RuPaul’s Hide and Seek Race leaves a lot to be desired.
I think we all knew how this episode was going to pan out the moment Pandora’s screen time went up by 500%.
Auf Wiederseh-JAN
You would think that with Jan having been up for elimination three times at this point the queens would have all been on the same page as to who to eliminate – that was pretty much the reason they eliminated A’keria the week before but apparently Eureka and Ginger hit a blind spot. Ginger is pretty open about the fact she chose Pandora’s lipstick because she felt like she got the worst critiques for the episode which…. no, I don’t think she did to be honest. I do believe Jan has the more intimidating fanbase however and that certainly comes into it, just look at the fact A LOT of them are claiming Trinity threw a $20,000 lipsync just so she didn’t have to eliminate The Wooby Faced Purple One.
Eureka meanwhile just fully pulls an “I didn’t go to school for fucking maths.” and babbles about how she didn’t know how to add up Jan’s 1 win and three bottom placements against Pandora who has coasted safely through every challenge in serene mediocrity… Just say you’re scared of the 15 year olds on Twitter, I respect that, they’re terrifying.
Speaking of Eureka, it’s fast setting in that they’re about to reach the top 4 and without a win under her belt she’s very much sitting primed for an elimination unless someone wants to pull a Naomi Smalls and completely Manila either Trinity or Ginger. And yes, this spiral into desperation does very much unleash Season 10 Eureka from the depths of hell. I can only imagine how bad next week will be.
Snatch You Later
Well, All Stars is still very much committed to the Snatch Game of Love format which I don’t think has been phenomenally successful over the years but this iteration probably felt the most cohesive, mostly because nobody absolutely crashed and burned like Gia Gunn just sitting there mercilessly insulting a slowly disassociating Latrice Royale. But this cast also generally has a more favourable Snatch Game history – the only outliers being Sonique who holds the dubious honour of being Snatch Game’s Porkchop and Ra’Jah who never got to play the game. And then there’s Trinity whose Nicki Minaj is just utterly unmemorable.
Also, just to ensure that nobody dares do Beyoncé, this week’s guest judge was Tina Knowles herself
I like to think that when they were given a list of the looks to bring there was just “NO BEYONCÉ AT SNATCH GAME!” scrawled at the bottom in red crayon.
Phyllis Diller, Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton walk into a bar…
The first trio were Ginger as Phyllis Diller, Trinity as Whitney Houston and Kylie as Dolly Parton who all had to woo Cheyenne Jackson‘s thighs
I find it incredible that he has featured on umpteen seasons and they’ve never managed to convince him to don his Xanadu costume – we just want the tiny denim cut-offs guys, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?
With Ginger we always knew we’d be in safe hands, she’s a pro at this and has done an uncountable amount of Snatch Games on tour. I’m not sure I was really thrilled with her Phyllis Diller though – she had the mannerisms down to a tee but the thing is, because Ginger has borrowed so much from this generation of comedians for her Ginger Minj character, it did just feel a bit like we were watching Ginger Minj, which wasn’t helped by the fact she didn’t really put much effort into looking like Phyllis
Ginger would literally wear this entire outfit on the runway if it fit the category. Which doesn’t matter *that* much I suppose as long as the energy is right and Ginger isn’t known for her makeup skills – this season is her third time at the rodeo and Michelle has already had to give her some pointers, which she has dutifully taken on!
Ginger’s main contribution to the proceedings was her unmerciful piking of Trinity’s slowly dying attempt to keep her Whitney Houston impersonation going – the look?
Phenomenal – as were the mannerisms, you could tell she was doing Whitney and that certainly counts for a lot. Like she said, she toured Canada doing her Whitney, and I’m sure she meant as a lipsync performance because the problem was that she came in completely unprepared in terms of any jokes to have up her sleeves, dropping the ball on numerous lobs from Ru and every time she missed she would just momentarily disassociate
The nerve of asking Cheyenne to repeat the question once she had finally thought of a suitable answer was the most Whitney Houston thing she did for this whole episode. And then for the answer to be a wildly unfunny domestic violence joke was… well, it was One Big Yikes. And we have established in the past that RuPaul’s height of comedy is indeed answering any question with “I don’t see why that’s any of your business.” so really all Trinity had to do was answer every question by belting out “I HAVE NOTHING!” to increasingly insane degrees and she might have been fine.
I was most worried for Kylie going into the Snatch Game because she is very quiet and in the past that hasn’t served a queen very well in Snatch Game. I was also terrified that she’d try to redeem her Lady Gaga impression from season 2 which for what its worth is still somehow one of the better Gagas we’ve ever seen on this show. The whole Season 2 Snatch Game is baffling and I love it because clearly very few of the queens knew what the point of it was and so some were playing it genuinely, dead seriously and then you had the Pandora’s pitch perfect Carol Channing and Tatianna’s (poorly aged) gleeful parody of Britney Spears. It is a rollercoaster.
