Hello? It's me [ __ ] and welcome back to my channel. The reviews are in! RuPaul's
Drag Race UK vs. The World is officially the worst fan reviewed All Star season of
Drag Race … ever. And it started off great but in the end … it's chocolate *womp womp*
And it's also one of the worst fan reviewed seasons across the entire RuPaul's Drag Race
cinematic universe beating only Down Under and the Holland seasons, which, let's be honest, wasn't
hard to do. On the bright side though, it is the best fan reviewed international All Star season,
being the only one in that category of course. And the culprit of this season's
sour second half is, I think pretty obvious – it was the top 2 lip sync elimination format
on the main stage with the lipstick tube. So in light of this momentous occasion, we'll be
taking a brief journey through the herstory of All Stars lip sync elimination formats,
dissecting their problems, and ultimately deciding on if we should completely abolish
the lip sync for your legacy. We've got a lot to cover today, but first!
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Now let's get started by turning back time … *Cher noise* oh … Our journey begins in the much simpler
summer of 2016. Bob the drag queen had just been crowned winner of season 8, and we were a year
out from our next season of Drag Race. Remember the time when we had to wait for seasons of Drag
Race to be released? Back in my day we had to lip-sync uphill BOTH ways … back to our story:
the summer following Bob's crowning, the All Stars 2 cast was officially revealed. The season itself
had actually been announced a year prior in this ominous video of RuPaul standing against a white
wall talking with long awkward pauses, “and it will leave you gagging! okurrr … thank you.”
But like whatever, it had been 4 years since the last All Star season and we were
hungry for something new. And finally All Stars 2 was upon us. But with it
came another more sinister twist: the queens for the first time ever would be calling the
shots in a lip sync for your legacy elimination format for the top 2 queens lip synced each
week to win a cash tip of $10,000 and the ability to decide who of the bottom queens goes home.
And generally speaking, I think this season and its twists were well received both at
the time and in retrospect. In fact All Stars 2 currently sits on IMDB as the best fan-reviewed
season of Drag Race across all franchises, and that's not to say this season was without its
shocking eliminations, but despite losing fan favorite after fan favorite every single week,
fans were still happy in the end because there was a front runner who was ultimately crowned.
And a little bit of drama and controversy introduced in this manner was exactly what
I think the franchise needed. The format was so successful they decided to reuse it in All Star
season 3 and 4, where it ultimately went sour. REALLY sour. Benzola and Manila eliminations
each marked the respective flat line of their season's ratings on IMDB. And to be clear,
I want to point out that these queens going home was not necessarily the only reason that these
seasons flopped in the end. The jury of their peers and double crowning twists were also to
blame. However it was apparent in both of these seasons, this elimination style specifically
prevented a front runner of each of those seasons from making it to the finale. And this same bigger
problem was rediscovered – shocker – in UK vs. The World, except exponentially worse,
because it didn't just prevent one frontrunner from reaching the end, but it prevented 3.
Every front runner with two top two placements was successively eliminated in the episodes
leading up to the finale, and this from a viewer perspective, just felt unfair. And this concept of
fairness when evaluating RuPaul's Drag Race is a little bit complicated because ultimately the show
is a reality TV competition. But the show is sold as the Olympics of drag. And if I'm being told
that I'm watching the Olympics of drag, I want to see a rightful winner. Imagine if for example
Simone Biles was sent home from the Olympics mid-routine because her competition didn't like
what she was doing. And more than this lip sync elimination format not being fair to the queens,
other problems for the producers and queens began to boil up in the background. Under this format
each episode's edit must focus on 2 winning queens instead of just 1, and why each of those 2 queens
would make whatever decision they're going to make about who they're going to eliminate.
Which in the grand storytelling scheme of the season may overemphasize top performing
contestants that eventually go home or don't win. Which is why I'd argue the entire second
half of UK vs. The World felt so empty. We as audience members, all of a sudden,
found our season's protagonist gone and rooting for what essentially were background
characters in the first half of the season. And concerning our queens there are also real life
problems created with this elimination lip sync format. Queens have to make the choice to
burn a potential bridge with someone they consider a friend or business partner, plus regardless of
which decision they make, they probably are still going to get hate from the fans of the queens that
they send home. Even if the elimination result would have been the same regardless of which
queen won the lip sync. Most people remember that Naomi sent home Manila on All Stars 4, but
how many people actually remember that Monet would have made the same decision? Manila leaving the
competition in that instance was inevitable. Yet Naomi bears the entire weight of that elimination.
