The No-Win World of Drag Race Formats
I will never complain about too much RuPaul’s Drag Race being made around the world. The show is reality TV with a clear formula now, yes, but it is still a radical act of queer representation on TV around the world. In countries like Italy or Thailand, for example, this kind of representation for the greater LGBTQIA2S+ community did not have many outlets on television. Even in the US, the show grew from a tiny sort-of satire of reality TV tropes shot on a small soundstage to an Emmy-winning phenomenon. Not for nothing, writing about Drag Race during those first few seasons did put a big target on your back from a lot of unexpected critics. I lost writing gigs, plural, when I decided to write about the show back in 2010 or so.
As happens with every long-running reality TV series, there’s a clear formula that has developed. RuPaul’s Drag Race has never been afraid of breaking its mold and trying something new. The show switched from declaring a winner on set in Season 3 to a filmed before a live audience reunion and finale for Season 4. Season 6 saw the introduction of the split premiere and Season 9 brought us the Lipsync for the Crown. All Stars 1 experimented with teams and All Stars 2 had the queens eliminate each other. Different variations of these forms persist to this day around the world.
Only two Drag Race franchises shifted from this format. The Switch incorporated a live singing element into the elimination rounds. Contestants had to perform for a live audience to continue on in the competition if they did not win the previous main challenge. Drag Race Thailand had the typical main challenge and runway, but they were evaluated separately. You could win Snatch Game and then lipsync for your life after a bad runway.
Right now, there are two seasons airing simultaneously for different markets. We’re up to Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race in the US. Meanwhile, the BBC Three is relaunching as a broadcast channel with RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs The World. That’s essentially an international All Stars season. Both shows have flipped the script on what we expect and the reaction is mixed.
Let’s start with UK vs The World. All Stars rules are in full effect. That means each challenge has two top queens. These queens lipsync to determine who the ultimate winner is. Each queen also has to choose which of the bottom queens to eliminate if they win. They get the win, the gold RuPeter Badge, and the responsibility of eliminating their competition.
Without going into spoilers, the contestants are finally doing something the backseat gamers have wanted for years on the show. The winners, whether they admit it or not, seem to be eliminating their biggest competition each week.
It is a game show. You win by beating your opponents. We finally have a cast that’s making the most of their power and people are very mad at each elimination. Drag Race has a social media problem with more aggressive fans sending hate and threats to contestants they don’t like. Consistently, the winner of each lipsync has been bombarded with vile messages and comments for playing the game. This cast is standing very united against this behavior, supporting each other publicly and showing off their friendships as much as they can. That doesn’t change the loud public perception that the season isn’t going great because those top competitors keep being eliminated.
This is a view that’s been expressed in quite a few exit interviews with the eliminated queens. Guess what? This is an All Stars season. Everyone is competition. One of the contestants is a judge from Drag Race Thailand; everyone else has made it to at least top five on a regular or All Stars season. Every contestant had the potential to win the whole season if the challenges lined up just the right way.
I’m loving UK vs The World. The cast is great and they’re really bringing it to these challenges. I’m also here for the more aggressive gameplay. On the US All Stars seasons, announcing you want to send your biggest competition home is an express ticket back to your own house. On UK vs The World, the contestants have kind of realized that with such a short season, they can’t exactly trust everyone to play fair. Once one person sends home the biggest competition, someone else is going to want to send that winner home for not playing fair. But then that contestant didn’t play fair by also sending home their biggest competition. It’s the weirdest collapse of a house of cards I’ve seen on a reality show in years and I’m loving it.
Meanwhile, in Season 14, the production clearly decided to build in a safeguard for a controversial decision in Season 13. One contestant was eliminated after a lipsync, then RuPaul stopped them before they left the stage; they were saved on the spot and continued in the contest. The cover for this in the past has been the double save, but the show tried something different. The fan reaction was incredibly aggressive to this and I doubt we’ll ever see that trick again.
It’s your own fault we’re LARPing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory onstage each week. Am I joking? No. This is quite serious.
After eliminating and then un-eliminating two contestants in a split premiere, RuPaul announced a new twist. Each contestant would sign a randomly selected RuPaul chocolate bar. One of the 14 bars of chocolate has a golden ticket in it. When a contestant loses a lipsync, they have to unwrap their candy bar on the Main Stage and see if they have the golden ticket. The lucky golden ticket winner will be saved from elimination.
I can only describe this as camp. The upset contestant struggles to fight back tears while they tear at this prop candy bar (confirmed to be plastic, not chocolate, even though the RuPaul chocolate bars are a real product). One by one, we’ve seen six contestants and counting reveal their candy bar is just chocolate. A sad trombone sound accompanies this. RuPaul acts like he’s heartbroken and orders the contestant to “sashay away.”
There has to be a better way around saving one of RuPaul’s favorite contestants from elimination than staging this golden ticket idea. None of the contestants are talking about it in the workroom. The show is barely acknowledging the twist until the candy bar gets pulled out of the losing contestant’s costume and torn apart onstage.
There is no way the show will not have someone find the golden ticket after all this hullabaloo. Meanwhile, all I’m seeing is discussion of how rigged the ticket must be and speculation on who will be saved no matter what.
My take? I think the contestants had free will to choose the candy bar. The golden ticket was random. There’s no way, though, that the show would’ve allowed the golden ticket to be handed out the first elimination. I think the results may have been fudged here and there to save the golden ticket winner from the possibility of losing a lipsync so that the ticket comes into play later, rather than earlier, in the season.
I’m also really enjoying this season. The cast is so much fun and the writing on the challenges is great. This season could’ve unfolded organically and been filled with humor, heartfelt moments, and drama. The talent is so high that contestants were inevitably going to get in their feelings when they were safe instead of winning on a challenge where every contestant did well.
Why are these formats a misfire? People are talking about production conspiracies rather than the actual content of the seasons. That’s not good. I doubt we’ll ever see the golden tickets return, the same way I’m seriously questioning if another All Stars season will ever let the winners choose who is eliminated after the reaction to UK vs The World.
I’m eagerly awaiting the reaction to the upcoming finale of UK vs The World (next week) and the inevitable reveal of the golden ticket on Season 14. The discourse is going to be something else.
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