Insidious (Wan, James. 2010)

Where IS the fashion in the Diaper Baby Hotdog?

Off the Beaten Track Record

There was a weird tension to this episode, which I’m sure in part had to do with Kasha and Jessica going rogue and not sticking to the tried and tested method set forth by BenDeLaCreme’s All Star Abacus 5 years ago – which is partly what makes this group so interesting, they have not come to a group consensus on how to base their votes and only three episodes in we’ve entered a sort of unique reality TV Behavioural Sink where nobody knows quite knows how to behave anymore and are becoming increasingly frustrated with even the nicest queens in the group. Or at least everyone except Kandy is because she’s loving every second of this

Kandy will always be Kandy.

Going to Market

This week’s maxi challenge was the ball, this one being themed around the supermarket and I am still trying to work out if “Supermarket Ball” is a pun on something. The three categories were LegenDairy Queens – a dairy themed look, Fruity Patooties – a fruit themed look and Supermarket Supermodels – a look the queens had to make out of what RuPaul called “supermarket items” but… were they? There were a lot of pool toys and given we were promised supermarket items I am a little bit disappointed we didn’t get a bread dress

GIVE ME THE BREAD DRESS.

Dear Dairy,

This first dairy category was a bit of a dud, a Milk Dud if you will, clearly the prompt had specified that it had to be a milk-themed look because if it had been more expansive, I’m sure more than just Monica would have shown up in a cheese look, or at least a look she claimed was cheese

I can’t believe I’m going to say it but what is basically a gold corset might have really livened this category up because it was mostly just a case of white drip effect outfits and some cow print. They could have designated some looks, break the 12 queens into 3 groups – some do milk, some do cheese, some do… ice cream, I guess? We’ve seen them do it on previous balls – in season 12 each queen was given a different sport and on season 13 each queen was given a different Mixed Bag prompt to avoid an overlap and repeats, it just makes for a better runway. Although, To be fair, if I got the “Dairy Look” prompt on a list of about 20 looks, I too would have low balled it and just vaguely repurposed the Princess Leia outfit I had lying around

at least she looked pretty!
I was surprised that in a prompt like “Milk” that Jimbo had played it so safe and not jumped at the chance to dress up as the worst possible google image result for “cow”

there is something of the Italian opera Pierrot about it with the suggestion of a frilled neck collar which I really like and it’s clean and polished, I just… I’m disappointed but also probably relieved that we didn’t end up with a weekend of the worst kind of Drag Race discourse.
With Jimbo opting out of Bovine Realness, the title of Best Cow in Show was up for grabs amongst Lala Ri, Kahanna Montrese and Alexis Michelle none of whom quite reached the glorious heights of Mo Heart’s Brown Gown Stunning

but Alexis’s was probably my personal favourite of the three because nothing made me laugh harder this episode than the sight of her furiously trying to chew a mouthful of Parsley before she got to the end of the runway and hating every second of it

I do wish the cow print had been bigger because it’s leaning slightly towards dalmatian but I have to say I love that she was wearing the red hanky (which indicates a penchant for fisting) and I’m going to assume was a joke about farmers and rectal palpation

I like the look though, I was just glad we got at least one cow with ears – don’t pretend you’re too pretty for cow ears, Kahanna

she is beautiful though and I will always be tickled by a sexy version of the least sexy things you could think of, although there’s someone out there whose first crush was Disney’s Clarabelle and I hope they’re doing ok. There’s enough fun little details in Kahanna’s look to make it fun – the cowbells at the end of her braids and the bow on her hip.
The last of the cows was Lala Ri and my favourite thing about her look was Ru sayin “Her Black Angus is showing!” which doesn’t make a great deal of sense but it made me laugh

She looks great – it’s a really strong silhouette with the big shoulders and fedora she stole from one of the Coneheads but I think I am little bored of the whole “throw a harness over it to make it interesting” outfits, but again – there’s upwards of 20 outfits to bring, by all means phone the “Milk” one in – I do kind of wish someone had dressed up as the drag queen Milk, but she doesn’t really have a memorable enough look and Ru can’t even remember Jinkx’s name so there’s no chance Milk made it into her memory bank.

A few of the queens mostly focused on what goes with milk, which was a great way to liven up a dress but did run the risk of kind of eliminating the Milk element, which Jaymes kind of did but I wasn’t mad at it because it’s such a cute look

the red hands don’t quite evoke “Strawberry Milk” so much as they do Italian Giallo horror movie posters – which still fits the 60s/70s look she was going for.
I was surprised more people didn’t go for the obvious Milk and Cookies reference, the only other queen being Naysha in her best look so far and probably my favourite from this category

the nude illusion worked really well and the drip effect is super flattering, kind of maybe wish she’d had a really white wig to carry the illusion through – she’s really married to these sort of Veronica Lake-esque pieces and they kind of kill the fun in a campy look – why are you trying to look like an old Hollywood goddess when you’ve got modesty cookies on?

