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The second season of RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race has come to an end, and not a minute too soon. It doesn’t seem to be capturing the hearts of many Drag Race fans, and while AJ McLean will always have the Backstreet Army out supporting him in full force, it’s not like Secret Celebrity got anyone talking once — at least after the first week, when it became immediately and glaringly obvious that the “who are they???” premise didn’t work.
Anyway, all hail the first all-encompassing winner of Secret Celebrity Drag Race: A.J. McLean, a.k.a. Poppy Love. He clearly had something to offer that Ru and the judges wanted to award and I don’t doubt his respect for LGBTQ+ issues and culture, but ugh, did the straight dude have to win Secret Celebrity Drag Race? Poppy Love was fine, but she certainly wasn’t the best of the bunch overall this season. Then again, A.J. is probably the most popular competitor overall, meaning he’ll garner the most post-event press coverage, and maybe that’s all that really matters. He also seemingly got the most fan votes online, which makes sense given his long standing Backstreet fandom, but if it’s just a popularity contest, then what was the point of everything running up to this? Or is that a futile question, because that would suppose that there was a point to Secret Celebrity Drag Race, period?
Anyway, how did we get to Poppy Love’s big crowning moment? With more solo lip-sync performances, of course! Ru and her World of Wonder pals went back to the same old well for the celebrity finale, asking everyone to do a song loosely themed around the idea of love. (And I mean loosely, because like half the songs in the world are about love and they picked three of the most random cuts.) To celebrate with the queens, the entire cast of Secret Celebrity has returned, from Fabulosity, who is still very obviously Loretta Devine, to the disgracefully robbed Chic-Li-Fay. I don’t have much to say about the whole parade, other than that I liked Donna Bellissima’s tiny “normalize kitten heels” sign, and I’m still not sure why they do Milli’s makeup like that.
When the three finalists enter the stage, it’s clear they’ve put everyone in gold for the evening, including the thus far missing Queens Supreme. Chakra’s look says “more is more,” Poppy is still leaning on that “Everybody” slide, and Thirsty looks really beautiful and modern, but she always does, so that’s nothing new. Ru announces that they’re all going off to get ready for their solo performances, but while that’s happening, we’re all going to get to watch some pretaped Tic Tac lunches.
Mark Indelicato/Thirsty is up first in the hot seat, and things immediately get intensely personal as he reveals that he’s long struggled with members of the general public trying to out him before he had come to terms with his own sexuality. Being Thirsty helps Mark Indelicato get in touch with the more overtly femme part of himself, as well as the part that’s sexual and flirtatious. Ru reminds Indelicato that he has access to those parts of himself even out of drag, as Ru is wont to do, and things seem to go fine.
Poppy’s up next, wearing a pink suit-and-hat number that you know Ru wants for himself. AJ McLean says that offstage, he’s always gone by Alex, something that he says his fans generally know. (I did not know this, so I am clearly not a fan.) While AJ is wild and tattooed and a bad boy, Alex is a quiet dork who’s long been tucked away as AJ claimed more of the spotlight. Being Poppy, he says, has helped him realize that he can be both Alex and AJ, and he’s come to have a greater level of acceptance for himself. He calls Secret Celebrity Drag Race “the greatest experience in my career,” which is both very flattering for Ru and kind of surprising. Literally? Like out of anything? Okay.
Ru clearly loves Chakra 7, who opens up and says she feels like she’s been reborn over the past few weeks or months or however long it took to film this show. Tatyana Ali says that being Chakra has helped her understand confidence in a different way. It’s also helped her come to terms with her impostor syndrome, which is always a nice thing to hear.
Here’s where I will say that I cannot fucking believe how little airtime was given to the charities that these celebrities are playing for. I think they literally mentioned the charity names once, and Chakra’s went by so fast I couldn’t even catch it. Poppy’s bumping and grinding for Trans Lifeline, and Thirsty is moving and grooving for Planned Parenthood. Both are such great causes that I’d love it if they got just a hair more airtime, especially during the Tic Tac chats. Why did they pick those? What do they mean to them? We’ll never know, I guess! I hate it.
It’s lip-sync time, and Chakra is up first. She rehearses a hit backstage in Aladdin pants and a “No Tucks to Give” shirt that I assume came in some sort of gift bag. She keeps saying she wants to “bleed onstage,” and while she doesn’t really do that, she does deliver a very compelling Tina Turner impression as she tackles “Better Be Good to Me.” Her Road Warrior Tina is staggering and gritty, and I do think she did a good job, but doing a technically good job has never been an issue for Chakra this whole competition. I just don’t see enough from her overall, but apparently a lot of people do, including her Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star Karyn Parsons, who says in a video message that Ali “always inspires” her.
