'...and DON'T *bleep* IT UP!' -- the RuPaul's Drag Race thread

Who did she say was? I can never remember anything about DR as soon as it's finished. I had to look up who left last night and I only watched it 12 hours ago.

She said it to Lawrence.

I mostly agree with her. He's naturally funny but, it seems, not capable of being funny when it's required.

they bleeped it out on the Wow Presents Plus app too, wtf

I could not believe how butthurt A'whora and Lawrence got about it!! I mean it was v clear that they were feeling vulnerable and insecure in general, and that this put them at a further disadvantage, and they took their own feelings out on Ellie, but like, wtf??? You cannot ever convince me that the running order has any real effect on anything but the participants' psyches, those performances could have been rearranged any which way and would have still gotten the same critiques. It's ridiculous to blame your own performance on someone else putting you in a certain order???? Also, how disingenuous to suddenly pretend that this isn't a competition and to hold relatively harmless competitive behavior against ppl.

I also felt so bad for Ellie and wish she could have been more confident in her decision and pushed back on them a bit.

At this point I am rooting hard for a Bimini win

Totally agree with everything you say. But I feel like Lawrence wouldn't have been so angry if Ellie hadn't kept wanting reassurance that everything was fine between them. Like, you can't fuck me over and then say "oh, don't be mad at me". You have to let me be mad for a bit.

I totally thought Ellie should have owned her decision more. In any other season, the girls would have called her a shady bitch and laughed it off and that would've been the end of it.

Also it felt weird how the critiques didn't match the performances or the rankings. From the challenge, Ellie seemed high, then got bad reviews but ended up safe. Tayce wasn't bad and got nice enough reviews but ended up in the bottom. Probably bad editing, but it was confusing as a viewer.

Lawrence deleted their Twitter overnight... sounds like things got rough.

re: Ellie/Lawrence, I do agree that it was disingenous for Ellie to keep asking people if they were OK with their places, and was 100% on Lawrence's side when she read her for filth about it. Though Lawrence should have gotten over it, and did not.

re: the critiques, I figured A'Whora would be in the bottom two, but couldn't decide if the other one would be Tayce, who did not-that-great but exceeded everyone's expectations and showed the most "improvement", or Ellie, who was marginally better than Tayce but was perhaps a bit more disappointing overall.

I really really wanted this to be Ellie's week but it was clear from early on in the ep that this was not going to be her episode :(

if Alan Carr was trying to coach me on how to be funny I would probably have to leave the set.

Loads of this episode made me uncomfortable - the inference that drag comedy should stick to tasteful things because it's the BBC, it is close to "you can be gay, but not too gay" territory. It's the same as how Graham Norton was much funnier on his Channel 4 shows.

I also wondered if there was a gender component. Like, A'Whora may be a drag queen, but to the BBC that is still a man saying pretty crude stuff about his grandmother. I wonder if a cis woman would be censured for the same material? Don't they bleep it when the queens call each other c*nts, too? I don't think they do that after 10pm on the Beeb when women do it.

Anyway, it seemed like an overreaction to bleep the material. I am a fairly prudish person when it comes to what I find funny (which is distinct from what I think you ought to be allowed to say on telly) and I thought it was weird that that was considered too tasteless to even broadcast.

Okay how the hell had the series got to this point *without* using Company B’s “Fascination” in a lip sync?

maybe they had that realization and came up with the runway as reason for song
agree with decision but would have had a different top 3

in re UK - really don't get the anger with Ellie D for how she did placing, um, its what you do and really wasn't that shady anyway, complaining queens came off as very petty to me (and didn't find laurence funny at all)

I don't think Lawrence is that funny, I think they're just Scottish

Okay how the hell had the series got to this point *without* using Company B’s “Fascination” in a lip sync?

I said the exact same thing to my bf !

I've rarely seen an outfit I hated as much as Elliott's this week. It was like a surgical stocking got tangled with a duster.

This is how I will now describe flamingos forever more.

how tf was Symone not the winner of that whole episode

even when Michelle SAID Elliott was a flamingo I was like “nuh uh”

she looked like a middleaged junkie showgirl from fkn sparks nevada jesus christ UGH
i fucking haaaaaaaaated it so much
and on top of her rue mclanahan (~bored voice~ men. gentlemen.) they were kind letting her lipsync bc she def deserved to be run out of town on a rail

Symone was so so so great, but it is v this show not to give her the win. Disappointing for sure. But Gottmik was hilarious too, and I really loved Rosé - that scottish accent SLAYED me, she was hysterical.

i am still no closer to liking or enjoying olivia at all, her snatchgame was tiresome & i hated her runway so much. that wig? and the “labcoat” with the visible buttons looked more like a DressBarn trenchcoat. HATED.

Why Rose doesn't go with the accent 24/7 is beyond me because that makes her 1000% hotter, and honestly I thought she deserved the win.

I never would've expected Denali to have those comedy chops! And she was totally unrecognizable.

