Posted in: TV | Tagged: drag race, rupaul

RuPaul's Drag Race Season 17 Ep. 3: "Monopulence!": Some Thoughts

RuPaul's Drag Race Season 17 rolled on with "Monopulence!" with the Monopoly! Ball testing the queens' sewing and designing skills.

MTV's RuPaul's Drag Race is back with even more balls this season – right after both big openings! In case you're behind, last week's episode had some gaggery and not necessarily in a good way, leaving us with the entire cast of 14 queens heading into the ball challenge. Naturally, with a challenge to measure the queen's taste, design, and sewing skills, there were several balls that were dropped.

This week, the queens were challenged to create an opulent original look inspired by the classic board game Monopoly. Queens were assigned colors based on the property cards they drew: orange, red, yellow, blue, and green. The monochromatic looks were fierce; let's get into whose looks ate and who struggled this week.

Starting off strong with the winner of the week, Miss Sam Star left not a single crumb and absolutely devoured the runway in her sapphire art deco drop waist pageant gown dripping in Ostrich and sparkles and rhinestones – Mama, Trinity the Tuck raised her right. When I tell you I am obsessed with her, you best believe I mean it. I only hope she holds her own in the comedy challenges because I am living for her looks.

Arrietty and Suzie Toot were both visions in crimson, with Suzie doing a really cute Betty Boop-style devil gown, which I'm living for. For the yellow properties, Acacia Forgot is giving a classic 80s Dolly Parton-inspired number, which wasn't bad, just safe, same as Lydia "Butthole" Kollins. Kori King was giving Big Bird/Tweety Bird a sexy Halloween number, but the body was right.

Hormona Lisa was some kind of a "sexy goldfish," and I'm so overwriting about her and all her stupid drama. She's just bumbling around Drag Race like Urkel, being all, "I didn't know that, aww poor me," a girl should be better or, at the very least, less annoying about it. She took her dress home and glued all her own rhinestones and jewels to it, then Lexi Love called her out on it to the producers, and she had to spend the morning of runway day ripping off everything she glued on because they weren't the materials provided. Honestly, if Lexi were shady, she would not have said anything until they got right up on it and really screwed her over with no time to do anything but disqualify her, but there's no way production would let that happen after saving her last week. Besides, Miss Love is far too genuine to pull that, which I do appreciate.

Hormona absolutely knew what she was doing with that little stunt, though, and just hoped nobody had the balls to call her out on her shady, sneaky cheating. Has Ru gone soft? Do the producers just not care? She should have been kicked off last week, or over this, or better yet, just never cast at all. I'm tempted to just stop saying her name at all – "the queen who must not be named" is already taken, though. We really need some kind of redemption for her if she's going to stay in this competition because I haven't had this visceral reaction to a queen in a while. Even Silky Nutmeg Ganache got a kinder edit the longer she stuck around, but it still didn't thaw the ice on her for a lot of fans watching.

Speaking of shady moves, Onya Nerve and Jewels Sparkles were beefing in the workroom over Onya taking trim Jewels was going to use after she asked and was told, "No, I'm using this." I swear, this season feels like queens are just being selfish with no regard for how they come across to everyone except Ru and the judges. And Onya was at the top this week because of how she sold it on the runway, and Jewels was safe – do they do this just for the Untucked drama?

This lip sync is ruffling some feathers already because it's clear that Joella is out of her caliber here – we are in season seventeen, and RuPaul's Drag Race celebrates sweet 16 this year – how on EARTH do queens come on this show and not at least know how to create a garment for themselves? I mean, come ON, I feel like Michelle Visage saying this, but how do you not do your homework and research and know that the past several seasons had a design challenge, if not a ball, early on?

Lucky Starzzz gave the judges something new and actually stepped outside her comfort zone, and it really wasn't that bad. Was it rough? Yes, of course, but given a chance to grow and figure it out, I believe she would blossom. Her look felt at least a little more on brand than Lexi Love's this week as far as fitting the "opulent" brief. Do I love Lexi? Yes. Was her look a 90s runway-style mini-dress? Also yes. Opulent? Not really.

Lucky is giving vintage drag race – it felt like something on an earlier season, and yes they had the opportunity to show more back in the day, this is season seventeen and times have changed by this point. Apparently they want to see more from the utterly generic LA queen without an original look or thought in her head. Great, this is going to make for a truly not-forgettable season of Drag Race. Needless to say, Lucky was not lucky and the Badonka Dunk was chocolate, making her the first queen this season sent home.

RuPaul's Drag Race season 17 airs on MTV on Friday nights.

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