Ok, so I did this a little while ago because the rigging felt insane in [redacted to avoid spoilers]'s favour. I'm back. It's worse.
Spoilers below.
Ginger Minj has now been on 4 seasons of Drag Race.
Is Ginger incredibly talented and skilled? Yes. Is she a drag race winner? No. Those are two separate things, and being one over the other is not a bad thing.
This Bracket, however, really wants us to see her as a winner.
Last episode, we saw a sewing challenge where she constructed a simple, deeply mediocre dress. But! the challenge wasn't just about sewing! It was also about characterisation and comedy and creating a narrative (things Ginger has excelled at in all 3 of her previous seasons.) As a sewing challenge alone, Denali and Acid would have taken it. (A swing here, because Daya's outfit was also great, and I think that could also be used to justify their top placement together) The challenge was adapted to Ginger's strengths, so we can comfortably assume the producers want her in the finale. Cool. No problem, there are still 2 episodes and that can change very quickly. She did win that lipsync.
Ok, so this episode!
We open with the concept that the episode will be focused on American country music. Nobody else in this bracket has any connections to the south, or to country music at all. Only Ginger. This episode is hers to lose.
We are then told it's a girl group challenge. Denali, on her original season killed slayed annihilated this challenge. We know she is going to hit it out the park, so it's pretty clear who will be the top 2, and the other girls don't really stand much of a chance, especially Alyssa with her language barrier.
Then we see the recording session with *drools* Orville Peck. (I just wanted to mention him so I can say how hot he is. The things I would do... Criminal.) Denali Kills it. Ginger is ok. Acid is made to look like she doesn't know what she is doing but then helps Alyssa? Hard to say the edit they're putting together here.
Choreo section. Denali stays killing it for the 3rd moment this week. She's leading her team, they're working well together. The episode is gearing up for her to win. Ginger gets the edit of being kinda too involved, and a little difficult to work with.
Performance time!
Ginger's team first! Ginger's look makes her stand out. They do not look like a group, they look like Ginger Minj and her two backup singers/dancers. Daya and Cynthia still outshine Ginger (In my opinion).
Denali's group go second. Acid does great. Alyssa struggles, but again, we knew this would happen. Denali smashes it. She looks amazing, outside the box, and her verse is really fun. She nails the choreo. It's clear Denali is in the top, but who else? Daya? Acid? Cynthia, perhaps? It'll probably come down to the runway.
The Runway: Night of 1000 (6) Mileys
Denali's look is cool. It's a pretty 1:1 recreation, but it still feels like her. Elavated from her original season, but still Denali.
Alyssa does the iconic Flowers look from the Grammys. She looks great, and is probably the most Miley of all the people on stage. It's not enough to put her in the top, but I wanted to give her her *cough* flowers.
Daya does a MET Gala look that I don't remember, but it aligns with her aesthetic and I appreciate that a lot. She found a Miley look that suited her.
Acid took a Miley look and made it her own. She embellished without overshadowing the original inspiration. Did it look a little cheap? Yeah, but she got a villain edit on season 8 and it can be hard to come back from that in bookings down the line, so we can forgive.
Ginger. Ginger wore an ill-fitting vinyl(?) jumpsuit inspired by Miley's Younger Now jumpsuit, complete with Younger Now bedazzled rope on the back. It wasn't as well done as Miley, but we've forgiven Acid, so I'll cut her some slack there. My problem is it was poorly fitted. It had similar fit issues as her hideous "Glamour Toad" look from All Stars 6.
Girl. This is your 3rd All Stars season. You should be able to get the fit right on a jumpsuit. In my opinion, with how the others did in the challenge, this would have been enough for Daya or Cucu to take her place in the top.
But, she and Denali win, and they have to lipsync to See You Again by Miley Cyrus. An odd pull, if you ask me. There are a LOT of good Miley tracks for lipsyncs. See You Again is a great song, but it has this weird contrast between the track and the vocals that makes dancing to it particularly difficult. Denali suffers for this. She's on beat the whole time. Her dance moves hit the right points, but the song feels like its fighting against her.
