Drag Race S5 E08 - Runway Recap

Surprise - another belated runway post. And what do we blame for it? That’s right: being forced to be somewhere else for 40 hours a week! And who will deliver me from this evil? YOU!

Meanwhile… the latest Drag Race had the contestants doing something I’ve seriously dreamt of doing: creating and marketing their own fragrance. Though since they’re drag queens, would it be a perfume or a cologne? =P I’ve always had my ideas for colognes, and my dream job (if it was forced to be retail) is behind a fragrance counter, so I really enjoyed this challenge. This episode was also a return to a normal runway (!!) and also one of the first of the season to involve the runway look as part of their judging, somewhat. Drag Race veterans would agree that this season has seen a notable lack of dressmaking challenges, which would have popped up a few times by now. Though it’s made this season a lot more interesting (those pure-runway challenges could get a little blah) it makes newcomers to the Race wonder why I keep putting such an emphasis on runway when these challenges don’t. I always thought those couture challenges were a bit unfair anyway.

COMMENCE… SHAKE… DOWN.

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Let’s start with Coco Montrese. One part sultry woman, one part hypnotic zebra.

Now that we’re 8 (!) episodes in, we can get an idea of what these girls do best. Coco’s forte is clearly the young cougar, glamorous trope. Everything from the neck up is just beautiful, like an empty nester-turned-speed dater who just came back from the salon. Everything from the neck down is, well… hypnotic zebra. As cool as it looks, I feel she should have worn what she did for her fragrance’s commercial shoot, which was heavy leopard. That commercial used a leopard greenscreen with a leopard couch and Coco wearing a leopard dress. It was waaayy too much and if she wore this dress for that commercial it would have broken up all that leopard wonderfully. Plus the gold tones of the dress would play off Coco’s runway hair and makeup even nicer.

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Alaska’s fragrance drove her runway look completely. That and a desire to look completely different from anything she’s worn before.

No trademark poofy blond wig here! (Though she did wear it for her commercial =P) This is probably the closest to Sharon Needles as she’s ever looked, which is great because it shows how different and unique she can look compared to her last season-winning boyfriend. Overall this is one of my least favorite Alaska looks so far, though I can appreciate that she dug deep to come up with something completely different and unpredictable. And I like the trademark poofy blond wig!

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Ivy’s dress is like one shade off from her skin tone. A rough move.

I’ll say one thing: Ivy definitely knows how to pose her body. It’s always really fun to screenshot her because she flashes so many poses through her runway, you would think she is standing still. Though we still see the showgirl in her, she’s pretty demure this week. And the hairdo, though really cute, seems a bit too casual for a dress like this. Especially for her fragrance being called ‘Dress Code,’ her look doesn’t quite match that.

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Detox has always been an angular performer, and no dress so far has been as demonstrative of that as this one is. It looks like there’s a prism covering half of her face!

This is another instance of me hating what she’s wearing, but loving how she’s making me eat it. Detox’s dominance and confidence is feeding me this look one spoonful at a time, and it’s hard for me to fault her on it. All I see on her this week are hard lines and angles, from the headpiece to the pointy shoes. Even her naughty bits are explicitly outlined, despite wearing a garment that technically is completely covering her. Oh, and her fragrance’s name? Genius!!

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Yes. Alyssa actually entered the stage, faced forward, and dropped her jaw. This was the best shot I could get of her. Seriously.

Luckily the other runway pics look much better. I really like her dress this week, matched with her good wig and sandals up to the sky. Could that shade of green be… Jade Jolie?? No pun intended. If we’ve pretty much seen every side of Alyssa that there is by now, I kinda like this side the most. And her fragrance, Alyssa’s Secret, was not only a ripoff of Victoria’s Secret, but a bad one.

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Jinkx continues the mid-20th century looks with this lovely ensemble this week.

This is obviously Jinkx’s forte so now she’s pulling out all the stops, and rightfully so. She sports a crazy (but in control) up-do, some vintage accessories, flashes a big toothy smile and admiration commences. Major props to the random woodland animal over her shoulder. I actually didn’t notice it until I was doing the screenshots, and now that I’ve just discovered it I absolutely love it. Jinkx continues to prove herself as a top contender for this race.

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And we finish with Roxxxy, who looks like she’s missing half her wig.

