Everyone else going buckwild for Marina’s lipsync and Juriji just taking a pretend phone call? I love her so much.

A perfect Pre-Eurovision episode!

This episode was wild – given the general toning down of the US Drag Race as courting Emmy voters becomes more important than being a parody of a reality game and in anyway subversively queer – this episode very much felt like the exact opposite of that. RuPaul would never in a million years have let a queen get away with half of what Estrella and Sharonne put in their ad

and my God did I love it – mostly for the fact we got to see Ruth Lorenzo being taught what a gloryhole is.

A Night of 1000 Raffaelles

The runway theme this week was for the queens to pay homage to Raffaella Carra, who I am only aware of through whatever I have casually gleaned from Eurovision over the last 10 years. And while I don’t ordinarily like these Night of a 1000 [insert diva name here], Rafaella at least has an aesthetic that better suits drag queens – there’s a lot of sparkle, frills, feathers and general campiness, it all worked pretty well!

Estrella Xtravaganza

This was certainly the most abstracted version of Raffaella with Estrella choosing to kind of cobble together various elements from across her fashion ouvre into one outfit, which I don’t mind – I much prefer a more creative take during these runways over straight up cosplay. I do think the adornments were just a touch small and seeing as she was so very proud of the crotch mask she had engineered, it could’ve been more of a statement.
I also have to wonder if production supplied some of the queens with a quick out of the bag Italian Entertainer wig because some of these blonde bobs seemed like a last ditch effort.

Venedita von Dash

First of all: the fact she bleached her beard just for this runway look? Kind of iconic, I’ll be honest. As for the outfit, I like that she did the red jumpsuit in a sequin, it just makes it that little more “draggy” – I do at least a little bit wish she had done it in the pinstripe of the backing dancers, but that would probably have taken it a little bit away from Raffaella.

Juriji der Klee

This was good in terms of the fact it’s a pretty flawless recreation of the look she was referencing, which is perfectly fine but I did appreciate the fact she added the campy twist on it by yoinking a phone out from under her skirt

it’s been a strong season for crotch props.

Sharonne

She absolutely knew how cheap this looked and so she came out onto that runway all guns blazing and basically did Marina’s lipsync before Marina did Marina’s lipsync

I was a little bit surprised that Sharonne had the cheapest looking outfit of the bunch, she’s usually so polishe but something about the strangely textureless fabric really reminded me of the Star Trek uniforms

I imagine she thought that, given they had an Almodóvar themed runway, she thought the Raffaella one would be for a challenge, where this would’ve been perfectly acceptable.

Drag Sethlas

On the positive, the outfit is kind of incredible – I wish the colours differentiated a little more but I still think it’s a pretty good interpretation. And I did enjoy that at some point during Untucked she just shoved all of the glitter she could get her hands on into her sleeves

the entire studio is going to take MONTHS to get rid of it all

I did greatly enjoy the murder mystery aerial shot.

Her decision to not change up her makeup was however a choice, and it didn’t help that Venedita had bleached her beard just for this runway

and I get it, your signature look is kind of sacred and it would be fine in literally any other situation, but on Drag Race you have kind of got to show some sort of diversity and creativity and this runway was the perfect opportunity to do that and sadly she didn’t take it.

Marina

Nothing shocked me more than Marina playing this runway 100% straight and not having some sort of incredibly meta commentary on the life of Raffaella. Much like Sharonne, the fabric was a little cheap, but let’s be honest, so was the fabric of the outfit that Rafaella actually wore – it’s very magic act at a junior school talent show. But my God did it allow her perform during the lipsync

I really didn’t think Marina would turn it out like she did but her performance was so stupidly fun!