moments to hold back on showing it. Ru said as much, but I think Jan might just be sooo shallow that there’s nowhere for Ru’s wisdom to sink in. Again, it’s OK to be shallow. Can someone tell Jan because she’s clearly struggling with thinking she has to be someone else, and she doesn’t.
I hope Aisha Tyler did steal Ra’jah’s runway look. Tyler always looks amazing, but she’d look fan-fucking-tastic in that outfit.
I forgot to give Pandora this week’s “Ben de La Creme Award for self-sabotage” by raising the issue of ageism in gay life and, by extension, Drag Race itself. And this is, tragically, the first time that I’ve ever heard the issue discussed on this show without it being a punch line or used as a justification for an arbitrary elimination. I mean, I’m sure it was a struggle to keep Tempest, Mrs. Kasha Davis, and Tamisha from collapsing into piles of dust during their respective seasons, but we persevered, if only just to have Charlie Hides clearly show us the dangers of letting anyone over the age of thirty on stage, lest precious lipsyncs suffer sprains and fractures. I’m amazed that this critique passed standards and practices, but they must have been distracted by their eternal hunt for Dangerous and Subversive Drag, such as Manila’s “period piece” dress and Adore’s unnamed (but dangerous!) All Stars talent.
Jan reminds me of Vanessa Bayer’s Laura Parsons, the wanna-be child star who would sing the news on Weekend Update. It’s like she’s always auditioning for something.
I was as surprised as everyone to see Bianca come out as the lip sync assassin, and then as equally disappointed that it was a gag.
Bianca may promote herself to be a comedian and actress first, but she got her start like all drag queens, she lip synced for a living. The (insult) comedy was there when hosted weekly drag shows, and called bingo every Monday at Oz, but she still did a lip sync during the drag show. She can deny it all she wants, but she is a great lip sync performer. I have seen her countless times in the aughts performing live (lip syncing and dancing), in front of huge crowds at circuit parties for Halloween, Decadence, Memorial Day weekend, and Mardi Gras, and besides hosting the costume contests for three of those events, she did not do the comedy routine at any of them. She only started doing the stand up routine post RPDR. It is crazy to think that if she were competing now, and truly couldn’t lip sync, she wouldn’t even be in the running to win RPDR.Bianca looked great though.