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Can We All Agree That Bianca Del Rio Is Going To Win RuPaul’s Drag Race?

bianca-del-rio-winnerWe’ve learned some very important lessons throughout the last six seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, like how to read, how to shade (your face), and how to take offense out of any insult by prefacing it with “No tea no shade.”

Perhaps the most invaluable lesson we’ve learned, however, is that the winner of any given season becomes obvious once RuPaul narrows her queens down to the final six.

We’ve made it to the final stretch in season 6 where queens will begin falling in the most calculated way possible, paving the road for Bianca Del Rio to take the crown and become America’s Next Drag Superstar for the next calendar year. Beside her will be two polished and professional queens, BenDeLaCreme and Courtney Act. Under them will be the two eager and entertaining final five runners-up Joslyn Fox and Adore Delano. Beneath them (and everyone, really) is Darienne Lake, the bitch.

At this point, it’s silly to think anyone but Bianca Del Rio will win. We saw the same thing happen two years ago with Sharon Needles and last year with Jinkx Monsoon. Don’t ignore the warning signs — the most obvious choice is always RuPaul’s final choice.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s chat about last night’s episode.

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She-mail is officially gone

After the Advocate launched a crusade against RuPaul to police her use of the phrase “you’ve got she-mail,” producers officially took the iconic phrase out of the show. R.I.P. she-mail.

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What’s up with these awful challenges?

This week on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the seven remaining queens were finally allowed to work independently, appearing for the first time in Drag Race history as talk show hosts being forced through painful dialogue with guests that, in my opinion, could not have been any more uninteresting and uninspired.

Each of the seven remaining queens were ordered to “fill in” as guest hosts on The RuPaul Show, during which they would write and direct an interview with Chaz Bono and Georgia Holt, two descendants of Cher that didn’t want to talk much about Cher during the interview (did they think this was an actual interview for an actual show?) Like most of the challenges so far this year, it seemed like a good concept that could have been great had it been developed over the course of a full hour, but it felt totally rushed and only a couple minutes from each queens’ interview made it to air.

When this season is over, it will be forever remembered as the one with the least interesting and most rushed challenges. The producers got ahead of themselves thinking of deeply conceptual challenges and didn’t realize there was no time to showcase it. This episode, we got a quick glimpse of the queens filming intros to their talk shows and lip-syncing a song — where the hell did that footage end up? Why was there no “final product” for each queen’s show? All we got to see this week was a rough cut of the actual interview; for a season that boasted such a high production value, it seems to have been managed very poorly.

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How awkward was Darienne Lake?

I’d say for the most part, every interview was a painfully awkward segment I wanted to run from. But Darienne Lake takes the cake with her off-the-cuff remarks about Chaz “becoming a man” and things he does differently “now that he’s a man.”

Where the hell is Parker Molloy when her megaphone is needed? How is RuPaul labeled “transphobic” for using the term “she-male,” yet Darienne Lake is given a pass for being so blatantly transphobic and insensitive to trans issues? Her ignorance is almost as offensive as that cheap clip-on earring that fell off her head in the middle of the interview; the fact that she’s even still in this competition is an embarrassment to the franchise at this point.

Her awfulness was finally brought to the table during Untucked, when Bianca finally called her out for being a “mean bitch.” She should have been read for wearing another bed sheet down the runway, but I think she’s just so hopeless at this point that reading her would be a waste of breath.

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Has this entire season jumped the shark?

Maybe it was just the cheap wine I was drinking while watching, but I’m starting to feel like season 6 has jumped the shark. There were so many moments during episode 9 that I could tell were supposed to be emotional and/or triumphant, but now that a clear winner has emerged, the last leg of the Drag Race has begun, and it’s only a matter of time before another winner is crowned.

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With that, here are the ho-hum things that happened during episode 9:

Courtney Act has decided to play the “I’m so incredible, what could I possibly learn from Drag Race?” card. I do like what she’s brought to the table, and I still believe she’ll wind up in the final three, but she seems very removed from the competition at this point and I’m starting to think the Broadway challenge was the best she’s going to offer this season. That being said, I’m not sure what she did that was so incredible to win the challenge this week, but then again, I wasn’t impressed with anyone’s performance.

BenDeLaCreme had some time to talk about depression this episode, and made an unsurprising comeback after two weeks of being in the bottom. Her scuff with Darienne Lake has leveled out — perhaps it’s time for Darienne to finally leave next week.

Joslyn Fox’s episode revolved around an embarrassing moment during her interview, when she asked Holt whether her views on abortion had changed after giving birth to Cher. I was mildly offended at first, but after watching the episode again, it was clear that Joslyn didn’t mean any harm by the comment and only brought it up because Holt was very forthcoming with the story in her Lifetime documentary. She wasn’t necessarily offended by it. Just caught off guard.

Unfortunately, Lineysha Sparx Trinity K. Bonet’s success last week wasn’t enough to keep her in the game. She sashayed away after a lip synch against Adore and gave one last PSA before leaving the set. “You can still be happy and live life with HIV,” or something to that effect.

All the uninspired moments lead me to my final question:

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Is there going to be another awful pre-taped crowning this year?

If the rest of the season is like what we’ve seen thus far, the only thing I’m looking forward to is the final crowning moment. This show has been heavily dogged on the last two years for pre-filming each of the final three being crowned the winner and revealing the true winner when the live broadcast happens.

Logo has done this to keep the winner a heavily-guarded secret until the moment it happens (not even the winning queen will know until premiere night), but it’s led to some awful and generic reactions from the past two winners. I’d actually rather hear a spoiler a week in advance and get a genuine reaction during the finale than hear the winner for the first time on finale night and get a standard pageant reaction.

Either way, Bianca will look flawless when she accepts the crown.

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Darienne Lake

The queens were asked to serve “jungle fever” on the runway this week, and Darienne Lake interpreted that as “silver bed sheet is vaguely the same color as elephant” realness. The queens want to read Adore and Joslyn for wearing “off the rack,” but no one comes for Darienne wearing “off the mattress” week after week.

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Adore Delano

I don’t really see where the queens come from when they read adore for wearing “off the rack.” Her dedication to leather is inspiring, and I think you’d have a tough time finding this Hannibal Lecter mask on any store rack.

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BenDeLaCreme

I think this is the first time an insect has walked down the runway? DeLa’s look this week was perfectly executed and comes at a great time. The judges asked her to be more vulnerable moving forward and, really, how much more vulnerable can you be after walking the runway in a headpiece like that?

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Bianca Del Rio

Bianca deserves to win this whole competition based on this look alone. Quite possibly one of the greatest in Drag Race history.

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Joslyn Fox

The tuck was extreme this week. That’s all I have to say.

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Trinity K. Bonet

I’ll congratulate Trinity on this incredible look once I figure out what the hell “birds of a feather flock together realness” is. The best part about watching her sashay away this week is knowing I won’t have to hear her butcher the English language anymore. Her continually referring to Chaz as “Chad” this week was painful to watch.

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Courtney Act

“I wanna see this on blogs, I wanna see this on Facebook,” Courtney says, as she walks to the end of the runway and opens up a pair of wings. It’s clear that the American exposure is the only real thing Courntey is looking for this year, so here’s your blog coverage, sweetheart.

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