Symone dressed The Cat in the Hat BUT FASHION! being given a tour of Utica’s fetish gear is Peak Drag Race.

With the UK series successfully dodging the makeover episode I had some hopes for the American version doing the same but alas, they’ve found a work around.

Elliott with Two Ta Tas

Elliott’s departure is very quickly glossed over other than a quick recount of the 4 attempts it took to get rid of her before Utica moves on to the fact that being in the bottom 2 has re-energised her (dangerous final words) and she is now pulsating with the power of the spirit – Utica edges closer and closer to going full conversion doorknocker with every confessional.

Symone’s look gets the necessary praise from the other queens that the judges didn’t get to properly give her because somehow she wasn’t the top last week, has anyone worked out why? The outfit was a homerun and she unarguably got the most screentime during Snatch Game – and not in a bad Utica slideshow of horror way! Answers on a postcard.

Tina is just a *little* hung up on the fact she didn’t even place top for Snatch Game and has now lost 2 comedy challenges to 2 different queens who are abjectly not marketing themselves as comedians – we call this The Lawrence Chaney Arc. It’s just a touch embarrassing for someone who clomped their way into the competition dubbing themselves as New Yawk’s Impresario of Comedy! and in true LifeTime movie fashion, Tina’s spiralling insecurity lead her to attempt to cut her own hair and to be kind it looks like she did it with a blunt knife while drunk crying after downing the entire hotel mini fridge

so now she has both a bad haircut and owes the hotel $500.

PSYCH-ick

For this week’s Mini Challenge RuPaul has organised for the queens to meet Char Margolis a self-described “intuitive psychic medium” and the winner of this challenge is whoever manages to cringe the least. Spoiler alter: nobody wins.

In true grifter fashion Char chucks out a few banal prompts to see who bites such as “Has anyone here changed their mind about someone else here?” during which Kandy looks THOROUGHLY guilty and constantly glances at Rosé

apparently Rosé was too bland for Kandy during the first couple of episodes, which are only statements of completely true facts because she only really seemed to come alive during the Rusical challenge.

Inevitably they were always going to bring up someone’s traumatic past and it was the unlucky turn of Tina Burner whose dead father had apparently come to apologise for being unsupportive during which Tina sat there and tried her best to leave her own body

This development is never mentioned again and was dropped like the hottest of potatoes but just to make things that much worse with Char “seamlessly” transitioning from Tina Burner’s trauma to Char telling Utica that the ghost of a cow is here to moo support at her from beyond the grave

I can’t wait for someone to inevitably do Char Margolis on Snatch Game and communicate entirely through ghostly farmyard noises. I best not encourage Utica for her All Stars run, huh?

Double Trouble

This week’s Main Challenge is one Hell of a doozy, because of Covid they’ve had to rethink the makeover challenge just a touch and the result is pairing up the Queens and making them makeover each other in a sort of Freaky Friday meets The Terrible Makeover Challenge From Season 11 – that cheek contour Silky inflicted upon Soju still haunts me.

According to Ru, Char’s psychic readings are responsible for the pairings AND DEFINITELY NOT THE STORYLINE PRODUCERS, and the pairs are:

Tina Burner and Rosé
Denali and Olivia Lux
Symone and Utica
Gottmik and Kandy Muse

Prayer circle for Rosé please.

Tina and Rosé: A Story of Fire and Wine

These two absolutely had the easiest time of it all. The only thing they really had to deal with was letting Rosé slowly come to terms with the fact Tina was going to make her look like either a technicolour Carl Giles cartoon or the therapy paintings of a child that survived a house fire

Every time I think Tina Burner has worn the worst thing she could possibly wear she pulls another Trump Card out of her closet – this has to be the look she had planned for the top 4, right?
Tina whines a little about the fact Rosé bares a passing resemblance to the Teen Titans character Gnarrk

but while Rosé probably has the most masculine face of the cast, it’s not brutish and painted correctly she always looks statuesque. Emphasis on CORRECTLY.

It’s genuinely a better makeup job than I thought Tina Burner would pull out but the contour isn’t particularly flattering but Rose does Hell of a Tina Burner impression, which is mostly in the loose gabbling jaw. As for the outfit, are you surprised that the ill-fitting Clarice Cliff housewife outfit was a reveal?

