CHAD: I don’t mean to dismiss any of the other queens, but I have this idea that, at the start of the season, Ru thought it might come down to Shea vs. Valentina. As Michelle said, Shea is the “postman of drag” who delivers so consistently that you almost take her for granted, whereas Valentina was the promising young talent with charisma and the “it” factor and a ravenous fanbase. Do you think that theory holds any water? And how do you think things have gone post “Maskgate”?

MANUEL: That seems like such an astute theory of how the season could have played out! Ru does love herself a young upstart (see: Tyra, Adore) and Valentina filled that role to a tee. Sadly, she shot herself in the foot with that lipsync, proving that being a seasoned queen (in Chad Michaels’ words, a “professional”) can often push you over the edge, especially in the eyes of Ru. That felt like such a softball lipsync, too! The “Valentina stumbles and comes back even stronger” storyline was there for the taking—in fact, they pretty much recycled it a few weeks later when Shea got her first taste of being in the bottom two! I think if Valentina had made it this far we’d be looking at a very different playing field going into the finale, where it really does feel like anything can happen. I do think there’s a way the show never really recovered from “Maskgate,” which became an infamous moment for the show’s fans that wasn’t much addressed on the show itself. Valentina left a sort of vacuum in the work room that was never quite filled. Of course, that this season has been light on the DRAMA with challenges that felt like a Greatest Hits of past seasons didn’t help. Instead, we ended up getting an extra week of Nina’s self-sabotaging narrative and the same of Alexis’ not-quite-villain-but-also-not-flattering-either-edit. The queens, it seems, ended up shaping the overall arc of the final half of the season: this is what RuPaul’s Best Friend Race looks like, a story that’s commendable in terms of LGBTQ representation, but perhaps not quite as riveting when it comes to must-watch TV.

CHAD: For many, many seasons, we typically saw a final challenge that required the queens to star in one of Ru’s music videos with various gimmicky and cheap special effects. But this week’s challenge is lifted entirely from All Stars 2-- how do you think it served as a showcase for the queens’ talents?

MANUEL: For all my criticisms of this season leaning heavily on what worked in the past and failing to really deliver any new or exciting riffs on past challenges, I have to admit that I like this finale challenge more than the usual music video one. It’s a perfect balance between the pre-packaged, “here’s what you need to do” challenges (see: cheerleading, 9021-HO) which I always feel needlessly limit what a queen can do and the free-for-all, “show me what you’ve got” challenges (see: TV pilot). There’s enough structure, especially with Todrick Hall’s coaching, that there’s an even playing field. But there’s also enough room to put your mark on what you’re doing and, more importantly, actually showcase talents and skills that real-life drag queens use when they’re out in the world. I think this is why the lipsyncs remain such an integral part of the show and why they help weed out weaker, or less-experienced, competitors. It brings the world of late-night bars and club performances onto the show—and that’s what “Category is…” felt like. In between Shea’s killer dance moves, Sasha’s Cabaret-like choreo, Trinity’s showgirl outfit, and Peppermint’s jaw-dropping vogueing, they all got a chance to shine. Nevertheless, I did miss the cruel “one of you will be cut from the video if you don’t make it to Top 3” threat that hovered over that final challenge in seasons past. Which is just another way of saying, I wish we’d gotten a “Read U Wrote U” with only 3 verses last year, if you know what I mean.

CHAD: On one level, the live performance aspect of the challenge seems a little less impressive of a final product than the music videos, but in fact, I think it was a much better showcase for the queens. Todrick Hall did a great job of catering the segments to each queen’s personality, but also put the pressure on. If there had been a bottom two this week, who would have been lip syncing?