Werk from home: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ first-ever remote finale makes TV herstory

Lyndsey Parker
·Editor in Chief, Yahoo Music
Updated ·5 min read
Contestant Gigi Goode recreates A-ha's "Take on Me" in her living room during the 'RuPaul's Drag Race' at-home finale. (Photo: VH1)
Contestant Gigi Goode recreates A-ha's "Take on Me" in her living room during the 'RuPaul's Drag Race' at-home finale. (Photo: VH1)

Like many other TV talent competitions during the current coronavirus lockdown, RuPaul’s Drag Race had to remotely broadcast Friday’s Season 12 finale from the contestants’ residences. But the shanté-you-stay-at-home format posed some especially unique challenges for Drag Race finalists Crystal Methyd, Gigi Goode, and Jaida Essence Hall.

Would the top three’s sheer charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent (and, let’s be honest, a well-placed ringlight or two) be enough to compensate for the lack of professional lighting and editing — or would they just look like busted amateurs serving bedroom-queen realness? Would their apartment-bathroom beatdowns hold up under the scrutiny of the unforgiving first round’s neck-up, close-up, triple-lip-sync challenge? And most importantly, when they individually lip-synched for the crown, would they be able to bring it to the runway, when in fact there was no runway to speak of?

The answer to that last question specifically was an emphatic yassss. Crystal and Gigi in particular wowed during the solo round, giving wildly creative living-room performances that they frankly would have never been able to pull off on a regular finale stage. Gigi was the standout, somehow transforming her microscopic L.A. apartment into the Rotoscopic alternate comic-book universe of A-ha’s “Take on Me” music video — even serenading a black-and-white negative image of herself through that video’s iconic picture-frame portal, as she poutily lipped to Morten Harket’s Nordic falsetto. It brought new meaning to the term “A-ha moment.”

If there’d been an award for Weirdest Lip-Sync in Drag Race Herstory, however, the crown totally would have gone to the absolutely bonkers Crystal. Chirping along to Nelly Furtado’s early-aughts hippie hit “I’m Like a Bird,” the clown princess of Season 12 really was like a bird — two cuckoos, actually, with her googly-eyed mama-bird character spewing Exorcist-esque pea soup into her baby-bird alter-ego’s willing beak. (“I never thought that regurgitation would make it into Drag Race, but somehow it did, and I feel better knowing that her baby bird was nourished,” quipped befuddled judge Michelle Visage.) It was fascinating and freaky, very Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall or like an outtake from Peter Jackson’s X-rated Muppet caper Meet the Feebles. And it crossed the lines of typical drag (and the lines of good taste) into a different alternate universe with a popular of one: Crystal. There was a Methyd to her madness, indeed.

As for Jaida, she was in full Slayoncé mode, pushing her furniture to the window and wall and transforming her living room into Madison Square Garden, as judge Ross Mathews put it, for her hard-werking Ciara lip-sync and accompanying Tik Tok dance. However, the pageant pro seemed to be relying a bit too much on that body-ody-ody, and her performance, while flawlessly executed, lacked the originality of her competitors’ numbers.

Still, host RuPaul (who is apparently struggling without access to his regular makeup artist Raven, since he opted to just cover his mug with an Orville Peck-style facekini for both this Friday’s finale and last week’s remote reunion show) was so gagged that he advanced all three queens to the final socially distanced lip-sync of Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.”

And the ultimate survivor was… lip-sync assassin Jaida Essence Hall! Condragulations to the winner of this season’s one-hundred-thousand dollahs and the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar, because she deserved it based on her overall body of Season 12 work.

However, in my opinion, Gigi’s “Take on Me” was the coolest Drag Race finale lip-sync since Season 9 champion Sasha Velour’s literally wig-snatching rose-petal reveal, so I am sure we will see Gigi back on All Stars 6 (on which I suggest she reenacts another iconic animated ‘80s video, maybe Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”), and hopefully Crystal as well. But for those of you who can’t wait until then to get your quarantine-queen fix, All Stars 5 will premiere in just one week’s time, on June 5. You betta watch.

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