Hang this picture of Coco Jumbo as Sailor Moon Lizzo Holding up the Word Bussy in The Louvre!
It’s episode 2, there’s 9 queens who barely know one another so it’s the perfect time for Snatch Game, right? Wrong.
Go, Go Home
As ever the first elimination really sets everyone’s nerves in as the competition finally solidifies itself and on top of that everyone is now slightly scared of the fact Elektra Shock can do a flying splits with the radius of your average Dutch windmill, so good luck to whoever lands in the bottom 2 with her next week when the fact she seems to have bought all her outfits from struggling prom dress retailers comes to bite her in the ass.
On the other end of the spectrum, Karen is flying high now that she has her first win, making her more successful in the competition than Art Simone… although after this episode I guess everyone is more Drag Race Successful than Art Simone, who is feeling the loss of the first episode particularly heavily and is sure that it is her God given right to win, which I suppose is Peak Australian. But really, incredible runways that you’ve unloaded thousands of dollars on can only get you so far, the rest is up to your Bindi Irwin impression apparently…
Snatch Lame
There were wild rumours circulating that this Snatch Game was the absolute dirt worst, incomparable in its awfulness and just an utter shit show. I wont say it wasn’t, but it really has nothing on the level of unprofessionalism that was showcased in Season 4 with PhiPhi doing a loose interpretation of Gaga and Jiggly’s horny South Park Snooki going head to head with Kenya’s drug addled Beyonce. That being said, this Snatch Game was pretty awful with the only saving grace being Anita playing Queen Elizabeth II as a very horny mob boss
And I’m sure that Diana joke will give the #DefundTheBBC crowd enough ammunition to last 3 weeks when they eventually get wind of it on Twitter or someone posts it in the Diana Appreciation Facebook page.
Although the real lightning rod of offense and outrage is probably Etcetera’s take on true crime podcast royalty, Lindy Chamberlain who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of her baby who had in fact been eaten by a dingo and Etcetera sure did go ham on the dingo
Did I laugh and feel exceptionally guilty when the Five Nights at Freddie’s looking dingo puppet showed up behind her? I regret to announce that I did
and I get that there is a major issue here about where the humour is coming from and the fact Etcetera is essentially punching down, whereas Anita was punching up. I do somewhat admire her conviction in the face of absolutely everyone giving her the side eye for decision though
but in a Snatch Game where Scarlet Adams was reading off IMDB’s Jennifer Coolidge trivia while looking more like the bitter axed member of any of the Real Housewives of [take your pick]
I’ll honestly take Etcetera’s very much ill-advised dedication to physical comedy involving a demonic dingo puppet.
I don’t really blame Scarlet for the basic Jennifer Coolidge impression because obviously Bindi was her first choice – she had after all paid for the jokes. However she had to concede it to Art Simone who was extremely hellbent on the idea of playing Bindi Irwin as a raunchy zookeeper, quickly running out of animal dick puns by the third round in which she claimed “Rhys is so gay he catches his boomerang with his Blue Ringed Octopus” which is a tenuous innuendo at best and even she seemed mildly confused by her own answer
I wont defend her too much but during her one funny moment where she made a joke about having blowies in her face, Ru did stop the whole thing dead to ask for an explanation as to what a blowie was – thereby ruining the whole joke and stalling the entire game to halt, it also really wasn’t that hard to understand what it was from the context clues and speaks to the broader problem of having Ru and Michelle involved when they don’t understand either the lingo or the references to anything within the pop culture zeitgeist that’s under 10 years old.
Etcetera did attempt to throw Art a lifeline with a dingo joke which Art fumbled and the lack of a volley really just solidified her place in the bottom two regardless of an impressive runway.
