Was season 13 the worst season of Drag Race ever? I think so and it’s not the queens’ fault.

Drag Race season 13 was switched up a bit by the producers of the show in a hope, that I see, to make it more interesting and exciting for the viewer, but instead was just incredibly infuriating.

Let’s start with the first episode where we see two queens come into the workroom and then they’re immediately shipped off to the main stage and forced to lip sync against one another until one goes home and one gets to stay. This happens again and again and again in the episode and it’s so repetitive and so boring, and I feel the excitement and anger that they try to bring in with the losing team and the winning team just wasn’t there and the payoff they were hoping for didn’t happen.

So then the season carries on as normal. It’s quite nice and we get to see the queens doing their thing, we get the same usual challenges, it’s good except for the fact that no one really goes home. To put it in perspective Drag Race UK started on the 1st of February and ended on the 22nd of March however Drag Race season 13 started on the 1st of January and ended on April 23. So Drag Race UK started a whole month after season 13 and ended a whole month before season 13 and why? What do we get out of those extra two months of challenges and lip syncs? Really? Nothing. It was a waste and it was so frustrating.

Far too often were queens not being sent home, queens were being saved when they didn’t deserve to be saved and the double shantay was completely wasted! I still hold my ground that Kandy Muse should not have made it as far as she did in the competition, and then certain people went home when I really don’t think they deserved to and a double shantay could’ve been used there instead.

And then we had the reunion! And usually the reunion is fun and interesting because you get all the queens back together and there were so many queens this season that you knew there was going to be a lot of drama but…yeah. I watched 15/20 minutes of the reunion because nothing was happening! It was filled with filler music videos that I could not care less about, RuPaul talking to the contestants but they didn’t really get to talk to anyone else and so there was no drama and it was just so boring. Why would I care about ‘this is your life on drag’? I want the excitement and the drama and the ‘fan favourite’ and the ‘you don’t love me’ and all that, but it just wasn’t there.

So skipping forward from the terrible reunion we then had a lacklustre finale, and I get why they did it, but last season it was interesting to see the queens battle it out in the living rooms, and I quite liked that element to it. But this time they have an empty theatre where the queens had to perform as if people were there and then we got to see people in a car park with masks and signs and stuff cheering them on while they were watching everything happening on a big screen like the rest of us. I still don’t know if that actually happened or if that was just put in afterwards to make it seem like there was some sort of audience there.

So not only did these queens have to do horrific challenges where no audience was there, they also had to do a finale with no audience. I would’ve much rather done it in my living room because at least I’m in a safe space and I feel secure, not on a stage in front of no one that’s very open and very awkward. I’m just not a fan of that, but moving on, the lip sing songs were fantastic! They were Britney Spears! You don’t get better than a Britney Spears song to lip sync to and yet they were so underwhelming. I was also surprised that the queens who got to the top two did, I mean Symone deserve that, I had goose bumps all through her performance, but Kandy…really?

In the end I’m so glad that Symone won because I wholeheartedly believe that she deserved it, however I am more happy that the season has finally ended. This is possibly one of the worst seasons of Drag Race just because they tried to switch it up so much when the original formula wasn’t the issue. It’s the amount of seasons that they’re putting onto our screens that is too much. If they took the time out between each season so you had Drag Race US and then UK and then Australia and then Canada then at least if you wanted to watch the different areas you could without it becoming too over the top. With UK running alongside the US the UK queens seemed to be so much better in terms of personality than the US ones who seem to rely more on money and style that it made watching season 13 even worse because you are constantly comparing the two.

I do hope when it comes to season 14 in probably like two months that they have learnt from their mistakes of season 13 and will put things to right again. I would like them to maybe take more time in between each season, so say they do a UK season at the end of the year and a US season at the start of the year or something like that, then at least you’re not constantly being bombarded by Drag Race every week. But I think they like money too much to actually do that. I just hope that season 13 was an anomaly and any season that comes after this does not follow the same sort of style because I will not want to watch it.

What did you think of season 13?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding