This feels like a particularly unhinged episode of All Stars from an alternate universe.
This week we get our first dramatic showcase of Mama Ru in her early stages of senility, as she cackles in delight at the abundance of fart sounds added in post while the queens watch in a mixture of horror and awe, and as she forgets that she is shooting an episode of a regular season instead of All Stars and has the queens lip-sync for their legacy rather than for their lives. For me it was a little too wild of a ride to be enjoyable, though I will say that all of the contestants did a fantastic job at acting in this challenge. And Lady Camden's stunt on the runway was just absolutely bonkers, definitely the high point of the episode for me.
That being said, I am sick and tired of DeJa, this season's filler queen, being saved time and time again after gracing the runway with the ugliest outfits (and wigs!) each episode. Not to mention that outside of the runway, she is edited out to such an extent that it honestly wouldn't make a difference if she went home. So why is she still here?
Another queen who I think is being unfairly favored this time around is Daya Betty. I mean, that runway... whatever was salvageable from that honestly mid-tier presentation was completely undermined by that weird, floppy hat. Her acting, though by no means the worst, wasn't the best either, so her placement in the top over Bosco is baffling to me. In an earlier season of Drag Race, the judges never would've given a queen a win just to kiss her boo-boos and offer validation so that she doesn't constantly whinge about "only being safe."
This season is starting to lose me, and it is because of all these shenanigans on the production's part. Things have been a little rocky with the undue departure of Kornbread, but the rest of the cast is still great, and the piss-poor judging and tampering is taking away from their stories and making it harder to honestly appreciate their talents.
