A first of its kind for an American reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race is a reality competition show hosted by the world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul. The show first premiered in 2009 and has recently released its fifteenth season.
The reality show is based on Rupaul’s quest to find the next drag superstar. Over the fourteen years of its airing, the show has found for itself a large franchise and has inspired several spin-offs and international versions.
Every season of the show, RuPaul selects the candidates based on the audition videos sent, and once selected, they are brought on the show and given tasks that they have to complete for every episode. Each episode ends with the elimination of at least one candidate till the last episode, where the winner gets selected by a panel of judges.
This season has brought along sixteen participants and five judges on the panel, including RuPaul, Michelle Visage, Carson Kressley, Ross Mathews, and Ts Madison. New episodes for the show are released weekly, bringing with them new guest judges every time. Season fifteen of RuPaul’s Drag Race was launched on January 6th, 2023, with episode ten being released on March 3rd, 2023.
The show is available for streaming on both Netflix and Prime Videos.
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 Episode 10 Storyline
The reality show, directed by Nick Murray, has been airing on television for the past fourteen years, and in its previous episode, we saw the drag queens celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. The show reached its 200th episode, and the theme for that episode revolved around relieving iconic moments from the past RuPaul episodes.
The episode was named “The Crystal Balls,” and the task for this episode was focused on recreating a legendary look from the previous episode but with a touch of their own ideas. Anetra ends up winning that challenge. The episode continues to follow its original format and introduces a maxi challenge which was a runway walk in a Crystal Ball, that has three different options for the queens’ looks.
At the end of the episode, the three contestants that are completely safe are Marcia, Malaysia, and Luxx. Sasha came out to be the winner of the task. A final battle took place between Spice and Salina, with only one having the chance to stay. The last task was “Lip Sync for Your Life” RuPaul chose Salina as the winner of the task. Unfortunately, Spice was eliminated from the show.
With eight contestants remaining, RuPaul’s Drag Race released the tenth episode of this season on March 3rd, 2023. The episode named “50/50’s Most Gagaworthy Stars” kicks off the queens in the Workroom talking about their performances in the previous episode. Marcia felt like she should have been among the top performers, and Loosey looked like she was becoming unhinged with every defeat.
The next morning, RuPaul visits the girls to tell them about their next maxi challenge. The challenge felt similar to the ones given in season three, season six, and season nine, but what made this one more interesting and challenging was the grand personalities that were to be interviewed. The challenge is based on improv, and it will be aired live.
The queens are divided into teams, though it would still be an individual fight. The guests to be interviewed are Charo, Frank Grande, and Love Connie. The queens are divided into three teams, Marcia and Sasha on one team, Anetra, Loosey, and Malaysia on one, and Luxx, Salina, and Mistress on the last team.
The interviews for the three groups were divided further into three categories, A walk-and-talk segment, something called ‘the activity,’ and a sit-down interview. Each team faced unique setbacks but managed to recover and complete its tasks. After the maxi segment was over, the episode moved onto the runway portion, the theme of which was “Night of 1000 Beyonces.”
Once all challenges were faced and done, the episode moved to the nerve-wracking portion, which revealed the ‘safe queens,’ the winners, and the ones that had to go home. Marcia and Anetra got safety this week, and Luxx, Loosey, and Mistress all rose to the top and found themselves safe. It was Sasha who was this week’s winner.
The Lipsync for Your Life battle took place between Salina and Malaysia, and just like last week, Salina impressed the judges and managed to get herself to safety. Malaysia was eliminated from the show.
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 Episode 10 Review
RuPaul’s Drag Race, a first of its kind, has been around for the past fourteen years. The show has given us some iconic drag queens and continues to be nothing but pure entertainment. The show is appreciated for bringing attention to drag culture and normalizing it in the mainstream market.
The show is always praised for its fashion themes. Whatever the contestants have shown throughout the fifteen seasons in terms of the runaway walks and creating literal art in the name of fashion is always genius. The show also has hilarious segments in its episodes, one being the Lipsync for Your Life challenge.
It is great to see what RuPaul’s Drag race is doing in terms of promoting drag and giving opportunities to drag queens to show themselves to the world, all the while keeping drag alive. And while the show is praised for being so drag-positive, it also gets criticized for using way too many swear words and having too many in-your-face sexual innuendos.
The show was also in hot waters with its viewers for, ironically, being transphobic towards trans-drag queens. RuPaul was in a controversy over his comment on trans drag queens, stating that he would not even let them on the show. It is disappointing to hear such statements from a gay member of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Since then, the show has made active changes within the script and has brought trans-identifying drag queens to the show. The show has tried its best to be as inclusive as it can be of all communities, but it was still shocking to see members of the same community dragging each other down and dismissing their existence.
The show, over the years, has continued to follow a set format of starting with a maxi challenge, followed by a runway walk, and closing up with the announcement for the week’s winners and the bottom two participants, who then indulge in a Lipsync fight-off.
The recent episode was the same, with the entire season focusing a lot on the core of drag, i.e., makeup. This episode brought with it three extremely huge and larger-than-life personalities, Love Connie, Charo, and Frank Grande. They are people that have an alluring charm to them, and that can be intimidating for a lot. It definitely felt like the case for Salina and Mistress.
Luxx, on the other hand, was very natural and fun during her interview with Connie, and so was Sasha with Charo. Marcia seemed to suffer not just during her interview with Charo, but her runway look also was downright sad to watch.
Loosey, who seemed on edge, did absolutely brilliant with her interview, whereas Anetra also managed to kind of pull it off. Luxx slayed her runway look, too. Seems like she was having a really good day. The others also manage to serve legendary Beyonce looks. Malaysia barely brought anything to the table.
Though Sasha was the winner for this episode, Luxx absolutely deserved the position too. Malaysia being selected as one of the two bottom contestants was an obvious choice, considering she did not really give off the confident drag queen vibes this time.
Our Verdict
Loosey seemed to be struggling because of her constant defeats, and the way she did not get to win in this episode either seemed off or likely to push her off the edge to create more drama. But what is a reality show that has no scripted drama?
Malaysia sucked a big time at the lipsync task too, which is the final box ticked off, leading to her getting eliminated from the show. As sad as it is to see her go, it is also painfully obvious that you must be confident enough to lead the room and have that aura around you. It is a drag, after all.
The episode was fun and entertaining with its wholesome and hilarious moments. This season is slowly but gradually reaching its end, and it is interesting to see how Loosey will turn the narrative of her defeat around and bring to the show the drama we all need in our life.
Our Rating: ⭐ (4/5).
