I don't really know what to write here, but I know that something needs to be written. I know that you can't call yourself a "Drag Race recapper" and then ... miss three episodes in a row — even if a lot of extenuating circumstances shantay into your life. It's also hard to recap an episode when you haven't watched it, and kinda don't plan on ever watching. That's the predicament I'm in right now, because I think — barring the potential for a "gaggy" twist —I'm done with Season 18.
No queen's elimination has ever had this effect on me, and I've been watching this show live for 10 seasons now (18 if you count All Stars, a million if you count all the other shows). I felt fine watching Friday's episode later because I knew, for sure, that my favorite queen would absolutely be fine in an improv comedy challenge. And then I, foolishly got on Instagram and saw that queen's initial post-elimination Story. I had had it. Officially.
It's not that I'm a "stan" of this queen. I loathe the term (that's a whole other thing but, the tl;dr is that I don't easily forgive Eminem for being wildly homophobic in the early '00s and refuse to use a word that he invented???). I love the queen. She is easily in my top ten favorite queens of all time, now. But if the show had eliminated her fairly, for a challenge that she bombed, or a challenge that anyone else actually excelled in, or if production and the editors had actually successfully concocted an unclockable French vanilla fantasy in which she deserved to go home, then sure. That's reality TV. But, time and time again, RuPaul's Drag Race breaks the illusion of reality TV, presenting a cause and effect that are not in conversation with each other, that are as indecipherable as Yara Sofia talking to Baga Chipz.
I'm talking about Jane Don't, the frontrunner of the season, the winningest queen of this cast, the queen with the longest unbroken streak of high placements, being sent home for a challenge that she did not do the worst in. Just for a stunt. Just to "get us talking," because rage is the quickest way to spike engagement. It's the old newspaper adage: if it bleeds, it leads. There is blood on the producers' hands!
But this elimination stings in a way that ... I don't know, that Shea Couleé's or BenDeLaCreme's or Pangina Heals' didn't. Those, narratively, made sense. Sasha Velour won that lip sync. DeLa's self-elimination was true to the choices she'd been making all season. Production didn't put Pangina's lipstick into Blu Hydrangea's hands. Those were all reality TV stories, and whatever hand production had in them, we couldn't tell at home. Because that is how reality TV production is supposed to work.
Jane Don't, though? From what I've gleamed from every other recapper, podcaster, YouTuber, and commenter, didn't even deserve to be in the bottom two — especially when there are other queens in the cast with worse track records who also did worse in the challenge. And mind you, they did worse in an episode that production — knowing they needed to tell the bizarre story of Jane Don't being eliminated — presented to the world. They told a story that did not make sense.
I'm sick of this, to be blunt. I'm sick of investing in a show that thinks its audience is dumb enough to fall for these kinds of shenanigans. Or, worse, I'm sick of a show that pulls stunts like this specifically because they know it will enrage the audience. That's a betrayal of trust, baby. My favorite show should not be one that sets out to confuse, enrage, and hurt me. And maybe this one stings because, up until this point, I've loved Season 18! I love the queens, the challenges have been a blast, and the talent has been on point. The weakest part remains the judging.
That does not have to be the case. And in pretty much every other reality competition show that I watch, it is not the case. Top Chef, Survivor, The Traitors, Project Runway, fucking House of Villains — I know those shows have producers and puppet strings too. Why can't I see those puppet strings? Why are Drag Race's puppet strings actually big heavy chains? And why do the producers act like they aren't dragging and clanging those chains every time they yank on a plot point?
I want to scream, from the highest point in Tuckahoe, "Let Drag Race be a fucking meritocracy." There is absolutely no danger in letting the best queens do their best — and for them to be rewarded for it. It almost seems like the easier show to produce is one where you turn the cameras on and just record reality as it unfolds. That seems easier than trying to shape the unknowable trajectory of unfolding events into a pre-determined outcome, coherence be damned! Some reality competition show producers can deliver episodes of TV — whole seasons, even! — that hang together in a narratively sensical way. Hell, some Drag Race producers can do that. I don't think the brains behind RuPaul's Drag Race can do that anymore. I think their goal is no longer to create compelling television. The primary goal seems to be to drive online engagement at any cost, to "get us talking," to get this exact reaction out of people like me. Ugh. Jesus. Gross.
Something has to be changed, because fans are angry, the show is not winning Emmys anymore, and those reports of skyrocketing viewership that are touted every season are dubious AF. There's nothing wrong with the queens, because the on-camera talent is undeniable. Behind the camera, though? The struggle is real on that end.
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