RECAP: RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17, Episode 9 (Design)
We are now officially more than halfway through Season 17, and I have come to appreciate the queens this season. While they might not always rise to the challenges the way I would like — as we saw in this episode’s design challenge, in which fully half of the nine looks were awful (but the other four were quite good) — they are at least committed to making good television. We got that this episode with a fairly solid reading mini-challenge, some good exchanges during the design challenge, and a wildly entertaining Untucked.
Below find my thoughts on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17 Episode 9, “Heavens to Betsey!” SPOILERS AHEAD!
I’ll go over each queen in order of my ranking from strongest to weakest in the Betsey Johnson-themed design challenge. This was at least our third design challenge this season (after the Monopoly challenge and the ball look). I thought it was a great idea to pay homage to Johnson and her role bringing camp and fun into fashion, and specifically for being a pioneer in casting trans models. I just wish that most of these queens did a better job creating looks that honored her design vocabulary and legacy.
Jewels Sparkles: Jewels finally got her win, and it was well deserved. Jewels was the only member of the flapper-boho-chic group that turned out a good garment, and she absolutely nailed this. She took a fairly simple but effective purple velvet gown and embellished it beautifully with hardware and notions on both the front and back, and then created a dramatic faux far shrug out of a variety of patterns that, on their face, should not have worked together. And yet it was all flawless. I did think her moment of realization that she had sewn one of the panels of velvet the wrong direction was absolutely hilarious. Great episode for Jewels.
Lexi Love: Lexi was part of the Prenup bridal-inspired group. I was initially concerned when Lexi had yet another intense moment of self doubt, getting overwhelmed by choice paralysis. I was grateful that Sam Star was a good sister to Lexi, and pulled her out of her spiral — but if these scenes are supposed to endear Lexi to me, they have the opposite effect. I commend her for being open about her emotional state following her transition, and I am very confident there are many viewers will see themselves in Lexi’s journey. That’s great for them. Personally, I am rarely going to identify in a positive way with people imploding on television. I’m going to feel very real empathy for them, as I do with Lexi. But it doesn’t make me actually root for them. It makes me question whether they are capable for a competition like this. But based on what Lexi ended up putting out — yes, she is. This was a beautiful, dramatic piece that fully evoked Betsey Johnson. The massive veil was the showstopper here, although the undergarments were sexy and fun on their own. Her styling was also punk and cute, that perfect blend of Betsey Johnson. A very strong contender for the win.
Arrietty: Arrietty once again again slayed the design challenge, producing a slinky, skin-tight black lacy look for the Prenup collection that brought Betsey’s visual language into the darker fantasy Arrietty tends to explore. There can be no question at this point that Arrietty is our look queen for this season, and I think she’s among the best designers/seamstresses we’ve ever had on Drag Race. She quite literally brings it to you every ball. I found her interactions with Betsey to be charming and genuinely moving. I’ve really come to like Arrietty over these past 9 episodes, and I was not expecting that.
Sam Star: Sam created a perfectly solid look that absolutely nailed the 80s bridal fantasy that was inherent to the Prenup collection. I think the issue was, it was a little TOO close to the Betsey Johnson inspiration, and ended up feeling like something Betsey herself had already done. But it looked great! Sam was Safe, and I thought her edit this episode was fascinating. Similar to Suzie Toot, now that Sam has two wins she’s getting painted as a loud, aggressive know-it-all. I appreciate that she’s not stuck in the perfect pageant mode, as she ostensibly was earlier in the season. But she’s veering into obnoxious energy. That is balanced out somewhat by her genuine conversations with her sisters, including Lexi. But Sam’s edit became noticeably more irritating this episode.
Lana Ja’Rae: Lana was Safe, but in my opinion, it was the best of the bad designs. “Bad” is perhaps overstating; I just didn’t think it was successful and I absolutely did not find it to be memorable. She was glad to be Safe, and she should be.
Suzie Toot: Suzie was extremely lucky to be safe, because I thought she looked awful. Wearing The Princess’ air-blown wig from Season 4, and sporting a faux taxidermied rodent on her shoulder, I thought everything about this was a mess. Suzie looked actually crazy, and the fact that there were three worse looks — and there really was — is a real testament to how bad this group did on the whole in the challenge.
Lydia “Butthole” Collins: In my opinion, Lydia — or Butthole, as Ru now calls her almost exclusively — should have been spared lipsynching, although she definitely deserved to be in the bottom for this. I have struggled with Lydia’s looks all season. I just don’t get them. I respect that she takes a more fluid, feelings-based approach to her designs. That’s interesting, to be sure. But I often find the results to look messy or haphazard. That’s what we got here. It was fashion roadkill, with pieces of fur dripping off of her, but a way overdesigned skin tight dress underneath it, blending fabrics that have no business being thrown together. It was terrible.
Onya Nurve: But not as bad as Onya’s, which should have been in the Bottom 2 (but no way are they going to risk sending her home this early, with two wins under her belt — although this is exactly where Plasma went out last season). Onya created a simple tube dress that was functionally a sausage casing, and then attempted — poorly — to put three giant bows down the front of this. Everything was wrong. The length was mumsy. The bows were a mess. It was a true failure from Onya, the first we’ve seen this whole season.
Kori King: Speaking of failure, let’s talk about Kori King. Kori has not excelled at really any element of this competition. She’s good at elements that are not competitive — she’s a good Untucked participant, she’s been a regular talking head in interviews, and of course she has the whole showmance subplot with Lydia. But as an actual competitor on this series, Kori has failed at pretty much all of it. I’m not sure we have had two less-impactful queens than Kori and Lydia make it this deep into a season in many seasons. This episode, she made the cardinal sin of ignoring explicit RuPaul guidance to change up her silhouette. While she tried to go for something classy (or “classy,” as it was still pretty hooch), she abandoned that and went with her now-standard Boobs Leggsly silhouette. Kori really does pad beautifully, and I get wanting to highlight your best assets. But this was so cheap, so boring, so devoid of any point of view — it was the antithesis of Betsey Johnson. I let out an audible moan when it came down the runway.
Both Arrietty and Lexi seemed truly plucked to not get the win — Lexi in particular, which, again, is not endearing me to her — and ultimately production could not resist the schadenfreude of the two “lovers” of the season, Lydia and Kori, lipsynching to Lita Ford’s absolute banger, “Kiss Me Deadly.” For all of my criticisms about Lydia’s looks, she is a lethal lipsynch artist. This was an even more assured performance than her first lipsynch, which was a commanding victory itself. She was magnetic on that stage, and when she and Kori went in for the prolonged make-out session, the judges and the other queens ate it all UP.
And ultimately Lydia was spared, and Kori went home. I absolutely think this was the right decision. Not only was Kori not successful in this competition, but she also had a terrible tendency to just copy what other queens have done before her. Even her exit line this episode was directly from Ginger Minj in All Stars 2. I get the sense Kori doesn’t know who she is as a drag queen, or was fixated on alluding to other “moments” so that she could feed off their relevancy in the fandom. What I find particularly crazy is that Kori is a skilled visual artist, and I have to imagine there is great opportunity for her to monetize that and lean on it to differentiate her.
I did think it was SUPER interesting in Untucked that the Safe girlies were not even trying to hide their exasperation over the Kori/Lydia storyline, and were actively encouraging Production to remove both of them because they’d been doing such a poor job in the competition thus far. Savage!
What do you think of Season 17? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
