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Reviews
RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under (2021)
Let's hope for a better 2nd season with better judging and no forced storylines.
The First Season of Drag Race Downunder ought to be a great show, given its talented cast featuring queens from both sides of the Tasman Sea. However, the judging is not only puzzling, but you are given the sense that Rupaul and Michelle, maybe due to the quarantine, did not seem to enjoy themselves during filming. The show can also benefit from a panel of jury members from the local scene. The ratio of having two American judges with one Australian judge as a permanent panel seems off.
The show is plagued with favouritism where poor performing queens are saved while deserving queens are routinely placed in the bottom for no apparent reason. A queen is brought back for no justifiable reason. This all gives a bitter impression to the viewers that there is a predetermined elimination order of queens and the prewritten storyline. As such, deserving queens were not given the opportunity to shine.
Poor judgment or lack of due diligence could be discerned by the fact that two queens of problematic past with racial issues. While it is admirable that these issues were discussed in the show, it is hard to believe that the host can single handily absorbed the mistake on behalf of a nation.
I look forward to the next season, hopefully with more engaging judges from the local scene of Australia and New Zealand with a more diverse cast.
Drag Race Holland (2020)
The Dutch Franchise ,while having its pitfalls, shows promise
The First Season of Drag Race Holland shows some promise. The cast is not only talented, but also diverse, showing not only Dutch queens but also a couple of South American queens. The production is certainly more modest given its infancy and filmed in a smaller country during the pandemic. While the show does stay true to the roots of the Drag Race franchise with snatch game, musical, acting and design challenges, there could be more room of originality, featuring more Dutch and Benelux culture in the mini and maxi challenges.
The weighting formula of the maxi challenge and runway is also different, with the latter outweighing the former. Therefore, at times, after watching the maxi challenge, one would have thought a specific queen deserved to win the episode based on her stellar performance but to be surprised a queen with a stunning runway look to snatch the win from the deserving queen.
The runway looks are really good for some queens like the incredibly polished Envy Peru, the crazily original queen, ChelseaBoy, and Sederginne, a comedy queen who proves that great comedic timing can go with great sense of style. I believe the show can benefit from better and more consistent judging where the maxi challenge weighs more than the runway look. I look forward to the coming seasons.