Daya could fit a whole Jorgeous in the space between her head and her cap.

We’re back to our regular schedule, both in terms of publishing this recap and eliminating queens.

The Golden Child

With nobody going home last week, the 7 remaining queens once again re-enter the Werk Room and I did very much enjoy Bosco entering Golden Chocolate Bar first

and while Bosco is thrilled to have been chosen by Hershey’s Christ, some of the other queens are less enthused, mostly Jorgeous who was beginning her descent into Nihilism

Jorgeous? More like… Gorgias. See, I can do highbrow jokes.

The show clearly wanted more drama out of the fact everyone said Bosco should go home, but Bosco seemed pretty mature about the whole thing and freely admitted that she deserved to be in the bottom two, and she and Camden certainly weren’t going to let their Saltine-based argument escalate into a bitter theatre kid feud – although I think it would have been a very different story if Camden had bombed as Mama Z.

Paint Me Like One of Your RuGirls

We were lucky enough to get a Mini Challenge this week, mostly because they needed to shill for Anastasia Beverly Hills, which means Norvina got to be on TV as a Mini Challenge guest because despite sponsoring the show they still are not allowing her onto the judging panel

her shoulder accoutrements do look a lot like those eyelashes you see on every second Fiat 500

which makes a lot of sense for an Anastasia Beverly Hills brand ambassador.

For the Mini Challenge the queens had to paint their version of the Dolly Parton and RuPaul mural by Gus Catty, which does feel like we’re one step closer to them having a Balloon Gay themed mini challenge, and if the golden chocolate bar wasn’t the jumping of the proverbial shark, then that certainly will be and I eagerly look forward to it.

I was preparing for complete and utter chaos until I realised that they had been given a vague outline of the mural to paint over

this didn’t however stop Deja from giving RuPaul a dick nose, which the mural was NOT happy with

You realise she has $100,000 to give you, huh?

The RuPainters, Deja, Angeria and Jorgeous were obviously slightly on a back foot with them only being 2 and a half people because Jorgeous was doing NOTHING to help as she tried to wield the already comically oversized paintbrush which only made her look even more like a Borrower

but considering everything, the murals actually came out kind of great?

Sure, RuPaul has Rylan Clarke’s old set of veneers and an upside down ET for a nose – but at least it gave us some great reactions when Norvina and Ru saw what they had done

but the other team’s Dolly is REALLY great! So no wonder they win!

Roast Mathews

This week’s Maxi Challenge was of course the annual roast, with Ross Mathews being the guest of honour and because they won the Mini Challenge, Willow, Bosco, Daya and Camden get to decide the running order – which thankfully doesn’t turn into another Ellie Diamond fiasco. The only real issue being Lady Camden agonising over whether she should go last or if she should screw Deja and put her last despite Deja not wanting to be last – it turns out the only person that was going to be screwing Deja over in this episode was Deja herself as Camden took the final spot.
I did love that throughout her torment she looked like Darla from Finding Nemo though

and everyone gets the positions they wanted with the final running order being Bosco, Jorgeous, Willow, Angeria, Daya, Deja and Lady Camden.

Bosco deciding to take the lead was mostly born out of not wanting to step on anyone’s toes after last week’s Saltine Showdown, but I think she was also slyly confident she would nail this roast given she won the Reading Challenge and has done hosting gigs in Seattle. She also knew Jorgeous was going to be following her given that for some reason Jorgeous adamantly wanted to go second because she truly was embracing her End Times with open arms.

I enjoyed Bosco’s set, I don’t think it was wildly original – she had kind of rehashed Bianca Del Rio’s jokes about not showing diversity until Michelle wears a turtleneck – but I did love her jokes about Jorgeous wearing nothing but swimsuits and underwear because Jorgeous was sitting there wearing a very badly fitting vinyl bra

and I think Bosco’s biggest strength was her command of the stage – she felt in control and her Dalmatians-Killed-My-Mother Cruella style look was incredible

it’s everything I’ve been wanting from Bosco for quite a while now – she really delivered on the aesthetics this episode, I just wish her roast had been as strong as her efforts in the reading challenge, which isn’t to say it was bad and she had certainly improved between her coaching session with Michelle and Dulcé Sloan and the actual roast.

