The following post contains spoilers for the February 22 episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season three.
Of course RuPaul loves Andy Warhol. The great pop artist is easy to love. Just ask any NYU sophomore who has taken one art class. But conjuring up his image is a lot harder than RuPaul putting on a white wig and getting out her old Polaroid camera.
Luckily, by the end of the episode Aja was put out of her misery and sent home. As the cast gets down to the nitty gritty, I’m glad that BeBe Zahara Benet, this week’s winner, decided to send the less deserving queen home rather than sending Shangela packing the first time she wound up in the bottom. Shangela is definitely one of the stars to beat in the competition and sending home a big threat is a strategic move that a contestant on Big Brother or Survivor would have done faster than Shangela can shout, “Halleloo!” for the ten billionth time.
I’m glad that they’ve decided to go the route of keeping the better performers. I think what the audience loves about Drag Race is that, unlike so many other reality shows, it is a bit of a meritocracy. Having the winners decide who goes home makes for good television—especially when someone like BenDeLaCreme tries to rationalize it for hours on end—but I don’t think that it’s good for the show if the finale is just the few mediocre queens who managed to skate by and be inoffensive enough that no one wanted to send them home.
The mini-challenge this week was to put on a super fast drag look and have RuPaul take a Polaroid that would then be turned into one of Warhol’s signature screen prints. Aja won the challenge for putting some makeup under her eyes and looking like a middle schooler dressed up as Harley Quinn for Halloween. I thought almost everyone’s photos were better than hers, especially Shangela’s hilarious booty popping girl with braids or Trixie’s Upper East Side plastic surgery disaster (which is exactly what Warhol would have been taking pictures of). The winners of these mini challenges always seem incredibly arbitrary to me.
Watch:
The main challenge was two parts, the girls had to come up with a soup can design that sold their brand as a drag queen and then sew an outfit that was like disco chic couture eleganza extravaganza death drop death drop vogue. Watching the queens try to sew, which happened a lot more in the early seasons, was hilarious. There’s always a few who are exceptional at it and a few who don’t even bother to learn how to work a sewing machine. Ben still hasn’t learned and said that she won a design challenge in the past with only a hot glue gun and she would do it again. Shangela, who was a victim to bad sewing in season three, admitted that she took two months of sewing classes but that still didn’t mean she could figure out how to work a sewing machine, which she hilariously insisted on calling Bertha.
The rest of the time in the workroom was spent deciding what criteria the queens should use to eliminate losers. Ben, who had had to choose every week because she'd been winning so much (yeah, boo fucking hoo) said she wanted to base it on track record, but even she couldn’t figure out whether being safe is better or worse than being in the top and the bottom on separate occasions. She was like someone on too many edibles trying to figure out how much to tip.
I had to agree with Kennedy (something I never thought I’d say), that each queen will know what to do when it happens. She was right. So many factors come into play—including personal relationships—that they’re fools to pretend otherwise. Everyone knows the game they’re playing and feelings will inevitably be hurt, no matter what.
Before the runway started RuPaul introduces the guest judges, including Shay Mitchell. I was like “Who the hell is this real girl?” Luckily for me Ru explained that Shay was on Pretty Little Liars. Oh. Ok.
First up, the soup cans, and Aja’s was Sugar Tits soup, which is like sweet or something? As everyone had warned her, it said nothing about Aja. No one thinks she’s sweet and she sure doesn’t look like candy. Shangela’s was called “Hallelloops” because of course. If Shangela knows one thing it is staying on brand. Trixie came out in pink, obviously, with something called Peps/Abyssmal. She talked about death and a rough childhood and being funny about it and it was the most Trixie Mattel thing I have ever seen. The only other miss was Kennedy’s Pot Licka Juice which, I don’t know, didn’t make any sense to me and was really ugly. BeBe made some sort of retro train ad looking peanut soup from Camerooooooon and Ben’s Cream DeLaCreme was perfect for any occasion, including this one.
The problem with the sewing challenge is that the looks always suffer. I mean, god bless these girls, but they can’t be expected to do everything. Aja wore a vest and a pair of slacks covered in dangling pearls which looked like something that Cher would have worn on The Sonny and Cher Show. I didn’t hate it. Shangela looked like a display at an old Sam Goody, with a gold record taped to her head and three gold records down her front. The rest of her outfit looked like she got hit by a girl riding a tricycle with gold streamers coming out of the handlebars and the tricycle won. It was bad.
Trixie was wearing a pink velour bell-bottomed jumpsuit that looked straight from the Juicy Couture 1976 catalogue. It was the best constructed of all of the garments. Kennedy was wearing a green leotard with a camel toe so big that tourists in Morocco would pay $20 to take a ride on it. She also had a sail of fabric, which didn’t seem to match, hanging from one arm. BeBe looked like a disco queen on a budget, with a blue fringey number that Ross Matthews accurately clocked as a homosexual car wash. Ben constructed a coral leotard that was only slightly better than Kennedy’s with some strips of fabric tied here and there. She looked like the front door of a Tory Burch outlet.
When it came time for the judges’ critiques, I was totally shocked. Though Aja’s look was more disco-inspired than actual disco, it seemed what Ru and the crew were looking for was a Party City costume, not something actually inspired by the fashion of the 70s. Also shocking was that Aja didn’t get the references she was dropping. She called disco legend and “Come to Me” singer France Joli “Francis Joli” and called Brigitte Bardot by the American sounding “Brigit Bardot.” Ru made fun of her on both accounts, telling her she needs to learn more about gay culture, especially when trying to impress someone who (no tea, no shade) lived through as much of it as RuPaul did. When Ru is giving one of the queen’s shade on the runway, just get ready to say goodbye to that Felicia.
As usual, I hated Kennedy’s outfit. I thought it was basic and poorly constructed, but the judges oohed and ahhed over it. Carson Kressley was right, her hair and makeup were amazing and definitely the best of the night, but the dress was hideous. They also loved BeBe’s dress, which I didn’t think was bad, but it looked like a 10-year-old wrapped a present using only foil gum wrappers.
The top was Trixie, who finally got a win, and BeBe who, after weeks of skating by on charm, was “safe” for the first time. The bottom was Aja, of course, and Shangela. To me the choice seemed obvious. I loved when Aja was trying to defend herself and BeBe was just telling her what an inspiration she was and how she was already a winner for being there. We all knew which lipstick BeBe was pulling right then.
In the lip sync to a Diana Ross song, BeBe changed into a caftan and repeated her spot-on Diana Ross impersonation, all but guaranteeing her win. Trixie changed as well (is this a requirement now?) but put on a fringed country lewk which made her look more like Dolly Parton than Diana Ross. I know that’s part of Trixie’s shtick, but it seemed like a very odd choice. Trixie just can’t get a win no matter what she does.
Finally I'm left wondering when they’re going to bring back all of those old queens. With only a handful of cast members left, they’re going to have to do it soon. And can they all come back in a box like a horde of mini-Shangelas? Nothing would make the corpse of Andy Warhol smile as much as that.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter.
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