IMHO "RuPaul's Drag Race" premiere: Tens across the board

I know this is a bit late, but hey - when's the last time you saw a drag show start on time? I meant to post this yesterday but things happen. (Every time a boybander is outed, a blogger gets his schedule effed up!)

Earlier this week Logo (our parent company, lest we forget) premiered its newest original show, the reality competition RuPaul's Drag Race. Despite having access to screeners and the preem online, I opted to forego them and sit down on the couch at 10PM with the boo and the cats like any other television viewer to see what the whole experience would be like in its native environment.

And our family has a new weekly obsession.

The thing that struck me most about Drag Race is that pound-for-pound, it's really not any "gayer" than a half-dozen of the other reality franchises out there. I'll admit, I was expecting a rather ramshackle production that tried to hard to be shocking and 'fabulous' and felt like amateur night at a small-town gay bar. (Well, some of the girls were pretty bad, but more on that later...)

But the show feels complete, with cleverly-designed challenges and a fun twist on the mentor/judge situation that has RuPaul Charles (as a man) play Tim Gunn and RuPaul (as the original supermodel of the world) play judge Tyra to the hopeful tuck-and-tapers. 

As a die-hard RuPaul fan myself, I think this idea is genius, because you can never get enough Ru. And as one of the contestants points out in the first ep, "you never really get to know someone until you meet them out of drag"; here, we thankfully get to see the man behind the breakout character and star that captivated the world back in the 90's and sent conservative parents scrambling for their remotes every time the video for "Supermodel" played.

Okay, on to the girls. Or not girls, rather - and I love that half of the show is about the men and half is about their drag characters, which again gives a nice window into what is really a form of performance art, and one that has been driven back underground in recent years. As someone who has never done drag (I know, I know, I'm a bad gay) but finds it wonderfully entertaining when done well, I loved the fly-on-the-wall look at what goes into building a character out of feathers, sequins and a ton of pancake.

As far as the contestants go it's a bit early to call anything but there are some standouts, for better or for worse. Nina Flowers is definitely the visionary of the bunch, but she has a bit of a dead-behind-the-eyes thing going on that's a little creepy ... I tend to like my drag queens with a bit more sass and I don't know if she can work it out when it comes to a battle of wits or wordplay.

I was actually kind of rooting for Pork Chops, because I have a soft spot for the big ladies and the old school of drag, which really meant something very different and served a different purpose when she got into the game so many decades ago. But she just didn't have the ... uh ... chops (ugh).

And can I say I'm loving the emphasis on diversity? At this point there's like two white American guys left, and one of them is a HOT MESS (I'm talking to you, Tammie Brown!). I think right now my favorites are Rebecca Glasscock and Bebe Zahara Benet, but I can't really tell you why.

So what'd you guys think? Hit or miss? Was I the only one who was more shocked by the ads for Boy Butter and porn sites than anything that happened on the actual show?