How RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars looked a lot like Survivor

A good thing is the Vox recommendation feature. In each edition, find one more thing from the world of culture that we highly recommend.

The best sport broadcast on television right now is not what most would think of as a sport. Instead, it is VH1’s country-most competitive reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars. The queens of Endurance race They bring their charisma, uniqueness, nerves and talent week after week.

Like star athletes, drag queens have their strengths and weaknesses. Some queens are better at giving us glances, others are better at being funny, and some stand out in pageantry or dancing. Determining the best of the group means looking for a queen that is excellent in her specialty and the other elements of drag performance. Endurance race He has always emphasized the importance of being a qualified interpreter, but the All the stars The installments of the series feature only the best of the best (well, the best of the best of any drag queen who is willing to give herself to the wolves of reality TV for a second round, that is).

As the queens are fun, old-fashioned, and even sing to each other, the real winners are the spectators at home. The result is something so joyous, so silly, and sometimes even inspiring. And with a new twist, this season now has a horrible drama.

Rules Endurance race have changed (again)

After 11 years on the air and multiple iterations, the RuPaul’s Endurance race The franchise is an undeniable force in mainstream pop culture. Host RuPaul’s key phrases “Shantay, you stay” and “Sashay absent” are just as recognizably quotable as any other reality show phenomenon, right there with Survivor‘the tribe has spoken’ and The best chef“Please pack your knives and go.” Ru generally drops one of these lines at the end of the show’s elimination round, where two low-scoring queens face off in a lip sync battle. The losing queen must “walk away”; The winner is awarded the comforting “Shantay, stay” and moves on to the next episode.

But for Drag Race: All StarsOver the past four seasons, these elimination rounds have morphed into less conventional and more strategic, and best of all, much more dramatic.

This time for him All the stars season five of the edition, the powers that will change the format again: queens can now vote among themselves.

Once Ru names the worst performers of the week after a main competition, the remaining safe queens have to vote on which contestant they want to see go home. There is no limit to the number of queens Ru can choose to face elimination, which is already a huge difference from the standard show. A more significant change is that the best individual performance of the week can override these votes and send whoever they want to pack. But to expel a contestant of her choice, the winner of the challenge must defeat a “lip sync killer”, not a literal drag queens killer, but a former Endurance race Contestant from a previous season who is best known for being proficient in lip syncs.

However, facing one of these killers is their own additional challenge, so a more compelling option is for contestants to try to woo themselves to vote for the same person. These new elimination rules open the door to play ability and subterfuge, as queens can conspire against each other in a more intriguing way than we’ve seen in a Endurance race Serie. Since no one in the court block knows who exactly voted against them at the moment, it keeps them alert on who they can trust.

One possible scenario: A leader who is having a bad week could suddenly be kicked out by other queens who can manipulate the game by gathering a vote. And the pioneers are clear on All the stars Season 5, with mega talented Shea Couleé and hilarious Jujubee as the real competition. They are better leagues than their competitors, and if it were any other reality show, the other contestants would reject them as soon as they had the chance, as they are the biggest threats.

But nobody took advantage of this option. Everyone has been playing well. Until last week.

Drag Race: All Stars‘twist surprised fans with a mid-season reveal

The current season of Drag Race: All StarIt’s been a two horse race almost from the start. Shea Couleé and Jujubee have always been the highlight of every episode as they stun on the track and master the challenges. Jujubee is effortless fun, a clutch skill as the show is primarily based on challenges that involve making the audience laugh. Meanwhile, Shea’s strengths focus more on his looks, wit, and spectacular performances.

When another queen manages to win a challenge, it almost seems like the producers threw a bone at them, simply to break the monotony of each episode that ends with a victory for Shea or Jujubee.

However, the most the other queens can expect is to get to third place. Before the show’s episode on July 3, queens Alexis Mateo and Miz Cracker were fighting for the honor of being the best unnamed artist Shea or Jujubee. And below Mateo and Cracker, India Ferrah and Blair St. Clair floated safely in the top six.

And then the status quo changed dramatically.

Ferrah is a queen whose most famous moment was a controversial lip-syncing performance with another memorable contestant, Mimi Imfurst, during her original endurance racing season:

For most of this season of All the starsFerrah has not really shown why she is more than “the drag queen who was lifted up into the air by another much larger drag queen.”

After another sad performance in a challenge, Ferrah stepped into the background. RuPaul revealed that, along with Ferrah, each queen (except for the winner of the challenge, Shea, to no one’s surprise) was willing to be eliminated. Apparently seeing the guillotine on the horizon, Ferrah immediately pulled Shea aside to defend her case. Ferrah told Shea that there was a traitor in the middle of Shea: Matthew and an already-eliminated queen had campaigned to vote for Shea during Shea’s appearance in the background this season, in episode three. Although viewers know Mateo voted for Shea in that episode, Mateo denied campaigning to kick Shea out, although he also did not deny voting for Shea.

The revelation cast doubt on everything we knew about the game. Until this game-changing episode, queens had been playing fair and voting for the person with the worst record.

Was Ferrah lying about Mateo’s campaign to end Shea? If so, why did Matthew vote for Shea in that episode and not for one of the other two queens in the background? Did Matthew try to get the other queens to join him in his crusade against Shea? So why didn’t the other queens say so earlier? And if Mateo campaigned against Shea, then why didn’t the producers even catch him on camera? Every interaction on the show is filmed, enough for a post-show called Uncovered showing the behind-the-scenes footage of the episode. Apparently, all producers have to show this accusation is Ferrah’s word.

Jujubee brought up a highlight: “If India [Ferrah] she’s lying, she would have been a better actress, which means she would have been better in Snatch Game, ”RuPaul’s celebrity impersonation challenge.

That noted that the terrible actor Ferrah sounded so sincere when revealing Mateo’s sabotage is almost enough to convince everyone that he was telling Shea the truth.

After this revelation of Matthew’s possible crusade against her, Shea had to choose between sending one of the two queens home: the alleged ally Ferrah or the alleged traitor Matthew. And in the end, Shea decided to send Ferrah home, despite Ferrah’s best efforts to gain Shea’s trust. Her claims against Mateo were not enough to save her.

Ferrah’s scorched earth tactic changed the way Mateo will have to play the game in the future, as the other queens now wonder if anyone can or should trust Mateo. What started as a bona fide decision-based competition, where people based eliminations on the contestants’ overall success during the show, turned into something else along the lines of Survivor – A game where nobody knows who to believe.

Each queen suddenly learned that they had to take care of themselves and no one else. And Ferrah, although disappointing as an interpreter, gave All the stars something that no other queen could do as her parting gift. She alone changed the show into the best kind of sport: one with a cutting edge flair and drama and a few possible backstabbings.

RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars airs on Fridays at 8pm on VH1.

---

Support Vox explanatory journalism

Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience worldwide, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is right now: empowering you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism requires resources, particularly during a pandemic and economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but will allow our staff to continue offering free articles, videos and podcasts with the quality and volume required at this time. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.