Me opening the door to my Deliveroo rider.
Queens come back, queens leave, such is the eternal tide of Drag Race.
Jeté Away
Much like last Alyssa’s really great lipsync last week, her exit gets payed absolute dust as Kerri announces she’s on the warpath and that she can most certainly be scary, monstrous and frightening before launching herself at Alyssa’s mirror message like she was Natalie Portman in Black Swan
The Dragula queens are truly quaking.
She’s not the only one that’s a little shaken by her appearance in the bottom 3 though, as Kornbread is feeling “a little vulnerable” – and I imagine at this point was meaning in more ways than one considering you could see her limping around the Werk Room as they all de-dragged. And then sure enough, the next day everyone except Kornbread shows up, and everyone has to pretend to suddenly notice that Kornbread wasn’t there as though they hadn’t all had breakfast at the hotel without her and shared a van ride to the studio with her noticeable absence, but Lady Camden was out for her Oscar
Lady Camden’s Dropped Jaw vs Lady Gaga’s Italian Accent – an awards season showdown for the ages!
Sadly Kornbread does have to withdraw from the competition due to a rolled ankle, which does explain why Michelle looked to thoroughly concerned throughout Kornbread’s performance last week
but she does get to send a video message to the queens where she bestows her goodwill upon Kerri, Willow and Jasmine – so consider them safe bets for the final now.
It’s pretty gutting to see Kornbread having to bow out, especially considering she was A LOT of people’s favourite to win the show, but hopefully she’ll come back with just as much star power in Season 15 (airing next Tuesday!) This does also mean the golden chocolate bar’s double save gets a little foiled considering they’re now a contestant short so RuPaul is going to have to throw out a double save anyway, unless they want to commit to a three queen finale. Please commit to a three queen finale.
Help a Queen
For their main challenge this week the queens had to create a PSA parody, with the cause being to help one of the first boot queens from a previous season, with the three returning queens being Tempest DuJour, Jaymes Mansfield and Kahmora Hall – who were all great choices, but given that Venus D-Lite from Season 3 spends A LOT of her time begging to be brought back on the show, the show then creating a challenge specifically tailored to be able to give her 15 minutes of charitable screen time and then not bringing her back is… D-litefully rude of them. I am a little surprised that they didn’t have the gall to drag June Jambalaya back into the fray before she could even fully pack her hotel room though.
Because there were three returning queens, there had to be three teams and in order to divide everyone up, the queens had to play a little game in which they had to pop a balloon while, and I quote, “dirty dancing with the Pit Crew” – which delighted everyone except Maddy who stood there like Ralph Wiggum
luckily Bosco threw Maddy a bone by going first and setting the precedent for just aggressively thrusting yourself into the balloon
and while Maddy’s first thrust was a little shy, she didn’t have nearly as much trouble as Jorgeous who was very much the David to Bryce’s Goliath and very much nearly had to resort to a slingshot to win this war – Look ma, those Sunday school lessons are paying off?
