Drag Race Down Under power-bottom ranking: episode 5
More like Bardon't!!!!!!
Hello, my best friends in the entire world! It’s time for another power ranking of the show that many have described as “on Stan right now” which we also call Drag Race Down Under s2.
This week was the “girl group challenge”, which is really just a choreograph and lip-sync challenge, with very little “girl group” involved. It was fine, but boy howdy was this episode weird - it honestly felt like the editors were doing the most, cutting together scenes and the glimmer of a narrative from scraps of reaction shots. They deserve a pay-rise.
I have to see, this episode felt pretty ratchet - from ill-fitting costumes, a boring and long challenge, to an absolute abortion of a reading challenge, any of that sense of polish and talent from a few episodes ago seems to have fled, and it was just hard to watch. I think the queens are still good obviously, but this episode did not really give many people time to shine, and it mostly felt long and either focused on painful things (stupendously boring beef and queens planning how to dance together) or skipping over things weirdly fast.
One thing I will talk about is cost - I saw a comment on Twitter the other day from an American drag race fan, who described DRDU as “provincial” and the queens as “clearly not ready for international audiences”. I disagree with this so vehemently for many reasons, but one of the things it made me think of was the prohibitive rise of cost for competing on drag race.
Queens bankrupt themselves to pay for the costumes and other preparations they need for drag race. Our scene is just smaller, so therefore the money is tighter. When Spankie Jackson is on stage saying how she is wearing an ill-fitting outfit because she lost weight recently, we have to remember that its often thousands of dollars to replace costumes. This isn’t just a problem for Aussie and NZ queens - it creates a class structure in drag, that you see in the US series with queens like Heidi n’ Closet who got read for her looks, but then talked about simply not earning enough money from her day job to afford more polished looks. Or queens like Mo Heart who made all her looks from scratch in her season. When you put them up against other queens like Gigi Goode, who had both a seamstress mother and some money to throw around, you see some inequality.
There’s a great article in VICE about the costs for competing in Drag Race, that really lays out just how MUCH money goes into competing.
“Girl. I took a loan out against my asshole to get here,” Cracker says, and Kameron snort-laughs. “Like, my asshole is collateral against a loan, my asshole is in a bank vault somewhere…”
“Exactly!” Cracker says, laughing. “Literally, my life and my funds and my financial future... I put it on the line because this is so important.”
(I used to have a grudge against this article because I was also writing one with a similar investigation and this one came out when I was half done. AND i didn’t have access to any queens because I live in Australia. Oh well, you snooze you lose)
Anyway, I don’t have much of a point except that polish, something that we all look for in queens, isn’t just about talent and poise and skill - it’s also about money, and it’s worth remembering before being too critical.
That said, let’s be critical and power rank these hoes.
WINNERS
Kween Kong +2 points
The episode opened with perhaps the most dire reading challenge I’ve ever seen on drag race. The library might be open but they’re just playing games on the computers, because they clearly can’t read. Good reads have an art to them like any performance - they’re closer to stand up comedy than anything else in the sense that you can have the funniest joke in the world and still flub it through fucking up the delivery. But still - i’d have prepared SOMETHING.
Kween was the winner of this challenge, but her reads were really only fine.
Kween also got some great feedback for the girlgroup challenge, and was one of the winners, now firmly placed in a “coming out of your cage and doing just fine” narrative by Ru.
Spankie Jackson +2 points
Spankie is delivering time and time again, and even after being roasted for wearing an ill-fitting costume by the judges, it was done in a weirdly fond way. Her talent and her attitude is clearly pushing her forward and that’s quite impressive.
I will say though that it would be nice to be able to see what the judges are seeing - i’m sure Spankie IS a great performer, but we barely see anything in these edits.
LOSERS
Beverley Kills -2 points
Beverley got a lot of good feedback this episode, and also looked good in the challenge and the runway. However all this means is that she’s not being docked A HUNDRED POINTS for making this episode not just dull but actually painful.
Beverley spent this episode picking at some broad and hard to define beef with Kween, that honestly gave me the utter shits, and felt so juvenile I want to scream.
Yuri Guaii -5 points
Yuri went home this week, which was really sad tbh. She was no worse or better than anyone in the shitty girl group challenge - it was also impossible to hear ANYONES verses, not that I care - and its debatable that Molly did a better lip sync. She also looked WONDERFUL on the runway, the only look that I actually loved. I liked her a lot, sad to see her go.
The audience -100 points
this episode was DRUDGERY.
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Alright, well, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your beauty and your grace. I’ll see you next week where I hope I am able to feel joy again.