Actual footage of me watching any football match.

An episode that really was a tale of two halves – a pretty abysmal Snatch Game for a good 60% of the queens and a truly solid collective runway!

You Monster!

I can’t be the only one that heard them say the theme was Monster Ball and thought that because this was also the Snatch Game episode that we were about to get another Lady Gaga themed runway – she has enough looks, they might as well redo it until someone is brave enough to cover themselves in fillet steak. In actuality it was to just dress up as much like a monster as you could to varying degrees of really good fashion moments to clearly panicked rummages through whichever costume stores survived the pandemic.

Ivy-Elyse Monroe

It really benefitted Ivy that she came out first because this was easily at least the second most disappointing outfit of the night – it’s not even that bad, everyone was just operating at an 11 and she was a solid 6. The prosthetics and concept are REALLY cool, the angler fish elements are incredibly interesting and well done. Where it falls a part is with the dress that feels a lot like she panicked that the original concept wasn’t “drag enough” so she thought just wrapping a black dress around herself in what feels like a vague homage to Ursula, which I feel like we’ve seen A LOT lately but it might be because every plus sized queen knocked up an Ursula look during the casting process for The Little Mermaid’s Live Action Adventure That Is Going To Be A CGI Nightmare, Have You Seen Aquaman’s Underwater Scenes? YIKES! (Working Title) and I’m a little fatigued.
But I certainly preferred her runway look to her truly manic and unhinged Cardi B impression

the fact she brought a cat plush and a bucket of water with her and thought “Yes, this dad joke will go down a storm!” and then sat there in sodden PVC – her mind <3.

Tabitha

If Ivy’s outfit was mildly disappointing this is just… incomprehensible? Mostly because of the truly abysmal lighting on the runway because it looks like there is a lot of interesting textural details on the gown and her mask but you just can’t see it because for some ungodly reason we’re lighting the runway with blue lighting?
The execution of it all was also just a little sloppy, the judges zoning in on the fact she just left her neck fully exposed, I imagine she didn’t get around to painting it because she was too busy having her eyebrows removed under the duress of The Countess and Vivaldi. Also she was sitting pretty after her Snatch Game performance as Kim Holland so I can’t blame her for half-assing it a little bit considering upwards of 4 queens completely bombed Snatch Game like a collection of weapons of mass comedy destruction.

Vanessa van Cartier

FUCK THIS IS GOOD. I think this is unabashedly one of the best looks we’ve seen across the Drag Race spectrum – it’s immediately striking, the impact of silhouette and the blood on the on the stark white, IT’S. SO. GOOD. It does have a bit of the Lady Gagas about it – especially that brief era at the beginning of the Born This Way period where she was obsessed with prosthetics which followed the period where she was obsessed with splattering fake blood during every performance. And the makeup was incredible too

That jaw contouring just changes her face completely – as does the lack of eyebrows and the alarmingly hideous eye beards?
She got dragged for her Snatch Game apparently being very bad, I didn’t think it was? Sure Queen Mathilde is boring and Vanessa was a little low energy – I think Anita gave a masterclass in royal mockery in the one good moment on Drag Race Down Under and will forever be the blueprint now and I’m not sure anyone will top it or needs to try.

Vivaldi

This really didn’t help Ivy’s case because this is a pitch perfect delivery of a humanoid deep sea monster look – the colours, the placement of the fins and the makeup are absolutely stellar. My only gripe is that the hefty armadillo shoes don’t really belong and definitely feel more like her wanting to flex that she owned them and could walk in them, which actually might be a perfectly good reason to wear them when you’re a drag queen. As you were.
I can’t say I really see why Vivaldi was declared a joint winner in this episode, her performance of Nikki Plessen in Snatch Game was perfectly adequate but it certainly didn’t wow me, especially not against Keta Minaj just completely steamrolling everyone as Sophie Anderson.

Keta Minaj

Speak of the devil (and she shall appear as a self-mutilating yeti) – this, much like Vanessa van Cartier, was an absolute SERVE and just perfectly captures the brief of being both stunning and utterly horrific. My only critique of the outfit is that I don’t think it really needed to have the big fanged mouth on her shoulder, it feels a little cartoon-y against everything else.
She was a runaway train this episode and really should have been given the solo win because she just dominated Snatch Game as Sophie Anderson

bringing up Fred’s leaked sex tape was some NERVE.

Love Masisi

I adore this – sure it’s mostly just a prosthetic mask but I think there’s a delicious subversiveness to a black queen using an image that has become used to mock black people, particularly African-American youth and she performed it perfectly on the runway – it was GREAT drag and I think her praises went rather unsung because of her truly abysmal performance as Grace Jones on Snatch Game, where she had the look down to a T

but I’m really not sure what she thought she was doing by just answering every question by singing “Slave to the rhythm”? And it didn’t even get more unhinged or dramatic, she just… sang it at Fred and considered that an answer?
As for her performance in the lipsync, I thought she was the firm winner of it despite the judges saying they thought she had given up prior to it even beginning? She delivered a humorous and campy performance as Greta the Gremlin lipsyncing to a bafflingly terrible mix of Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” and so sadly Love Masisi’s time on Drag Race ended very prematurely in my eyes.

My Little Puny

This feels a little undercooked – the dusty purple colour of the dress is a strange choice for a look that seems like it wants to have an air of opulence about it and the fringe is just a little bit too bordello lampshade to read as glamorous. The prosthetic though?

Incredible, if maybe a touch too mask-like but I love the way the wig curves out in those two spikes to give the illusion of spider’s fangs – it gives it a real air of anime character design.

The Countess

I was most intrigued to see how The Countess would approach this theme after having spoken so much about how she desires to only ever be seen as glamorous and regal and I’ll be honest, Beetlejuice was nowhere near my radar of where she would go with this look, let alone high glam moth-Pierrot Beetlejuice. It’s a truly beautiful look and it was nice to see her moving slightly outside of her wheelhouse. I also don’t think she bombed Snatch Game nearly as hard as everyone else made out, in fact I think her screaming “I AM IMMORTAL!” and snapping her fan while dressed as Louis XIV was what made me laugh the most during the entire damn thing

I do also have a penchant for Snatch Game performances of historic people so I might be a bit biased but I thought she was reasonably good throughout if maybe not pushing it all quite hard enough.

A Monster Ball Runway Ranking

1. Vanessa van Cartier’s Born This Was Era
2. Keta Minaj’s Flagellated Yeti
3. The Countess as Beetlejuice But FASHUN
4. Vivaldi’s Sea Creature with Incongruous Boots
5. Love Masisi’s Reclaiming of the Gremlin
6. My Little Puny’s Very Good Prosthetics
7. Ivy-Elyse Monroe’s Funereal Angler Fish
8. Tabitha By Virtue of Terrible Lighting

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