The Crackening

After the lipsync India Ferrah is channelling some serious Mean Girls “One time, she punched me in the face. It was AWESOME.” over being beaten by Yvie.

Then in the grand tradition of All Stars (unless you’re Bebe Zahara Benet) India has to reveal her lipstick and in a turn of events that surprises nobody, least of all anybody in June of 2020, her choice for elimination was Derrick. It was almost a unanimous decision except for Jujubee who voted for Mayhem and decides to tell her as much, to be fair she gives pretty solid reasons but it cuts deep with Mayhem considering they are such old friends and Jujubee should be aware she has much more to offer than Derrick’s inexhaustible amount of Britney references.

This is kind of why I hate the Allstars format, this isn’t the drama and “high stakes” I find fun, but it does at least result in my favourite phenomenon, Drag Queens with Straws:

Juju insists it wasn’t personal except I kind of feel like saying that you laughed at Derrick doing a Miley Cyrus impression that sounded like Danny Devito doing Don Corleone more than Mayhem remaking her Meme is a very personal attack.

And just when you thought Juju was on the rise as the outlier and villain of the series, Cracker decides to pipe up that she was apparently kept up all night tossing and turning because she eliminated Derrick Barry and thinks she should have white-outed Ongina’s name onto a lipstick

Very that Ongina.

Who would have guessed Cracker would have been the stealth villain this whole time? Although apparently every queen did because allegedly Cracker is quite difficult to work with and I CANNOT IMAGINE WHY. And when she gets called out for it later and explicitly told it is because she’s a bit of an egotistical nightmare her immediate reaction is to call bullshit and then latter laments that she has no idea why people think she is difficult. GIRL, BLAIR JUST TOLD YOU. Blair St. Clair, Drag Race’s universal nice girl.

Love is in the Air

The challenge this week is for the Queens to form groups of threes and each write a verse about their secret celebrity crush, Ru reveals that his celebrity crush was Ed O’Neill, HOW WAS IT NOT EL DEBARGE? The teaming up was weird because as it turns out all of them are just singing the same song, there’s no change in genre, tone or tempo – it’s literally just 8 of the same verse and Shea doing her Shea thing and showing everyone else up.

The teams are and their crushes are:

Team Season 10:
Blair <3 Hannibal Lecter
Cracker <3 Sylvester Stallone
Mayhem <3 Mr. Rogers
Team Superhero Fetishists:
Shea <3 Chadwick Bosman
Mariah <3 Jason Momoa
Ongina <3 Henry Cavill
Team The Rest:
India <3  Her Fiancé RJ Justin Timberlake
Jujubee <3 John Stamos and Greek Yoghurt
Alexis <3 Daddy Yankee?

Team Season 10:

Blair chose her teammates because she believes they have a very good pre-existing work relationships, which is fair they must have toured together for awhile but she has overlooked the fact that Mayhem was eliminated in a challenge wherein she was overshadowed by Cracker being Her Most Cracker (I still maintain that Dr. Dil was not funny but here we are, a whole Dr. Dil schtick later – may she never return).
The group butt heads pretty quickly because Cracker is taking it upon herself to write the verses (and being obscenely proud of rhyming “puppets” and “Muppets” while Blair and Mayhem sit in the background sharing A Look

The recording session doesn’t exactly alleviate the clouds of their group dynamic; while Mayhem is recording her verse about Mr. Rodgers (absolute daddy) Cracker is seemingly snipping in with lyric changes? I couldn’t tell what was going on? It was very badly edited and ham full of knife sharpening sound effects and shade rattles: like there was a particularly blood thirsty rattlesnake on the loose in the studio who happened to stay around for the choreography session because apparently Cracker opting to throw a pillow off the stage instead of passing it to Blair is the level of shadiness this show is trying to go with, gone are the days of cocktail throwing. Was Cracker maybe slightly on her high horse after getting a bizarre amount of praise for her middling vocal performance on a thirst track about Sylvester Stallone? Sure. Is choosing not to lumber tiny Blair St. Clair with two pillows with a bigger combined mass than her during a dance number shady? No.

Team Superhero Fetishists:

A lot of this group’s time seemed to be wasted trying to get Ongina out of her Cracker-induced funk and also probably desperately handing Ongina throat lozenges because as it turns out she has completely lost her voice and can’t sing a note to save her life during which Mariah tries her absolute best to not cackle at Ongina rasping out lines about how hot Henry Cavill is

Mariah really doesn’t have much room to talk though considering her own singing style is very reminiscent of Mayhem chewing on marshmallows and Shea is left to realise that no she is not in fact captaining the GE2, she is very much the captain of the Titanic and Ongina’s Laryngitis is a rapidly approaching iceberg. At this point I think the Queens fully believed they were being judges as teams, because there was literally no other point of having them in teams considering every verse was identical, so the choreography was really her only lifeboat and she certainly used it to her advantage.

Team The Rest

Elephant in the room, who the flying fuck is Daddy Yankee? Is this was Americans felt like when The Vivienne started doing impressions of Kim Woodburn? He’s as much of a celebrity to me as India’s Fiancé RJ  but at least I’ve seen RJ on India’s Instagram before! Luckily India changes to… Justin Timberlake *sigh* – when can we, you know, leave him? This team’s lyric writing was questionable, save for the apparent lyrical genius of Jujubee rhyming “blouse” and “house” – Bob Dylan who? India is meanwhile making Laganja references for no reason except for the fact needless pandering to Ru worked pretty well for everyone in the last challenge – or she entirely mixed up Laganja Estranja and Chris Crocker which isn’t the most difficult thing to do in the world. Their recording session is mostly fine, India is getting wildly overshadowed by Alexis and Jujubee and is in desperate need of amping up the sex appeal.