Jessica Wild opted for Froot Loops instead of cookies in her attempt to bring some colour

it’s really cute and everything that made it great, kind of made Kasha’s look… not great

when she first came out, my mind went a 100 miles a minute as I tried to work out what she was doing because I thought the shoulder details were trying to make her look like an ancient Egyptian symbol and what she was doing was a look inspired by Cleopatra’s ass milk baths. Apparently I was overthinking it (ON THIS BLOG?) and she was just a milk jug and I have to say if a 6 year old singing “I’m a little teapot” looks more like a teapot than you do a milk jug in your milk jug dress, something went wrong along the way. It just needed to be exaggerated and it’s a surprised that it wasn’t given that most of Kasha’s drag is big, bold drag.

The last of the “I’m wearing milk” looks was Kandy in one of those splash effect plastic Abraham Levy designs that have become a Drag Race staple

the effect is really cool but it is another leotard and gubbins from Kandy which she looks good in but I hope she packed some slightly different silhouettes. Although my favourite part of the outfit was Alexis wearing the collar like a cone of shame in Untucked

Alexis in Untucked is a sight to behold – nobody is better at producing an entire programme around themself when they could easily just be sitting back drinking a cocktail.

Lastly we have Heidi dressed as a milklady and honestly, after all the other looks genuinely felt the most exciting

I just really liked the shape the capelet gave it and her face was stunning – those spiky lashes really brought the cartoonishness of the whole look together.

The Fruits of Your Labour

This runway was a lot more successful, or at least there was a welcome variety of colours, I thought the producers must have designated everyone a fruit, but then we did get double banana’d with Kahanna being more of a literal banana and Kasha doing what Kasha apparently does best and gluing stuff to herself to fulfill the assignment

the banana pauldrons very much feel like a desperate addition to clearly signpost that she’s a banana – but I do love that if you put this on a mannequin, you would know it was going to be worn by a drag queen. Or a woman over the age of 50 on Strictly Come Dancing dancing a cha cha cha, it’s a fine line.
As for Kahanna’s literal banana

she looks amazing – the B.A.P.S. inspired hair is a great way to finish the whole look off, I don’t think she needed the banana toggle buttons or earrings, the kitschy cartoonishness of them doesn’t quite mesh with the alarmingly realistically rendered banan dress.

Also in yellow was Jaymes Mansfield who was bravely wearing lemons in a world where there’s a drag queen called Lemon

I don’t think the, and I apologise for this phrase, bejewelled squirts worked quite as well on camera as she wanted them to but I like the whole pin-up, spokesmodel for the California Lemon Growers look – she’s Anita Bryant’s biggest rival since banana cream pies. Speaking of Banana Cream Pies

I was so relieved that this was a reveal because the overwhelming fruit salad housecoat was not a great look but the little nubbin-y banana tail was perfectly stupid enough for me to forgive it and the slightly too low hanging crotch cherry

the fact it looks like a little dinosaur tail kills me every time. (I tried to get a picture of Yoshi’s tail because that’s what it made me think of but googling “Yoshi tail” led me to having to delete my browsing history and have a 20 minute shower to make myself feel clean again.)

Kandy was also getting her tits out for the boys in her second (but slightly less of a) bodysuit

it’s rough that she ended up wearing two similar outfits on the same episode, and even rougher that she’d worn a very similar looking outfit in the first episode for her Signature Drag Runway

they are at least really good bodysuits and torso shells – there’s a look to them that reminds me of The Blondes and I’d love to see Kandy collaborate with them because I think it would result in something pretty fabulous.

Lala Ri was also in red latex for her caramel apple look

I didn’t like this, comparatively to her previous season? It’s excellent, I just don’t enjoy the colours together, I know it’s a caramel apple but the red is oddly muted and I just wish the caramel was a little translucent or much shinier because right now it’s really reminding me of the episode of Pingu where they try to make pancakes

and that’s the non-gross reference.

I think when we heard the theme was fruit, we were all waiting for Jessica Wild to come out and do the Acai Berry bit and then she came out and I was so disappointed because I thought she’d just gone for grapes

and then I realised that I don’t actually know what an acai berry looks like and it turns out they just look like little blueberries and she was in fact doing the (now de-branded) acai berry bit

I will never stop thinking about the fact she got eliminated for that challenge because Jeffrey Moran told her she wasn’t being a good spokesperson for accidentally getting hammered during her interview and not promoting the drink and then ended up doing a TV advert for Absolut Acai-flavoured Vodka a few months later and now only exists in glorious 240p

it’s always a bit of a relief that we don’t have to deal with Absolut and Jeffrey Moran anymore but then you do remember that’s also why Untucked is so boring now and why RuPaul says stuff like this

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN RU?

