Oooooh gurl, it's the start of a brand new year — and that means precisely one thing: we have a brand new season of RuPaul's Drag Race to schedule our entire lives around! What, did you think I was going to bring up resolutions like eating healthier or taking up meditation or being more kind to myself? All of those goals take a backseat to Drag Race, and I mean all the way in the back, back, back of the bus. I'm here to cover Season 17 of RuPaul's Drag Race first, and all self-care will have to wait. This is what the new year is about!
Wow, we're off to an odd start — but that's what you're going to get from Pop Heist's coverage of Drag Race. You're going to get an unfiltered, unrestrained tour through the global franchise via me, Pop Heist Editor-in-Chief Brett White. There's a lot of Drag Race coverage online, and I indulge in a lot of it. Raise your hand if you watch 90 minutes of actual Drag Race and then a supplemental 360 minutes of YouTube analysis about it every single week. I'm typing this sentence with one hand because the other is sky-high.
But I don't want our Drag Race coverage to be like any other site's — ! Pop Heist is all about passion, and I'm clearly passionate about drag. And when I talk about Drag Race, honey, I make like a doctor reading back some test results and I focus on the positive. I think that's evident in the exit interviews we've published with all of Canada's Drag Race Season 5's eliminated queens. There's too much negativity everywhere, so let's focus on the fun.
This rambling preamble brings us to the Season 17 premiere of the flagship series, a chapter titled "Squirrel Games" (which is also the name of RuPaul's Drag Race UK 4x08, because why not). Keeping it honest: I don't yet know what form these recaps are going to take. It turns out that running a website involves a lot more than just writing words, stream-of-consciousness style into a blank Wordpress page. My attention has been pulled in more directions than Sasha Colby's braids during "G-O-D-D-E-S-S" — but I'm also a drag queen. Drag queens make it werk with whatever they have on hand. So, I have a brain that's watched this episode twice and ten fingers ready to skitter across a keyboard just as nimbly as Suzie Toot's nine toes tapped across the main stage. So ... here we go!
The episode starts with a prolonged Squid Game parody that harkens back to the earlier seasons, when the premieres would start with some mood-setting skit instead of just a queen entering the Werk Room. The parody does its parodying, and it gives us the instantly iconic shot of Kylie Sonique Love getting pied on the ass. And then, of course, our 14 new queens make it to the finish line with nary a cherry or whipped cream on them. Time to enter the Werk Room.
These queens are diverse, running the gamut from street-smart playmate who's definitely seen some shit (Lexi Love) to the franchise's first-ever Home Depot queen (Lucky Starzzz, angling for a brand collab). There's the sweet Jewels Sparkles, who has the energy of Jorgeous but the intentionality of a Marcia Marcia Marcia. The Could've Been On Dragula quota is filled by Arrietty and Lydia B Kollins (the B stands for "butthole," which RuPaul — fresh off a season where she flat out refused to say Rileasa Slaves — enthusiastically says at every opportunity!).
Lots of standouts in this cast, and even some simmering rivalries. Kori King (Plane Jane's drag sister, whose vibe so far feels like if Plane Jane knew how to, uh, relate to other humans) has it in for Hormona Lisa, since Hormona was hand-picked by RuPaul during Ru's book tour last year. It doesn't help the otherwise sweet-as-pie Hormona's case that she brings up the "hand-picked by RuPaul" thing all the time. And I can feel some country feuding coming, some Hatfield vs. McCoy extravaganza between Sam Star (Trinity the Tuck's drag daughter, so, look out) and Acacia Forgot (who is from Los Angeles, so already losing whatever country feud is going down — no matter how many instruments Acacia can play).
But the real standout queen is Joella, which immediately tanks my Drag Race group text's vibe check on this cast. A boring "Meet the Queens" does not make for a boring queen, and Joella got plenty of time to shine thanks to guest judge Katy Perry. It's wild to have a superstar like Katy Perry walk into the Werk Room on dildo heels and immediately be like, "Joella?!" Insanity. Madness.
More madness ensues when RuPaul hands out fourteen unofficial segment producer titles and tells the dolls to plan two talent shows, with seven queens performing this week and the rest next week. I love any time this show hands actual control over to the queens, which so rarely happens. I hope we're heading towards an instance where Ru walks in and says, "For this week's Maxi-Challenge, we're playing Snatch Game ... or performing the Rusical! You decide."
The talent show is actually more of an all-around success than some season-starters we've endured in the past. Everyone does well, with even the bottoms (Joella and Arrietty IMO) doing just enough to avoid an inescapable "I'm going out tonight" level disaster. The queen deemed by her sisters to be the bottom is Acacia Forgot, who actually did fine. She played a song she wrote, on guitar, and sang live — and she didn't even fall victim to the producers mixing her vocals to sound rough! She was, at worst, fine. But since Rate-a-Queen determined the placements tonight, and since Arrietty forged a very smart alliance with Lana Ja'Rae that guaranteed her at least one top rating, Acacia is going to lip sync for her life next week against Group 2's bottom queen.
As for the tops, Jewels Sparkles worked her bionic spine out in a milk-themed showstopper of a bop. Just ... roll that sentence over in your mind a bit. Isn't Drag Race great? And just, while Jewels' robo-spine has us adjacent to body horror — can we just take a moment of silence to let it sink in that Lucky Starzzz witnessed her stepfather's hand falling off to the ground. Christ.
Back to the tops — Suzie Toot absolutely knew exactly how to toot her horn on RuPaul's frequency. A level-headed tap-dancing doll who's obsessed with divas from 100 years ago and speaks with a measured, deliberate cadence does not seem like a Week 1 winner, but her tap dancing and busting out the Gettysburg Address in Morse code is exactly the kind of wickedly smart / astoundingly stupid kind of bit that RuPaul dies for. And that's also how Suzie won the lip sync, by giving a solid performance that played with tension, built to a big, jazzy crescendo, and some tapping out the lyrics of Katy Perry's "Woman's World." She knew what she was doing, and she did it very, very well.
And those are the queens we'll be spending the next four months of Fridays kiki'ing with — and I'm honestly stoked. This is a stacked cast with big personalities and no clear frontrunner. I truly can't wait to see how this turns out — and, uh, I can't wait to see what form these recaps take as we move through the season. We're on a journey, baby, so hold on.