Seeing the fast arriving failure India decides to hand over the choreography duties to Alexis who promptly teaches them how to do the Soft Shoe Shuffle

Sex on a stick.
Jujubee takes over and I’m not sure it got a whole lot sexier

But at least it’s closer to the vicinity of sexiness than your grandfather trying ti get something off his shoe. It’s no wonder that this groups reaction to Shea’s choreography was to literally shit a brick

The Main Stage

Soju has left the chat.

Joining us this week is Tess Thompson:

Also Madison Beer but she says all of 4 words and was apparently a complete nightmare behind the scenes of Celebrity Drag Race so, skip that and on to the main performance!

It’s a bit of a mess to be perfectly honest – it’s hard to have a stand out moment in a performance this low energy and repetitive which somehow also manages to somehow look under rehearsed – Mariah just sort of saunters around with the absolute fear of God in her eyes and looking like she has actually pissed herself

Shea is the clear standout of the whole thing, her verse is witty and sharp and most of all she has the attitude and confidence to pull it off, not to mention her look is adorable

Speaking of outfits, the other two teams went very pastel and pinks and then there’s Alexis, India and Jujubee looking like limited edition Furbies

India is barely intelligible and Shea, Mariah and Ongina playing around with a giant hairdryer in the background entirely steals focus from her. Alexis does a great job of setting the tone and gets a big ol’ belly laugh from Michelle for mentioning how Daddy Yankee makes her feel very gassy (I’m going to need an explanation on when and where Michelle Visage will accept a fart joke.) The other big laughs are for Mayhem’s reveal of her crush being Mr. Rogers (she was actually intelligible this time) and Blair for just about every line of her love letter to Hannibal Lecter – it was by far the best comedic verse, and obviously written by Miz Cracker, so props to her for that. The best part of it though is Madison Beer clearly having no idea who Hannibal Lecter was

I would say as a whole that Team Season 10 were the clear winners but Shea was in a league of her own so there was no real way of justifying putting her in the bottom with Mariah and Ongina, so they swap in India for being less interesting than a giant hairdryer.

THE RUNWAY – The Skin You’re In

The Tops:

Could anyone but Shea have won this runway? It’s so Goddamn good! Save for the bit of the runway where the judges just start shouting the names of every black historical woman they can think of – but the fact even the shoulder blades were bedazzles on and you’d be forgiven for not noticing because of those hypnotic Sir Hiss nipples.

It’s just so right, Mariah’s face is a work of art and the colour and texture on her is utter perfection, we have no choice but to stan.

The Fines:

Who knew a couch’s vagina could look so good?

The fit is impeccable, Juju’s figure does not get the respect it demands and deserves. My one issue is maybe the wig’s curls were a touch loose, it looked like the whole thing was about to topple.

I really like this look from Blair but for this runway? I’m not digging it (apparently I’m a stickler for rules, who knew?) I do think the highlight and contour of the pink is ever so slightly off and is verging into Monet X Change’s horrifying Lovecraftian panther-pig and it is after all a tailored coat and after a whole season of Gigi Goode being gassed up every episode for hers I’m a little over it.

She looks like a very glamorous bowl of bran flakes.

The Bottoms:

After a long night of hooking, trade didn’t like the session so he had gutted me and set me on fire. But you know I didn’t die. I had crystallized. And now I’m a glamazon, bitch, ready for the runway.

Serving up some Neighbour Wilson realness. I hate this with my whole heart, and what kills me most is that the judges obviously couldn’t see her face AT ALL.

If your outfit can ever be described as looking like it’s from Dancing With The Stars, you know you’re on to a loser, although personally it reminded me more of a Hershey’s bar.

The Reckoning

So Shea is the winning queen and the bottom 3 (I see it’s another year of inconsistent bottoming) are Ongina, Mariah and India.

The backstage deliberations are much the same as always, lots of “you know how much more I can give!”s and “You know me”s. Ongina’s frustration with her performances so far comes to a head and she vaguely alludes to wanting to just bow out because Mariah and India have done distinctly better than she has. This then sets Cracker off because she suddenly sees VILLAIN EDIT written on the wall and ponders that “it doesn’t do me any favours to put Ongina down” – except it clearly has, what are you talking about? Meanwhile for this entire debacle Shea is in the corner conducting intense interrogations in the most awkward sitting position because first of all she has an incredibly tight corset one, secondly she’s very tall and those chairs re very low and lastly she can’t move her neck because of her neckpiece

And so she sort of has to swivel like a sexy Dalek.

Shea changes into that staple of every New York drag queen, the Abraham Levy holographic football cleat looking dance number

as she faces her Lipsync Assassin:

Alyssa Edwards dressed as a cat toy.

It’s a really fun lipsyc, no ridiculous stunts, just a good show from both of them but the win is so obviously Shea’s the moment she does that little side step across the stage and dry humps the floor

even Alyssa prowling up her Alyssa Edward’s Dance Mount

isn’t enough to get it and Shea gets a tip of £20,000 which just feels correct and her choice for elimination is Ongina.

I’m sad to see her go, especially after everyone has been begging for her to get on allstars, it can’t have been easy and I think people forget that Ongina lowkey put the whole franchise on the map with her Viva Glam advert and coming out as HIV+. It’s really sad that her experience was a little marred by pettiness, and she has gone off about it on her Instagram – this season is SALTY.

NEXT TIME:

Carol Baskins is SHOOK.