I think we’ve officially exhausted the well that is Secret Slutty Housewives of Drag.
As for Tina’s transformation she was having to deal with the fact she doesn’t wear pink, not even on Wednesdays, but she was going to push herself and allow Rosé to put her in the signature colour that she has worn 3 times in 10 episode – you’re talking to Tina Burner, it doesn’t count as a signature until Twitter is bored of it!

I don’t know if I recognise the face as Rosé so much as I do John Travolta in Hairspray, but I love the softer look on Tina – it’s nice to see her face properly! Her presentation though was my personal favourite part because nothing brought me more joy than Tina thinking THIS was “a flourish”

It looks oddly like Gottmik’s dancing.
I was also so sure that Rosé had already worn this cute little dance number that she put Tina in but apparently not

it just kind of looks like an amalgamation of everything Rosé has worn so far, she really loves making her arms look like exotic marine life doesn’t she?

Denali and Olivia: On Thin Ice

These two had a real hard time of it because neither of them has a very signature style – Olivia is kind of just generic glamour (it works for her) and while outside of Drag Race Denali does have a heavy influence from the figure skating world, it’s not really translating to the show beyond her entrance look, which I suppose is why she opted to put Olivia in this kind of subpar recreation of the look

I love that there was NO CHANCE she was going to let Olivia touch her precious ostrich feathers. The ice skating didn’t stop there as Denali did Olivia hell of a disservice by telling her to look like she was ice skating on the runway and Olivia proceeded to look like a heron trapped in a plastic bag

Bless her heart.
Although I would have done a subpar job too if someone I considered a friend did this to my face

Olivia has such a cute baby face and it is a mystery to me as to why Denali turned her into Ursula the Sea Witch. It’s all in the constantly arched eyebrows that make her look like she’s permanently in the process of doing an evil laugh.

Olivia’s transformation of Denali would have been perfectly fine for an ordinary makeover challenge

It’s that very classic, jazz bar songstress look that has a similar vibe to Olivia’s yellow look, the mistake was making it so dark and almost vixen-y. Olivia has always come across as bubbly and effervescent so Denali looking like she was about to hatch a scheme to take over Gotham City was a weird curveball. I do agree with Michelle on the wig though, the harsh metallic copper tones of it don’t compliment Denali’s skin tone very well

It should have been that big curly number she wore for the Little Black Dress Runway, or even just use the Ella Fitzgerald-esque updo that she wore during the yellow runway.

Symone and Utica: Tripping The Light Problematic

Carrying on from last week’s tiptoeing around the afro in the room, Symone was going all in on trying to dress Utica up in a B.A.P.S. look, which is obviously heavily leaning into Black American aesthetics and has Utica more than a little nervous. It is easier to understand Utica’s tentativeness when you know that she received quite the backlash after advertising her own GoFundMe during a week that was dedicated to supporting black artists a couple of years ago. But with Symone’s help and RuPaul breathing down her neck about the Bob Ross shenanigans she got over it and went ahead with what was a pretty stellar look

I’m really sad we probably wont get to see Symone wearing it on the runway but you can see her and Shea Coulee’s photoshoot on her Instagram page HERE. I wish the runway walk had more of Symone’s signature walk in which she looks like she is dislocating every bone in her body like a chapter from Junji Ito’s Uzumaki but it was a strong effort for Utica who suffers from much the same problems as Ann Ward on ANTM

It’s just all limbs.

I still don’t know how I feel about Utica’s transformation of Symone – I think it’s one that would certainly translate much better in a photoshoot, as demonstrated on Utica’s own Instagram page HERE and HERE. That being said Symone did the best she could with it

The crotch of the bodysuit is hanging unflattering low – it was always going to considering it was made for 8 foot tall Utica. It’s the face that is the star though

That wig and the painted rose headpiece really sing against the sausage skin that Symone was waging war against. I really love this graphic almost Lichtenstein lip and eye lining that Utica does every now and again.