I was hoping that this would be the start of Olivia's heel-turn... which didn't happen, but hope springs eternal.

So what are we all thinking for a top four at this point? I'm assuming Symone and Gottmik are the slam dunks.

Symone, Gottmik, Rosé and maybe Denali?

Yeah I was pretty much starting to settle on that overall.

I see Tina Burner in there filling the Silky/Eureka/Sherry Pie role this show seems to love

What lurks on the horizon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf_-FV3-lVs

Karen from Finance is my favourite drag name in some time.

aaaahahah Trixie and Katya were talking abt Karen from Finance on an episode of UNHhhh a few years ago and the name has stuck with me since

Yeah, I think my top 4 are also Symone, Gottmik, Rosei, and either Olivia or Denali (both have shown amazing performance and middling performance and it seems to very from week to week in a way where I can't really bank on how either of them will do over the next several episodes)

lmao "Rosei" wtf

also I did NOT expect Utica to turn out a lip sync that good!!! She's got a lot of raw potential but has shown us multiple times that her idea of what is funny/entertaining does not always align w reality or common taste?

Oh my god, LEARN THE LIPSYNC!

Although I wonder if this was one of those times when they switched it out at the last minute, leaving the queen who happens not to know the song already at a disadvantage.

Yeah, so much for my top four!

As for the UK you could kinda see the hints about them going top four. I’m still amused next week wraps that up while we still have seven queens left in the US one.

UK: Ellie's lip-synch was adorable, possibly my favourite moment of hers so far, while Tayce's felt a bit same-old, same-old: there hasn't been much, if any, interpretive difference in any of hers.

The UK's final four are the cover story in today's Weekend Guardian colour supplement - some great photos, too.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/mar/13/ru-pauls-drag-race-uk-finalists-ellie-diamond-lawrence-chaney-tayce-bimini-bon-boulash

the winning team in the US ep did such an amazing job! well deserved win for both and exactly what they both needed at this point in the competition.

honestly this week's US challenge is one of my favorites in the history of the whole show, I can't remember the last time I was SO EXCITED to see the results of the challenge. I thought they all did a great job, even the bottom two did so-so and not awful imo (except for Olivia's make-up which was v v bad)

Given this episode alone, I mean the bottom two def did the worst, and the winner of the lip sync def won the lip sync, but it still feels shocking to see the loser sent home right now!!!

Indeed! And yes, it was a solid challenge all around, it almost feels like an actual start of the season/high stakes moment.

yeah a great twist on the makeup challenge, with many consequences, like the loser having to say farewell while not in their own drag

Agreed, and Utica kept me on pins and needles the whole episode long after I'd written her off -- I thought after the Bob Ross afro debacle, she was for sure not going to be up to it, and I am pretty sure the producers thought the same.

Also, I think this ep proved once and for all that Symone can basically wear the hell out of anything.

absolutely, but what made it especially exciting was her change from the initial apprehension to “i just have to go there and own it”

didn’t quite like how they were setting it up with the editing to make it look “omg are they going to do blackface?!”

symone and utica posted the pics of them wearing their own drag used in the swap and as expected both are gorgeous

Utica is so pure and I love her so much and this is giving me a boost of hope that she might go farther in this competition than I would have thought.

Also really loving how anyone’s-game it still is!! Looking at the last couple of seasons’ contestant progress it’s all very much “hm, yes, that seems about right”, I think they all fell into a very logical order, but honesty you could give me any elimination sequence at this point and as long as Symone was in the top I’d believe it.

Symone plus Gottmik seem locked in. The other spot or spots are up in the air.

symone, gottmik, rose would be my top 3. not sure who else would make top 4
it definitely feels wrong that there is still so many of them left!

wonder what the UK top 4/3 would look like if veronica green didn’t have to drop off.

I assume that Raven's still doing Ru's makeup, but I wish she'd stop contouring her nose into such a sharp Michael/Latoya Jackson blade.

The lie, where is it

I was aimlessly clicking around YouTube and stumbled on a video where someone describes Utica’s approach to conceptual drag as having very “Maureen from RENT vibes” and...I mean...I love her, but...they aren’t wrong.

— Alexander (@purplechrain) March 14, 2021

Yes I know the UK finale is here and I still haven't seen it so I'll be back on this thread later but in the meantime, a wonderful repurposing from the US end of things

*58 minutes into a 1-hour meeting*

"Well that's all I have for today. Happy to give you guys a few minutes back of your day!" pic.twitter.com/rIH3GIqGJB

— 4d hair advocate (@OfficiallyVex_) March 17, 2021

UK finale: okay, honestly surprised? In that the winner totally makes sense (and I love the choice for many reasons) but I thought someone else had been coming up big time over the last few episodes, so! I'll take that!

I was not at all happy with the winner. Alan Carr handwaving the inability to follow choreography highlighted to me how arbitrary and inconsistent the judging is on this show.