So it was these problems both with production and the real lives of the queens that I thought
led production to the natural evolution of this format, which they introduced in All Stars 5 and
6 as the lip sync assassin elimination … twist. And the assassin twist is genius because it solves
a lot of the problems introduced by the top 2 format by bringing the power and control back
to the producers. During filming, production can almost always guarantee that a queen they want to
go home, will go home. It's basically a given that the group will by majority, choose that expected
queen. Because the group individuals don't want to put a target on their backs by straying from
the herd. And always having this backup safe elimination choice always allows the producers
to avoid that wild card or self-elimination if need be. In All Stars 6 for example,
the two times that the top queen of the week voted against the group the assassin's lipstick
as voted by the group was ultimately revealed. In All Stars 5, the top queen of the week voted
with the group every single time, which means the same phenomena pushing the group to vote for the
less controversial elimination is also helping push that top winner in that same direction.
But this accountability factor also has the added benefit of helping reduce the weight of an
elimination from a queen's shoulders. By showing the audience how the rest of the cast would
have voted to eliminate. And in addition to this elimination format being good for both production
and the queens, there's also the added bonus of the chance to showcase a queen's talent from a
past season who hasn't been on TV in a while. The obvious downside to this elimination format
though is that it does feel a little more rigged, and it's I think also a little more
boring … in that we can pretty much predict how a queen is going to vote to send somebody home,
and we also miss out on the opportunity to see what could be breathtaking lip syncs between the
actual cast members. But I’ll happily give away that bit of joy I get from seeing these dramatic
moments on my TV if it means that the queens can live easier and less stressed out lives,
and if it means that we never lose all of our front runners mid-season again.
But the question remains why did UK vs. The World implement this elimination format? The producers
saw the obvious benefits of the assassin format
in All Stars 5 and 6. The ratings are great! On par with a normal
US Drag Race season. I sat here asking myself for quite a while why these producers chose
violence and ultimately I think there were a few factors that influenced this decision.
Firstly as we saw in my little poll, fans do like this format. And it was
very well received in All Stars 2, and as I mentioned earlier this format wasn't the
sole reason for the downfall and ratings of All Stars 3 and 4. There were other twists at play.
So I think that the producer saw an opportunity to reuse this format in a new way without over
complicating it with unnecessary twists. Potentially bringing back the glory of
All Stars 2. I also think it was a pretty easy decision for them to make considering that there
is no prize money on this show. The assassin elimination format really only works when
the top queen of the week has a reason to lip-sync … there's gotta be a prize at the end of the road
and the second gold RuPeter badge of the week simply wouldn't do it. Plus on this apparently
cash dropped season the expense of compensating all those assassins wouldn't have been realistic.
But I don't think they factored in that the queen's participating in the UK
vs. The World season ultimately know that the drag market is very, very saturated right now.
And winning a title in this oversaturated market is kind of that one thing that can truly set them
apart. And to answer the question that we asked the beginning of this video: should we abolish lip
sync for your legacy formats? I would say no in both cases, with a little asterisk. I don't think
that the top 2 elimination format should be used on super short seasons … ever again. There was
just no opportunity for this season to recover and for the remaining queens to establish themselves
as the new frontrunners. And I also don't think that we should have seen this elimination format
on a season with no prize money, because that is something that I think, can help sell cut-throat
decisions to an audience. In the assassin format, I really wouldn't change in any way,
I like it as is. But even better than keeping the lip sync assassin format for potential future All
Star seasons, I would actually love to see the bottom 2 All Stars of each week lip-sync for their
lives. It's so rare that we get to see that level of heightened drama on our TVs – that would be a
super simple easy way to really just solve all the problems involved with queens eliminating queens.
Raise your hand if you've watched the Alyssa and Tatiana lip sync
more than a thousand times … but I'd also love to know what y'all
are thinking about all this so let me know down in the comments below.
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*gay giggle*