Ron Does Stuff

It’s my day off today and you’re not going to stop me!

Yes, yes, I know I am a couple of days late, but work has been really busy the past few days and I have just been trying to catch up with everything. Also, I am just doing this for fun and not even for any monetary gain so why am I even worrying about sticking to a schedule?

I also thought a lot about which language to use before deciding to watch this because sometimes, there really is no better way to describe what’s happening in Drag Race Philippines other than in Filipino. I know if I did this during the previous season I would have probably written it in a mix of Filipino and English, so that’s what I am going to do today~

And immediately we are greeted with a set that is so much bigger than last season’s, where all the girls seemed like they were crammed into a sardine can. Just look at this fight where even the ones who weren’t involved had to get up close with those involved because the space was so cramped!

Arizona Brandy is up first and well…she wore clothes. The Empi on an IV was a funny touch though!

Arizona’s lackluster entrance look becomes even more obvious because Matilduh enters the Werk Room in an outfit with all of the ruffles and shit. And drama is immediately started because Matilduh says why is Arizona even in the Werk Room in the first place? I did love Arizona’s Babaeng Loofah crack though! Quickly followed by Matilduh not eating the chip Arizona pulled out of her outfit.

Tiny Deluxe is up next and I have unfortunately been spoiled because Kandy Muse retweeted (re-Xd?) a tweet comparing the two of them and I gotta say she’s not wrong. And Arizona quips that Tiny is Babaeng Loofah Number 2 and you just know she’s going to be this season’s narrator. Does that mean she gets further along? We shall see!

Nicole Pardaux enters and…that face. She paints a little old even for her self-proclaimed MILF persona and the filters on your Instagram when you’re in boy drag because that is NOT how you look in the confessionals! And Arizona is already laying down the running Babaeng Loofah joke for this episode, at least.

Captivating KatKat enters and I won’t say anything because she talks on Twitter and I’ve already been mobbed by a fandom before way back when Blackberry were still the phone of choice and I did not enjoy it. The laugh I let out though when Arizona Brandy described her as uugod-ugod!

M1ss Jade So enters and she is an experience. It’s giving Gia Gunn. It’s giving Kimora Blac. It’s giving Gia Gunn and Kimora Blac in a Wait, What? episode.

Then the RuMail starts and I am guessing this is like RuPaul’s Drag Race season six with two first episodes. They quickly head on over to the mini challenge photoshoot with BJ Pascual and make the requisite BJ jokes and honestly the shine has faded for me with BJ Pascual ever since he went to watch Here Lies Love.

The mini challenge is drawing heavily from America’s Next Top Model with the tarantula special guest. I really wanted to pick the photoshoot from Cycle 1 with Elyse Sewell and that beautiful snake but I can’t find a video so we’ll have to make do with this one from a VH1 season.

As the girls de-drag after the shoot Captivating KatKat easily slips into bitch mode and reads Arizona, Nicole, and M1ss Jade So. It’s all been friendly reads so far, but is she going to be the villain of the season? Is she going to be the drama? We shall see!

Matilduh wins the mini challenge and gets a P20,000 tip, which is almost the same salary I get for a month’s work. This is no shade to her but to the billion peso company I’m working for. Hi capitalists!

The first Maxi challenge, on the other hand, is immediately the girl group challenge because let’s be honest, Pop Off, Ate! was a smash and quite frankly better than most of the girl group songs that were put out at the time by other franchises. Just watch the Flexbomb Girls! I still know every word to Turing’s verse!

Because of her mini challenge win, Matilduh gets to choose her verse first and let the other queens fight it out, but what ends up happening is that everybody else gets to pick first and Matilduh ends up getting the first verse since she was the last one to choose. I don’t know if this episode is going to end well for her since production usually punishes those who don’t stand up for themselves.

I just can’t with how much funnier this is to watch for me since I know the references? Titikman? Maghanda na si Moophs hahahaha!

Once they start recording it is…a chore for some of the queens. Nicole Pardaux hits Matilduh for not having as strong a verse as the rest of them but girl. You weren’t on beat! And if someone like me who isn’t that very knowledgable about music can tell, then you’re really off beat!

Tiny Deluxe, who early on stressed that she’s more of a live singer than a lip syncer, ends up struggling during the actual recording. Never share what you’re good at because that will set you up for a failure storyline.

After the recording and the frankly messy choreography practice where Nicole felt she was cast aside, the girls get ready for their first runway and KatKat and M1ss Jade So get to talk a little but about being trans, emphasizing that it wasn’t something that they chose to be since who wants to be discriminated, after all? Being trans is just who they are.

Then we swiftly head to the actual performance — the editing is so much smoother than the previous season — and it’s good! There’s a little something that’s missing that I can’t quite put my finger on but it is not at all a bad performance. It just seemed to lack the X factor that the Flexbomb Girls had when they began to perform. Maybe because the choreography wasn’t as fluid? Or because some of the girls looked like they didn’t know their own verse?

The runway theme is feathers and Tiny, baby, those are feathers stuck on a corset I am so sorry. And Nicole those aren’t enough feathers, especially when you put it right besie M1ss Jade So who said you want feathers I’ll give you feathers! That Ibong Adarna look was by far the best of the bunch.

And the production is really going in this early because Mawma Pao is already asking who should go home and wht on the very first episode. The other girls haven’t even arrived yet! All the queens descend on the Nicole and Tiny so we now have our bottom two I guess!

I fully thought M1ss Jade So was going to win this one but it went to Arizona Brandy instead and she gets P80,000! Which I would need to work several months for before I earn that amount at my job! Thank you capitalism!

Tiny and Nicole are the bottom queens and…they performed? There was some tepid clapping at the end and I guess that polite clapping is my reaction as well. For a while there I thought Tiny had the edge but she killed her momentum when she had to involve those chickens in the lip sync. And guess what maybe she did kill it because she’s safe!