drag race all stars 7 thoughts

Welcome to my post, today I want to talk about the newest All Stars season from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, the all winners season! I have positive things to say about this season, and a few places where I think they went wrong. Firstly, I want to congratulate the winner, Jinkx Monsoon! She absolutely deserved it and they have been amazing to watch, as have all of them!

For this post, I want to highlight the elements that make up every season to show where all winners succeeded or failed: the format, challenges, runways, critiques/judging, lipsyncs, and finale. Let’s get into it!

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Format

With an All Winners season, it’s always gonna be tricky to get it right because you want to celebrate the winners and give them each time to shine but keep the competition. The stars and blocking system is a good idea in theory, especially because it meant we got to see the queens show their talents and runways all season long. However, I think it did feel too overproduced and unfair for the queens because letting it play out naturally would probably end in a tie and make it difficult to have a clear final four, as it was looking at the start. But the way they solved that by giving out random stars and making the last challenge worth three stars to boost queens who were being overlooked (when they could have easily been in the top before) undermined all of the queens’ work in the competition. I’m not sure of an alternative that would make everyone happy but it’s clear from the queens on social media that they were unhappy with production and the way things played out.

Challenges

The challenges felt pretty fresh this season, a combination of new ideas and the queens’ success in the challenges that just made it fun to watch. Some were new, like the tiktok dance challenge and the 2 snatch game characters. My favourites were probably the stand-up challenges (graduation speech and roast). Some felt a little stale, like the acting challenge and variety show, although it still wasn’t awful because of their talent. A few felt a little disconnected from the rest of the episode, especially the Y2K girl group with the Dolly Parton runway and lipsync, but overall the season had really interesting and fun challenges, which makes it so much better to watch.

Runways

Wow wow wow. So many stunning outfits from every queen! I loved that the queens got to show everything they brought, because it is disappointing especially in all stars seasons where queens who go home early don’t get to show some amazing (and expensive) outfits. My favourite was probably Raja’s finale outfit – it was everything – and my favourite runway was probably All Glow’d Up. The only runway I didn’t really like was Night of a Thousand Dolly Partons just because you can’t do too much with it.

Judging

Another element production used to celebrate the queens was only showing the positive critiques. While it is nice for the focus to be on the queen’s success and I loved how that was the priority, editing out the negative critiques could have allowed production to do whatever they wanted with the placing by making it seem like every queen did pretty much just as well as each other. It was a little disorientating and disconnected the viewer slightly because it made the judging harder to understand and got very repetitive as the season went on, as there didn’t really seem any point in showing it. I think I agreed with most of the high placements but the top two didn’t always go with who seemed the strongest, and even then some contestants like The Viv came out and said that some of their best parts were cut out, like her jokes in the roast. I think this kind of production meddling and the queens’ unhappiness with its outcome has held me back from loving the season even more.

Lipsyncs

The lipsyncs were a bit all over this season, with a lot of random song choices. However, some of the weirdest ones turned out to be some of the best lipsyncs, like the monologue and Old Macdonald (both with Monet in let’s not forget). I don’t know whether it was because there was less stakes or the song choices or just compared to other seasons, but they just felt a little lackluster. The finale’s lipsyncs were all great but the decisions spoilt it a bit, which I’ll get onto now.

Finale

Finally, the finale! As I said, the lipsyncs were great and I enjoyed the ‘lip sync smackdown’, but I don’t think it’s what the queens deserved. It’s clear from Raja v Yvie and Jinkx v Monet that production crowned who they wanted to, not the actual winners of the lipsync, so why do that format at all? It did feel slightly anti-climactic, especially compared to the recent Season 14 finale that felt like a satisfying ending to a good season, with a live audience and individual songs. I did like the twist of the ‘losers’ getting to compete for a second prize, and the winners Jinkx and Raja definitely deserved their second crowns, just the way they chose to present that wasn’t the best.

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Overall, it was a really great season and despite my criticisms, I did love getting to see these queens compete again and showing more of their amazing talents and outfits.

Thanks for reading! If you’ve watched it, how did you find the season?

—ella♥

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