my favourite part of the whole ordeal though was Kerri absolutely losing it in her confessional
and so the final team line ups are:
Team Tempest: DeJa, Kerri, Angeria and Jorgeous
Team Jaymes: Orion, Maddy, Willow and Jasmine
Team Kahmora: Bosco, Daya and Lady Camden
I really like the idea of this challenge and using it as a way of giving early outs a modicum of extra time with the show. However, I don’t quite know why they decided to Seuss it all up and force the queens to make the whole thing rhyme, unless the American PSAs for The Donkey Sanctuary are all in iambic pentameter? But nobody was hating it more than Jorgeous who was looking straight into the Shakespearean void
she could not get to grips with the very concept of poetry and proceeded to just write a few sentences that all ended in words that sounded vaguely alike, regardless of syllables and rhythm. One of those sentences being both particularly unfortunate, and yet somehow making her whole bit funnier
I SCREAMED, both because of that and because she had done her makeup in such a way that did make her look like Sans from Undertale
apparently she was going for “a regular-degular, bland white woman kind of thing” and as a regular-degular, bland white woman kind of thing, I feel VERY attacked. But also, is that what the whole team was going for because DeJa was wearing June’s zebra runway, Angeria had just killed her third husband and Kerri had a seance to lead in 1972
and yes, Kerri’s idea of ugly is very much The Princess Diaries school of thought
the failing de-yassification of Kerri Colby is maybe my favourite Drag Race storyline since Derrick Berry vs Eyebrows way back in season 8 – I am OBSESSED. And Kerri was really good, after fumbling and struggling with lines last week, she came into this challenge with a surprising amount of confidence, but did still get overshadowed by Angeria pulling a single face
and even though Kerri was hungry for the win, it was Bosco and Lady Camden who were both out for blood as the show already starts the “I need a win under my belt to justify being here” with the competition only on its third real episode – those premier episodes do not count if the eliminations were null and void, I simply do not see them.
I do think Bosco, Daya and Lady Camden did the best, their rhyming was certainly the most cohesive – not that we expected much in a franchise where everyone keeps rhyming “crown” and “down” every time they have to write a song verse. I did think the judges would have a go at them for their outfits though, the other two teams went with the more expected church-going formalwear (with a few notable exceptions) while Bosco just did Bosco and continued to champion horns as a personality trait
I was particularly worried for Daya, because Crystal Methyd got slammed in her first acting challenge for not changing up her face to look more like a girl guide, and Daya was still very much doing her little puckered lips and rolling landscape brows
apparently it wasn’t that big an issue though, but it was an issue that in a group of Conservative suburban nightmares, Orion was dressed as Teresa Giudice doing post-makeover Sandy
I don’t actually think Orion’s final performance was as lifeless as the judges made out, it wasn’t exactly a star turn or anything, but we didn’t actually see Michelle giving her much direction, which was weird because we had a whole bit with Michelle giving Maddy tips on her line reading, which Maddy took and gave a great performance but then weirdly they used her first, slightly lifeless take in the final video. And this comes directly after Maddy just about having her whole bit cut from last week’s acting challenge. If you’re going to try this hard to make her a filler queen, don’t show us her doing really well?
Jasmine had the hardest time with her reading as she became trapped in a never ending cycle of doing The Count from Sesame Street’s voice, and when Michelle eventually pulled her out of it, she became very robotic. I will say, I don’t think Michelle is a very good director and I wish they would bring in guest directors, because even just the way Bosco directed Kahmora for her whole bit about getting ready drew out a better performance than Michelle managed last season
what I’m really saying is: Bring back Kathy Najimy.
Putting a Spring in Your Step
Finally, we get a decent runway theme that allowed the queens to be a little bit creative… kind of. The theme was “Spring Has Sprung” and so naturally it was a bit “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking.” but what was surprising was that Ru was playing along with the theme this week
I just really loved this dress, although he nude illusion on the bust was a bit of an uncanny valley.
There were a few queens that didn’t rob their nearest craft store of all its fake flowers though. The best of the non-floral bunch easily being Maddy Morphosis as depressed Cousin It
this is stunning and she pretty much, quite literally, mopped the runway. Obviously everyone has been very quick to compare it to The Vivienne’s look, which honestly read more as Samara from The Ring going to a wedding than it did a raincloud
but really, Maddy’s is infinitely more glamorous, and her cloud headpiece, significantly more elevated.
But Maddy wasn’t the only raincloud on the runway, with Bosco coming out dressed in the lint under the sofa
at first, I felt *so bad* when Bosco came out wearing this – my immediate reaction was that her burlesque outfit in the talent show was initially going to be her spring look, and so she had to cobble this together in her hotel room. But it was in fact a reveal
and her sunshine yellow dress was very pretty
I think I would’ve liked a little more sparkle from it, there’s a smattering of stones, but for something that was meant to embody sunshine, it wasn’t quite radiant enough.
