AJ AND THE QUEEN Season 1: RuPaul’s New Show Deserves A Bigger Audience Than Just Drag Race Fans

Laughs, tears, grifting, and a rubber breastplate – what more can anyone ask for in a dramedy? With Netflix’s newest series, AJ and the Queen, your TV screen is filled with all of this and more.

Now, before I sat down to watch AJ and the Queen, I expected a lot of camp, a lot of jokes that were lower than the lowest-hanging fruit, and a non-stop RuPaul’s Drag Race hype machine. Not to say that these are bad things, but a lot of camp and a lot of edgy jokes can go south really easily. Thankfully, season one of AJ and the Queen brings it on home, albeit slowly.

The show stars its co-creator, the iconic RuPaul Charles as Robert, a middle-aged gay man who performs drag as Ruby Red, a fiery queen complete with red wigs and her own theme song (of which I CANNOT get enough of). Robert has everything going for him – a hot boyfriend, enough money to open his own club, and an RV big enough to hold all of his drag as he goes on a cross-country tour to perform as Ruby. What could go wrong? Well, everything. Turns out the hot boyfriend is a grifter and he was in fact conning Robert for months in order to gain his trust and steal his money. But at least Robert still has the RV? And hidden in the RV is the other half of this dynamic formula – AJ.

AJ is a self-sustaining kid grifter that lives in the apartment above Robert; played by Izzy G, AJ is just a small kid in a big beanie, white tank, and Timbs who’s just trying to get by through means of conning the gullible adults around them. The logistics of how the two came together isn’t entirely important but all you need to know is this: AJ needs to get to Texas to see her Pop-Pop and Robert is going to take her there – OR ELSE. AJ’s a grifter, remember? She uses whatever trick she has to get what she wants or needs.

With each episode, the unlikely duo make a different stop of Ruby Red’s tour and take another step towards an understanding of one another – from dealing with shady local queens to rescuing and then returning a puppy, to putting on a drag rendition of Grease, they learn a little bit more about each other and eventually become like a family, despite their initial qualms and annoyance towards one another.

Though it’s a bit of a tired trope to have a roadtrip bring two opposite people together, AJ and the Queen makes it fun and blue, yet heartwarming and serious. Here are a few reasons that this show deserves a wider audience than just RuPaul’s Drag Race fans.

The performances

Rupaul is such an iconic figure and has amassed such an otherworldly, almost untouchable level of fame and clout that it can be hard to imagine her taking things down to a human-level and showing real emotion and vulnerability as an actor – in AJ and the Queen, she totally nails it.

Though some of the punchlines and expositional reads feel a little forced in the beginning, Ru as Robert/Ruby brings it all out a little at a time and ends the season on an extremely strong note. From the beginning, Robert is a tender-hearted yet pragmatic person who does what he needs to do to be a good citizen while Ruby is as confident as she is tall and takes shit from absolutely no one – she is a fierce queen after all. RuPaul’s ability to balance between Robert and Ruby Red shows just how talented and charismatic he truly is.

The breakout performance of the show, however, is most definitely that of young Izzy G., the child actor who plays our AJ. AJ is a tough 10-year-old girl who dresses like a boy and whose actions are just a reflection of the world around her. The world is unkind and harsh, so why shouldn’t AJ always be ready to strike back?

Despite AJ’s foul mouth and instinct to always screw someone out of their money, she holds a surprising amount of wisdom and compassion in her tiny body that you expect from a 10-year-old who is always by herself.

As the season progresses, we learn that AJ has an unreliable mother who shoots up heroin and works as a prostitute. When she’s off doing these things, AJ is left alone to fend for herself, with only their (Verizon) phones to keep in touch. AJ’s outright contempt for her mother never goes unmentioned and she really seems to hate her. However, there are instances where her true feelings show, and they are complicated.

One of the biggest insights is in Episode 7, “Jackson”, where AJ rescues the aforementioned puppy. After coming across a homeless couple who can’t/won’t properly take care of it, AJ screams that the owner is a “horrible, horrible mother” and Robert ends up buying the puppy for her. Well, it turns out that even though AJ gives the puppy all of the food, love, and attention it needs, the puppy still cries and whines throughout the night. In the end, AJ gives the puppy back to the couple and cries, telling Robert that even though the puppy’s mom was bad, the puppy still missed her. It’s not subtle, but it’s an effective allegory for AJ’s relationship with her own mother.

Despite everything, AJ loves her mother and knows that she needs to be with her, and that’s why she needs to go to Texas; she needs her grandfather’s help to sober up her mom and create a happier life. And yeah, I choked up a bit at the puppy bit, but I blame it more on Izzy G.’s performance as she cried her little heart out; not only for the puppy, but for herself. I think it’s safe to say that the kid’s got talent and AJ is a great character for her to show us.