Bosco’s success meant that Jorgeous did have quite an act to follow and I will admit, this wasn’t nearly as big a disaster as I thought it was going to be – there was quite a bit of dead air and she did frequently devolve to pulling a funny face and making weird vocalisations which was giving me Blair vibes

except slightly funnier if only for Michelle desperately trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it

but Jorgeous actually had jokes! Which was a surprise considering after her coaching session she was ready to lie down and allow the comforting warmth of her on-set dressing gown swallow her into the depths of its plush abyss

and I can’t really blame her because it did not go well, if only because of her accidental miscarriage joke, which was VERY funny for all the wrong reasons – from Michelle’s reaction to Jorgeous’s slow realisation as to what she had said being TV gold

but that wasn’t her only misstep because she had this long rambling joke about Ross Mathews twerking (I still don’t know what “45 ounces of bounce that ass” even means) but while the joke wasn’t funny, it did give us what is debatably the funniest sentence ever composed in the English language

Dulcé Sloan was DYNAMITE this episode.

The thing that was really going for Jorgeous was the fact she actually took Michelle’s advice, which a few of the other queens could probably have done with doing too.

Willow had the very easy job of following Jorgeous and I very much appreciated her joke about RuPaul sacrificing Jorgeous for 7 more years of life – if only because it confirms the queens are as aware of the absurdity of the situation as the viewers are. Willow also did a great job of taking the feedback from Michelle and Dulcé and applying it to her jokes, there were still a few that were a little long and should have just been nixed – namely the one about people like the like children of X and X but I adored the bit about thinking Ross and Fortune Feimster were the same person. But for the most part I thought Willow being utterly savage in her confessionals about the other queens’ sets was funnier than most of her jokes.

Angeria went after Willow and I think her set was the least memorable for me – I literally only took two notes – them being about the fact she treated all of her jokes being top tier comedy which kind of bamboozled you into thinking they were funny, but I will give it to her that the one about Dulcé being knockoff Lizzo and being “okay as hell” really, really tickled me.

Daya was next and her biggest issue was the fact she took FOREVER to get to punchlines and Willow looked like she was staring into whichever void had engulfed Jorgeous’s will to live

this is when Willow really began to sink her teeth in during the confessionals

had she not opened up with the long spiel about how nervous she is and how “not a comedy queen I am” despite the fact she was dressed like she was doing a stand-up set in a comedy club owned by Beetlejuice, which for the record I did very much love

but it didn’t set a great tone and she had been told not to include it and we know how Michelle is about queens not paying attention to her advice. But at least she still had jokes, even if I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the “Your favourite candy is PrEP” joke before from Willam. But Daya not taking Michelle’s advice paled in comparison to Deja who upon being told her opening joke about Daya “being what a 5 year old would draw when asked to draw bigfoot” not being particularly funny, decided to double down on it and make it even longer

granted, I don’t think it was as *unfunny* as Michelle made out, it was just a little bit long for an opening joke and there would be snappier ways of delivering it. There was also a lot of expectation on Deja given that she has kind of styled herself as a comedy queen, which is debatable considering she was in the bottom 2 in her first episode because of a bad comedy routine so she might want to rethink that angle because this whole set wasn’t great, even if there were some glimmering moments – she played well with audience feedback at least

and I did love her introducing Lady Camden by saying “the next queen needs no introduction” and then just marching off stage

every bomb has to end with a bang.

