Jasmine Kennedie, off key even in writing.

Tonight we turn back the clocks to one of 4 decades that RuPaul cares about!

High Winds

Of course without a mirror message to read and Daya Betty having finally self-produced herself a top placement, there’s not much to discuss in the opening of the episode except that Daya has passed on the bitter baton to Jasmine who feels she should have been in the top. And you know what? For that performance of Alyssa Edwards as a gecko she probably should have been in the top over Daya Betty

but also… that graduation gown she wore for the chaps runway needed to be punished.

Also, Willow ominously says this…

and Angeria chases Kerri Colby around the Werk Room which I greatly enjoyed because it looked like someone chasing an ostrich as all Kerri was wearing was her, and I hate to write this, fur bikini *shivers*

it’s like a live action recreation of Wile E. Coyote chasing The Roadrunner – honestly, give Kerri Colby an award for being able to book it across a room while not looking where she’s going, in a pair of 4 inch heels.

Are You Reading For It?

It was of course the return of the Reading Challenge this week and it was mostly very good – nobody got hit by the gentle parping of the Doom Tuba, which was certainly a turn out for the books. Although I think Jorgeous, had she not been RuPaul’s Golden Child (Jessica Wild is QUAKING) would have been because her reads, while mildly amusing, didn’t have much of a flow. Jasmine had similar issues with her read about Kerri not being able to dance – really she just wanted to give Sascha Colby a shout out and then there was her read about Daya Betty being two-faced which Daya, being a storyline producer’s wet dream, obviously latched onto and made it into a whole thing later on in the episode. The fact Daya Betty is about to self-produce her way to the final through the power of almost psychotic insecurity alone is… kind of iconic? And really we should have seen this coming given that she ate a dragonfly for £1000 20 minutes after being brought back into the competition. Imagine if RuPaul finds out he could literally dare Daya to do anything and she’d jump at the chance?

Speaking of Daya, I am still BAFFLED by her audacity to make jokes about Jasmine Kennedie being in the bottom two 1 (one) time when Daya herself literally got eliminated in her first episode and nobody brings it up – not even a single read about it! It’s like she has Neuralyzed everyone! Instead everyone is still weaponising Crystal Methyd to deal her increasingly high levels of psychic damage to keep her humble.

Bosco does win the challenge and deservedly so because I think she had the strongest all round reads but Lady Camden’s one about Jorgeous being “the tiniest little waist… of time” was good and I was pleasantly surprised by Kerri – especially the one about Jasmine finding her silence. And Willow was obviously great too, and I look forward to Serena ChaCha posting a rant on her Instagram stories within the near future. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to just have your name being a read for another queen…

Pushing Sixties

This week’s Maxi Challenge saw the queens having to form three 60s inspired girl band: The Ru-nettes, The Ru-premes and the Shang-Ru-Las. And just to cause as much chaos as possible, Ru didn’t ask the queens to order themselves by height and use that to determine the groups, instead they were all told to sit on the sofas and battle it out like a group of seagulls arguing over a single discarded chip, and then there was Jasmine sitting there looking like one of the Olsen Twins having an existential crisis at the tender age of 12

The most popular group was the Shang-Ru-Las, mostly because their song “Bad Boy Baby” had the best beat and they weren’t the Ru-premes which you know RuPaul was going to be going hard on because of his fondness for The Supremes. However, Kerri, Angeria and Camden snapped that one up. Jorgeous was after it too but I think realised that she would absolutely be swallowed up in a Ru-premes line up involving Angeria so quickly jumped ship to join Jasmine, who was the only queen who was after the Ru-nettes. This left Willow, DeJa, Bosco and Daya in a The Good, The Bad and The Ugly style stare down over the Shang-Ru-Las. At a certain point it did become clear that everyone was mostly after these parts because giving it up would mean you had to work with Jasmine and Jorgeous who were never really going to thrive in a girl group challenge that doesn’t involve wearing a well bedazzled bikini and high kicking to God.
Eventually DeJa realised the futility of the situation and decided to join Jorgeous and Jasmine.