Willow, being unlike other girls, had also obviously abstained from florals, instead dressing up, quite literally, as a prairie house
this was deliciously stupid fun and very Alice in Wonderland meets Stepford Wives, especially when she turned around and had “Help!” written in blood on the back of the dollhouse
the way Willow has perfectly navigated every single runway so far with outfits that by all means probably shouldn’t work, is kind of incredible.
And now to the onslaught of flowers and rabbits! With Deja being the self-titled “Pastel Princess” this by all means should have been a runway made for her, and well… I didn’t love this
it all feels very disparate – that rabbit mask is exactly the sort of thing a queen adds to a look in an effort to make something look high fashion regardless of the fact she’s wearing Homer Simpson’s trousers… I did love the blouse though, but the most interesting part of the entire look to me were the daisies on the back of her wig
that’s just a really cute detail.
Kerri continued on her mission to explore her own personal brand of ugly, the spring runway not being the most opportune runway to try this on, unless you’re going to go the full Charity Kase and come out looking like a Goosebumps cover
alas, Kerri was sadly not yet ready to fully embrace her monstrous side, but certainly did her best to adapt what was absolutely meant to be a glamorous bouquet of orchids into something at least aesthetically confusing
I can absolutely guarantee you that those gloves are not hers and she just borrowed them from another queen in an effort to add something sinister to the look
and then the most she could bring herself to do in terms of fiddling with her face was to draw some flowers and give herself a truly baffling lip shape. Bless her heart, at least she’s trying something. And I would like to think this look was originally meant as a nod to her fellow trans queen, Monica Beverly Hillz all the way back in season 5
I was both surprised and a little relieved, because I genuinely thought we were going to be in for several looks that looked a lot like that outfit. And actually I thought we’d get a lot more fake flowers, but it seemed that Angeria had bought the entire American supply up for her skirt
I always find a very textured skirt and an absolutely flat bodice to be a weird combination, and Angeria’s was only made weirder by the fact her corset just didn’t fit great and was a distinctly cadaver shade of beige
but considering this is Angeria’s first misstep in the competition it’s pretty easy to forgive the fact her boobs look like a pair of depressed emojis.
Lady Camden had opted for florals, but very much steered away from being an actual literal flower, or just wearing something fashionable with flowers glued to it
this is a delight – that floral fabric is truly hideous but as someone who has visited many a tea room in York, I have seen this table in just about every single one of them – I love that she didn’t try to make it fashionable and the tea headpiece was really cute
I can’t wait for her and Victoria Scone to do an entirely matinee tour together called What’s The Afternoon T?
the second act of which is just them throwing their food props at one another.
Jorgeous was kind of the only one that felt a little bit like she had an outfit that she regularly wears for her bar performances and then hastily glued a bunch of flowers to it
and I only say that because it came off very easily when she did the reveal in the lipsync. It’s a pretty outfit though and I think she had my favourite wig and makeup of this runway,
but I might also just be glad to see in her makeup that doesn’t make her look like her soul was stolen.
Also wearing a performance outfit was Jasmine Kennedie in her best Burlesque Poison Ivy corset
She looks phenomenal, I wish there had been a little more to it than just the corset, just to make it a little more fashionable, but my God, what a corset it was – the stone work on it is insane
someone almost went blind stoning that thing.
And now that we’re done with our floral looks, we must delve into the animal kingdom, starting with Orion as a sexy bunny rabbit
it’s a cute look, I wish it had been a reveal, because coming straight out in sexy underwear does always feel a little underwhelming – and it is a brave decision to add fun-fur to your knickers. The look as a whole, also doesn’t feel entirely cohesive – the hair is a particular sticking point, it should have been more of traditional Playboy bombshell blonde and I was thoroughly confused by the wedding shoes and their dearth of sex appeal.