Speaking of volleying, we are now at the point where just being able to look Michelle Visage in the eye during Snatch Game is enough to grant you safety as Elektra Shock took on Moira Rose but because the Drag Race lawyers are so awful, they had to say she was doing Catherine O’Hara which made the fact she was dressed as an overflowing bin even more baffling
It also became very apparent that Michelle and Ru have never watched Schitt’s Creek and genuinely thought she was doing actual Catherine O’Hara until a whiplash change of opinion after the judging
The impersonation was utterly wretched but something about the way she talked as though she was Dory trying to speak whale while simultaneously suffering from the after effects of a dental anaesthetic was quite endearing. It was less endearing on Karen who was playing Dolly Parton and somehow doing the exact same accent as Elektra Shock while occasionally slipping into The Rich Texan from The Simpsons
also baffling is the fact she claimed she had the look on point and yet looked more like televangelist Jan Crouch and then proceeded to make mostly no Dolly Parton references beyond a rambling screed about Dollywood and turkey legs and mortally offending Michelle by the fact she didn’t do a single one of Dolly’s trademark giggles.
Fellow comedy queen, Kita Mean didn’t fair much better as she made the decision to not be Carol Baskin despite the fact it would have gone down an absolute storm with RuPaul who has the weirdest grudge against her and makes me think Ru has his own fair share of illegal big cats on his mysterious ranch. Instead Kita was going to be doing Doctor Seuss AND DEFINITELY NOT ROLF HARRIS
which went down so poorly they mostly edited her out completely, only allowing her to show up at the end to rhyme “solver” and “vulva” while very much misspelling the latter
spelling if fun!
Instead an absolutely absurd amount of screentime was dedicated to Coco Jumbo’s limp Lizzo as she merely quoted The Big Three Lizzo Songs regardless of whether or not any of them made any sense
The look was cute and I did find it particularly funny that even as Lizzo, she looked more like Patrick Starr than Kandy Muse managed to when she was trying to be Patrick
It was also incredibly shady that during the bit where she pretended to play the flute that the sound editors didn’t edit in Matt Mulholland’s truly awful recorder cover of My Heart Will Go On over it, instead they just left it as dead air because it was a model flute, incapable of making noise.
Similar to Elektra, Maxi was doing Magda Szubanski but was in actuality doing Lynne Postlethwaite from sketch comedy show Fast Forward, which she had absolutely nailed the look for
and it’s no real surprise that it was very good, Maxi has been doing Lynne for years if you scroll through her Instagram. I don’t think it played particularly well on Snatch Game – and not because she didn’t look Michelle Visage in the eyes – but because Lynne is already a sketch comedy character, so there’s no place to really take it and you’re having to field questions about Babe the pig, which she dealt with admirably but it wasn’t a very elevated Snatch Game.
And then after this absolutely lacklustre showcasing of comedic abilities the queens had the audacity to think it was the best Snatch Game in the show’s history. The level of a delusion is far too much.
An Unofficial Snatch Game Ranking
- Anita by a Country Mile
- Etcetera’s Questionable Decisions
- Maxi Skating By
- Elektra Shock in The Crowening 4: The Crows Have More Eyes
- Doctor Seuss’s Rhyming Vulva
- Scarlet Adams as Jennifer Coolidge’s IMDB Trivia Page
- Coco’s Limp Lizzo
- Karen’s Dolly, pardon?
- Art Simone’s Zoological Nightmare
Queens of The Deep
The theme of the runway this week was Sea-Sickening and RuPaul had shown up very much off theme by dressing up as a disco ostrich
Hey, at least she had bothered to get into drag this time!
First up was Art Simone who, and I am loathe to say it, really reminded me of the mermaids from the fourth Harry Potter movie
I promise I read other books, but I’ve always loved this creature design and I think Art’s use of the really swampy looking green really separated her from the fact nearly everyone else went very aquamarine, making it a more interesting interpretation of the theme.
The first of our Ursula inspired outfits was from Kita Mean who looked absolutely stunning in this sort of powder blue jellyfish ensemble
The way the feathery extremities moved was really pretty, I do think the mad professor, electric shock hair kind of it took it to a more Sci-fi, space age place and I would have preferred something a little more soft to make the look more cohesive.
