‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race 15×07’ Review
I have discussed numerous times about the Drag Race universe and the importance of throughlines across seasons/versions/iterations. This is why initially I thought it was an incredible idea that the iconic Daytona Winds challenge would re-appear in this week’s episode but with a slight twist in genre. For those who did not watch the episode you can learn about it here but this was a unique acting challenge where the queens were shocked to discover that farting noises were added in post-production leading to a hilarious series of events, however the situational comedy version of this show had no farts to be heard! The highlight for the episode however was the aftermath of the drama between Mistress Isabelle Brooks and Malaysia Babydoll Foxx boiling over only for them to act alongside each other in the challenge (leading to them being a highlight of the acting performance!) At the other end of the competition, we saw Aura Mayari being told to sashay away after Jax showcased a plethora of skills and tricks during the bottom two lip-sync!
Continuing with the idea of the reappearing challenges and lip-sync performances, this week’s episode saw the return of the lip-sync LaLaPaRuza which essentially is an intense performance tournament. The format of this challenge was fairly complex with the handsome from the pit crew randomly selecting a queen who would then choose an opponent and this second queen was then given the opportunity to select the song they would both be performing. Now if I was in the (high-heeled) shoes of these competitors then I think I would have preferred the opportunity to choose the song as there is one song in particular that I have no doubt I would absolutely dominate! Despite her ongoing drama with Mistress and even expressing her interest in picking the weakest lip-syncer for an easy win, Malaysia is selected first and she opts to battle against Marcia, Marcia, Marcia with the latter really surprising everyone with the range of flips and tricks. It was announced that Marcia would be safe which means she is guaranteed a safe position and Malaysia would have to battle again in order to stay in the completion. I have to admit the most disappointing lip-sync of this entire episode was the battle between Loosey and Spice. The latter conveniently wore a flame top and trouser combination that matched the song wonderfully but the actual performance was fairly disappointing! I do think that Loosey was slightly better (but against anyone else this would have been a bottom lip-sync) and so it made total sense when it was announced that Spice would have to lip-sync again and Loosey secured her place in the competition.
The next queen to be selected from the bingo system was Lux Noir London who choose to battle against Salina EsTitties where the latter was given the advantage of the song selection. When I saw that my go-to shower ballad, the iconic “It’s all Coming Back to Me” by Celina Dion was in the song selection then this would be a song that I would have wanted more than anything! Selina talked about how this is a song she performs regularly back home where as Lux talked about how this is not a song she I would choose to do if given the chance. This is why I was fairly disappointed by Selina as she tried to infuse a series of comedy skits that didn’t truly land until the closing moments of the song. Despite this attempt at comedy, Selina was declared as the winner with Lux being told she will need to fight again! Mistress and Jax were up next and both managed to squeeze in the most amount of stunts and tricks to give a quintessential drag performance! Jax showcased an incredible backhand spring and an insane straddle jump that transitioned flawlessly into a diving forward roll. Mistress is known for her larger-than-life personality who devised a wonderful costume reveal to a wonderfully sparkly, gorgeous pin out and ever threw in the splits. It was announced that Mistress was safe and clearly the queens backstage clearly disagreed with this decision in their looks as Mistress joined everyone else in the safe area. Earlier in the episode it was discussed how the two queens to be feared in this lip-sync-centric completion were Sasha Colbi and Antrea and conveniently these two were left to battle against one another in the final battle of this round. The performance of “I’m in Love with the Monster” by Fifth Harmony was extremely close with Antrea redeeming her lip-sync performance during the golden oldies original verse challenge earlier in the season. Sasha is so incredibly captivating and knew every single one of the words to the song and Antrea shockingly managed to keep up with the legendary queen. If the decision was up to me, both the queens would have been declared safe! This battle was one of the greatest lip-syncs we have seen in the history of the show and I thought it was unfair that Antrea was forced to perform (spoiler alert) another two times!
After the queens of season fifteen were split in half, those who lost their battles were then made to battle again. First up was Malaysia who chooses to battle against Spice with the latter adopting a unique and ineffective strategy when choosing the song. Spice talked about how she wanted Camila Cabello’s “Don’t Go Yet” as she was adamant Malaysia wouldn’t know this song. She was correct but in a shocking turn of events it turned out that neither did spice. Seeing two queens struggle with the words so clearly was very disappointing and if it was up to me I would have placed both queens in the bottom two. While I’m not sure how this would affect the structure of the tournament, I do think this lip-sync was very disappointing! However, I was not in charge and Malaysia was announced safe and spice would have to battle again! The final battle of this round was the coveted three-way lip-sync between Jax, Antrea and Antrea. During this performance, Antrea pulled out that move where the queens throw themselves to the ground as their legs fling behind their heads which had been done numerous times by queens such as Silky Nutmeg Gnache and Laganja Estranja but this showcase was the best I have ever seen! She also squeezed in numerous iterations of the duck walk which has become somewhat of her signature move. Lux also showcased a range of tricks including a death drop and jump split but I don’t think this warranted her overall win. I think Antrea or even Jax were significantly more entertaining that Lux but Ru decided to save Lux which made we now have a bottom three for the final lip-sync in the episode.
Before the three could do another battle, however, Ru announced that there would be another random selection but this time the queen could select one queen to give an instant save that would not need to lip-sync again. Antrea was selected and after much deliberation so choose to keep Spice in the competition which I have to admit is a very strange choice. The remaining queen Jax has been really proving herself this episode and everyone has talked about how much Spice has been struggling with the lip-syncs so if it was up to me I would have gone for the easy win against one-half of the tik-tok megastars. While the two queens have a very exciting performance, we have seen these queens perform three times in this episode (on top of the other challenges this season) so we have seen most of the queen’s tricks and stunts so they were fairly repetitive at this point. At the end, Ru announced that justifiably Antrea would be safe and sadly Jax would be going home. I was really disappointed that Jax would be going home this episode as they really shone in the lip-sync format and the worst lip-sync performer Spice was simply lucky.
Overall, this was a very exciting episode that allowed all of the queens to showcase their performance abilities that we had not seen yet. Some the best lip-syncers had a very unfortunate run of battles this episode leading to us seeing them perform multiple times (which I suppose is the silver lining for the audience) but did make for some very interesting line-ups. While I didn’t totally agree with the outcome of some of the battles, this was a very wild episode that lived up to the hype of the previous iterations of this challenge. That lip-sync between Sasha and Antrea will forever be one of the greatest battles we have ever seen and it seemed unfair that after this phenomenal performance, Antrea was inches away from being sent home!
