Did they purposefully dress as the most fashionable couple in the Wild West?
It’s Snatch Game week which can only mean two things: abominable accents and mild disappointment!
Black Out 2: Electric Boogaloo
Because Joe Black was back for all of 5 seconds and the only thing she accomplished was turning RuPaul apoplectic no one is in any rush to mourn her 2nd elimination and instead turn to speculate on whether or not Tia Kofi is now a lipsync assassin – the general consensus being that we’ll wait for the third one to see, but how could you not call someone whose signature move is smashing their kneecaps into the ground a lipsync assassin?
She must have the strongest knees in Britain.
There is of course also the fact Lawrence Chaney has now set a Drag Race UK record by winning 3 challenges in a row
(Envy Peru on Drag Race Holland also has 3 but Angele Anang on Drag Race Thailand season 2 holds the record with 4 consecutive wins). Whether you think Lawrence deserved those wins is another story because quite honestly A’Whora should have won for the Daytime TV challenge, Bimini should have won the Fashion Frenemies episode and Lawrence was charitably dragged through last week when Bimini should have just won the episode outright.
But while she celebrates Tia is once again being grilled about her fashion choices, this time by sans-seagull Ellie Diamond because we really needed to rehash that conversation for the fifth time and Tia once again promises us a waist and a nebulous concept of fashion, while Sister Sister keeps her newly sculpted face firmly looking down and hopes nobody will notice as she skates by again.
Snatch Game!
I love that every season everyone always gets very excited about Snatch Game and then every year we are incredibly disappointed by most of it – every year like clockwork but this Snatch Game seemed particularly bad, mostly because RuPaul shouldn’t be hosting it if he is going to stop the show dead in its tracks to have the word “bellend” explained to him when seasoned British hosts Alan Carr and Graham Norton are right there. But there was also the fact most of the queens were flops and left Bimini as Katie Price to do ALL the heavy lifting, and lifting she was
Seriously, even Gemma Collins as Kind-Of-Out-Of-It-Gemma-Collins was doing better than most of the queens!
I’m not sure we’ve seen a queen being allowed to answers every single one of the questions since Jinkx Monsoon did Little Edie in Season 5. It was such a spot on impersonation but the best part of it was that there was no malice behind it – any other queen would have gone IN on her because that’s the low hanging fruit and Bimini had RuPaul eating out of her hand the moment she said “The nipples are the eyes of the face” – which yes is stolen from unsung pop culture well The House Bunny but who cares? It was certainly better than self proclaimed comedy queen Lawrence Chaney merely reading off a SparkNotes version of Miriam Margolyes’s appearances on The Graham Norton Show
and getting not a single laugh from ANYONE which only caused her to panic and further the painful diatribe to the point of awkwardness. It just wasn’t going to work from the very conception of the idea to be her because Miriam Margolyes is already such a caricature of the “horny old woman” that you can’t possibly exaggerate her any more than she already is, and Snatch Game is as much more about exaggeration than it is accuracy. The best bit of the performance was the really pissed off look she gave Tayce when Ru laughed at her joke instead of Lawrence wending her way through the Laurence Olivier anecdote
What made it worse is that we’ve all watched the Miriam Margolyes Highlights Reel on YouTube – we’ve been shut-ins for a year, there’s not much else to do! So we’re very familiar with these stories so when she started telling them badly we knew.
I’m curious to know who Tayce was going to be prior to pivoting to Jane Turner as Kath – I imagine it was Naomi Campbell and after being told off for using the horned hair twice that she decided she couldn’t do that again after the Gay Icon runway. Her performance was perfectly fine – the look was SPOT ON but I’m not sure why the judges were describing it as “surreal” when you have Bimini as Katie Price next to her talking about how her implants were held at gunpoint in South Africa and that she discovered her horse cheating on her so she didn’t have time to write down the answer
The most surreal thing about Tayce’s performance was the accent that couldn’t stay Australian for more than three words at a time.
And you really know you’re onto a winner when all it takes to make Ru laugh is to rhotacize “press” as “pwess” – although it was her pronouncing “orifices” as “oforiceses” that was the highlight of the performance for me. And I was genuinely shocked that Ru wasn’t falling over himself laughing at A’Whora lisping her way through a truly cursed and uncanny Louis Spence impersonation
It’s a very flattering Louie Spence illusions – like if Louis Spence created a Picrew avatar. I truly don’t know what the judges had against this performance, especially saying that she didn’t go big enough – did they miss the point where she whipped out her two beanbag legs?
Or you know, this nonsense reveal?
