The final episode of a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race always
fills me with so many emotions. There’s the obvious anticipation as I hope hope
hope that my favorite will win. (Please don’t let it go to the bitch!) There’s
the agony of knowing that in 90 minutes, once that crown is handed out, I’ll
have nothing left to look forward to until this whole process starts up again
in eight months. This time around, I had the added pressure of wondering what
the hell I’m going to write about, given that half the show was just a bunch of
female impersonators sitting on uncomfortable stools.
Luckily, there’s one thing that makes it all better: GIN. If you
haven’t already, please drink some right now. It’ll make the rest of this
article so much yummier. And yes, I’m aware that my column typically gets
posted before noon on a Tuesday. That’s happy hour as far as I’m concerned.
Since Ru has a 90-minute time slot to fill with the announcement of
a single name, she’s padding it out like Latrice Royale in a Rent-a-Center
dress. Before the festivities begin, the girls deliver a pageant routine that
was apparently choreographed by a chimpanzee who had a lot of other things to
get done that day. Seriously, I perform a more complex routine getting ready in
the morning. Everyone gets a runway moment (I’ll review their looks in a
minute), and then BAM: Ru emerges to show them who’s boss.
She’s heavenly in her white, wispy wonderwear, and all is well in
the world, until… that’s not… it couldn’t be. Oh, I get it, they’re playing
“Can I Get An Amen?” as a joke. No, stop the presses, this is serious. We’re
going to sit through this entire song. The sad part is that no one, even the
once-and-always drag superstar herself, musters so much as a whiff of
excitement about the process. The contestants resume the raising and lowering
of their arms with new levels of listlessness, while Ru delivers a lip sync so
tragic she could probably take pointers from Vivienne Pinay.
And then it’s on to the interviews. The responses are uniformly either heavily
scripted or heavily edited, so I won’t spend much time on them. I’m not even
going to comment on each individual contestant, because who even cares about
Honey Mahogany’s new wig? Let’s just take a quick glance at the highs and lows.
The most impressive transformation comes by way of early sashayer
Penny Tration. Her conceptual look has the artsy flair that Serena ChaCha only
wishes she could execute. Smarter still, she showed off a sleek silhouette in a
leotard made from the same fabric as her elimination dress, basically doing the
first challenge over the way you might turn in a revised paper in college for a
higher grade.
Lineysha also delivers dramatic fashion with her winged creation.
It’s so disarmingly beautiful that it erases Ru’s knowledge of U.S. history and
geography. (You can’t call immigration on someone from Puerto Rico, honey. It’s
part of our country. You may as well threaten to deport Alaska. Or an Alaskan.)
Whatever Jade said, it must have been extremely bitchy or extremely
incoherent, because her segment is choppier than a YouTube video on your mom’s
dial-up connection. Truthfully, it’s nice that someone else took the time to
ignore her so that I didn’t have to personally.
Ivy Winters wins the Miss Congeniality prize, mostly because she’s
the only one who was eligible. Her red frock is unremarkable, but her Julia
Child impersonation makes me want to build a time machine. Like, sure, preventing
genocide would be great and all, but imagine if we could right the cosmic wrong
of her dismal Marilyn Monroe performance!
The Coco/Alyssa feud is briefly discussed, but the part that really resonates
with me is when Ru shames Santino for his “worst dress ever” judgment with
basically a verbatim transcript of my Award Awards callout from episode 10. Do you read these recaps, Ru?
Because I’m available to write for season 6.
In a look that all but literally says “I should have been in the
final three,” Detox delivers a monochrome presentation so flawless that it
could make you check the settings on your television. Her interview, like the
others, is mostly filler, though the look of genuine horror that creeps across
her face when the “Peanut Butter” twerkers swarm her is priceless. (Over on the
other side of the stage, Lineysha is grinding so hard on one of the Andrew
Christian models that I worry whether her tuck will hold.)
At last, the final three take their seats, vamping to fill the next
half-hour with expected tales of family reconciliations and apologies for their
snappish behavior and appreciation for their drag superstar husbands, yadda
yadda yadda. Nobody cares, just call me when Jinkx gets crowned.
And Jinkx gets crowned! MonSWOON.
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