The Story of Reality

Because Sherry Pie was disqualified from Drag Race AFTER the season ended, she is still, of course, in all of the episodes. What the showrunners have done to take the emphasis off of her involved editing out her confessionals and any scenes that focused mainly on her. If reality television was JUST reality, that would be fine.

However, reality television still has storylines. These are created using the raw footage (and some awkwardly produced moments) taken over the course of the season. Then the footage is edited together in a way to make the episodes have the basic emotional flow of a story. "This episode is about the two queens who fight all the time finding common ground." "This episode is about the underdog queen believing in herself and winning the main challenge." Etc. As an audience, this is what we're used to seeing.

So when they as much of Sherry out of the episode as possible, they still needed to fill time. In this case, they did it with Heidi. Heidi's storyline this episode was that she was considered the weakest one there, but then worked really hard in the main challenge, impressed her teammates, and pleased the judges. By the time we were to the judging panel talking to the contestants, it looked like Heidi was the winner. Moreover, in the way that we respond to storyline cues, it FELT like Heidi should be the winner.

Then, out of the blue, Sherry wins the episode. And that was jarring. And it wasn't just jarring because of all the drama surrounding Sherry and her activities, but because the way this episode was edited, you just don't get any sense or reason to believe Sherry did anything special. Her performance gets lost in the mix.

I think this season of Drag Race is going to really show how much story editing plays a role in reality tv. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, just that it IS a thing. It's rather facinating to witness.