Me every time Beverly Kills mentions she’s 21.

How many barrel rolls can YOU do in only 3 minutes?

No Place Like Home

For this week’s Maxi Challenge the queens were having to create adverts for their hometowns, with Ru once again having to spell out the fact that they weren’t having to take it quite so literally and that a large part of the challenge was in fact self-branding. And after having torn everyone’s ideas to shreds, a fair few of the queens came to the filming process after scrabbling their idea together in only 30 minutes – I think Kween Kong suffered the most from this because I really liked her idea of making it about “Kween Kong Island”, unfortunately she clearly hadn’t had the time to quite practice her line delivery so it was all very monotone which meant that a lot of her jokes, which were quite funny, just fell a little flat because she was saying them like she was doing a table read of a script and was thus a little overshone by the Pit Crew members gently bobbing around beside her

I want to know how much these poor guys get paid and I’m going to need WoW to double it – they’re doing the Lord’s work.

While Kween’s ad was a little undercooked, Beverly had WAY over thought hers, and I am entirely certain the idea started just because she wanted to crack the whip because her whip work has basically been the one thing the judges have complimented her on this entire season

and from that point she somehow extrapolated to being Bindi Irwin’s Younger Lesbian Sister, Cindi Irwin

Why does this show keep dragging Bindi Irwin into things? HAS SHE NOT SUFFERED ENOUGH AT THE HANDS OF ART SYMONE? Beverly didn’t seem to quite know why she had bothered to make the character a lesbian, I have a few ideas – she’s only 21 and I would hazard a guess that Drag Race had been hugely formative for her and the creation of Beverly Kills and if Drag Race acting challenges love anything more than being terribly written, it’s for at least one of the punchlines to be “these characters are lesbians”. Then of course there’s a large part of the Drag Race fandom who are queer teenage girls that regard a few of the queens as “Lesbian Icons” – Trixie and Brooke Lynn Hytes have at this point made it a sizeable part of their online brands and I think Beverly’s internal Drag Race algorithm just kind of told her to be a lesbian and a lesbian she… was not, because she was chasing a Sugar Daddy. But however much of a weird choice that was, I did love that Beverly’s shorthand for a sugar daddy was just “man in a top hat” like every man on the Gold Coast is Mr. Monopoly

it was probably my favourite part of her whole advert – a complete scene stealer. It also probably didn’t help her chances in the eyes of the judges that the whole punchline of her advert was that she was going to have to piss on the guy’s jellyfish stings

and sure enough the moment she said it she got treated to the Piss Shade Rattle because we do know how the judges feel about piss jokes

Your honour, she’s dying on the hill that Etcetera Etcetera was actually funny again.

What I will praise Beverly for was that at least her advert had the vague semblance of a narrative, Spankie’s was a just a stream of unhinged consciousness

but she very much benefits from The Alyssa Effect in which she does it with such confidence and conviction that you kind of just have to go with it. I do think the actual filming of her advert was significantly more funny than the final product, even if it was just because of how utterly overwhelmed Suzanne Paul was by the monolithic insanity of one Spankie Jackzon and God bless Suzanne for trying to give Spankie any guidance in this runaway train to Palmerston North, as she desperately tried to get Spankie to say “We’re balmy for Palmy” instead of “Palmerston North, FUCK YEAH!” – but at least they found a semblance of a middle ground

the “FUCK YEAH!” was essential to the Palmerston North experience.

While Spankie’s was essentially just a few random scenes stitched together like one of Kuleshov’s early Soviet Montage trials, at least it was only *a few* scenes, Molly came to set having written her own Greek tragedy, boasting an alarming 16 scenes, of which only 8 actually made the final cut (RELEASE THE POPPINZ CUT). Molly’s was definitely the most advert-y of the lot, I didn’t find a great deal to laugh at beyond her introduction

she fell back on a lot of physical humour, which personally doesn’t appeal greatly to me – unless it’s two queens doing competitive barrel rolls at one another, then it is very much Extremely My Shit™.

Hannah on the other hand very much immediately had my whole heart the moment she uttered the phrase “I am going to be fighting a giant black swan”

the faith she put in the video editors to even remotely pull off a vast majority of what made her video funny when they can barely muster the energy to use a background with a correct perspective during acting challenges was an extreme trust exercise.
Much like Beverly, hers really stood out against a few of the others due to the fact it had an actual narrative and it wasn’t just her reeling off a list of things like the side effects on an American TV advert for antidepressants, and she looked stunning too

I know saying that Hannah has a phenomenal beat is a little redundant at this point but… Hannah has a phenomenal beat.

Swimwear

This week’s runway theme was Jorgeous Swimwear, which I think is quite a difficult category because it’s quite hard to make a swimsuit super interesting and it obviously requires a lot more confidence than a lot of other outfits – unless you’re Spankie Jackzon in which case pantslessness is your eternal reality.