And lastly we have Daya Betty as some sort of butterfly nymph
this is really pretty, I’m not sure I love it with the perspex pleasers, which would’ve honestly looked great with Orion’s look, but really the stand out of this look was the makeup, which prevented the whole thing from looking like budget Effie Trinket
I’m obsessed, I just love it when there’s a queen that you can never predict how they’ll look when they come out on the runway, so I’m so glad we have Daya Betty around because she’s kind of the only one that’s giving me that.
- Maddy Morpho-Nimbus
- Daya Butterfly
- Las Vegas Poison Ivy
- The Little Murder House on the Prairie
- English Breakfast Tea with Lady Camden
- Bosco’s Silver Lining
- Kerri Colby’s Personal Brand of Ugly
- Orion’s Bunny Tale
- Jorgeous’s Pretty Little Dress
- DeJa Skye as MET Gala Homer Simpson
- Angeria’s Predictable floral Display
And they let the returning queens walk the runway, with Kahmora pretty much winning the day with her olive green stunner of a dress
She’s the most beautiful queen to have ever been cast, right? There’s no way she’s not.
Jaymes Mansfield was doing her whole Jayne Mansfield in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter thing
I would honestly really love to see Jaymes come back for an All Stars season, and I think they owe it to her now for making her do another series of forward rolls
lest we forget Eureka injured herself during that challenge and had to go home several episodes later and Kornbread literally just went home with an ankle injury – I’m surprised they let her do it without wrapping her in bubblewrap first.
And Tempest went with the always fun Sunset Boulevard reference
you might as well play any card that’ll make RuPaul laugh.
I wasn’t surprised with much of the judging this episode, I do think Maddy should have absolutely been in the top (and probably won) but the top three were Bosco, Angeria and Lady Camden – I can’t say I remember much of what Lady Camden did, other than give me this reaction Jpeg in the mini challenge
but as for the main challenge, I have not a single note of what she did other than whisper most of her lines – I think they just liked how poetry sounded in her accent to be honest. But of the three that were up for the win, it was pretty obviously Bosco’s night
and I’m sure we’re going to get a whole Bosco vs Lady Camden storyline for the next two episodes that they let Lady Camden hang around for.
On the bottom were Orion, Jasmine and Jorgeous, which is probably fair – only Jorgeous really bombed, so she was a dead-cert for the bottom, and the only thing that saved Jasmine this week was that her runway was a good deal better than Orion’s Playboy bunny, and so it was Orion and Jorgeous in the lipsync.
Maxed Out
Given that we’ve seen Jorgeous do a dance number and we’ve already watched Orion lose a lipsync, I wasn’t surprised by the disaparity between their performances – Jorgeous very much giving us a phenomenal lipsync from the jump by just whipping that dress right off
but what I loved most was the fact that as she undid the zip at the back, she looked like some sort of sea anemone trying its best not to be eaten by whatever the hell eats a sea anemone
and it was nice to see someone finally doing a reveal that didn’t involve revealing to something significantly uglier, even if the fit of the pants was very dubious
I’m going to assume she did the fittings without her padding.
And she danced down a storm
and there was just no way that Orion was going to win this lipsync with her grade school talent show literal dancing, highlights of which include “crossroads”
“noughts” – which did look a bit like her looking directly at RuPaul and calling her a wanker
and of course, my personal favourite, “rolling”
slightly disappointed that she didn’t just start doing a roly poly across the stage for that last one.
The only thing really going in Orion’s favour was the fact Jorgeous pretty much gave up on lipsyncing after about 15 seconds, but Orion promptly pissed away any good will by kicking off her wedding shoes
and had to spend a significant amount of her concentration in the final moments desperately trying to keep her wig on
and yeah, as expected it was Orion who went home, and not even her chocolate bar could save her
I’m glad she managed to hang around for a few more episodes than I thought she would, I found her quite endearing and I will miss her excruciatingly misplaced confidence in her comedic abilities.
And so, 10 queens remain…
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