And we’re back with a new episode of Drag Race France Season 2! Like I said in the previous post, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of promotional YouTube content for Drag Race France like they have for Drag Race Mexico where they post episode teasers, so you guys will have to be fine with me posting sorta-connected videos to these posts!
Vespi is the second eliminated queen this season, which is now really going full steam ahead. Let’s find out what happens this episode!
I got to say, this is only the second elimination but it is already hitting the queens hard. Cookie Kunty, who was the one to send Vespi home, is actually crying over her departure. Piche, who was close to Vespi, is understandably crying as well. In fact, Vespi’s departure is making Piche’s win feel a little bittersweet, and she says it’s the first time in years that she’s actually cried. She declares that there’s no way she’s getting eliminated now, and girl that’s practically daring the producers to get you off the show.
It’s pretty heavily telegraphed n the Nicky Mail (?) that this week’s main challenge is going to be an acting challenge. But before that we get the reading challenge and I am excited to see what the girls come up with. Piche seems particularly confident and says the queens better have life insurance and yes.
And you know what? Piche delivers. That reincarnation dig at Cookie Kunty? I WAS FULL ON JINKX MONSOON CACKLING.
Punani’s “meh” read for Kitty Space was also genius. LIKE GIRL. And while I wasn’t vibing with some of Cookie’s earlier read the “prototype-finished product” read for Mami Watta had me Jinkx Monsoon cackling again.
This was a really good reading challenge compared to other currently airing season so I would have been fine with anyone winning, but it rightfully goes to Piche. She deserved it for that reincarnation read alone. What I am not vibing with are the joke prizes for winning the mini-challenges, but maybe this is a French humor thing? Somebody explain!
At least Piche gets to assign roles this time around for the Maxi Challenge, which isn’t just an acting challenge but an improv challenge as well, with the queens in charge of creating their characters and their lines. Hopefully, we get another ETB card moment!
Piche assigning roles generally goes smoothly until it gets to the role of anchor. Tensions arise when Piche, Sara Forever, and Punani want to take the two roles, but Piche pulls the “I have the power to assign roles” card and gives one of the two anchor role to himself. Drama.
And it looks like Piche may have set herself up to be sent to the bottom two because the bit we see in the rehearsal is…not it. In fact, the queens don’t seem to be doing well with improvisation at all. Kitty Space, in particular, performs horribly. My poor Southeast Asian sister.
In the lead-up to the runway, Moon talks about her mental health struggles before starting her hormone treatments, saying that she constantly thought about suicide since she could not understand what was wrong with her. Piche makes the excellent point that trans women have a high suicide rate and that this is something that should be addressed.
Mami Watta shares her struggles as well, saying that she’s long felt that she’s a trans woman but has hesitated to “cross that barrier” just yet because she fears that it might just be what kills her religious father. It really adds another layer to what Mami already shared about her family dynamics in the previous episode.
Kitty Space also shared her won story with trans-identity, saying that it was something that she considered growing up because people had always considered her feminine. And what fascinates me about Kitty’s journey is that doing drag made her realize she just wanted to express her femininity, and that by doing so it made her more comfortable with her male body. Truly something the patriarchy and toxic masculinity can learn from.
The runway theme this episode is Night of 1,000 Dalidas and while I love learning about each country’s gay icons I do wish they included the reference photo while the queens were walking the runway. Other franchises can do it, surely France can as well!
There is an interesting thing that happens on the runway though when some of the queens end up wearing the same outfit — like #Kimonogate but French. Punani and Moon are inspired by the same Dalida outfit, but it’s pretty obvious that Punani has the higher budget. Does that make her look more beautiful that Moon’s handmade but earnest one?
Moon hasn’t posted her outfit on Instagram just yet!
We then proceed to the improv challenge and…it’s something? Once again there may just be cultural nuances that I may be missing or the translation may be off but this was a challenge for me. I had a hard time getting into it.
But apparently some of the queens were really funny according to the judges, which tells me that maybe the comedy or the translations weren’t just up to par with what some of the queens were giving! As expected though, Kitty Space is in the bottom, along with Mami Watta and Cookie Kunty.
Sara Forever becomes the first queen with two wins, while Kitty Space sashays away. Je suis triste at losing the sole Asian in the cast but she really did the worst, let’s be honest. At least there’s Snatch Game next week!
Ron Does Stuff 
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