Etcetera came with a full on vintage deep sea diving costume that I really loved
It’s just really well executed, the cinching of the waist, the heeled boots with the suit tucked into them, and the helmet – it was perfect camp. She also had a swim suit reveal under it just in case her Lindy Chamberlain royally backfired.
Coco Jumbo was a more literal Ursula, which I thought was very obvious and then apparently Michelle managed to completely overlook it because *checks notes* Coco hadn’t painted herself purple
She looks gorgeous, she always will, the dress is maybe a little simple but I think with the complex and intricately braided wig I don’t really mind. Would I have liked some tentacles? Yeah, sure – or at least some reference to her eels might have been fun. Or she could have at least worn Ursula’s signature necklace. or just a necklace, it’s a very bare bust.
Anita was only sea-sickening in the fact she told us that she was dressed as a siren and the embellishments on the corset were kind of coral-like
I do love it though, I’m a sucker for any sort of a panniered gown and she really sold it on the runway. I do however hate the shoes with a burning intensity that could boil all 7 seas but at least she wasn’t wearing stirrup pants this week.
Maxi was in white again this week as she wore a pearlescent jumpsuit that meant she disappeared completely and utterly into the background and did nothing to show off the amount of details on the outfit
It’s very pretty but the wig is very much an out of the bag Old English Monarch wig
it could really have used just a touch more volume.
Also wearing a white dress and hoping they could make it fit the theme was Elektra Shock
It is a little basic and I can feel that we’re going to get another “you should look like a million dollars despite living off nightclub wages in the midst of a pandemic” conversation within the next two weeks. It’s not a bad look though, and I do, for once, like this colour of wig in this style – she matched it very well to her makeup.
The only really, very camp look came from none other than Karen From Finance in her shark attack jumpsuit
It’s very stupid fun, I’m not quite sure where she got “high fashion” from it but it was still certainly a highlight of the runway.
Last up was Scarlet Adams who was basically the natural evolution of Anita’s coral, siren
It’s pretty in that there’s a lot of glitter so immediately your inner magpie is piqued but there’s something about it that just feels a little flat and uninspired, even she sounded bored of it in her voiceover!
A Sea-Sickening Look Ranking
- Kita Mean’s Mad Jellyfish Scientist
- Art Simone’s Swampy Mermaid
- Etcetera’s Men of Honour Cosplay
- Coco’s Jewellery-less Ursula
- Karen’s Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
- Anita’s Siren Antoinette
- Scarlet’s Coral Corset
- Maxi’s Pearl Necklace
- Elektra’s Under the Sea Prom Night
Without so much as a hesitation Anita is declared the winner of the episode while the only safe queens are Etcetera and Kita Mean meaning the rest are potentially up for elimination and after some truly questionable judging the bottom 2 are Coco Jumbo and Art Simone.
She Really Is That Bitch
In a spectacular display of no budget, if you hadn’t realised from the fact all the maxi challenged seem to be filmed on the Main Stage, this week’s lipsync song, in an episode where Kylie and Danni Minogue showed up via the power of Skype, is I’m That Bitch by RuPaul herself. I personally don’t think Ru songs make for good lipsync performance, they’re fun, catchy tunes but they don’t lend themselves to a performance as became glaringly apparently by the fact Art was just generally quite frenetic
and never really found a groove beyond maybe the brief bit where she slowed down to do some off rhythm clapping
meanwhile Coco is running rings around her by just being a little more controlled and vibing with the song
and really I can see exactly why Coco was declared safe and Art was sent home in the second episode, much to everyone’s utter shock. Nobody was more shocked than Elektra who was slowly realising that she had now lasted longer on the show than Art Simone, the obvious favourite to win
The existential dread is setting in.
Meanwhile, backstage Art is having the worst time of her life and a producer desperately tries to console her by telling her “at least you were on the show” and thus the most iconic meme of all of 2021 Drag Race was born
I bet the producer’s blood run cold the moment Art looked at them with cold blooded murder in her eyes. A super villain has been born and I cannot wait to see her manic energy on the inevitable All Stars International 2.
And so, 8 Down Under Queens remain…
