An objectively correct appraisal of Drag Race seasons I have seen, by Isaac Fellman, aged 41
U.K., season 2. The real winner of this season is COVID-19, which lip-synched for its life to send everyone home halfway through the season. Baffled by British drag culture, RuPaul trips and drops the crown upon the head of a Glaswegian enby whose hair is a bird. It's not that Lawrence Chaney didn't have a dominant run (though seven months of quarantine did slash her momentum); it isn't even that Lawrence wasn't my favorite queen of the season. It's just that I'm not used to Ru crowning plus-sized queens whose final lip-synch performance is essentially to twirl cautiously while howling, "Could a depressed person make this?" At times, this season is genuinely surreal; the spectacle of Ru snapping, "The world's about to end, by the way! The world's about to end!" at a broke, blameless goth dressed as the Wind makes Drag Race's subtext text in a way that might be hauntology.
Canada vs. the World. Pleasant. Slightly more fun, maybe, for the competitors than the audience. Reality is briefly shattered by the baffling incursion of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Philippines, season 1. Insanely stacked. So stacked that power-drill twink Marina Summers was the runner-up, and Turing, one of the two or three greatest dancers to appear on any season anywhere, went home third. Was it maybe too stacked? Was this season actually a long manic episode, or host Paolo Ballesteros' Christmas Carol cheese dream? We will never know for sure.
Philippines, season 2. The weed to season 1's coke. A season so nice that the hosts didn't have the heart to send anyone home after a certain point, meaning that we got episode after episode of pull-the-string nonsense doll M1ss Jade So and Dadaist drama kid ØV Cunt – they really ladle out those "strong password" drag names in the Philippines. In the end, the whole thing comes down to one of the great Drag Race face vs. heel matchups (w/rare crowning of the heel!), which takes place in the first round of the lip synch tournament because the producers couldn't just rig it like everyone else.
France, season 1. An incredibly memorable top 5, plus a 100% forgettable bottom 5, as nature intended. Also another season so stacked that its breakout star didn't win and shouldn't have won. This is, however, not what you remember about it. France has more overtly nationalistic project than even most Drag Race franchises, second perhaps only to Thailand. Because Drag Race is quintessentially American, overseas franchises have an opportunity to define their host nations in opposition to America, to say what they are that America is not. And all Drag Race franchises, including the original, are making bids for respectability through a stylization of the underground. France, more than most, thinks it's telling the story of a pluralistic society that's more open to queerness than America is, but it also cannot blink together the double outline of France and its former colonies into a unified vision of French gay culture, nor can it pull its nose out of la xénophobie. Even as it tries to differentiate itself from RuPaul product, it tells on itself just as badly as RuPaul does.
France, season 2. I maintain a soft spot for this season. The queens are character actors, while on the first they were movie stars. An extremely satisfying winner, and one of the rare occasions when a bona fide drag icon is also really good at Drag Race.
Thailand, season 1. Not available from any legal source; possibly imaginary. I dreamed a dazed dream that a rich coffin salesman won Drag Race? And that the runner-ups were a shrimp farmer and a bureaucrat? And the rich coffin salesman, whose drag schtick really was "selling coffins bought this van," had a drag name that meant Tired Pussy? Her other hobby was cheerleading. They didn't bother getting the music rights at all.
Thailand, season 2. A perfect season. High glamour, actual comedy, insane fashion, challenges that don't feel like TV threw up, and a host so good that she won't be back. Any of the top six could have justly won it. The actual winner was a beautiful trans woman, a Beyonce impersonator, who triumphed via a dance number about how her father helped her get sober and become a monk.
Canada, season 1. They came in too hot and cast icons only, so everyone had a nervy B when they realized that they were in for a parade of confusing humiliations intended for younger artists. Winner was a former kids' TV host. It was visibly freezing on the set because they shot it in Edmonton. Introduced the world to Jimbo the drag clown. Chaotic, but the weight of talent was too great for it to actually be bad.
