AJ and the Queen: 12 Course Meal Doesn't Digest Well

Back in the days when all small-town gay bars were drag bars, I went to a lot of drag shows.  I've seen Victor, Victoria, To Wong Foo, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, RuPaul's Drag Race, and Pose.  But I was unprepared for the world of AJ and the Queen.

RuPaul plays Robert Lee, aka Ruby Red, a drag queen so popular that she is showered with money at every performance, and has managed to save $100,000 to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening her own club (assuming a 20-year career, that's $96 per week, barely enough to keep a girl in eye liner).   But first she will take a cross-country drag tour of Trump Country, culminating in the Miss Drag America contest in Dallas.

But before he can leave (pronouns are interchangeable), Robert makes the mistake of depositing the entire $100,000 into a joint account shared by his new boyfriend Damien (Josh Segarra), who...well, you know.  He turns out to be a con artist who preys only on drag queens, assisted by his cartoon villain sidekick, Lady Danger.  When Robert calls the police on them, they start chasing him across the country to get revenge, but Damien developed real feelings for Robert, and wants to help or reconcile or something.

Feeling bloated yet?  It gets worse:  Tagging along is the adorable street-smart scamp AJ (Izzy G), homeless since her addict mother abandoned her, and trying to get to her grandfather's ranch in Texas (is that like the farm upstate where your parents send your aging pets?).  But AJ's mom is all rehabilitated and looking for her.

Got that?  Each episode consists of:
1. Ruby fairy-godmothering locals in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, east Texas, and other godforsaken places, none of whom expresses the slightest homophobia or transphobia.  AJ is the only homophobe in the entire cast, and she comes around quickly.

2. Ruby reuniting with friends in the drag world whom she  "helped when no one else would" (lots of these) and snarking at enemies who are jealous of her success.  Then she performs, to ecstatic adulation.

 3. AJ conning people or stealing something.

4. Damien and Lady Danger conniving.

5. Ruby's roommate back home, Leon, aka Cocoa Butter (Michael-Leon Worley), whom she "helped when no one else would," making jokes about being blind and trying to find AJ's mother or track down Damien, with the help of her police-officer boyfriend Patrick (Matthew Wilkas), one of several gay cops. Ok, all the cops in the series are gay.

6. AJ and Robert having long heart-to-heart discussions about self-actualization or "painful memories" or something that I skipped over.

In Dallas, the various plotlines come together in about the way you'd expect.  The only surprise is: Cocoa Butter performs in Ruby's place, as she is off handling a family emergency.

What I came away with:
1. Homophobia does not exist, anywhere, not even in the deepest of the deepest South.  Even the gun-toting redneck who Ruby meets in an east Texas trailer park is fine with gay men. He doesn't want his son to wear a dress, but Ruby turns him around.

Cocoa Butter tells us that she went blind when she finally decided to tell her "very Christian father" that she was a drag queen. He was fine with it,but she had a stroke.



2. All gay men are super-attracted to drag queens.  For instance, Officer Patrick just hooks up with Jordan (Constantine Rousouli, top photo),but with Cocoa Butter, it's "real."

3. Ruby knows everybody and helps everybody, and fixes everything but global warming (maybe next season).  I know this is RuPaul's vanity project,but come on, putting on a dress doesn't make you the Second Coming.

4. Constantine's bare butt is worth the price of admission.

5. I'm over-stuffed, like I ate too much and can't digest it all.  I'm glad I fast-forwarded past the heart-to-hearts, or I would explode.