12/28/2023 0 Comments Ru pauls drag race season 12![]() After a couple of seasons of lackluster lineups, season 12 delivered a crew that was more polished and refined as a whole than we have seen in quite some time. While looking at all the things that went wrong with the season, we also have to look at what went right, and it started with casting. That is partly because everyone is closed inside their homes and looking for good TV, but it also speaks to the overall quality of the cast. The season-12 finale was Drag Race’s highest-rated episode in two years. ![]() ![]() It’s no doubt these queens would have been in high demand. (And for all of the queens who took out loans to pay for their looks on the show, it’s a way to pay back the initial investment they made in their careers.) Most of the contestants countered the missed opportunities by finding inventive new ways to cash in, but no Zoom show is ever going to take the place of an in-the-flesh Werq the World, in terms of both financial gain and self-promotion. For queens like Heidi N Closet, who says she only made $9,000 last year as a gas-station attendant, this is a life-changing opportunity. Most importantly, all of the queens go on a tour around the world, cashing in no matter how well they did on the show. The show concludes in June, the lucrative Pride season, which traditionally lines the pockets of anyone willing to sweat in a wig under the summer sun. They do live appearances and host watch parties while the season is airing, scoring sometimes thousands of dollars a gig. Traditionally, the hottest drag queens on the market are those who are on a current season of Drag Race. While this pandemic has been bad for the economy and the population in general, it’s a disaster of a different sort for the season-12 queens. As it kicked off, the novel coronavirus settled upon the nation, shuttering everyone in their houses and derailing the traditional “live” finale, which would have already been altered thanks to the Sherry Pie of it all. The other problem with the season was no fault of the producers. This left Brita as the villain of the season, a title she somewhat deserved for being mean to Aiden, but it might not have been the albatross that it is now if Sherry were around as a shock absorber. As Drag Race scholar Kevin O’Keefe points out, the skirmish between Aiden Zhane and Brita probably got a lot more screen time because a possible story line of front-runners Gigi Goode and Sherry Pie vying for supremacy had to be scrapped. It seems fair to theorize that Sherry Pie was also damaging to the other contestants in her absence. Even her complete absence at the reunion was disorienting, since it was the story of the season, though none of us saw it play out onscreen. That means each episode had to have a disclaimer about her, a shadow hanging over much of the action of the season. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she wasn’t a clear front-runner and a would-be finalist, but she was. The first indignity came courtesy of Sherry Pie, who was disqualified after accusations of predatory catfishing on the internet and subsequently airbrushed out of the season, sometimes quite sloppily. That’s when I started to think about how unfair season 12 was for everyone involved, not least of all for the fans, who were left puzzling over RuPaul’s unremarked-upon sexecutioner hoods as the series wound to a close. RuPaul didn’t, and all three advanced to the final lip sync, a fitting capper to a tumultuous season that often didn’t follow the rules set for itself. Jaida Essence Hall was all of that everywhere, in all places, at all times, and on top of that her partner killed it with the camera angles. Gigi Goode did an amazing homage to A-ha’s “Take on Me” and then syncopated her eyelashes to the beat in a lip sync. While watching the season-12 finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race, there was a moment where I thought, How can you choose? Crystal Methyd came out as a farting piñata and then regurgitated in her own mouth.
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