Poppy Love dons a boring bubble leotard for his performance of “I Touch Myself,” which feels so blatantly obvious and “look at this wild straight guy pretending to jerk it” that I hate myself for watching it. AJ said preshow that he’s trying to be comedic, sassy, and sexy in one performance, and while I guess he could be seen as being a tiny bit funny in some circles who still think American Beauty references are timely, I would not include myself in those circles. I liked the gag about AJ gazing longingly at a hot, early ’00s picture of himself with abs, I suppose, but everything else, no.
That being said, I am apparently alone in this hatred, since Michelle commends Poppy for being “a dude, really” but getting “to this point where [he’s] a fully formed personality.” Commenters, I have no idea what the personality is, and if you do, please weigh in below. Ross says Poppy has exceeded any expectations he had for him, and Backstreet Bros Nick Carter and Kevin Richardson send in a nice message saying they’re some of Poppy’s biggest fans. Also, we learn that Frankie Grande is one of Poppy’s good friends, which checks out, honestly.
Thirsty Von Trap has selected “Hollaback Girl” as her song about love, which is a little confusing because I never thought of it as a song about love, but then I guess I never really thought about the lyrics much at all before, so whatever. For her “camp, sexy” performance, Thirsty is rocking a marching-band-infused outfit that made me think of those circus horses with head plumes, and it looks great on her, because everything looks great on her. God bless whoever helps her with her cinching and padding and proportions, because Thirsty always looks like a ditzy Barbie doll, and I really love it.
Her performance of “Hollaback” is full of walking around and jokes about dicks/bananas, and the judges seem to like it quite a bit. Carson says “talk about the right time to be peaking,” and Ross even goes for a sports reference, saying Thirsty “scored [herself] a touchdown.” Ana Ortiz is there in the crowd in support, and Thirsty gets a video message from her Hacks co-star Hannah Einbinder, who was a very good judge on the most recent season of Drag Race All-Stars.
Next, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Jujubee, and Monét X Change come out and do a performance of “Blame It on the Edit,” which is a perfectly fine RuPaul song that also just happened to come out this year, because Mother is nothing if not self-promotional. They joke about Jujubee getting cut, and then they announce that all the celebrities have decided that Chakra 7 is season two’s Miss Congeniality. She gets a chintzy-looking sash that looks bad over her outfit.
As is the norm for most Drag Race finales at this point, Ru tells the contestants that she needs to see them lip-sync one more time to really decide who wins. Everyone who has ever watched Drag Race knows that this is not true and that the decision is made down the road based on either how many #TeamWhatever votes someone gets on social or whichever way the wind is blowing at the time, but the queens all play along with a perfectly fine version of “I’m So Excited,” by the Pointer Sisters. Thirsty does floor work, Chakra’s wig seems to come a little loose, and Poppy is the only queen to tackle the piano solo, which Ru seems to think is hilarious. There’s a fake-out crowning that goes into a commercial break, and finally Ru announces that the winner is (sigh) Poppy Love.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I really hope they don’t make another season of this show. While I’ll admit I think there probably is a way they could keep refining and get better contestants and actually do challenges that aren’t lip syncs but also aren’t Snatch Game, I don’t know that I need to see any of that play out on actual television. It always feels like Secret Celebrity Drag Race is a half-cocked idea, in all its forms, and I think it waters down the brand overall — not that I think Ru’s concerned with that at all, as evidenced by the 100 new seasons of Drag Race, Drag Race All-Stars, Drag Race Canada, Drag Race U.K., Drag Race Down Under, Drag Race Espana, Drag Race France, Drag Race Philippines, Drag Race Italia, Drag Race Thailand, Drag Race Netherlands, Drag Race Germany, Drag Race Mexico, et al. popping up each and every year.
In the past, I’ve made the case to friends that directing more eyes toward drag in all its forms can only be a good thing, but I think Secret Celebrity Drag Race proves that there’s an exception to that rule. Calling attention to technically beautiful drag queens who have half-cocked personalities just makes more people think that doing drag is about how you look, when really it’s about so much more. That no one involved with Secret Celebrity Drag Race seems to have either realized that or cared is just disappointing.
• I can’t believe Ru and her writers waited the whole season to use the pun “walk into the room Thirst first.” What restraint!
• I may not have actually liked watching RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race, but I liked writing these recaps and getting all my thoughts out onto the page. Thanks to each and every person who read them, and to the fine people at Vulture who humored my every angry whim.
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