I don't think I've ever seen a season of RuPaul's Drag Race that's as cleanly cleaved into two distinct halves. There's the first half of Season 17 — or, rather, the first 9 episodes of the season. These episodes were feisty, fun, and full of potential — mostly realized potential, too. And then there's Episodes 11-14, which have ranged from uninspired to downright baffling.
Just a sidenote: I feel like I don't say this enough, especially when critiquing the show: RuPaul's Drag Race is my favorite unscripted show of all time and, 17 seasons in, still finds ways to make my jaw drop. It's a good show, and I'm only tough on it because I care (and because I've seen this show achieve true greatness many, many times).
That said — Episode 10 was clearly the fulcrum around which Season 17 pivoted. The chaos of that episode, the disastrous Villains Roast and Arrietty's scorched-earth exit, changed the season. It's like the show hit the gas, broke the speedometer, and then crashed into a Hamburger Mary's. The season's been in traction ever since.
The only bright spot in the home stretch of this season was the makeover challenge — or, rather, the first 3/4ths of the makeover challenge, everything before Michelle Visage reminded audiences that "family resemblance" on this show means "exact same hair color." And apologies for not recapping that episode, as I was out having my own chaotic family event.
And now we're back with the final challenge of the season, a Drag Race tradition whose current form (write/record your own verse, Tic-Tac lunch, girl group performance, eleganza runway, cry in front of a childhood photo) stretches back to Season 9. It's formulaic, sure, but it's a satisfying way to wrap up the season and really reflect, all while (hopefully) getting the most sickening runway looks of the season and a gay bop for summer pool parties.
Wouldn't ya know it, Season 17 doesn't even give us this.
"How's Your Headliner?" has to be the most disjointed episode of RuPaul's Drag Race that I've seen in a very long time. This makes those All Stars episodes where queens have to be interior decorators/event planners seem lucid. What was this challenge? I mean that literally! For the grand finale of the season, the queens were tasked with completing what felt like a handful of Mini-Challenges, only half of which we got to see play out.
Using RuPaul's Drag Race Live as a framing device once again (I feel like I've seen that entire show, and I haven't been to Vegas since The Before Timesâ„¢), the queens have to take a promo photo, appear in a kiosk ad, perform a new number, and have an interview with Live mainstay Latrice Royale.
Let's break this down. Now Ru's only interaction with the queens in the final challenge is directing their photo shoot — which, admittedly, is always a treat because modeling really is Ru's true superpower. But instead of getting an insightful chat with Ru and Michelle over a bowl of Tic-Tacs, the queens have to talk to someone they just met. Maybe it would have worked if Latrice had been able to give feedback during judging, but the unspoken (and unconfirmed) rule that RuPaul must be the only queen on the panel means that the judges are critiquing conversations between strangers that they just watched on a monitor.
And then — ! The Main Challenge continues into two segments we saw zero prep for: the "Gift Shop" performance and those promo videos. I didn't even know they were filming promo videos until they popped up! Now, I'm not here advocating for us sitting through the millionth round of queens not getting choreo during rehearsals, but ... I think we needed it. As presented, "Gift Shop" comes and goes in what feels like 30 seconds, and the editing was so choppy that I never got a sense of what was going on. It was bizarre.
This gets to what may actually be Season 17's biggest shortcoming: the lack of Leland and a girl group challenge. The performance challenges involved pre-written verses (quotes from other queens, and then the Wicked Wiz of Oz lyrics) — and both of them relied way more on comedy than cuntiness. It's no wonder why Arrietty and Lana Ja'Rae were losing their minds towards the end of their respective runs. Those two queens were never given the chance to actually perform, re: the house down boots. Kori, too, would've benefitted from a straightforward performance challenge, and I know Onya Nurve and Lexi Love would've slayed one too. So ... where was it? Why are we closing the season with a hodgepodge challenge?
All this being said, I actually don't think there's much else to say about "How's Your Headliner?" as an episode of Drag Race. It all felt artificial in a way that I'm not used to Drag Race feeling. Like, the success of a queen's photo shoot and ad all depend on the editing, which photo and takes are used. The "Gift Shop" number was so short and all over the place that it was hard to tell how anyone was doing. And once again I ask Drag Race, because they keep doing weird talk-centric "challenges," how do you judge a conversation?
The only thing that, really, rang true to me was Jewels Sparkles' trajectory. She's been pushed to the background too much and absolutely deserved this win. As for the rest? It felt like they could have justified putting anyone else in the bottom, and — after spending the entire season building towards a Suzie/Lexi lip sync — the show chose to put Suzie and Sam up for elimination. The wild thing about this challenge? They could have said Suzie and Lexi and it would have made just as much sense.
At least, at the end of a weird episode, I can applaud the show for not keeping a final five. And I even applaud the show for eliminating a major contender like Suzie right at the finish line. I think Jewels clearly won whatever this challenge was, and the real frontrunner — Onya — is still in the running. And with Suzie out of the way, I really don't know what that's going to do to the energy of this final four going into the finale. And, as with everything else in Season 17, it's foolish to try and even guess.