So to Recap, the groups were:

The Shang-Ru-Las: Willow, Daya and Bosco

The Ru-premes: Kerri, Angeria and Lady Camden

The Ru-nettes: Jorgeous, Jasmine and DeJa

Good Bad Boy Baby

Well thank God that after just falling short of starting a gladiatorial deathmatch over this song that these three didn’t absolutely tank it, which they really could have with just how comedically they decided to play it. It’s always a risk to go as extremely comedic as they did, especially when the episode is clearly using this as a teaching moment because RuPaul is absolutely adamant that in order to be America’s Next Top RuPaul Impersonator Drag Superstar one must know the ins and outs of the 1960s music scene. And I get it, it’s an important decade for music, especially the advancement of Black Music, but you could feel the fear in the air whenever Michelle asked the queens what they knew about the bands they were referencing.

These three also had the advantage in that they had just worked together in the previous challenge so they knew they could all pull of a very character centric performance. I can’t quite tell how much of the song was their writing – all I know is that Willow absolutely had to have written the entire bit about their man getting hit by a bus and looking like a bowl of hot spaghetti

we’ve come full circle!
And I continue to be obsessed with Willow playing this game of just occasionally showing how utterly talented she is, this week showcasing that she knows how to choreograph and having the other queens quaking in their boots. You can tell she learnt a lot from Yvie’s run on the show in season 11.

Daya and Bosco held their own with some funny verses and decent vocal performances – they were certainly the most cohesive and memorable group, and it did help that they had the best look

and for a wig that Willow probably had to whip up in a matter of hours, this Mary Weiss beehive is AMAZING

because the one we briefly saw on the Wigs and Grace wig stands, certainly wasn’t that high. And it was nice to see Daya with lips that didn’t look like she had got her mouth stuck in a soda bottle

I’m still amazed she got by with the lips she did in last week’s acting challenge.

DeJa Skye & Others

My favourite thing about this group is that DeJa came into it last and immediately just became their lead singer – which is understandable considering Jasmine sings like a Franciscan monk with a sore throat and Jorgeous was so bad that her verses literally just became her talking because she could not be trusted to find a note.

I think DeJa would have probably worked better in The Shang-Ru-Las, mostly because she clearly wanted to go the comedy route too, and she seemed to crib a little bit from them with her verse being about stalking as well. While Jasmine and Jorgeous just kind of played it like they were trying to make a real song, which I think hindered their performance because if they’d gone comedic, they would have been able to use the fact neither of them could really sing.

Now, there were rumours that during this performance Jasmine’s breastplate falls off so I was watching like a HAWK for the moment that her breastplate would come tumbling out of her red smock dress like Tempest DuJour entering the Werk Room

and sadly it never happened, but it did have me on the edge of my seat the entire time so I was much more engaged with this performance than I probably would have been because it really just wasn’t anything to write home about, especially given that while their outfits were spot on, they were the most boring of the bunch, although I did enjoy Jasmine’s insanely padded ass

it’s like she has four Christmas turkeys hidden back there.

Ru-premes

Given the pressure of doing RuPaul’s favourite girl group, I think these three did rise to the occasion, sure there was a little bit of a struggle with teaching Kerri the very basic choreography and even then she was still completely out of time within 3 seconds of the song starting

although to be honest, they might all have been out of time?

Lady Camden was obviously put in charge of the choreography, most of which did involve them just swishing their arms around like they were washing windows. I think choreographing something interesting for a number that’s referencing The Supremes is kind of difficult because, in my head at least, a lot of their performances were kind of just stationary and a lot of arm movements, which is probably why Kerri got called out for going a little too big with some of her moments. I actually quite liked Kerri’s performance, I think it’s the most personality we’ve seen from her in a challenge and I felt like she was actually enjoying herself in this role. I did also find it very amusing that with the style of dress they were wearing and the way she was flapping her arms around because she didn’t really know what to do with them, they did look like they were someone else’s arms – a bit like that mini challenge from last season

and given how much they made out Kerri struggled in their recording session, she sounded pretty great in the final product, but really none of them were going to touch Angeria who basically just became Diana Ross in the same why Bebe and Ra’Jah managed to

I do think she still struggled with the choreography, there were definitely quite a few moments where she was having to concentrate on what her feet were doing, which might have been more to do with the fact she didn’t want to trip over the swishy hem, but I thought it was unfair to call Jasmine out for it and then not even acknowledge that Angeria did the same thing and put her in the top.

