This week, Drag Race “turned back time” to pay tribute to one of the most famous gay icons of all time: Cher. But, when paying tribute to a living legend, the stakes are exceptionally high – how did the queens stack up?
To honor one of his favorite celebrities, Ru challenged the remaining queens to put on an unauthorized Rusical dedicated to Cher, with each contestant taking on a different persona based on a different decade from the singer/actress’ life. The biggest obstacle: the queens would have to sing live, in addition to performing tightly choreographed routines and embodying Cher’s biggest characteristics and voice.
Weirdly enough, the best part of this episode was the build-up, simply because all the queens were… bad. Yes, as the contestants attempted to find their “Cher voice” and practiced their routines with Todrick Hall, they all flopped in some regard, creating a genuine sense of suspense as the challenge neared. Between Eureka’s stage fright while singing, Kameron’s inability to remember the lyrics to her verse, and the fact that almost all the queens struggled to nail their imitations of Cher’s recognizable voice, the episode lacked a front-runner, and was more entertaining because of it.
But the actual musical number left much to be desired. To be perfectly frank, all the performances sort of blurred into one, and with the exception of two queens – one who forgot their lines, the other who failed to mimic Cher – all of them seemed just OK. Drag Race’s musical numbers have always been hit or miss, and this one was definitely a “miss,” with awkward jokes and lyrics that were embarrassing and lacked the camp that they were trying to exhibit. The better portion of the actual competition this week was the runway challenge, which was glitter themed and gave all the queens the chance to show off phenomenal looks.
And, finally, the lip sync was intense, with both queens in the bottom two giving their all – it was truly difficult to predict who was going home until Ru made her final decision. But, even then, the rather mundane Cher musical kept things dull for a bit too long.
Elsewhere in the episode, we saw the aftermath of The Vixen’s fight with Eureka play out, which lead to an interesting discussion about racist stereotypes on reality television and in the drag community. These conversations are necessary, and it’s refreshing to see a show like Drag Race exploring these problematic narratives instead of employing them. It’s also worth noting that this week’s guest judges, Andrew Rannells (Girls) and Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street) were welcome additions to the cast, as the seasoned comedic actors made jokes that consistently landed, while also providing thoughtful critiques.
While this certainly wasn’t a perfect episode, this week’s episode of Drag Race brought us another step closer to what should be a nail-biting conclusion. While this critic was personally a fan of the queen who was sent home, the standing six are all fierce competitors who know how to play the game and bring something interesting to the table. As long as the challenges improve in the coming weeks, it won’t take much for Season 10 to course correct and deliver episodes that live up to its namesake.
Overall rating: 6 out of 10