Canada, season 2. One of the great Drag Race seasons, and one of the greatest winners of all time – it's barely even fun to talk about Icesis Couture, who combines every obvious talent with personal grit and enormous soul as a performer. A Judy-level, Judy-type star. You're missing a lot if you're sleeping on Canada, which trusts its viewers and showcases a broad, diverse scene. The nationalist project is there, but you could do worse than be over-keen to present your country as welcoming, nice, and relatively free of outsize beefs. The only bummer is a dull judging panel (my spouse and I call one of them "Grep," for reasons that are lost to time), and even that is enlivened by the subtle charms of U.S. season 11 veteran Brooke Lynn Hytes. Speaking of which –
U.S., season 11. Look, among artists, some of us are instinctive performers, and some of us are practiced but slightly soulless technicians. This is the only thing TV Tropes has ever been right about. As a performer myself, my heart is with the technician, because their story is usually the more compelling one – that is, the role of the technician is more fun to perform. Drag Race 11 has a perfect pairing of performer and technician in Yvie Oddly and Brooke Lynn Hytes (they are literally a self-taught dancer and a former professional ballerina), and the interplay between them is intensely moving, precisely because they don't have much of an onscreen bond. I don't usually comment on drag queens' personae on the show, because it's heavily mediated by kayfabe and editing, but I am comfortable saying that Yvie has had an enormous amount of trauma related to her disability. She will read any accomodation, or even kindness, as pandering, and so she walks right into a really negative edit – the show is eager to show her overcoming her disability with help from her friends, and she just doesn't want to give that to them. She's too young and she's seen too much.
As it becomes clear that Brooke Lynn will be Yvie's primary rival, and they compete directly for the first time, we recognize a respect between them. Yvie can tolerate Brooke Lynn's friendship because Brooke Lynn is too professional to give her any quarter. It's all terribly honorable, and more butch than you can imagine. By the time Yvie delivers the greatest lip synch in the show's history to secure the crown and make the utterly commanding Brooke Lynn look, honestly, kind of try-hard and awkward, we are left with a fantastic season, despite a dubious field of other contestants, some overtly racist editing (just because RuPaul is Black doesn't mean that her show is not anti-Black), and an extremely sociological musical episode about Donald Trump.
U.S., season 16. A perfect season. Was I sad about the eleventh-hour upset that deprived us of a historic first – a Drag Race winner who's a top? Of course. Did I think Nymphia Wind's triumph over Sapphira Cristal was perfectly judged, soaringly performed, and possibly an actual international incident? Also of course.
U.K. vs. the World, season 2. The best drag queens are named after concepts. For example, Lawrence Chaney is named for a shapeshifting horror icon, while Icesis Couture is named for couture, and La Grande Dame is named for being tall. Tia Kofi (say it aloud) is named for variety and hospitality, for the concept of a gentle good time. RuPaul got mad as hell at Tia on U.K. 2 (her reasoning: they're both tall and thin, but they don't dress alike). On this season, Ru threw the car into reverse and gave Tia the crown, which some fans thought felt like a fix. Boo to them! The winner of an All Stars season is always a fix!! What matters is that it was a transcendent run for the stretched-out air hostess from South London, a queen smart enough to deliver her own storylines by courier. Nobody understands better that Drag Race is pro wrestling. The layers of truth and illusion in that onscreen romance with La Grande Dame alone – it is a kayfabe mille-feuille. I wanted them to be together for real, if only because they are both built exactly like the footballer Peter Crouch.
Just as the best queens are named for art or weather, the best Drag Race seasons give the lie to the whole idea of Drag Race. They show us its true Drag Face. This show began as a parody of Project Runway and America's Next Top Model, two series which are culturally forgotten today. Now it is a parody of nothing, each "challenge" a series of empty signifiers. The flipside of the sheer joy of Tia's work on this season is how bad most of the queens fucked it, through no real fault of their own. What are we, as a society, doing flying insanely talented artists halfway around the world (the Philippines, Australia, France!) to do this absolute nonsense, particularly when no accommodation is made for the ones who are not comfortable in English? If U.K. 2 spoke to the madness of 2020, this speaks to the madness of 2024: things have never felt faker, or more unfair.
The consolation is the sheer camaraderie of the thing. Everyone became besties! They seem to also be besties in real life! Just as COVID-19 was the real winner of U.K. 2, the real winner of U.K. vs. the World 2 was the persistence of queer community in the six-foot-high face of RuPaul. This is the rarest of things: a season of Drag Race that RuPaul doesn't win.