The girls are back in town!
Darlings, we were grinning from ear to ear last night as we sat through over two hours of fabulous dragulosity. It's nice to see (and a bit refreshing) that the show hasn't done a thing to change its format (except to add more judges) and doesn't feel at all different from the first shows of the first season. We feared they were going to change things. Actually, they did change one thing:
The pit crew is no longer stunning, steroidal adonises, but a couple of really cute, really sexy guys with great bodies. We approve.
Something we noticed as all the queens introduced themselves to each other: while there is a range of characters, none of them could really be classified as "statuesque black glamour queen." The show was widely criticized (even by us), for giving the award both seasons to queens who were essentially clones of Ru. We got the feeling they actively tried to avoid that outcome by casting more types and more than one of each type, i.e.: more than one Puerto Rican queen, more than one big girl, more than one comic.
The result is one of the more interesting casts they've had. There's both a range, and a sense of real competition.
Shangela is very likable, but our first thought when she popped out was, "You had weeks of experience when you got eliminated last year. Now you have one year of experience. Is that really going to make a difference when most of the others have been doing this for a decade or more?"Let's check the pics:
Carmen Carrera
A surprisingly good picture, given the impression we got of her, which is that she's tacky and lets the body do all the work. Then again, when you know your body well, you're more likely to know how to pose it.
A standard, but cute attempt. We don't have much of an impression of her except that she's the Puerto Rican queen who's not a total bitch.Mimi Imfurst
She went for funny when she should have realized (because it was Ru and Mike Ruiz) they were looking for glamour first, funny second. We're rooting for Miss Imfurst, but she made it difficult with her scenery-chewing meltdown right out of the gate. India Ferrah
Standard. 
Poor thing. She tried her best, but this was clearly not a fair challenge for the big girls. There are a record number of big girls in the cast this year (and there was a lot of self-congratulating over that fact in the pre-show casting special), which makes us suspect this was the first challenge out of the gate precisely because there were so many big girls.Anyway, we have to give Stacy Layne her props. If this contest was decided on realness alone, she'd be the clear winner.
Mariah
For a queen who goes on and on about how real and hot she is, this was a piss-poor way to show it.Alexis Mateo
Pretty good, but not great. We suspect we're going to say that a lot about her since she spends so much time ragging on the others. She knows she's good, but she's not sure she's the best.
Manila Luzon
Early favorite! We think she's got an adorable personality, and she can straddle the line between glamour girl and comedienne. One of the better pictures.Delta Work
She did the best out of the big girls. She didn't get a lot of air, but she posed to perfection. Phoenix
Not working a feminine vibe all that well. We thought she was kind of a bitch.Venus D-Lite
Second best pose of the night. Ironic that she went home. She had skills and presence.Shangela
Bad. We think Shangela has potential, but we're not sure why Ru is so keen on her.Raja
Perfection. Obvious early front runner.
Ru and all her guest judges were in fine form. Is the judging panel going to be that large every week? Because we can get behind that.
We were surprised at how little he was used, especially since he's a legendary quipster.
And Miss Vanessa here wanted everyone to know she was the realest doll in the room, didn't she? She was fabulous, she LOOKED fabulous, and she was a very good judge with great critiques.We'll look at all the dresses in a different post. Let's look at winner/loser for now.
She's not our favorite in terms of personality, but it's hard not to root for such a stylish drag queen. True high-fashion style is a rarity among that crowd. We don't dislike her. She brags a lot but she's got the goods to back it up. We'll see if she becomes a villain or if she's just uber-confident. Anyway, this outfit was pretty amazing. The only parts we don't like are the metallic scarf and her eye makeup. She's pretty obviously the judges' favorite, but that's understandable given how good she is.
It certainly wasn't the worst of the outfits and she gave one of the better pictures. We would not have put her in the bottom two, but once she wound up there, she shot herself in the foot, giving an aggressive lip synch that had no grace or fun to it.
Shangela's outfit was much worse and demonstrated pretty bad instincts (the snowman?). Mama Ru seems to be protecting her pet here. But like we said, she gave the better lip synch, so we can't say she didn't earn her stay.Watch the episode:
[Screencaps: tomandlorenzo.com - Video Credit: logotv.com]
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Labels: RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul's Drag Race Season 3, RuPaul's Drag Race Season 3 Episode 1
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