And I guess we’ve found Roxxxy’s trope: looking 15 years older than she is, bronzing herself like hell, overdoing her eye makeup and wearing some truly god-awful nail polish. And persons of her physical dimensions really can’t get away too well with wearing bodysuits. It’s not to the caliber of Stacy Layne Matthews’ bodysuit from Season 3, but we can see where this is going. Deep down I really want to like Roxxxy, but I feel like she could be taking her drag in a much different direction. A better direction.

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And just because I love you guys, here’s a screenshot from each contestant’s fragrance ad.

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I’m not even putting up a picture of RuPaul for this week because she looked horrendous. … Ok fine…

I told you.

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Ranking Based On Runway?: Partially
Winner: Alaska
High-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Detox
Low-Ranking: Ivy Winters, Alyssa Edwards
Bottom Two: Ivy Winters, Alyssa Edwards
Eliminated: Ivy Winters =’(

I’m stunned. Ivy was one of my top contenders for this race, but unfortunately her misguided ad and blasé runway did her no favors. I would have wanted to see Alyssa go this week, as I don’t think there’s much more we have to see from her. Ivy felt like she still had more things to offer, especially as a seamstress (with the inevitable dressmaking challenges on the horizon). The lip-sync saw Ivy standing completely in place and Alyssa bouncing all over the place, eerily similar to Season 2’s sync between Sonique and Morgan McMichaels. Though in that one, Morgan (the one who stayed in place) stayed and Sonique (who did handsprings everywhere) sashayed away.

Season 5 continues to be a season of oddities if we look at the statistics. Jinkx Monsoon has ranked high for 6 weeks straight, an unparalleled record. Also we haven’t had a contestant so far who has won more than one challenge, and every remaining contestant has won a challenge. This is one of the most spread-out seasons, with no contestant clearly winning. Though Jinkx’s continuous high ranks are something to be noted, I highly doubt anyone will break Sharon Needles’ record of winning 4 challenges in the season.

With us past the halfway point of the race, this is where things start getting truly interesting, kicking off with Ivy’s surprisingly early elimination. And it only gets better from here: the drama, the talent, and the fierceness!

Yeah, I said fierceness. This show is on Logo, after all.

Rosaries are NOT Necklaces!

Let’s all get something straight. Over the past few years I’ve seen this alarming trend of rosaries (and variations of such) being worn like necklaces. It’s usually the younger crowd (ages 16-24) and I highly doubt they even know what a rosary truly is. You may be one of these offenders. Well I’m here to tell you to STOP IT.

I get it. Rosaries look like ideal necklaces, with the long loop of beads and the small string coming off the bottom, ending with a crucifix (NOT a cross, there's a difference). But they are not jewelry: they are prayer beads. You see, each bead represents a prayer, and yes they are in that certain pattern for a reason. It’s in a circular form because you start with the crucifix, travel around the loop and double back to the crucifix to finish the rosary. I suppose they could’ve just broken the loop to go in a straight line that ends the way it starts, but that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

Now I could go into major detail about the origin of the rosary, what prayers are said on each bead, the Divine Mysteries associated with the rosary, and all that good stuff, but honestly if you use a rosary properly you would already know those things. But I will tell you that to us Catholics (and especially to those of us that openly embrace the spiritualist and mystic aspects of the faith), the rosary is an incredibly hardcore and powerful instrument of prayer. Saying the rosary can supplant miracles, invoke religious ecstasy, even grant indulgences (reductions) to sentences in Purgatory! So with the rosary seen as such an important and beloved chain of beads, it is distressing to see so many people misuse them for jewelry.

Even worse are the rosary wannabes that replace the crucifix or beads with something completely different, like with pentagrams. What a rape if I ever saw one. Probably the worst thing someone can do though is wear a rosary and think it makes them look or seem religious, but then when someone asks them what it really is they draw a blank or simply don’t care. It makes me sick.

