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Hi ugly, it’s me, Bussy.
And welcome back to Hot or Rot.
And today we’ll be reviewing episode 9 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 3.
Our queens were challenged to roast themselves and the judging panel in the pearly gates
roast and the runway category was Oh My Goddess!
Ethereal, mystic glamour.
And we’ll be breaking all that down by ranking each queen based on how I thought they did
in the episode overall.
By rating each queen’s challenge in runway out of 5 Hot flames.
And then at the end of today’s video we’ll be taking a look at the deleted post from
the Drag Race UK BBC’s social media accounts.
And taking a look at Vanity’s exit interview she did with Digital Spy in which she shares
her thoughts on the season’s diversity and what she wants to see from the franchise moving
forward.
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Now, let’s turn up the heat.
First up, orange you glad she didn’t wear orange this episode?
It’s Vanity Milan.
Vanity tonight in the main challenge had the tough task of following up Ella, which according
to Ella’s strategy was intentional.
And I think Vanity’s biggest challenge in the roast tonight was that she had a physical
wall in between herself and the audience – the podium – and also a metaphorical one in
the way that she delivered her set.
She started off by hyping herself up.
Talking about how she had sent some of the bitches in the audience home.
And generally speaking from what I’ve seen in successful comedy sets both on drag race
and off, it’s typically better to open by telling jokes about yourself and then moving
onto the audience or subject matter at hand.
And that problem was of course layered with the fact that the challenge of the roast was
to actually roast yourself not hype yourself up.
It also didn’t help that the rest of her set opening had a joke that we just heard
in Ella’s set about Anubus’s name and having the word “bus” in it.
Is the Anu-bussy still running?
And by the time she actually got around to roasting herself about her orange outfits
– which was a great idea – it seemed she just didn’t know how to actually make those
jokes funny.
She did though – and we have to give her credit for this – had the best one liners
at the entire show when she looked over at Krystal, Kitty, and Ella and called them the
white Supremes.
Overall, Vanity failed to be funny, but for how damn good she looked, and the white Supremes
joke, I’m gonna give her 2 out of 5 Hot flames for this roast.
And on the runway she gives us our first golden goddess look of the evening.
And I’ve gotta say from waist up I think this is Vanity’s best runways.
The detailing is immaculately ethereal.
The heavy beading, chains, and crown detailing are perfection.
There’s literally nothing to complain about up top, however when you look at the bottom
half of her look, it does almost unfinished?
It’s like the top part is just so intricate and then the bottom left me wanting more.
Which isn’t the first time I’ve said that.
I think to finish this look off, she needed the chaining on the boddess to come down to
about mid-thigh and/or to have worn a better shoe, maybe some sort of gladiator sandal
pump that went up her leg.
Overall though, a solid gold look from Vanity and I’m gonna give it 3/5 Hot flames.
Which brings her total score to 5/10 Hots.
Next up, Krystal Versace who went first in the challenge.
Also another strategic play by Ella.
She was of course hoping that Krystal would bomb, leaving her a very very low bar to step
over when it was her turn.
I’ve gotta say though, as nerve racking as I’m sure it is to go first in a roast
like this, I think it’s actually one of the better positions because the bar is already
low.
The audience hasn’t seen anybody and they’re ready to laugh.
So as long as you can tell a couple of jokes, you should be moderately successful.
And if your was name is RuPaul, well then apparently you thought Krystal was extremely
successful because she laughed at every single thing Krystal said.
It is very clear that mother Ru has a favorite tonight.
As far as meeting the brief of the challenge, she did spend some time roasting herself and
the judges but all of her jokes were about her being young and a V word and the judges
being old and decrepit.
And as Veronica heckled her and said those jokes were indeed getting old.
Which was actually my favorite part of Krystal’s entire set because even Ru herself jumped
in on the heckling.
And sure she was nervous and she lacked a little bit of diversity in her jokes, but
some of what she said was actually funny and I think her delivery was okay.
So good or great, no.
But okay, sure.
I’ll also leave this roast at 2/5 Hot flames.
And on the runway our little virgin Mary takes her identity one step further by embodying
it and firstly yes, she looks gorgeous.
Cinched, pinched, beat for the gods.
Body, 10/10.
