Don’t miss RuPaul’s Drag Race Week!
• Ten Tips for Surviving RuPaul’s Drag Race!
• RuPaul’s Drag Race Week: The Top Six Meltdowns!
• RuPaul’s Drag Race Week: The 6 most hilariously WTF challenges!
• RuPaul’s Drag Race Week: 12 Queens Who Deserve a Shot at All-Stars!
The wonderful thing about RuPaul’s Drag Race is that, compared to other reality TV shows, it can get away with playing it fast and loose with the challenges. Throwing the contestants a complete curveball is pretty par for the course when it comes to reality television, but the thing with Drag Race is that even the most insane tasks can be rationalized by what drag is: Doing whatever it takes to keep people entertained. that being said, there are moments when RuPaul manages to psyche out our wildest expectations, and these are the six best WTF challenges. For the sake of scientific accuracy, we created the WTF template as a means of calculating which challenge was the most insane:
- W – Warping of Reality
The more the challenge completely defies the laws of the universe, the more insane it is.- T – Total Unexpectedness
The further out of left-field the challenge comes from, the more insane it is.- F – F*ckery to the Contestants
The more it destroys the queens’ minds and causes them to spiral downward into madness …
Well, you get the point. Anyway, onto the list!
#6: Season Four’s The Fabulous Bitch Ball
If you take into consideration how varied the challenges were, the only logical conclusion we could draw from season four is that it was the season where officially sopped giving a f*ck. Whether the queens were fighting off hordes of zombies, designing boats, or debating their presidential platforms, nothing was too wacky and crazy for season four. That being said, The Fabulous Bitch Ball ranks pretty high-up there, not only because it forced the queens to design and create canine-inspired outfits while dog-sitting a bunch of rowdy puppies (Phi Phi O’Hara getting to third base with a hound? HILARIOUS.) but also because it involved a musical number where the final four dressed up as sexy mutts. Amazing.
#5: All-Stars‘ Queens Behaving Badly
Some of the best challenges in Drag Race herstory involve the queens eating total sh!t and doing it with a smile on their face. So when All-Stars decided to have the queens unleash their inner bad girls, no stunt and no prank was deemed too bonkers. The power-couples had to do everything from squirting whipped cream down strangers’ pants, to walking around on all fours with a leash like a dog, and all of it in broad daylight on one of the busiest streets in Hollywood. But the kicker to all of this? The fact that Manila Luzon and Latrice Royale were sent home because Latrice spent too much time trying to find a can of sardines in a trash can.
#4: Season Two’s Starrbootylicious
Drag Race has never shied away from embracing human sexuality, as exemplified by the ever-present Pit Crew or the cameo by Jesse Santana in season four, but for season two’s Starrbootylicious, the queens went full-blown whore, and the results were pure magic. Not only did the queens do sexy strip-teases while fratboys showered them with singles, but they also had to walk the streets of Hollywood, selling their (*ahem*) cherry pies for five dollars. Nothing exemplifies how amazing this challenge was then Pandora Boxx cooing the line, “Anybody that’s eaten my cherry pie raves about it.” I have no doubt that Pandora’s cherry pie is moist and delicious.
#3: Season Four’s WTF: Wrestling’s Trashiest Fighters
Of course you knew this one was going to be on our WTF list. I mean hell, it has WTF right in the name! Just one season after RuPaul declared that drag was not a contact sport, the queens were paired up in the wrestling ring to take out their aggression the old fashioned way: Blunt force trauma! They beat each other with powder brushes, slammed each other against the mats, and at one point, Latrice even launched Kenya Michaels like a tiny Puerto Rican cruise missile aimed right at LaShauwn Beyond‘s face. Until Logo finally licenses a Drag Race-themed Super Smash Bros. video game, this is the closest we’ll ever get.
#2: Season Three’s Hair Extravaganza
Having the queens design couture out of odd material is an integral staple of RuPaul’s Drag Race. At this point, the queens have made dresses out of Goodwill clothing, dollar store crap, Christmas ornaments, curtains, money, and zombified carnage. But making a dress out of hair? That’s just mean is what that is. But in season three’s Hair Extravaganza, the queens were given the impossible task of making couture dresses out of wigs. Surprisingly, the managed to pull it off with aplomb: Raja‘s cotton candy cocktail dress and Manila’s buzzing bee looks both received high grades, but it was Yara Sofia‘s Poodle-Scorpion hybrid look that took top honours. For the record: “Poodle-Scorpion Hybrid” is also my answer whenever people ask how I’d like to die.
#1: Season Two’s Country Queens
America’s Next Drag Superstar needs to be able to sell complete crap as if it were solid gold, so every season invariably features the queen’s hocking goods and services with bright eyes and big smiles. That’s not the crazy part. What’s absolutely insane about Country Queens is just how far into the realm of screaming, frothing insanity they were able to take such a simple concept. In any other reality TV show, selling shortening would consist of nothing more than looking into the camera and going “MMM-MMM, SHORTENING IS SO GOOD IT’S LIKE BUTTER BUT IT ISN’T!” But on RuPaul’s Drag Race, it involved dressing up like a giant chicken, rubbing shortening on your crotch, and having grown men wear table cloth camouflage so they could pretend to be babies. For taking the simplest concept and turning it into pure, blissful lunacy, Country Queens is Drag Race‘s most hilariously WTF challenge.
About Jeremy Feist