Kandy and Gottmik: Sizing Each Other Up

It’s a good thing these two are such good friends because I feel like if they were paired up with anyone else this would have been a Herculean trial of headbutting and sniping – like two mountain goats with hell of a grudge.
Obviously with them being such different sizes they were going to have to do a lot of sewing and with their past experiences of Kandy gluing backpacks to a piece of fabric and calling it a skirt and Gottmik just wearing three drawstring bags I was worried.
I did laugh at the fact the only item of clothing of Gottmik’s that Kandy fitted in was her 1 size fits all glove

I would have genuinely loved it if Kandy had just walked out onto the mainstage in Gottmik’s Little Black Dress Look – I think they would have won the challenge in a heartbeat. Instead they opted for a slightly fetishy mime situation

I love that neckpiece, the detailing on it is really pretty. I’m a little confused on the eye-makeup and the choice to make them not match, I’d get it if it was a take on the Comedy/Tragedy Masks combined with the Pierrot costume but it’s not really exaggerated enough and kind of just looks like a superfluous detail that throws the dimensions of Kandy’s face off.

The wig is a miss for me as well, I get that it’s kind of a nod to Gottmik’s entrance look, and I’ll probably never love a neon yellow wig and would have much preferred one of Gottmik’s many black offerings – I’m sure she could have worked wonders with that Bettie Page number she has floating around.

I don’t know if I got any sort of Kandy from the outfit she put Gottmik in

I don’t really associate Kandy with a bodysuit? or at least not something as kitschy as a Hell’s Angel dance number? I really think they should have done some sort of amalgamation of Kandy’s Miss Moneybags outfit with the wig made out of dollar bills and her nude beaded look. The little detail of giving Gottmik’s Kandy’s gap was cute though.

A significant amount of their time did seem to be taken up by Kandy trying to coach Gottmik into being her best Bronx self

I just appreciate that we have reached a point in the franchise where nobody is using the G word. I can’t quite believe that after Gottmik told Kandy that while on the runway she makes a lot of groaning and squeaking noises that the editors didn’t play Gottmik’s mic feed from her previous runways – GET IT TOGETHER.

Should She Stay or Should She Go?

With nobody having started any drama since Tamisha left the competition 173 episodes ago, Ru decides to throw out the dreaded question of who should be eliminated this evening. Everyone except Olivia and Denali think Olivia deserves to be eliminated for falling short in this challenge. Olivia decides that Utica should be going home for a subpar performance in the last couple of episodes and then Denali decides to pick a fight with Kandy and says that the outfit she has put Gottmik in looks like something Tina Burner would wear and if I were Kandy I would have taken that as a very personal insult too

Kandy is obviously not having it and calls Denali out on the fact that as much as Tina wants to she doesn’t own the concept of flames – it’s hard to believe that anything Tina Burner has worn is trying to invoke flames when week after week she looks like a walking Happy Meal.
Kandy is also quick to point out that she and Gottmik had the most work to do out of anyone because of their size differences and they still managed to pull it off and stops just short of pointing out that Denali made Olivia look like she was in a 15 minute quick drag look for a Mini Challenge.

It’s a weird challenge to judge because by all accounts Rosé looked awful but she did also look very much like Tina Burner – can you imagine if they had unleashed her on a member of the public? There’d be an inquest.
It is a fair run away win for Utica and Symone

while Olivia and Denali are pretty fairly lumped together into the bottom 2.

Shackled Together

Denali really got done dirty by having to wear a full on gown for a lipsync to Shackles (Praise You) didn’t she? And she couldn’t even really dramatically tear it off because it doesn’t belong to her and the last thing you want after spending umpteen thousand dollars on Drag Race is an invoice for repairs on another queen’s garment. So Denali was kind of trapped doing whatever this is

and I think it’s fair to say that this was not acting

That is a full on blinding migraine happening. It also looks delightfully like a scene from the X-men where Jean Grey is trying to telepathically reach out to Scott.

It was exciting to see Olivia lipsync again, I have missed her miming skills and she got off to one hell of a start

it certainly beats out Denali’s take on “breaking chains” which looked like she was playing the triangle

It was not Denali’s finest hour and I think it made sense that Olivia was the one who was saved and she has the mother of all reactions

which is fair, emotions are running high and I’m sure that flight from LA to New York was seriously playing on her mind, but I think Denali’s exasperation was also warranted

THIS IS HER MOMENT OLIVIA!

And so Denali has to sashay away – I think she’s a classic case of a queen that doesn’t necessarily translate to TV – her drag performances on ice are iconic and I implore you go check them out HERE. She has also done a lot for her local drag scene in Chicago and has gone out of her way to share the platform Drag Race has given her to champion fellow local talent, it’s been really sweet to see.

And so, 7 Queens remains