First up was Kween Kong, who was referencing the Samoan warrior queen and Goddess, Nafanua

she certainly captured a regality and power that I think just comes innately to a lot of Kween’s drag, I didn’t mind the minor fraying on the fabric, it was a natural fibre and if anything it could have afforded to be more frayed. I would have maybe liked a few more stones to really amp up the seaspray effect she was going for. As for the wig, I REALLY like it, I can’t work out if it’s a direct reference to a part of Nafanua’s mythology or Polynesian religion, or if she just went with an Ankh-like shape because it’s kind of easy shorthand for a Goddess.

Spankie was next and I just love that the best she’s ever looked on the runway is while she’s doing Baywatch cosplay, it just feels VERY correct

I am genuinely astounded that in an instance of doubling up of looks, we didn’t end up with a pair of duelling Pamela Andersons. Instead Hannah showed up as Barbarella going to the Sea of Tranquility (that’s a joke for all the space nerds who don’t read these recaps)

I mostly just don’t appreciate that this reminds me far too much of Shuga Cane’s absolutely heinous Troll Doll morphsuit she wore during season 11, which is the only part of season 11 that has managed to commit itself to my memory other than Yvie yelling “WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING BITCH?!” during Untucked

instant jail time for anyone that reminds me of it, sorry Hannah.

The actual double up on looks though was Molly and Beverly both walking out as Surfer’s Paradise Meter Maid’s, with Molly going first in probably the subtler of the two – as subtle as her trademark breastplate can ever be that is

I’m not entirely sure I’m fully getting beachside babe from it so much as I am Texan pageant mom – I think it’s entirely down to the wig. Whereas Beverly’s look was just a little more dragged up – some might say “crapped up” given that it did look a bit like she had run full pelt through a Claire’s Accessories

The opera necklace to cover a breastplate seam strikes again!

Coming out in the little sleeveless jacket wasn’t entirely worth it, but I did appreciate her clearly having to concentrate A LOT as she tried to undo and take it off while wearing 4 inch nails.
I do think Beverly needs to learn how to edit a look, I think she gets very excited by the fact she can do these graphic eye looks, but I’m not sure they always make sense with her look

it’s just a little too bold and dark for a look that was meant to be a little more peppy and sunny.

A Swimsuit Runway Ranking

1. Spamela Spankerson
2. A Kweenly Goddess
3. Poolside Barbarella
4. Beverly’s Crapped Up Meter Maid
5. Molly Poppinz’s Texan Meter Maid

Much like the eventual crown, the win for this episode was a two horse race between Spankie and Hannah – Spankie’s was the better example of branding (and therefore probably should have won by Ru’s own metric) but Hannah’s was the more cohesive and “professional” of the two, and thus won her the episode

I see the Palmerston North is catching.

As for the bottom 2, Beverly was a predetermined decision the moment she owned up to RuPaul that she had never watched Muriel’s Wedding before

and then it probably didn’t help that everyone chose her as their choice to be eliminated next due to her track record and the fact everyone was slowly losing patience with her supposed inauthenticity – and just to exaggerate this relationship gap they had stood most of the queens on one side of the stage during the judging and then banished Beverly to the otherside in emotional Guam

and given the fact Ru had decided that Beverly didn’t have enough trauma to work through during a TicTac Lunch and was going to have to be sent home, she was put up against Kween Kong instead of Molly Poppinz, so instead of battling Meter Maids we got an interpretative reenactment of the Punic Wars.

Do A Barrel Roll!

It’s hard to remember what song these two were even lipsyncing to because it so quickly became a secondary component to their aggressively competitive barrel rolling and I LOVE that the fact the super zoomed out wide-shot makes this look like an online platform jumper you’d find on AddictingGames you’d play with your friend during an IT class

and I’m so glad it became this insane contest between themselves and the very concept of gravity because I really did think we were in for something A LOT messier when the two of them collided within the first 5 seconds of the song

and then of course you had to worry about Kween’s rapidly fraying train threatening to trip both of them up at a moment’s notice – how was there more accidental physical contact in this two person lipsync than the time RuPaul made 6 queens lipsync at the same time?
I do also thoroughly recommend watching the lipsync and trying your best to tear your eyes away from drag queen zoomies to just watch Molly looking on in complete shock, realising she dodged one hell of a murdering

the only person was more shaken was RuPaul pondering if the insurance would cover Kween Kong having her eye taken out by stiletto

would this have been a double shantay if they could afford a whole extra episode? Probably not, as noted previous: Beverly didn’t know about a piece of media from the 90s and is therefore WORTHLESS to RuPaul and was eliminated, Krystal Versace count your lucky stars RuPaul didn’t spring a Meg Ryan pop quiz on you

she’s a young queen, she’ll bounce back from this and if she shows up on an All Stars edition in about 3 or 4 years, I’ll be excited to see how her drag has developed because there’s obvious talent there.

And so, we’re heading into the semi-final

And if you’ve enjoyed the recap of Drag Race Down Under and would like to support the blog, you can drop a small tip over at my Ko-fi account HERE – any and all support is welcome and much appreciated in keeping the blog going.