And every piece of the outfit is perfect, however, my problem here with this look is
that we’ve seen it all before.
This look is like if you combined Aquaria’s runway with Yara Sofia’s rendition of Gaga’s
McQueen look.
It is almost identical to the look that JuJuBe wore on her finale eleganza look in All Stars
5.
And I’m not sure if she directly took inspiration from any of these looks, but I do think it
is in the queens’ best interest that are going on this competition to heavily study
what queens before them have worn on all seasons.
Because as a fan of the show, I am looking to these runways to tell me the personalities
and individual styles of these queens.
I wanna see something new or at least a fresh take on a concept if it has been done 10x
prior.
So while this look is undoubtedly amazing, I’m only going to give it 4/5 Hot flames
tonight, because we’ve been there, done that.
Next up, loosey goosey, Ella Vaday.
The star of tonight’s show.
Who got to choose the order of the queens in the roast.
And what a smart little cookie she is because I think her strategy played out perfectly.
Honestly though, she didn’t even need the strategy because she was that damn funny.
As the judges critiqued her, she left no queen un-roasted.
She went after Anubus, Veronica, Allan, Victoria, Kitty, Vanity, and Krystal, it was relentless.
But her approach was also playful and allowed her audience to have fun with her.
As she read them for filth.
My one critique though, is that she kinda didn’t meet the brief?
This was supposed to be a roast about themselves and I think she had one line from my count
about herself.
When she made the comment about not seeing her dad very much as a kid.
And she kinda skipped over Ru and Michelle opting instead for Allan.
So I guess you could say that she barely met the brief.
But it’s also possible that she had more jokes that they cut.
And I’m not trying to blame the editor or anything, but who knows?
But then again does the brief even really matter when you serve one of the top 5 funniest
comedy set challenges across the entire franchise in the history of the show?
No, it doesn’t.
This set gets 5/5 Hot flames for me.
But on the runway, girl, is it a bird, is it a plane?
No, it’s the Virgo constellation.
I about choked on my own spit when she was bragging about that hair and how it’s human
and expensive and yada yada yada and I was like girl, how about you get an Ellava refund
on that wig?
Which she was appropriately dragged both by the judges and her peers for.
As for the constellations stone body suit, I think it’s serviceable for this runway.
Does it say etherial mystical goddess?
Maybe?
But not in the way that some of the other queens looks did tonight.
It was a choice.
Ella reached for the starts tonight, but I don’t think she even got off the ground.
I’m gonna give this look 2/5 Hot flames.
And finally, Kitty’s got claws, jokes, and looks.
Which is why she’s at the top of my list tonight.
In the roast, I think she did overall an amazing job.
Sure, she was a little slow to start and I was a little scared she was gonna fall into
that story-telling trap, but she picked it up as she went along.
And she was brave enough to take a knowing dig at the guest judge.
Using that pop culture reference data base she has in her brain.
Which also maybe was a little bit of her downfall tonight in why she didn’t take the win.
Like for example, Ella kept all of her jokes super topical which kept me laughing the entire
time.
And Kitty near the end of her roast started getting super detailed into British pop culture.
And I’m sure somebody in the UK that keeps up with all of that maybe thought her roast
was super hilarious, however, I as an American was a little bit lost.
That said, her set felt comfortable, her delivery was good, and overall, she was I think perfectly
placed by the judges tonight, above Krystal and Vanity, but below Ella.
And as far as meeting the brief, she definitely did, she made fun of herself for looking old
and haggard.
Which is a lot further than Ella took her roast of herself.
So I’m gonna give Kitty 4/5 Hot flames for this performance tonight.
And on the runway, Kitty is giving me Athena Warrior Goddess.
She looks like she just stepped out of the Hercules Disney movie, which was one of my
favorites as a child.
I love that the entire thing is flowy.
Like for example, the bodice piece, which looks kinda armory, is even also flowy.
Definitely tapping into that mystical and ethereal vibe that the queens were challenged
to meet on the runway tonight.
Plus, she looks damn beautiful and gets extra points for that crown of hair on her head.
There’s literally nothing I would do to improve this look.
This is a master at her craft.
Kitty Scott Claus gets 5/5 Hot flames for this look.
And as for my Hottest Hots tonight, well Kitty did come out on top overall because of her
strong main challenge performance and extra strong runway.