Closing out the show was Lady Camden whose funniest joke about Michelle not being a dancer was unfortunately cut from the final set in favour of her also doubling down on an unfunny joke about Ross’s arse being a gay echo chamber. It wasn’t quite as egregious as Deja’s obsession with Bigfoot and bigger feet but quite why Camden was so determined to shout into Ross’s bum remains to be seen, but I did like that she didn’t take the joke about Ross’s farts having a lisp because I am 100% sure someone on the show has already made that joke about Ross. But the rest of her set was great and her following up of Deja had me ROLLING

as did her telling Jorgeous to “try and superstar your way out of this roast” – the girls were GUNNING for her this episode!

Overall, it was a pretty good roast – I don’t think anyone’s set rivalled the iconic likes of Laganja’s Droi Vajoina, Farrah Moan just being mean or Utica bombing with a flagrantly unearned confidence, try as Deja Skye did, she wasn’t that loftily bad.

TuTu For Now

This week’s runway theme was Tutus and given that they came out in their roast order, I can see why Bosco wanted to go first because she was going to be setting the bar VERY high for everyone else

This is just straight up iconic, I made the most unGodly sound when she came out, it’s just SO. DAMN. GOOD. And when she did the bow at the end of the runway I damn near lost my mind because FINALLY it felt like we were seeing The Demon Queen of Seattle

And I can’t fathom why the judges weren’t drooling over it – especially considering the slowly creeping fear that all Bosco had left was a thong she had to keep washing in her hotel room sink and then she thankfully turns up serving you Final Destination Glamour. But she should be punished for having a pair of tights that ends at the ankle.

And then Jorgeous had to some out after it in her perfectly cute little dress, and thus started the issue of a lot of queens just wearing tulle skirts without much of a point of view

I adore the fact that Jorgeous thought this was giving “butch lesbian biker realness” just because she was wearing a leather cap and jacket when it is quite frankly almost literally the same outfit worn by 11 year old Bella Thorne during the height of her Disney Channel fame

except Jorgeous’s was much less of a tutu.

While I thought Bosco’s outfit was the star of the show, the judges were all aboard Willow’s Space Opera Amanda Lepore

and don’t get me wrong, I think this is an incredible look and what I like most about it is that it doesn’t feel like it’s mocking people who have plastic surgery, which is often the trap these types of looks fall into. The train somewhat ruins the tutu effect, and in fact I get more of a tutu from her collar that makes her look like a Bjorkian Frilled Neck Lizard than I do from the skirt

quite when editing celebrities’ heads onto frilled-neck lizards became a staple of my blog I don’t know, but there’s a niche Twitter shitposting account in there somewhere.

Angeria was certainly the least of the tutu looks as she proudly boasted “I’m not just wearing 1 tutu, I’m wearing 4 layers of tutus!” at which point I believe they just become ruffles

and if I were to see this outfit I, after recovering from the eye-searing lime colour, would never have guessed that this was for a tutu themed runway. And once again, as much as I love her hair, it is really fighting with with the shoulder ruffles

and I wish she had chosen smaller stones for the applique around her neck, they just look a little clumsy.

I had kind of hoped that Daya would give us a real emo-goth look, ala Avril Lavigne in the My Happy Ending music video

which might have been predictable for her but it would have at least stood out amongst the cutsie froth of everyone else, but it was a missed goth-ortunity because she came out in her very Baroque, Jean Paul Gaultier outfit, which I really did like but I was VERY distracted by the audio editing of her explanation about how the outfit was made out of recycled materials

“This entire outfit is. Made. Out. Of ^recycled… Mat..Erials. The jacket is a thrifted Jacket. The crown is a ~duct. tape. roll.~ Covered in. CONSTRUCTION PAPER! I’m wearing. 11-inch. Plat. _Form. ^Heels.”

But to be fair those heels were INCREDIBLE

thank God she didn’t choose this runway to fall over during, we’d have lost another girl to the dreaded ankle phantom.