Quite why she revealed to a bodysuit of a bedazzled women’s body I can’t tell you – Tia’s muscle vest from the Reveal Runway must have been kicking about somewhere unless she burnt it during the hiatus out of shame. But at least A’Whora was creating a moment for herself that Sister Sister as Psychic Sally did try to get in on by saying “I knew he was going to do that!” but the editors didn’t cut to her because by this point even they’ve forgotten about her – her talk with Ru didn’t even make it into the episode!
Although her performance as Psychic Sally wasn’t bad
it was just very predictable because we’ve seen every shade of psychic and medium done on this show with varying degrees of success – it’s such well trodden ground at this point that maybe we retire them to the Beyoncé Snatch Game Cupboard?
But I’m not sure even Sister Sister’s precognitiveness was half as repetitive as Tia Kofi’s performance as Mel B in which the only thing she seemed to know about Mel B was that she once had a relationship with Eddie Murphy
But like, literally not even an utterance of the Spice Girls. And I think what went wrong is that she was taking a leaf out of Raja’s book with her Tyra Banks Snatch Game in which she just made the same joke every time – the only difference was that Raja’s escalated to the point where she had blood coming out of her eyes
Tia’s started and ended with “Eddie Murphy has a penis” and I honestly don’t understand how she came to the decision that that was the best way to play the character when the wealth of Spice Girls jokes ARE RIGHT THERE. I was so mad at Tia this episode, flames on the side of my face mad. Would her Dame Shirley Bassey have been better? Probably because we wouldn’t have had to hear about Eddie Murphy’s penis for minutes on end.
You know how they put a soft ban on queens doing other queens for Snatch Game ever since Roxxxy Andrews’s turn as Alaska on All Stars 2? I’m going to need the same treatment given fictional characters just to ensure that Matt Lucas’s Little Britain universe gets no more airtime, especially if you’re not even going to be able to use the name of the character
And we’ve seen this a few times like Bob as Uzo Aduba and BenDeLaCreme who was just Downton Maggie Smith.
And I genuinely didn’t know it was possible for anyone to have an emotional attachment to a Little Britain character but apparently Vicky Pollard is a fundamental piece of the relationship between Ellie and her twin brother – what does “family resonates so much with my entire upbringing” even mean?
And while the impersonation was actually quite good (find me a boy who went to school in 2007 that can’t do a Vicky Pollard impression) it didn’t strike me as particularly funny – again mostly because RuPaul roadblocked all of her answers because he didn’t know what a bellend or “being tossed off” meant and was ironically looking like a bit of a bellend but also because I think I would have preferred her Sharon Osbourne.
All that being said one of the highlights of the game was Gemma Collins monotonally saying “wanking” to explain “tossing off” to RuPaul
I imagine it had been a long filming day and we know what those do to Gemma Collins.
A Snatch Game Ranking:
- Bimini as Katie Pwice
- A’Whora as Femme Bodied Louis Spence
- Tayce’s Wavering Australian Accent
- Sister Psychic by virtue of everyone else being a bit crap
- Ellie’s Totes Emosh Vicky Pollard
- Tia Kofi’s Spiceless Mel B
- Lawrence Chaney’s Miriam Margol-NO
Queens of the Stone Age
I apologise now if the images for the runway aren’t of the best quality but the lighting on the runway was HORRIFIC – not quite Canada’s Drag Race bad but just overwhelmingly bright and Iplayer did not cope well with streaming it – I hope it’s back to normal next week.
The runway this week was a Prehistoric themed runway which is delightfully niche and has a multitude of ways half arse it – a tiger print dress does not a cavewoman make – but there is also the possibility of really fun dinosaur runways that were sorely lacking on this runway except for Tia Kofi
I actually like this look, I just think she made the mistake of being a pterodactyl which are these fairly muddy shades of brown and red when there are a variety of similar dinosaurs with much more fun colour schemes, the scaphognathus is a personal favourite (Hi, I was a dinosaur child.) I also think she should maybe have been less literal with the headpiece which looked a bit like your mother made it for you because were cast as a stork in the nativity play that had to find enough roles for 60 children. It was a fun look and I wish more people had gone full dinosaur instead of Generic Big Cat Bone Woman
You absolutely cannot wear an 80s cocktail dress, a beehive, hold a cartoon cat skeleton, put on a bony mask and call yourself “a 90s supermodel cavewoman diva!” – none of this Patsy Stone costume is any of that! And then I did feel doubly sorry for Sister Sister (I didn’t really, don’t worry) because A’Whora came out with a perfectly fitted and contoured 3D printed bone mask with a matching corset
I didn’t love the glittery modesty bikini underneath, it looked a little bit medical and like an afterthought after the BBC told her they needed to censor the look a little bit.
