AJ and the Queen is a sitcom about a drag queen and a kid in an RV, and it never quite figures out what kind of show it wants to be. RuPaul stars as Ruby Red, a washed-up performer who travels from town to town in a beat-up 1986 RV with AJ, a recently orphaned 10-year-old stowaway. The premise is sweet. The execution is less so.
The show premiered on Netflix on January 10, 2020, and ran for one season of ten episodes. It was created by RuPaul and Michael Patrick King, the man behind Sex and the City. That pedigree should have landed something sharp. Instead, it landed something soft and occasionally baffling.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Ruby Red and AJ
Ruby Red is the heart of the show. She’s a big personality with a small bank account, and RuPaul plays her with the kind of warmth that made him famous. The problem is that she’s also a passive observer in her own story. She tells people to love themselves and accept each other, but she rarely does the heavy lifting herself.
AJ is the engine. Played by Izzy G., she’s a scrappy kid who talks tough and hides her grief behind a mask of bravado. Their dynamic is the reason anyone watches. AJ sees through Ruby’s BS faster than anyone else on screen, and the show is at its best when the two of them are arguing in the back of the RV.
The show tries to make AJ a symbol of resilience. She’s recently lost both parents, and the show keeps reminding us of that. But the reminders start to feel like a checklist. We get it, AJ is sad. We don’t need a new episode to tell us again.
The Supporting Cast
Michael-Leon Wooley plays Louis Bell, a fellow performer who goes by Cocoa Butter. Josh Segarra plays Hector Ramirez, who becomes Damien Sanchez. Katerina Tannenbaum plays Brianna Douglas, and Tia Carrere plays Leilani Kala’i, a performer known as Lady Danger.
None of them get enough room to matter. They exist to give Ruby and AJ a reason to perform, and then they disappear. The show is so focused on its central duo that everyone else feels like furniture.
“As the two misfits travel from city to city, Ruby’s message of love and acceptance winds up touching people and changing their lives for the better.”
That’s the official description of the show. It’s also the show’s biggest flaw. Ruby’s message is sincere, but it’s delivered in a vacuum. People are touched and changed, but we never see the work it took. The show skips the friction, and friction is what makes stories stick.
The RV and the Road
The RV is supposed to be a character. It’s old, it’s loud, and it’s full of junk. The show shows us the inside of it often, and there are jokes about the fridge being empty and the toilet not working. But the RV is a prop, not a partner.
The road itself is meant to be the adventure. Ruby and AJ travel from city to city, and each stop is supposed to offer a fresh lesson. But the lessons repeat. Love thy neighbor. Acceptance is key. The message is delivered with the same words in each episode, and the delivery gets dull fast.
There are moments of genuine charm. AJ and Ruby’s arguments are funny because they’re honest. AJ calls Ruby out for her contradictions, and Ruby calls AJ out for her stubbornness. Those scenes crackle. But the show can’t sustain that energy. It keeps returning to the same beats, and the rhythm grows stale.
The Comedy and the Drama
The show is pitched as a comedy-drama, and it struggles to find the balance. The comedy comes from AJ’s mouth, and it’s sharp. The drama comes from AJ’s backstory, and it’s heavy. Putting them together in the same scene often leaves you wondering which mode you’re supposed to be in.
The show leans heavily on broad physical humor. There are pratfalls, there are spills, and there are moments where AJ gets stuck somewhere she shouldn’t be. It’s silly, and it’s fine. But it doesn’t elevate the story.
The drama is where the show falters. AJ’s loss is real, and the show acknowledges it. But it doesn’t know what to do with it. It keeps bringing it up without giving it a shape. The result is a show that feels unfinished, like it was cut off before it could resolve anything.
The Message Machine
The show’s core idea is noble. Ruby travels around telling people to love themselves and accept others. That’s a message worth hearing. But the show delivers it with such frequency that it stops feeling like advice and starts feeling like propaganda.
Every episode ends with someone being changed. Someone sees Ruby perform, someone hears her talk, and someone walks away a better person. It’s a tidy formula, but it’s also a lazy one. Real change takes effort. The show skips the effort.
The show also spends a lot of time on Ruby’s past. We learn that she used to be a big star, but now she’s forgotten. That’s a solid setup for a comeback arc. But the show never commits to it. Ruby talks about her glory days, and then she moves on. The past is a mood, not a plot.
Where It Falls Short
AJ and the Queen has a good idea. It has a great cast. It has a premise that could have carried a season of sharp, funny, heartfelt TV. But the show never finds its footing. It drifts between genres, between tones, between messages, and it never lands anywhere meaningful.
The show is at its worst when it’s trying to be profound. It reaches for big themes—loss, identity, acceptance—and then delivers them in a way that feels thin. The show is at its best when it’s just AJ and Ruby bickering in the back of the RV. Those moments are real. The rest is hollow.
| Element | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Central relationship | AJ and Ruby’s dynamic is the show’s engine | AJ’s backstory gets repeated without resolution |
| Premise | A drag queen and a kid in an RV is a clever setup | The setup is underdeveloped compared to the message |
| Tone | Comedy and drama collide in a way that’s often charming | The collision never resolves into a consistent voice |
| Message | Love and acceptance are sincere ideas | The delivery is too frequent and too tidy |
Final Word
AJ and the Queen is a show with a good heart and a weak brain. It wants to be a road movie, a coming-of-age story, and a social message all at once. It can’t hold those three jobs. The result is a show that’s pleasant in short doses but exhausting over ten episodes.
The show’s score sits at 4.6 out of 10. That’s a fair assessment. It’s not a failure, but it’s not a success either. It’s a show that tried to do too much and ended up doing none of it justice.
AJ and Ruby deserve better than this. Izzy G. gives a performance that demands more material, and RuPaul brings warmth even when the script doesn’t. But a good performance and a warm presence aren’t enough to save a show that doesn’t know what it’s doing.
The show’s final episode wraps things up neatly, but the neatness feels earned. AJ and Ruby have traveled, they’ve performed, they’ve touched people. The show’s message is delivered. The show ends. It’s tidy, but it’s also forgettable.
AJ and the Queen is a show that means well. It just doesn’t mean well enough.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