The Characters

Along with Robert/Ruby and AJ, there’s a bevy of diverse and interesting characters that give the show its real charm. There’s Louis (played by Michael-Leon Wooley), Robert’s blind roommate and best friend, who used to perform with Ruby under the drag name Cocoa Butter, before a stroke took her vision.

There’s also Tia Carrere’s Lady Danger, an eye-patch wearing woman who makes a living injecting queens with bogus fillers, using actress Lorraine Bracco’s stolen credit card, and being an accomplice to stealing Robert’s money. She’s over-the-top hilarious and brings most of the camp and fun to the show, even though she’s very nonchalant about plotting to – gasp! – kill Robert, following him on his cross-country tour and failing hysterically at every turn to do him in. Despite being a pseudo-villain, she’s still shown to be a (slightly) sympathetic character, as is everyone else in the show.

Which leads us to two of the most polarizing pair of characters the show has to offer – AJ’s estranged mother, Brianna, and Robert’s boyfriend, Hector Ramirez, who turns out to be con-man Damien Sanchez.

One of the stronger aspects of AJ and the Queen is that it shows people as complicated beings – nobody is perfectly good or perfectly bad and more often than not, there’s a reason they all behave the way they do. With Damien, it’s clear that he’s not a good dude but we also learn that he has baggage of his own. However, the show’s portrayal of Damien’s character is sloppy at best and bi-phobic at worst, in terms of how Robert reacts to Damien having had sex with a women and then making it an addition to Damien’s mountain of betrayals.

Since Damien is with Lady Danger as she tries to hunt down Robert (for reasons long forgotten), it becomes clear that Damien feels deep shame from using sex with men to get what he needs – be that becoming Robert’s boyfriend in order to steal from him (“Let’s get something straight. I never did anything to him. He did stuff to me. Repeat that.”) or going to the gay bar to find a john when Lady Danger runs out of cash (“I’m done with all of that!”). It’s interesting to see Damien’s motivations and feelings but it doesn’t negate the awful things he has done to Robert. If there is a second season, I hope that Damien’s storyline is cleaned up better and the writers decide on whether or not he’s worthy of a redemption.

Whereas Damien’s characterization is a little scattered, Brianna’s is sympathetic and complicated. For a long time, there is no real introduction to AJ’s mom outside of a snide remark or two. However, as we the audience are slowly shown who Brianna is, we find that each detail is more heart-breaking than the last. Yeah, she leaves her daughter alone so she can shoot up or prostitute herself, but she is shown to be a kind, struggling mother just trying to do her best.

When she realizes that AJ is gone, Brianna quickly sobers up and does everything she can to find her daughter. To be clear, Brianna is not the cliched “hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold”. She is a bad mother, and her actions put her daughter in danger every day, but she loves her daughter and that’s something to root for.

The Lip Sync and Musical Numbers

It wouldn’t be a show about a drag queen on tour if it didn’t have amazing musical performances for us to be dazzled by, and thankfully AJ and the Queen delivers. From a Tina Turner drag-off to Chad Michaels as Cher in her rendition of “Waterloo”, the show really delivers on its songs.

Other notable scenes are the aforementioned Grease musical, where Ruby Red as Sandy and AJ as Danny dance and sing together in perfectly adorable harmony, along with a lovely dance performance of Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real” in the penultimate Episode 9, “Fort Worth”. In “Fort Worth”, Robert/Ruby reconnects with his childhood friend, played by Jane Krakowski, and they perform the song after reminiscing about the good old days. It’s a fabulous moment that really shows the RuPaul’s talents have aged like a fine wine.

However, the best number of the entire season goes to Louis, who performs live on stage as his old drag persona, Cocoa Butter. After replacing Ruby in the Miss Drag USA pageant, Cocoa Butter takes Ruby’s “Unspeakable Joy” and turns it into a “Joy to the World” medley with nothing but a piano, a gorgeous red dress, and her rich voice. She brings down the house, but sadly, doesn’t snatch the crown.

In Conclusion: AJ and the Queen Season 1

Despite some stumbles and clumsy writing, the first season of AJ and the Queen is a heartwarming, heartbreaking delight that lets you ride out every emotion while giving you a few laughs and some amazing drag, too. Despite being marketed to Drag Race fanatics the show deserves some recognition and a much wider audience, because everyone should immerse themselves into a story about people who may be different from themselves; they should see this familiar story told in a fabulous new way and they should give RuPaul and Izzy G. a chance. It’s their chemistry and their character’s love for one another that carries the show and everyone should experience it. In the words of RuPaul, everybody say love, and everybody see AJ and the Queen (probably).

What did you think of AJ and the Queen? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

AJ and the Queen is streaming on Netflix.