The other worry was that we’d recently had a Dolly on Snatch Game in the form of Karen From Finance who made the weird decision to play her like Miss Piggy playing an oil baron in An Inconvenient Muppet Truth, proving that it is indeed a hard job. Kylie’s was thankfully much more enjoyable, and she had the look down
She just looks so damn good! And her improv and interactions with Ginger and Trinity were really well timed and handled perfectly. There was also a lot of subtlety to the performance such as the way she strummed her nails while singing the showtune to Cheyenne, nodding to the fact Dolly always claims she came up with the tune for 9 to 5 by doing the same thing
I thought this was where Kylie far outshone Ginger, there was something much more transformative about her performance and that just put her over the edge in my eyes but Cheyenne was apparently much more seduced by The Minj.
What do you get when you cross Divine, Kim Cattrall and La Toya Jackson?
While most queens tend to use an All Stars Snatch Game to make up for the mistakes they made in the past, Eureka saw it as an opportunity to go back in time and make the mistakes she avoided making in the past as she began her fools errand to bring Divine to Snatch Game. I really thought that the Season 7 acting challenge might have taught everyone that Divine just doesn’t translate to Drag Race, especially Drag Race on such corporate channels. Eureka had previously been talked out of doing Divine on season 10 (because her impression sounded like Ethel Merman) and talked into doing Honey Boo Boo which is the biggest favour RuPaul has ever done anyone – which isn’t saying much considering his past attempts to help people include merely praying for a drowning man
I will never get over that anecdote.
As for Eureka’s Divine, it was A Lot and not much of it was good – she clearly had the references and reverence for Divine and her look was very well done
and because this was Eureka of Season 10 born anew, there was of course a reveal
I think this counts as a reveal? It was certainly as awkward as most Drag Race reveal stunts – although somehow not the most awkward part of her entire performance which she played as weirdly mean spirited, mostly just rolling her eyes into oblivion whenever Pandora so much as breathed
which isn’t *not* Divine but doesn’t make for a very good Snatch Game – it also might have helped if her jabs at both Pandora and Ra’Jah were actually funny but they mostly just hung awkwardly as neither of them wanted to engage with anything Eureka was doing and you could just tell that Pandora was done after like 2 minutes of this
it is however not Eureka’s fault that Pandora chose to sacrifice herself upon the Snatch Game pyre that is Doing A Fictional Character But Claiming To Be Doing The Actress Because The Drag Race Lawyers Are Terrible At Their Jobs as she set about doing Kim Cattrall but actually doing Samantha Jones and yet looking like she was about to become a meme on Fox News
I’m beginning to think that Pandora just has a makeup gun that she points at her face and fires which is why she can only do one face because that is just Pandora Boxx dressed as a jazzy devil in an all female 90s nostalgia re-telling of Faust. I HAVE DIBS ON THAT STAGE PLAY.
I don’t think Pandora did horribly in this Snatch Game, her jokes all just felt a little canned and there was no real spontaneity to her performance aside from the growing irritation of having Eureka steamrolling her with non sequiturs. Ra’Jah faired much better against the Eureka Express to Chaosville, mostly because she was playing La Toya Jackson and had seemingly perfected the art of the dead-eyes-vacant-smile (my favourite Yu-Gi-Oh card)
This has to be one of the best visual transformations on Snatch Game – IT’S SO GOOD! It really looks like she’s changed her entire face, I’m honestly in awe. And her performance was GREAT! Or at least I thought it was, Michelle claims some of her jokes didn’t land but every single one they showed got laughs and she should really have won just for her perfect delivery of “a nice pantsuit” which was just unnecessarily and unexplainably funny to me. She’s also a very clever queen because a lot of her answers were just bastardisations of Ru’s anecdote about La Toya’s favourite food being sushi but at the same time she hates rice and she hates fish. There are some queens who are just very good at Drag Race and I would say Ra’Jah certainly fits perfectly into that category.
Pop Goes The… Art?
I really liked the idea of the Pop Art runway prompt, unfortunately as this runway kind of proves, it’s maybe a theme with limited scope in terms of trying to navigate doing a good outfit and one that will be understood by as wide an audience as possible, which is why we ended up with A Trio of Warhols – shocked to see we only got one Lichtenstein though!
First to hit the runway, and benefitting hugely for it, was Ginger Minj in her 60s style Warhol dress
it’s certainly the best of the mod looks we saw – the styling is perfect with the gogo boots and the wig that looks like it could have a wonderful second life as a tea cosy. But it is a slightly uninspired look considering Eureka essentially wore the same thing except because it’s Season 10 Eureka the styling was INSANE
I do really love the powder blue latex undersuit – I almost wish she had just painted her entire face to match and pulled a bit of a Juno Birch – but I do really like the makeup she did use, it’s at least interesting even if I could have gone my entire life without seeing somebody painting their lips like a pair of Barratt’s foam banana sweets. It’s also a baffling choice of wig – it’s just so heavy and didn’t really fit in with the rest of her references.