Ginger does the same thing Ginger always does. She jokes about vaginas, pulls silly faces, walks around lethargically, and mocks her opponent. Dont get me wrong: This is a fun style for a lipsync, and Ginger does it well, but we've kind of seen it? She's been on 4 seasons. She has done well on 3 of those. We've seen her lipsync a lot. I'm not expecting her to shablam or do the splits, or whatever, but am I wrong to say I'm bored? I'm bored of watching Ginger lipsync in the same way to every song. I'm bored of the Drag Race producers making sure whatever song they pick is the right kind for Ginger to do well with. When I complained about the riggory towards MIB, I was frustrated with the fact that the judging seemed off. Others were doing better than her, and it was rigged poorly for the sake of a storyline. I didn't feel like MIB was being set up to succeed above the other girls. The favouritism that showed was in the critiques, not the whole challenge concept.
This kind of rigging feels worse because the other girls aren't even being considered. This isn't "we want so-and-so in the finale, so find an excuse to give her the win, maybe overly critique this one moment in the challenge." This is " we want Ginger in the Finale, so let's make sure the challenges are all in her wheelhouse, so we know she'll do well. What? What about the other contestants? This isn't about them." This kind of rigging feels bad because they just dont care who else makes it. There's no competition because they made the challenges Who Can Be The Most Ginger Minj. This isn't a competition. It's a showcase, with other queens as a backdrop. It isn't fair, and the people to blame aren't even trying to hide it.
Disclaimer: I do not hate Ginger Minj, nor do I blame her for the choices made by the producers of drag race. She is doing well in the challenges, and I wont fault her for that. This is not the fault of Ginger Minj or any of the other queens.
The other thing is that this whole rigging paints Ginger in a poor light. When things are set up for a certain person's success, it shows the people setting it up do not have faith in the person to succeed on their own. By tailoring this bracket to Ginger, or by putting Ginger in this bracket where she will so clearly excel over the others, they make it look like they didn't think she could get to the top on her own. They cheapen her extensive skill list. It's also unfair to her.
Drag Race has never been unscripted. Neither has basically any other “reality” tv show. The tournament format of this All Stars season just happened to show more of production pulling strings than a normal series format.
Bringing back 18 unique queens only to give 1 of them the free pass to the crown doesn’t exactly feel gratifying for a 12 episode season of Drag Race. Especially in a format that relies on lip syncs but doesn’t have the courtesy to treat them like genuine performances that should be judged fairly. Ginger is incredibly talented in comedy, acting, and camp performances. In her peak during season 7 (when she should’ve won, let’s be real Violet wasn’t quite ready yet) Ginger was the lip sync assassin. However, that was 10 years ago. Lip syncs have changed a lot since 2015 so it’s not surprising that Ginger can’t keep up as well in the lip syncs. What is surprising is Ginger winning 5/6 lip syncs she was in during AS10. Even Ginger was surprised every time she won and even during Rate-A-Queen when she was given the top spot as the most dangerous lip syncer.
The finale was unbearable to watch from the seeded bracket, to the song choices being tailored for specific queens (I love Bosco but I don’t love a song being put on the options solely for her), to pretending like the queens were actually selected at random for choosing the songs (again, I do love Bosco but these were some shenanigans)
Everything after bracket 1 was actually a pretty hard watch. MIB’s dedication to being the villain of the season really took the fun out of why she was a good villain in season 15: she wasn’t playing it up for the camera. MIB now has a following built on her characterization as a shady pot-stirrer, but now it seems like she feels the need to prove that she’s “still evil” and it just comes off as irritating. Jorgeous spent most of her bracket focused on MIB in a way that made it hard to form any new connections to her before the semifinals. Bracket 3 has been critiqued to death but what I will say is that Daya, Cynthia, and Ginger were probably the 3 queens with the least likelihood to object to what production was doing, and guess who moved on to the semis?
My final thoughts are
The queens done the dirtiest (I think the term “robbed” is dumb):
Kerri Colby
Aja
Cynthia Lee Fontaine
Denali
Acid Betty
JORGEOUS
I’m delusional so here’s the actual ending to the season instead of the one we got:
Aja was about to be crowned when Nicole Paige Brooks From Atlanta Georgia leapt down from the rafters and snatched it from her hands. NPBFAG went on to tell Rupaul that rigging reality TV is wrong and so is being a climate terrorist. After a long-fought battle, NPBFAG ascends and returns to her home planet because this one doesn’t deserve her.
