RuPaul's Drag Race: Dragazines First Watch

November 1, 2016 3:33 PM - Season 4, Episode 7

The queens turn the publishing industry on its wig as they launch their own magazines. With Extra special guest judges actress Regina King and country legend Pam Tillis.
posted by duffell (5 comments total)

• Latrice did pretty well in the library, but I thought Sharon had it in the bag! All in all kind of a weak showing from this group. A little heavy on puns and dad jokes.
• Re Phi Phi's sabotage shenanigans. Go on, Phi Phi. Complain about the fucking villain edit again, you absolute horse's ass.
• I feel like Ru's workroom advice for Jiggly was good "performer to performer" advice, but... it still really rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like Ru was telling Jiggly that there was a right way and a wrong way to process her pain, and that Jiggly should just learn to lighten up and find the humor in what was obviously a very painful experience.
• You were on TV before, Willam? Why haven't you said so before now?
• Dida has been running straight to the middle for several challenges running, now. I don't feel like she's very long for this competition.
• Phi Phi's win came out of nowhere for me. I mean, this challenge was pretty dull across the board for me, so I guess I could've seen just about anyone winning, provided they didn't make an absolute ass of themselves.
• The song was pretty meh, not great for a lipsync challenge, but still, damn, that was a really fucking boring lipsync, maybe the all-around worst I've seen on the show.
• Just an altogether boring episode. Blahhh.

posted by duffell at 4:12 PM on November 1, 2016

Yeah, this is my least favorite ep of Season 4, barring the reading challenge. Dida Ritz's read about Latrice's "yard sandals" was a good non-obvious dig, I thought. The best things about it were the clapbacks - usually the shitty reads just get awkward silence, but Sharon returning serve to Phi Phi, and Willam staring stone-faced at Phi Phi during her read were both highlights to me. (Man, Phi Phi really flatlined here, huh?)
posted by en forme de poire at 3:59 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Watch Phi Phi do the EXACT THING SHE DID ON ALL STARS OMG I COULD SCREAM.

All in all a pretty skippable episode. Dida's one lip sync a few episodes back was great but that's the only memorable thing she has done so far. Her clock does seem to be ticking.
posted by tchemgrrl at 11:06 AM on November 2, 2016

I mean, they had to give Phi Phi a win at some point considering how much Reality TV Gold she's been serving, and this was an opportunity to do that (I don't think hers was bad or anything, though Sharon's was pretty genius I thought -- "you don't know anything about fashion!").

The T from Willam is that there were massive technical problems during this show and the fonts she chose for her magazine got screwed up, hence her saltiness about how the cover wasn't actually what she designed and how she wanted a better staff.
posted by en forme de poire at 2:55 AM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Dida's dig at Latrice was my favorite read. She was pretty good there, which surprised me because she has been so mediocre so far.

I don't know how much control the queens have over the magazine layouts. We never see them hunched over a computer and Photoshop with a design team, like say on The Apprentice. I assume the queens are done after the photoshoot and WoW employees whip something together based on the queen's notes and whatever low cost stock images are available. So just going by how the queens did at getting their picture taken, PhiPhi deserved to win.

Chad's runway was my favorite so far this season. Now I can see why the judges were so hard on Milan in a tux. This is how to do drag in pants.

I don't think country songs work well for lip syncing. It was Jiggly's time to go anyway as she pretty much gave up before this episode.
posted by riruro at 5:47 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]