What everyone should be wearing are scapulars. “Huh? What’s that?” A scapular is a rosary’s ‘other half’, as in both are related in tandem to become very powerful religious artifacts. Scapulars are two small square pictures connected together by two pieces of string, in the basic sense. They are designed to be worn over your neck, one square on the front and back of you, but can be affixed to you in various ways (my grandmother used to string hers around her bra strap =P). It’s preferred that some part of it touches your skin. Scapulars simply bless and enhance you as you wear them (though people of little faith will just call BS on them and everything else), but the most famous reason for wearing a scapular is because if you die while wearing one you will ascend directly to Heaven. No Hell, no Purgatory, no questions asked, no kidding. And since any one of us could die at any given moment, a scapular is something you wouldn’t want to be caught dead without! Literally!

Trust me, you're better off wearing the thing on the right.

I’ll admit, a scapular doesn’t look nearly as sexy as a rosary, which is probably why it’s unfairly found its way into Religious Item Purgatory (god I’m loving the wordplay in this post!) but nothing would do my heart better than to see every schlock wearing a rosary like it’s bling instead wearing a scapular. If only they knew what a scapular had to offer them. Then again, if only they knew what a rosary actually was…

Drag Race S5 E07 - Runway Recap

Calling this post a runway recap is a bit of a misnomer, and it’s very difficult to talk about it without talking about the challenge itself. That’s because this week there was NO runway! =’( This week was the RuPaul Roast, where the challenge was to roast RuPaul (including the judges and other contestants) in front of a live audience. Put simply, the ones who did well did extremely well and were funny as hell. The ones who did not do well… completely bombed.

So the runway this week was replaced by the roast itself, and since they did not do a costume change for the judging, I’m going to count their roast attire as their runway look. There was no explicit theme for this week, but everyone is dressed to go to a roast (i.e. they look nice). This was also a challenge for me by taking the screenshots. For the first picture I wanted to get their name graphic, and for the second pic I wanted it to be closer up. But since they’re talking the whole time it made it very difficult to get a pic of them that didn’t look really weird.

COMMENCE… SHAKE… DOWN.

Alaska kicked off the roast, and she was one of the knockout funny ones.

I’d say this is my second favorite outfit of Alaska’s so far. Clearly this is also Alaska’s second favorite wig, because she’s worn this one a lot through the show so far. Alaska looks simple but elegant this week, rocking the LBD with minimal jewelry and a cute little hat. Hair is right, makeup on point, overall a very inoffensive and beautiful look.

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Roxxxy followed, and according to Alaska’s closing joke, ‘That’s Roxxxy with 3 Xs, just like her dress size.”

Roxxxy, as always, just looks eh. I do like the hair and I like the simplicity of the dress, but again there’s those overdone dark eye pools that just suck any personality she had right away. Oh and her act? A giant bomb. This was a very bad week for Ms Andrews, seriously the only decent thing she pulled off at all this week was that wig.

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Coco Montrese decided to take it in a different direction and be a long-lost childhood friend of RuPaul’s when he lived in the Detroit projects. What could have been disastrous was instead hysterically effective.

Everything was perfect this week. The visible roots in the hair, the overdone jewelry, and the voice! The ironic thing was the Coco didn’t think she would do that well because she doesn’t consider herself a funny person. I don’t think you could fake funny as well as she did.

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Third time’s the charm for Jinkx trying to bring glamour to the runway, bringing her best look yet.

Jinkx looks absolutely wonderful this week. My favorite part? That one blonde curl in her auburn hair. It completely brings this look from the 1910s to the 2010s. And the comedy was of course, spot-on. No complaints here.

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Ivy Winters followed, looking like a carrot cake.

All of her colors coordinate really well, and I really don’t mean my carrot cake comment as an insult. She just looks good, if not a tad plain. Actually, her look and her comedy were about the same, good but plain. And that’s about it.

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Alyssa was the penultimate performer, and possibly surpassed Roxxxy as the hardest one to watch. It was just so bad.

As for Alyssa’s look it was fine but nothing we haven’t seen before. But the roast itself… I’m very disappointed. For someone with such dominating stage presence she had horrific posture and she hovered over the mic so badly it kept giving off feedback. If that was intentional, it was a bad move. In one of the outtakes it revealed that the producers turned off the mic at times just to keep the feedback from deafening everyone. Her jokes also just bounced off the wall and hit her back in the face. Not good.

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Detox apologized for Alyssa’s performance, coyly saying she tried her hardest. An example of how good timing can make a good joke even better.

