Pop Culture Advent Calendar, Day 3: Two Of 'RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars' Bring It

The highlight of a strong season. Death drops and pointing. Lots of pointing. YouTube

Once a day, until Dec. 25, we'll be highlighting a specific small, good thing that happened in popular culture this year. And we do mean small: a moment or image from a film or TV show, a panel from a comic, a brief exchange from a podcast, or a passage from a book.

What's that you say? Spike TV's Celebrity Lip Sync Battle is now in its third season?

... Well. How nice for it.

I'm aware of its work.

Hmm? What was that? You say some of the male celebrities lip-sync while dressed ... as ladies?

The Devil you say! 'Pon my word!

Look, I'll just say this once: Drag is no place for dilettantes. It's not a lark. It takes drive and dedication and legs that go all the way to the ground.

Are you content to watch the third lead from NCIS galumph through "Proud Mary" with all the verve and glamour of a high school jock dressed as a cheerleader on School Spirit day? Well then enjoy it. I don't begrudge you your small pleasures.

But know this: There's more. So very, very much more.

Take Logo's RuPaul's Drag Race, which recently completed its 8th season, thank you very much. And take, as well, the even-more-recent second season of RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars, in which, as the title suggest, past RDG also-rans returned to claw their way to the crown.

This 2nd All-Star season had its highs and its lows — the choice to have each week's two winning queens decide which of their colleagues will go home, instead of leaving that weighty task to RuPaul and the judges as God intended, flew in the face of the show's sacred contract: Drag is a meritocracy. It also served to rob the final lip-sync battles of that which is drag's very lifeblood: Drama.

But certainly this lip-sync battle — in which Tatianna (in opalescent white) and Alyssa Edwards (in black) throw down over Rihanna's "Shut Up and Drive," — stands a season, and a series, high point.

(It starts slow. But wait for the break.)

Previous Pop Culture Advent Calendar Entries

Day 1

Day 2