RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars loves a twist. The spinoff brings queens back for another go at the big cash prize (and also a nice boost in followers and booking fees), but every season tosses new hurdles for the queens to clear. The most enduring twist was ruvealed in the Season 2 premiere when it was declared that instead of having the bottom two queens of the week lip sync for their lives and only one queen earning the right to stay, the top two queens would lip sync for their legacy and the right to eliminate a bottom queen of their choosing. Thus dubbed All Star Rules, this twist changed the game forever — but forever’s time is up. The Lip Sync For Your Legacy has evolved into a convoluted mess of rules, production trickery, conspiracy theories and/or ulterior motives. All Star Rules are garbage, mama.

For proof of this, you need look no further than the mother series. The Lip Sync For Your Life is quite possibly RuPaul’s Drag Race’s single greatest contribution to the reality TV format. Giving the bottom two competitors one last chance to prove they deserve to stick around? It’s brilliant. Every episode of OG Drag Race ends with a duel. This high-pressure environment makes for great TV, and it routinely gives us some of the best moments every season.

Comparatively, you can count the number of All Stars lip syncs that compare with any of those hyperlinked above on one hand — maybe even just two fingers: “Shut Up and Drive” (AS2) and “Physical” (AS6). That’s not to say that there haven’t been other fantastic lip syncs on All Stars: Valentina’s redemption to “Into You,” Shea Couleé and Alyssa Edwards throwing down to “Neutron Dance,” Naomi Smalls’ backbreaking “Adrenaline” performance, Monét X Change and Jinkx Monsoon’s Designing Women monologue. All Stars routinely turns out very, very good lip syncs, but — the very nature of the Lip Sync For Your Legacy means that, by design, the lip syncs are going to lack that fire. How did we get here?

In its initial iteration, All Star Rules and the Lip Sync For Your Legacy resulted in a season where every move felt messily genuine (AS2), a season where queens felt terrified to be messy (AS3), and a season where the voting was incredibly messy (AS4). Overall, the queens played All Stars fully aware of the ups and downs to winning a lip sync and having their very consequential vote impact their chances of winning; Shangela eliminated three queens on All Stars 3 — and then the finale was determined by a jury vote. Even just revealing how you might vote could get you the chop, like Morgan McMichaels openly saying she would eliminate her biggest competition if she ever won. Instead of keeping you in the competition, the queens and the viewers realized that winning a lip sync put a huge target on your back. That’s a weird way to frame what should be the most exciting part of each episode.

Worth pointing out: the most iconic lip sync of this era was Alyssa Edwards and Tatianna to “Shut Up and Drive” — a lip sync that determined who would re-enter the competition. It was great because there were stakes.

The Lip Sync Assassin twist gave the franchise a nice shot of adrenaline in Season 5. Now the winner of the week would lip sync against a guest Drag Race queen whose performance abilities are renowned. If the winner of the week won, the queen they chose would be eliminated. If the assassin won the lip sync, the queen that the rest of the All Stars cast voted for would be eliminated. It’s so simple but so hard to explain. This still didn’t make the lip syncs feel high stakes, nor has it given us a ton of hall-of-fame performances. The one lip sync that did crack the canon — Trinity K. Bonet and Laganja Estranja to “Physical” — did so because the queens involved had personal stakes in the game. Forget the money, forget the elimination, forget the crown — Laganja and Trinity both had shit to prove and they cut loose like no two queens ever have on All Stars, at least not since Alyssa and Tatianna.

Now we’re in All Stars 8. After taking a nice li’l break from the elimination format for All Stars 7, All Stars 8 has brought back All Star Rules and the Lip Sync Assassins — and the format has hit a brick wall named Jimbo.

Jimbo is iconic. Jimbo is one of my all-time faves. Jimbo is maybe the most unpredictable queen in the entire franchise, and she manages to be unpredictable and impeccable at the same damn time. Jimbo is a miraculous queen — but lip syncing is not her forte.

But because pretty much everything else is her forte, she keeps winning challenges. That means that, because of these rules, we’ve gotten 3 Jimbo lip syncs in 5 episodes. Thus, the lip syncs on All Stars 8 have, once again, been average.

But it’s not just Jimbo’s fault. Now that we’re on our third season of Lip Sync Assassinery, the queens (and definitely the viewers) have poked all sorts of holes in the format. The $10,000 cash tip is incentive for a queen to win, but the queens have to weigh that against the $200,000 prize at the end of the season — a prize they might lose if they make an enemy and get the cut. As for the Lip Sync Assassins, they don’t get $10,000 for winning the lip sync. And if that cash tip has rolled over for a few weeks and is some multiple of $10,000, winning a lip sync means robbing their sister of money. For instance, Ra’Jah O’Hara is a fierce as hell lip syncer, but Jessica Wild stood to win $30,000. I’m not going to say that Ra’Jah phoned it in, nor am I going to act like Jessica didn’t kill it, but just clock Ra’Jah’s reaction when Jessica wins $30,000.

Good for both of them!

So we are at a point now on All Stars 8 where the queens don’t have an incentive to slay a lip sync, the one queen that keeps winning challenges can’t slay a lip sync, and the assassins brought in to slay a lip sync probably don’t want to rob their sisters of a massive payday. The only reason any queen has to really give it their all is if they themselves want to put on a show, like Aja LaBeija and Kahanna Montrese in the AS8 premiere, or Jasmine Kennedie in the most recent lip sync against Jimbo. Even then, there is a fire that comes with facing a sashay away that can’t be replicated, no matter how hot a queen’s between-me-down-theres is.

Imagine for a second what All Stars 8 would be like if instead of watching Jimbo go up against titans of lip syncing, we saw the bottom two fight it out. Darienne Lake vs. Monica Beverly Hillz! Naysha Lopez vs. Kahanna Montrese! Mrs. Kasha Davis vs. Darienne Lake! Kahanna Montrese vs. Jessica Wild! In the context of one of them going home, you know these lip syncs would’ve been hot.

This is why the Lip Sync For Your Legacy format, wherein the top two or (one) queens lip sync against each other (or an assassin) needs to be replaced with the classic Lip Sync For Your Life. The queens are invested in All Stars, literally. Some of them have spent upwards of $40,000 on looks for the runway. There’s a lot on the line, and I think the show is really missing that specific fight. Need yet another example? Just rewatch Jiggly Caliente in All Stars 6, sitting at the bottom and knowing that she can’t save herself.

We watched her cry in a parking lot instead of seeing her pound the stage.

I do still think that All Stars needs something to differentiate itself from the regular series. Maybe the winner of the week gets to grant another queen immunity. Maybe the group nominates one queen for the bottom two and RuPaul picks the other one. Maybe we bring back the points system and the queens with the two lowest cumulative points land in the bottom. Hell, maybe we get two lip syncs in an episode, a Lip Sync For Your Legacy to determine the week’s winner and we get a Lip Sync For Your Life to see who goes home. Whatever it is, no matter what, we gotta start seeing these all stars lip sync for their lives again. We need some new rules — and Dua Lipa has a Lip Sync For Your Life song for their implementation.