Look-wise, Detox is decent this week. She’s combining a few different age groups in this look, with the youthful earrings, middle-aged makeup and old-person hair. Her jokes were good but there was way too much dead space between them. Overall if Ivy was safe-to-bad, Detox was safe-to-good.

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And just because she looked so bad this week, I’m putting RuPaul last in the line. For an event honoring her, I’m surprised she thought this was the best look to bring:

Just… no.

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Ranking Based On Runway?: No
Winner: Coco Montrese
High-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska
Low-Ranking: Ivy Winters, Alyssa Edwards, Roxxxy Andrews
Bottom Two: Alyssa Edwards, Roxxxy Andrews
Eliminated: No one!

Shocking! Not only does this season have a double-elimination episode, but there is also a zero-elimination episode. I’m fully convinced these special episodes were worked in production beforehand, but Ru gets the choice on what episode to use them on. So basically he used up his special elimination allowance and I’m assuming the rest of the season will proceed normally. Well, I am waiting for the bring-back-an-eliminated-contestant twist to rear its head, unless that had its place taken by a special elimination. As for the lip-sync itself, the song was ‘Whip My Hair’ (yeah, the song sung by a 9-year-old) and Alyssa and Roxxxy, well, whipped their hair. Roxxxy pulled a trick out of her hat though. Early on she took her wig off (considered a total shot in the foot for a racer to do) only to reveal… another wig! This wig was much longer and straighter and a better candidate to whip back and forth. So clearly Roxxxy knew she bombed the roast so she had a secret weapon in waiting for the lip-sync (of which they know what the song is ahead of time). Very nice strategy.

This episode was in my opinion one of the most entertaining of the season (runway-free and all), and I highly recommend you watch it this one if you watch any. I know this post was a little scant, especially on the writing side, but there simply wasn’t much to say. And nothing is more unfunny than repeating a joke (especially in writing) out of context, and then saying ‘oh it was funnier when you actually hear it.’ So do yourself a favor and watch this one, it’ll make you smile.

Drag Race S5 E06 - Runway Recap

I blame the one-week delay on these recaps purely on my day job, which gives me barely any time to myself and exhausts me at the end of the day. With your support I’ll be able to rid myself on it and have my writing take care of my finances. It CAN happen and it WILL happen, but only with the help of my readers and supporters. I give you my word (no pun intended) that with a day job gone that you will receive a plethora of more high-quality posts and beyond.

And for all of you that are slogging through my Drag Race posts wondering when I’ll finally change the subject, hang in there. The season is about half over (omg) so your deliverance is in sight, but not for a while. (And I’ll probably still talk about them even after the season is over.)

Oh Ru…!

Looking lovely tonight! Bluish silver, semi-realistic hair and perfect makeup make this one of the better weeks for our queen of queens. This week the runway criteria was one of the more uncommon ones: highlight your favorite body part. To my knowledge this was only done one other time, in season 3. The criteria is rather loose, nor are the contestants really held to it, but generally this signifies that this is one of the last times you’ll see the racers in their own wardrobe. At this point of the competition the challenges start to change over from acting and personality to dressmaking and pageantry. It’s also the time when the eliminations start getting painful, as you’ll see. =(

COMMENCE… SHAKE… DOWN.

(By the way, anyone still wondering what the commence shakedown means before I put the pics up… you really haven’t watched this season, have you?)

Favorite Body Part: Heart.

This dress requires about 5 seconds to understand. It’s supposed to look like she’s nude and her chest has been ripped open, showing her internal organs, ribcage, and her bleeding heart. (Yeah, that red thing’s her heart.) Unfortunately if you need someone to explain all that to you, it nullifies the effect. As for the rest of her, the hair is fun (but odd) and the makeup’s a bit bright, especially if she’s trying to look like a zombie. I really don’t know. This was not Coco’s week, neither in the runway nor the main challenge itself.

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Favorite Body Part: Legs.

At this point it makes no more sense to clock Alyssa on her overdone badassery or her facial expressions. Maybe for the first time, I like what she’s bringing to the runway. The garment just flows over her, catching every wind it can get, and I love the shoes with the neverending straps. Hair is nice, makeup is clean, overall good job.