But I truly cannot believe there was no footage of A’Whora delicately applying this work of art and turning around to see Sister Sister wearing a set of model monkey mandibles glued to a face mask. RELEASE THE TAPES.
But because the judges had decided to hate A’Whora this week they completely swept over how intricate and beautiful it was, save for the back which was a stringy nightmare and could have been hidden with more of a statement wig and I fully don’t blame her for throwing her coat down like she was performing a finishing move in a WWE tournament when she was put in the bottom and eventually called safe
I’d have a thrown a tantrum too!
Lawrence was more deservingly in the bottom 3 with more of a copout than Sister Sister
How long are we going to have to wait for the judges to tell Lawrence off for wearing the same dress every week? I suppose I should just thank God it wasn’t latex again but we have seen this shape now 4 times in 6 episodes and it’s not like she can’t do anything else, we all saw how good she looked in the Diana Rigg Gay Icon costume!
Ellie at least managed to step out of the realm of bodysuits and chaps and showed up as Teenaged Pebbles Flintstone
Which as a concept I like, the execution? Eh. It reads a little too modern rock and roll for me, even with the bones in the hair it feels out of place within this runway, and there were ways of doing something modern and still fitting in, Bimini after all came out in a knock off Iris van Herpen dress and passed it off as primordial soup but DRAG!
It’s one of the best runway performances of all time and it was so simple, the gentle movement of her arms to make the feathers flutter
100% stealing this idea for Halloween this year in which I will be a Sexy Ghost Ostrich.
Once you’re over how beautifully the dress moves you can move onto her face which looks the marble statue of an Elder God come to life and about wreak untold havoc on the world
It’s a face that could destroy entire kingdoms – everything about this look is perfect and I fully believe Bimini could win the entire season off the back of it alone.
While Bimini went for a soft and floating runway walk, Tayce was all over the place, leaping and bounding from one end to the other clad entire in fur dressed as what she described as “a voodoo priestess” which is problematic for a variety of reasons but I’m glad she was the one that said it. And fun fact, A’Whora actually made this outfit several years ago while she was at college
I found the mouthpiece (both her crotch mouth and the mouthguard) to be a bit distracting and didn’t add anything to the look but the judges didn’t mind ebcause they were fixated on the pads you could see beneath her tights but no matter how much they zoomed in on her legs I can’t see them
Or at least not in a way that would be noticeably distracting from more than 3 metres away.
A Pre-Herstoric Runway Ranking
- Bimini bon Bacterium
- A’Whora’s Bone Tits
- Clan of the Tayce Bear
- Tia-dactyl Kofi
- Patsy Stone Age
- Lawrence Chaney’s Tiger Print Gown
- Pebble-dashed Ellie Diamond
After all that Ellie Diamond and Sister Sister are both told they’re safe for the week – a decision I truly don’t understand more because I feel like everyone should have been given a critique this week and I need both of them to have some sort of ~Big Moment~ or leave.
This leaves Lawrence, Tia and apparently A’Whora as the bottom 3 while Tayce and Bimini live it up in the top two – a distinct sign on how poor a Snatch Game this truly was when they can only find 2 tops.
It was an obvious runaway win for Bimini this week and it’s nice to know the judges aren’t sleeping on her anymore and Tayce and A’Whora are both safe leaving Tia and Lawrence in the bottom 2. It’s interesting to note that The Vivienne also landed in the bottom 2 this far from the end which is lining up nicely for the Lawrence win that the show is obviously pushing for, a little more subtlety would ne lovely.
Don’t Touch Me!
Tia and Lawrence find themselves lipsyncing to Cathy Dennis’s “Touch Me” despite the fact Jessie Ware is sitting right there – I always find it weird when they have a musical guest and don’t do one of their songs.
The writing really was on the wall for Tia and didn’t help that she could barely lift her arms above her head because of the wing membrane which was making her look even more uncoordinated than before and all she could really do was hoik her dress up and hope to glamour everyone with her legs
and she introduces us to another signature Tia Kofi move, shaking her bony little bottom
and it seems to the Tia Kofi choreography is catching on because Lawrence Chaney has her own go at the Kneecap Crusher
It wasn’t a particularly good lipsync for either of them and against any other cast member they probably would have been sent home but as this was Tia’s 3rd time in the bottom 2 and was showing no real improvement week on week it felt the right time to cut her loose (especially because next week is a sewing challenge and nobody wants to see that again)
And with her hosting a big weekly watch party and several other online discos I hope she is managing to invest some coin into her drag because she really could be phenomenal and I eagerly await her return to an All Stars in 2 or 3 years time.
And so 6 Queens remain
