[Braden]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

I disagree with the idea that a predictable winner is boring. Someone shouldn't sashay away for doing well, it's very unsatisfying since it undercuts the winner's achievement then since they only won because the frontrunner got eliminated for having a good track record.

It destroys a natural narrative in favour of a contrived VH1 narrative. Imagine if Alaska got sent home in AS2 or if Ben didn't quit and both she and Shangela got the boot in favour of Trixie (I love her, don't get me wrong but she's the most undeserving winner ever). Look at Season 9, the ending of that series wasn't made more entertaining by the surprise top 2, it completely let all the air out of the balloon because Shea and Trinity were the obvious frontrunners.

I say this as someone whose fave is Monique but Manilla should have won the whole thing, I love Trinity too but her inevitable win is gonna be dampened by the fact that she wasn't going up against the best.

How do you know Latrice wouldn't have beat Manila in a normal lip-sync set-up? All is fair under this format, nobody should be handed a win just because they're doing the best up until that point. There are still viable and deserving winners left in the competition. Plus, we don't know Naomi's reasons yet. It could be anything from 'I don't like Manila' to 'yeah, Manila was a threat' (good on her, if so).

The format of this season is set up for a VH1 narrative. You even said in the previous thread that production and Ru know what lipsticks are pulled before the lip-sync happens, so any 'natural' storyline can be altered, by that logic.

I can only speak for myself, but I actually really liked the lip-sync set-up at the season 9 finale. I wasn't even a Sasha fan but it freshened the format up, Trinity was able to pick the person she wanted to lip-sync against, and all of the lip-syncs were enjoyable. Only last season, when it became more about reveals than lip-syncs, it become tiresome imo.