Even casual fans of the series remember Jan’s single-minded, militant determination to win the Rusical challenge, and the subsequent face-crack of the century when Jan realized she had lost. But in order to understand how we arrived at this episode’s winner, we have to turn the clock all the way back to season 12’s “Madonna: the Rusical,” or as I like to call it, “the Jokerification of Jan.” It was quite the sight to behold: Jan’s BFA was weaponized with enriched uranium as she screlted, twirled, and kicked through her number, only to lose to season 12’s golden girl, Gigi Goode. However, if there’s one thing Drag Race is gonna do, it’s overproduce an entertaining episode with questionable judging. The Theory of Relativity of Drag Race maxi challenges. Not only does this allow queens like Trinity and Yara to shine (I’ll get to that later) it even allows savvy, non-dancing queens like Pandora to show off their Snatch Game-level comedic timing. For this maxi challenge each queen has preselected a pop diva whom they will impersonate in order to serve up a brief Superbowl halftime show performance, lip syncing to RuPaul tracks remixed and re-recorded to emulate the sonic qualities of that particular diva. Closet, Asia O’Hara).Įnter the Drag Race halftime show. By selecting one diva to focus on, like Cher or Madonna, you put queens who would never even think to impersonate that particular star at a distinct disadvantage (e.g., Heidi N. “Well,” you might reply, “there are Rusical challenges, like season 12’s ‘Madonna: The Rusical’! Don’t those pick up the slack left by Snatch Game and cater to the performance-heavy queens?” (Okay, I was getting there? Stop being rude?) These also have major drawbacks. It elegantly presents a solution to a problem that our world’s most brilliant scientists have struggled for years to decipher: How do we highlight the talents of incredibly talented queens whose primary skill is performing the heavily copyrighted music of female pop stars in bars? Snatch Game is the obvious solution, but that only caters to a very specific type of comedically minded queen, leaving excellent entertainers like Trinity K. Halftime Headliners is the platonic ideal of a Drag Race maxi challenge. I’ve called our legendary mother queen “maniacal,” “a psychological terrorist,” “a gay Joe Rogan,” and, baby, that’s just what I’ve said in print! So believe me when I say that RuPaul truly freaked it with the challenge this episode. As longtime readers surely know by now, I am not one to shy away from RuPaul slander.
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