I actually do agree with the judges and my Hottest Hot in the main challenge goes to
Ella Vaday.
Kitty does take it for me in the runway category.
I also asked my Patrons to vote on their Hottest Hots and for the main challenge they also
chose Ella and on the runway, they chose Krystal Versace.
So Ella rightfully so, earns her fourth badge in the competition, and I’m gonna say for
any sliver of me that was left with a single doubt about Ella’s [_], well it was obliterated
tonight with that roast.
I left this episode thinking wow, Ella could do a one-woman show like Bob and Bianca and
Trixie do.
She’s funny, can command a crowd, and she can work on the looks.
And concerning the bottom two, I did react to Krystal and Vanity’s lip sync over on
my Patreon over at patreon.com/bussyqueen.
That’s my members-only website where my patron family gets exclusive member benefits
like early access to my videos, access to exclusive videos and access to the Bussy Queen
discord server.
You can join by clicking the link in the description of this video.
See ya there.
But my short thoughts on that lip sync were wow!
This was the episode we needed that double save for because both of those girls turned
it out.
I honestly don’t know that I could have picked a winner, however I do respect Ru’s
decision though, because looking back at the competition as a whole, Krystal does have
a stronger track record.
Which leaves us at our final three queens will be competing for the crown in next week’s
grand finale, so let me know in the comments below: are you #teamkrystal, #teamella, or
#teamkittyscottclaus?
Now, let’s have ourselves a cup o’
Last week the Drag Race UK social media accounts have been called out for deleting posts.
Here’s what happened.
The first one they deleted was a post of Krystal Versace which had her hometown labeled as
Tunbridge Wells.
And because there was a lot of negative activity in the replies to the tweet version and in
the comments of the Instagram post, people were speculating that World of Wonder took
it down because of that negativity.
However, they did shortly after re-upload all the queens with their hometown on the
post, this time, appropriately labeled as “Kent.”
So ultimately there does appear that there was no actual drama there and they were just
correcting a label mistake.
However, the next deleting we saw was a little more controversial.
Right after the episode aired, the twitter social media account posted a screen cap of
Krystal, Ella, and Kitty off to the side with the joke that Vanity said about them being
the white Supremes.
And if you saw this with context of watching the episode, you probably didn’t think anything
of it.
However, twitter had a field day with it because well, I probably don’t need to explain to
you that if you don’t have the context for the caption, it looks pretty bad.
So I do think this post was appropriately deleted.
Was the post bad intentioned though?
Probably not, but it was a little tone deaf.
And I think they were right to remedy the situation before it got out of hand by deleting
it.
And as for what Vanity had to say in her exit interview.
So we brought this up in Hot or Rot and it’s also been addressed throughout the season
that Vanity was the only black contestant in Season 3.
And Digital Spy directly asked Vanity, “when the season three cast was first announced,
there was a lot of criticism regarding the lack of diversity.
What are your thoughts on that now reflecting back?”
And she said “We definitely need in season four a very diverse cast.
But when I say ‘diverse,’ I mean: I need to see drag kings.
I need to see AFAB queens; and I need to see more queens and kings of colour on Drag Race.
I think it’s very important to showcase that the UK is not just drag queens and white
drag queens.
There’s a lot of people in the industry who are of colour, who can give just as much
as anyone else on the show.
I think it’s very important for me to continue that message, and I hope that I’ve done
that justice.
Because I felt in the show, there was a lot of pressure on me to carry the torch for everybody.”
And I 100% agree with everything Vanity said there.
The actual drag scene is extremely diverse.
I think the bigger task for the casting team of Drag Race to figure out how to get these
more diverse populations in the drag scene to actually apply, because it is so cost-prohibitive
to do so.
Back when this season started, we were discussing this topic and looked at an interview with
Freida Slaves in the UK who said the reason she wasn’t on season one was simply because
she couldn’t afford to get the outfits to apply.
And I think an easy way to improve equity among casting would be for Drag Race to offer
some kind of stipend to the queens and potentially kings that apply.
Simply put, it’s a lot to ask somebody to prepare 10, to 20 looks for a show that they’re
not getting paid that much for and for which there is no prize money in the UK.
It’s quite the dilemma.
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