As for Lady “The Choreographer” Camden, she definitely took a bit of a back seat in terms of the performance, which given that she’s a white person doing a number inspired by The Supremes alongside two Black people, was probably the right choice. She still gave a perfectly fine performance and in her group, her vocals were the smoothest but I really couldn’t get over the fact she looked like that Noah Schnapp meme

but I don’t really think she deserved to be in the bottom this week or for Michelle to bizarrely declare that “I’m losing [Lady Camden] in the mix!” after she literally just won an episode and gave us one of the most iconic runway moments this franchise has ever seen? Do you have the memory of a goldfish?

The Heart Life

The runway prompt this week was “Heart On” which I thought was a really great theme because there’s so many ways to go about doing it, but also runs the risk of everyone bringing in a fake heart or cosplaying as Cupid. Luckily, we only got 1 cupid in the bunch from Lady Camden

this is good, I do agree with the judges that the proportions were very off – I’m sure she was going for a very cartoonish look but with the bulk of the tulle spray at the back and the ostrich feather heart, the look begins to lose its drama and looks a little crapped up.

Jasmine was also borrowing from mythology, but going Greek with her take on Aphrodite from the tv series spin-off from Disney’s Hercules, a refence that speaks to my irrelevant media loving soul

I think this would have had a lot more impact if she had gone the full hog and painted herself pink, which I get isn’t very Jasmine but this was kind of just a pretty dress with a couple of hearts stuck to it. I also think the very pageant up-do, while VERY Jasmine, does make it all look a little bit stuffy.

Bosco walked out with the first of our fake heart props

I think this look makes a strong first impression – you can’t really go wrong with an Old Hollywood style robe and a vampiric aesthetic – we call this Pulling a Sigourney Beaver

and while I find the makeup from Bosco to be very interesting, especially the very classic Tim Burton-esque feel she gave it this week

it’s a look that I think works very well for a photoshoot, because it didn’t look great when she turned to the side, which is a big part of painting for a runway presentation

and the wig is baffling – again, I love it from the front but I’m not sure why her Dracula (1992) wig needed the very chunky Elsa braid at the back.
I’m sure the limited time they have to get ready is a big part of why this look wasn’t as polished as Bosco usually is, so I’m looking forward to what she posts of it on Instagram.

Kerri Colby too had a fake heart and I *adore* that she had it on the wrong side of her chest

after all, we do know biology wasn’t her strong point

I appreciate this look from Kerri – it’s still very much her body-ody-ody style, but given that she could have easily played this as very pretty and glamorous, I like that she went quite ugly and gruesome with it. Because there is no denying that this vascular macrame poncho is bloody hideous. I think had this been a nude illusion catsuit, so that everything was just that little bit more fitted, this look would have worked a lot better – if only because it would have disguised that 70% of her look was a black thong.

Speaking of thongs, here’s Willow Pill

this is delightfully stupid, I do kind of wish she had done something more on top than a pair of heart-shaped pasties – I always think if you’re going to use pasties, it’s better to reveal to them rather than just walking out with them already on display, but I am a simple bitch and watching her trying to walk in a hobble dress made of thongs was *very* funny to me.

Willow wasn’t the only queen just wearing underwear because Jorgeous is going to be Jorgeous, isn’t she?

The AUDACITY of her to just outright say she was wearing another bra and panty set because she can and she knows how the judges will eat it up – and she’s right, because this is like the 5th itsy bitsy glitzy bikini she’s worn and she’s now severely in “You can’t keep relying on that body” debt. You can feel Ru desperately wanting Jorgeous to make the finale but with her runways being this repetitive, there’s absolutely no chance, right?