Following Daya was going to be a tall order for anyone (heh.) and it was Deja who had that unfortunate task

this really reminds me of the sort of things that Jiggly was wearing in Season 4 which I believe she did admit were all bought from a prom dress store during a closing down sale, so they’re not even the good dresses, it’s the dresses that the 15 year old girls with questionable taste in 2012 didn’t want. But as nothingish and ill-fitting as the dress was, I did really like Deja’s makeup and she really does look good in in these My Little Pony pastels

she’s serving Generation 1 Bow Tie realness.

Thankfully Lady Camden was on hand to give as the full throttle ballet that SOMEBODY in this runway needed to give us

it’s sublime and very Sugar Plum Fairy which is quite funny after her shoulder pads runway being a nutcracker look

Going with the Sugar PLum Fairy over Odette from Swan Lake was a good call because it lets you add a lot more sparkle and was my second most “I really want someone to do that for this runway” option after the Black Swan, which I’m very mad that nobody did but I can understand the fear that we’d have another KimonoGate with 4 insane Natalie Portmans standing on stage.
The one thing I would change about Camden’s outfit is the applique on her face

I thought it was a little distracting and muddied her up a bit, and as much as I would have loved for her to wear pointe shoes, I fully understand the decision to wear heels instead, I just think the ones she chose were a little clunky.

A TuTu Much Runway Ranking

1. Bosco’s Final Destination Glamour
2. Lady Camden’s One Woman Production of The Nutcracker
3. Willow’s Bjorkian Frilled-neck Lizard
4. Daya The Balletic Kaiju
5. Jorgeous’s Butch Lesbian Disney Channel Starlet
6. Angeria, Those Were Ruffles
7. Deja’s Bootleg My Little Pony Doll

Willow and Bosco were the clear standouts in both the roast and on the runway – I’m a little bit surprised that Willow didn’t win considering she took Michelle and Dulcé’s advise the most seriously AND Ru said her runway look was her favourite of the evening. But Bosco getting the win does feel more narratively satisfying, and I think pretty much solidifies her place as a finalist. It’s difficult to actually call the final 4, I would say Bosco, Camden and Willow are pretty much dead-certs for it with Angeria and Daya having to fight for the last spot. Angeria has just kind of fizzled out in the last few weeks, I’ve found it really hard to give her A Moment in the recaps and I often find myself enjoying her more out of drag than in drag, which is a problem when it comes to a drag competition. But seeing as this is the Season of Non-eliminations, I can see us actually ending up with a Top 5.

As for the bottom 3, it was pretty fairly Daya, Deja and Jorgeous – ultimately I think Deja and Jorgeous would have been the bottom 2 but they really needed to eliminate two people so we have a three way lipsync, which thankfully Daya was allowed to change her shoes for

lest we have another Oinkle Goes Cleek incident.

Good 4 Her

The lipsync song this week was Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” which I saw a lot of people online saying was a bad lipsync song and I HIGHLY disagree, I think teenage brand pop-punk is excellent lipsync fodder and with Daya Betty essentially being teenage angst personified she was in her element of mostly being hyperbolically angry at nobody in particular

the thing with this song is that it’s quite narrative heavy, which means that a full dance sequence to it doesn’t go down particularly well and you could kind of see the fear setting in with Jorgeous as she slowly realised that if she wanted to survive this lipsync she would have to go for something more emotional and not so ghost-punching heavy, which I don’t think she managed to do. But good God do I not HOWL when she skittered across the stage while Daya towered over her

it really is a pity that Daya had to change shoes.

And then Deja was just… there? It’s clearly not a song in her wheelhouse and it really didn’t feel like she connected to the song, I’m sure the fear of her dress “pulling a June” didn’t help her situation though.

Ultimately Daya Betty manages to survive and Deja and Jorgeous have to awkwardly sign off together

Nihilistic Jorgeous is the best Jorgeous.

And so, we’re FINALLY down to 5 queens, it’s only 4 episode late

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