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Favorite Body Part: Hair (assumed)

That last shot of her I got completely on accident, and the minute I looked at it I knew I couldn’t put it to waste. Today Jade is an explosion of rainbow hair, albeit the colors start from the bottom and work their way up. It’s so over-the-top and absurd that it’s perfect for her, and it wouldn’t look nearly as good on anyone else. I like it, I like Jade Jolie, I always did, end of story.

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Favorite Body Part: Face

Ivy decided to make her dress this week completely out of headshots. For something she just whipped up that day, it’s very impressive. It’s another great sign for her that she can execute something so simple and effective, and this was the one who went out as a butterfly on stilts a few weeks ago. If I had to give one critique, it’d be that her makeup never changes from week to week and she’s blonde very often, but why fix what isn’t broken?

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Favorite Body Part: We don’t know.

I feel that Jinkx ignored the runway criteria completely and continued to take on Michelle Visage’s challenge of bringing glamour. That’s just fine with me and apparently it was fine with everyone else too. Ms Monsoon looks perfect tonight except for one thing: the cheek makeup. Those lines are too severe and honestly she doesn’t even need them. It makes it look like she’s wearing a mask from the nose up. But if you can mentally erase those lines from your mind I’d say that Jinkx met Michelle’s challenge. This girl is destined for Broadway.

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Favorite Body Part: Body-ody-ody.

Roxxxy’s problem is similar to that of Season 3‘s India Ferrah: she paints herself to look many years older than she is. She does her eyes the same way every week, by overloading them with detail and color. Problem is that her eyes aren’t big enough to take all that so they just don’t look right. And that wig, whoa. That’s not what you wear in your 20s. It’s what you wear in your 50s when you notice your real hair is thinning. As for the rest of the would-be dress: meh. Roxxxy is too young (and cute in guy form) to keep trying to look like a cougar.

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Favorite Body Part: Right Collarbone. (seriously)

Alaska can be as cynical as her last-season-winning boyfriend sometimes. Either she forgot the criteria and made something up quick, or she’s mocking the notoriety of a favorite body part by picking something so facetious. I want to say it’s the latter. Anyway, there’s that same wig from week 2, i.e. my favorite outfit of Alaska’s so far! The rest of the outfit is adequate, and idk she looks like more of a horse than usual, but she gets a free pass this week just cuz I like her. =)

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Favorite Body Part: Ass.

Let me explain. From the back, Detox’s dress is simply an undone corset, and this goes all the way down to show almost her entire rear end. I’m really surprised the censors let this one slide because when she turns around, there it is in all its glory. I have refrained from putting up a picture of it because this is a family blog. Yeah right. Really it’s because enough people mistake Drag Race for being pornographic (my parents included =P). By putting up a picture of Detox’s butt and saying ‘No it’s not!” would be, well… ass-backwards. So instead I put up a bunch of pictures of Detox’s flawless head this week. It’s very similar if not exactly her look from the now classic music video ‘Chow Down at Chick-Fil-A’, also starring season 4’s Willam Belli.

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Ranking Based On Runway?: No
Winner: Ivy Winters
High-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Roxxxy Andrews
Low-Ranking: Alaska, Coco Montrese, Jade Jolie
Bottom Two: Coco Montrese, Jade Jolie
Eliminated: Jade Jolie =’(

Oh no, Jade Jolie has crossed the rainbow into Drag Race Hell! She’s the first queen I’m really gonna miss. From a competitive standpoint, Jade was a victim of being too safe. Week after week she was not the best in the challenges nor the worst. She always just fell in the middle with a smile and giggle, and in many ways her runway was about as interesting as she got. Coco Montrese totally bombed this challenge but turned out the lip-sync, and compared to Jade, Coco’s got a little more under her belt. But again we’re at the point where everyone’s good and someone’s gotta go. I’ll miss her.

I don’t know what it is that attracts me to her, and it’s not a lust. Here’s a gay guy who clearly has been through more than his share, and when he becomes a drag queen (which is even more taboo) he is 110% rainbows and unicorns and all things fabulous. And he does it with a smile on his face and a song in his heart, knowing well that he must have naysayers that would snap his throat if given the chance. Jade is living his dream as a queen, and one who made it on Drag Race for a good few episodes. If he can be Jolie, why can’t I become the writer, commentator and otherwise personality that I aspire to be?