RuPaul's Drag Race spoilers follow.
Remember when people started to complain that there was too much Drag Race? Like Sasha Colby's neck this week, fans worldwide have swiftly snapped 180 on that idea thanks to MTV's big change for season 15.
Following the premiere's bumper two-parter, each episode of RuPaul's Drag Race will be one hour long moving forward. Or, to be more accurate, just 40 minutes or so without ad breaks.
Seriously, that's one huge chop. Each episode is now — insert confused equation meme — one-third shorter than they were just a year before. That's twenty minutes less drama, and that's also twenty minutes less time for these talented queens to promote themselves onscreen. Fans and queens alike are understandably pissed.
RuPaul's Drag Race is more popular than ever, so MTV must have had a real good reason for angering the queers like this.
Deadline has reported that MTV decided to cut new episodes short to help launch their new reality show, The Real Friends of WeHo, which stars LGBTQ+ celebrities in a Real Housewives-style setting. By combining this venture with their new Drag Race acquisition, the network planned to create a destination night for queer viewers every Friday.
Unfortunately, MTV overestimated how much gays want to see gay celebrities do stuff on screen. It certainly doesn't help that the "celebrities" in question are mostly unknown or "known" in an unfortunate, problematic sense. Now Drag Race — and the gay community as a whole — is suffering for it.
If that's not homophobic, we don't know what is.
The impact of these cuts are felt from the moment our queens first re-enter the werkroom at the start of episode three. Instead of hearing everyone's thoughts on the main stage and what just happened, the edit immediately jumps to Amethyst and Robin Fierce discussing their former relationship for the dramz of it all. There's no congratulating the winner or time to unpack what happened in Untucked.
When the RuMail alarm sounds soon after, there's no time for a mini-challenge either. Instead, we're thrown straight into an acting challenge, where the edit suggests that everyone sucks. Acting challenges on this show do, by and large, suck for the most part, but the queens as a whole certainly do not.
What's even more infuriating about this is how Sasha Colby's group actually fare quite well by the end. The filming scenes all shown prior suggest the opposite, yet Sasha herself even goes on to win the challenge.
This isn't exactly the first time Drag Race has played around with misdirect, but given such a short span of time to play with, the editors opted to make everyone seem terrible for a cheap twist instead of acknowledging the various strengths and weaknesses of each group like usual.
Yes, it's more tempting than ever to blame the edit here, and we just might, but to be fair, the editors themselves are probably suffering too. They're being forced to contend with MTV's new time constraints firsthand. Still, it's the queens who suffer the most from all this.
After the first shorter episode aired on January 13th, contestant Salina EsTitties said (via Twitter) "we worked too hard and invested too much money for a 45 min edit 😔". And she's right to say it.
A lot of drag on this show looks opulent — "You own everything!" — but often, that's because it is opulent in a very real, financial sense. Fans and queens alike are literally being short-changed by this new edit, and that's especially clear on the runway.
With so little time to pack all those queens in, each runway walk lasts for about eight seconds onscreen. Yep. Eight. Seconds.
Back in a season ten episode of Untucked, Miz Cracker told fellow competitor Kameron Michaels that she spent more on Drag Race than she did on college: "Literally, my life and my funds and my financial future... I put it on the line because this is so important."
Now jump forward five years. How much do you think each runway look cost these queens in season 15? Out of those eight seconds on stage, each individual second probably cost anywhere between hundreds, and in some cases, maybe even thousands of dollars to take part in.
There's also an emotional cost too. That's always been true of Drag Race, and competition shows in general, but if you're going to encourage queer people to expose their trauma so publicly in the werk room, it's only right to give those heartfelt moments the time and space they deserve.
This week, Malaysia Babydoll Foxx and Mistress Isabelle Brooks shared their struggles openly and honestly, explaining how their religious upbringing clashed with their queer identity in painful, often devastating ways. But again, with the pacing so off, it almost felt like the show was rushing through all this to make time for the main event.
You'd think someone like Anetra, last week's winner, would have been safe from these issues, yet she probably appeared less than anyone this episode, save perhaps Aura Mayari. Never mind that her talent show performance went ducking viral, or that she must have gained countless new followers in the span of one week alone.
The editors weren't to know that Anetra would end up being quite this big so quickly, but it's funny to think that all her new fans tuned in this week for what was essentially two minutes of screen time. How will she and other fan faves fare in next week's episode when 14 queens will compete in a double snatch game?
Giving the show's largest cast yet the shortest amount of airtime is flawed on a very basic, intuitive level. It's often a struggle to stand out as it is, so how are the 14 queens who remain supposed to do this in just over 40 minutes each week?
Now, you might assume that this problem will naturally improve over time as the cast shrinks each week. The length of the episodes won't increase anytime soon, but the screen time allotted to each queen will (bar a twist of chocolate-flavoured proportions).
However, we're not convinced things will just automatically improve. Once upon a time, earlier seasons of Drag Race also ran for a shorter length, just like these new episodes. In fact, season five and six remain the gold standard for many with episodes that ran just as long as the new ones do.
The difference this time round though is the pacing. Back when Bianca Del Rio was telling everyone to calm down in season six, the structure of each episode essentially remained the same. There was a much-needed balance to every section that's sorely lacking in 2023. When those rhythms that reality TV so often relies on are off, shows can become jarring to watch, and that's exactly what's happened here.
So who is to blame for Drag Race's sudden dip? MTV is arguably the real villain this season, no matter what fans might say about Irene Dubois. But actually, when it comes down to it, maybe we should blame the edit, after all.
RuPaul's Drag Race US airs on MTV in the US and WOW Presents Plus in the UK.
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