The last of our Andy Warhol Mod dress was Pandora Boxx who certainly didn’t go subtle on the self branding
She was far too proud of that box-shaped purse and yet payed the fascinator DUST.
I think the look is a little too cluttered, which to me is kind of the opposite of what Pop Art is, or at least the style of pop art that she was aiming for – also bless her for the shoehorned in WAP reference, it’s Hello, Fellow Kids energy at an intensity of 1000 burning suns.
Ra’Jah’s wasn’t too far removed from the previous three, going for a very similar top-heavy silhouette and just printing her name and designated catchphrase on it
Does Ra’Jah always look good in purple? Yes she does. (Jan found dead.) This look though is a little meagre and falls short just when compared to everyone else, it’d go down a storm in a club where everyone is paying for a Ra’Jah O’Hara performance, but as a piece on the Drag Race runway, it’s not blowing anyone away.
Kylie also just had her face printed on a dress
I can’t say I’m a huge fan of this colour combination, as someone who is constantly haunted by the image of Mr. Blobby, pink and yellow in any capacity is a no from me but I can appreciate this as a look and her face was a knock out as usual
She really reminded me of Anna Nicole Smith on this runway, and who’s more pop art than she? It turns out that Kylie just has a monopoly on blonde bombshells and we love to see it.
Lastly we have Trinity K Bonet who used the theme to delivery a timely political message
both supporting the Black Live Matters movement and the trans community – which shows a lot of growth on her part considering she posted some quite transphobic stuff on Instagram and Facebook a couple of years ago. The look is immaculate, that yellow jacket that’s painted to look 2D is one of my favourite pieces to walk the runway this season. And she pulled the Lichtenstein makeup off really well, as she should considering she practiced the lips earlier this season
I’ll never forget this.
A Pop Art Runway Ranking
- Trinity’s Pop Politics
- Kylie as Anna Nicole Smith
- Ginger’s Well Styled Warhol
- Eureka’s Outfit
- Ra’Jah’s Merch Billboard
- Eureka’s Styling
- Pandora’s Everything And The Cardboard Boxx
Ginger ends up as the winner of the episode and I don’t know if I would have given her the win because I truly feel like both Kylie and Ra’Jah had much more enjoyable and engaging Snatch Game performances. I take umbrage with a lot of Ra’Jah’s critique to be honest, I thought all her jokes landed very well – she was certainly the only one in Group 2 making Ru regularly crack up with everything she said. The bottom two were undeniably Trinity and Pandora – really it could have been a bottom 3 and they should have thrown Eureka in there too, especially for the drama of Pandora blaming her on the runway for her poor Snatch Game performance and then subsequently backtracking faster than Gia Gunn after she contracted Covid when Eureka called her out on it.
Heidi, Hi!
Before the lipsync began I was VERY intrigued by what song this could possibly be because Ginger was over there dressed like she was the 3rd runner up on an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras
mind you, looking extremely pretty – the makeup worked really well with this wig
I really like ginger in blonde wigs.
And then showing up in an aesthetic that I can only described as Evil Vaginal Gate Post is Heidi N Closet
This is the most wildly impractical lipsync outfit we’ve seen since that time BenDeLaCreme tried to lipsync to Greenlight by Lorde and slowly became Samara from The Ring
and similarly Heidi did have a wig malfunction, nobody could possibly have seen this coming as she tottered down the runway with it wildly swaying from side to side like it was some sort of Venom-like symbiote looking for its next victim
it was obviously meant to be a reveal, it just decided to reveal itself, and shout out to the editor who RUDELY cut to Trinity’s look of utter disgust as she was forced to relive her de-wigging the episode prior
I love it when the editors are the shadiest queens.
The lipsync ended up being to Sugar Walls by Sheena Easton which does explain Ginger’s candy pink look and Heidi dressing up as the most menacing vagina. Heidi obviously pulled out a wealth of tricks including one hell of a sliding splits
but Ginger always has a come back for it and robs them of their power by doing her usual “I can do the splits too but not really” schtick
If it works, it works. I did love her coy unzipping of her corset only to then zip it straight back up though
and I think Sugar Walls does work better with a campy, fun performance rather than Heidi really trying to sex it up and so Ginger adds another $20,000 to her winnings, meaning she’s now won $50,000 which is half the winner’s prize and is kind of iconic.
The elimination wasn’t much of a surprise, anyone could see that Pandora was on her last legs and so Pandora ends her All Stars 6 run and hopefully she can prouder of this one than her previous go
She might not have had all the success she wanted from it, I think she was overlooked a couple of times and I did grow to love her rampant pessimism over the course of the season.
And so, 5 All Star queens remain
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