I was surprised that this category didn’t have any reveals, although perhaps everyone chickened out after Lady Camden’s reveal last week – and I categorically refuse to call Angeria covering a heart she had hastily glued to an outfit she already owned a reveal

I do really like the outfit though, and I like that this very 60s mod look aligned perfectly with the 60s girl group challenge – but my favourite part was that she had to walk around the runway like she was a robot because she was having to very carefully balance that wig on her head.

DeJa went with a very anime inspired outfit

and I like that it’s evocative of Sailor Moon without just being a Sailor Venus cosplay, but it did overwhelmingly remind me of the outfit Veronica Green showed up in for the Season 2 finale

every day I think about everyone standing there in their most opulent looks and Veronica Green looking like a guy at a stag party.

And lastly we have Daya looking like the wrappers that a sadist leaves in the Quality Street tin

it really helped her this episode that she had the most original look on the runway and I am obsessed with the shoes – it’s the first time, for me at least, that a look has felt distinctly like it’s Daya’s own personal style. Although I won’t lie, I wish everything she wore would stop veering towards the sort of silhouettes that a 5 year old girl wears.

A Heart On Runway Ranking

1. Daya Betty is Punk Hearted
2. DeJa’s Potential Toei Lawsuit
3. Willow With Her Pants Down
4. Angeria’s Mod “Reveal”
5. Bram Stoker’s Bosco
6. Lady Camden’s Stupid Cupid
7. Jasmine Kennedie’s Aphrodite Pageantry
8. Kerri Colby Failing 9th Grade Biology Again
9. Jorgeous by Ann Summers

Had this challenge been judged by group, Willow, Daya and Bosco should have absolutely been in the top while I think the Ru-nettes would have been the bottom 3, even if DeJa probably didn’t deserve to be, which would have made for an interesting lipsync between Jasmine and Jorgeous. However, it was judged individually and weirdly the only member of the Shang-Ru-Las to be in the top was Daya, which struck me as distinctly odd. She was joined by DeJa and Angeria while the bottom three was made up of Kerri, Lady Camden and Jasmine – I really think Lady Camden should have been safe with Jorgeous taking her place. I still can’t quite believe that Jorgeous squeaked by again with another lacklustre performance and with the next two episodes being the DragCon Panel Challenge and Snatch Game, I can’t see her doing particularly well so I expect some very odd judging as RuPaul tries to desperately save the alleged Drag Messiah.

Daya ends up winning the episode and I look forward to her somehow being bitter about it next week and the bottom two is Jasmine and Kerri – which sucks after last week’s Untucked episode.

Heartbreak

They were lipsyncing to a remix of Unbreak My Heart by Toni Braxton which was fitting – I had expected a much more emotional lipsync between the two of them, and I think had they worked more together they could have given us something quite iconic, but I also don’t blame Kerri for keeping her distance from Jasmine considering she sent a shoe flying within 10 seconds of the routine starting

she did at least know better than to immediately kick the other one off, and I did love seeing her awkwardly strutting around with one show in a glamorous heel next to her little potato foot

there’s always something duck-like about a drag queen’s feet when they take their shoes off.

Being mono-shoed did obviously hinder Jasmine’s performance quite bit, and it wasn’t the cleanest number in the world, but Kerri wasn’t a great deal better – it always surprises me that’s she’s not a dancer because she looks *so good* but she did have A Moment when she kind of fiercely strutted down the runway

but that was kind of it, and the rest of her performance was kind of just an awkward shuffle

It was a fairly even showing and they could have feasibly swung it either way, but ultimately I think it came down to the fact that Jasmine probably had more to show over the course of the competition while Kerri, as much as I like her, wasn’t really excelling or showcasing anything particularly exciting in the challenges – she was however the narrator of the season so it was very sad to see her go from that perspective. But of course, there was a chance for her to stay…

And making her dramatic opening of the chocolate bar even more horrifically uncomfortable than the entire debacle already is, was the fact Jasmine was at the back of the stage on the verge of hysteria, begging it for it to be golden

but alas, Kerri Colby was not saved by this nonsense twist

and thus her slow transing of the entire cast of Season 14 has been scuppered.

And so, 7 queens and an underwear model remain…

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