Jimbo went quite far out of the box and instead of going for a fruit, decided that she was going to go “fruity” and bedeck herself in gay icons

Cher may not be a variety of apple but my God do I get a kick out of the fact that because of Jimbo’s breastplate the Cher on her chest looks like a dog that got stung by a bee

the Rupaul on the other tit faired better. We’ll let that mean whatever it means.

Heidi was a little sour about Jimbo’s look and I can’t entirely blame her given that she’d obviously gone all out on getting a pair of strawberry balloon pants made

I’m obsessed with these and think it was absolutely my favourite look of the night – they were so fun when they moved, they were excellently structured and they reminded me of The Red Guy from Cow and Chicken who never wore pants and walked on his butt because 90s Cartoon Network was a wilderness

he butt-walked so that Him could saunter.

The last of our currently competing queens is Alexis in a really stunning gown

I’m convinced she had to have owned at least part of this beforehand because I cannot imagine going this all out for a gown necessitated by blueberries which I would like to think are unanimously agreed upon as the worst fruit. It’s also probably why she was really insistent that you notice the blueberries in her hair

I cannot stop saying “Oh, and look, I’ve got blueberries in my updo!” because she sounded like Barney Rubble when she said it.

Over with our eliminated queens and Monica can at least rest safe in the knowledge that she’s the second best looking queen dressed as a tree

only beaten by Ra’jah’s Farm to Runway RuDemption outfit

and beating Lemon dressed as the driest lemon tree in Toronto and Salina EsTitties dressed as a Game Boy era Exeggutor

we have quite the drag queen orchard.

Then we have Naysha in another extremely Naysha look

Darby pointed it out in the IMHO recap – she wears a lot of these extremely ornate catsuits that just stop at the neck and the hair & makeup have nothing to do with the rest of the look so she’s just kind of wearing an ornate scuba suit, if this were fully accessorised with bold makeup and a better wig or headpiece, it would be really cool but as is, it just doesn’t seem fully realised. Even just a neckline to break it up slightly might make it better.

Strutting Down the Aisles

With this being a design challenge we were all eagerly awaiting to see quite what Lala would do, but having been severely burnt by a design challenge she had at least gone to a sewing lesson

or at least half a sewing lesson

she was aided this time by the fact she was working with something that at least resembled real fabric and not 15 miniature giftbags, although the amount of outfit we ended up with was somewhat comparable

it is a scooch too short but my God did she masterfully control that riding hemline. Am I proud of Lala Ri? In a completely one-sided parasocial kind of way? Absolutely, but I don’t like this outfit – I find the folds and layering to be off kilter and making the outfit really top heavy, which admittedly she has the legs for and I loved the decision to not to wear a wig – the doors Joey Jay opened – but I just don’t like that she has about 3 waists and 4 shoulders.

Had Lala not learned how to sew, I don’t know what she would have done because I’m not sure there were any gluesticks left on the East Coast after Kasha had her way with them

and as I think we all suspected when she said she was making an outfit inspired by a child’s birthday party and suddenly got 70% more screentime, Kasha’s outfit looks liked a Thanksgiving Turkey out for revenge

everyone describing this as looking like a pinata was being kind, she looks like the bride of Veronica Green’s Pride Demon

I wish them the best of luck in their most unholy matrimony.

While Kasha had us seeing, tasting, psychically communicating with and hearing the rainbow kicking and screaming, Alexis had a very different approach

so while she watched as Kasha wandered into the technicolour bear trap, Alexis made a much more subdued looking cocktail dress

it has a very early 2010s tweeny Taylor Swift vibe to it that I’m not sure Alexis Michelle, who always looks like the classy lady, quite pulls off, but I do like a textured skirt and a plainer top combo, it’s a design that works really well, especially on a runway. I think the other thing slightly holding her back is the fact it doesn’t look *that* unconventional – which I think was a case for a lot of the queens, there seemed to be a lot of just plain fabric at this supermarket and the only queen that truly embraced the unconventional materials of it all was probably Jimbo who was disappointingly not wearing a hairband so I can’t make a Blair Waldorf Salad joke

this does also explain where Alexis got her mouthful of parsley from. Although. I’m still not sure if they’re real salad leaves or not because they look suspiciously fresh for leaves that were sewn over the course of 2 days even with overnight refrigeration and I know there were fake flowers (a staple of every supermarket) on offer because Jessica was very proud of her flower boobs

I love this as a cohesive look – for a bunch of separate random things they go together very well and I do think she had the best constructed outfit, I just maybe wish it was a little more interesting, like Kahanna’s at least had a bold structure to it

it was pretty obvious that she’d intended to make it into a sort of leotard but hadn’t made the gusset long enough so it was just flopping around down there

I’m just shocked there were any pool toys left for the other queens to grab after Kasha wove them into her glue gun web.

Kahanna wasn’t the only one sold a bit short this episode because the general consensus online, and in her own mind, seems to be that Heidi should have been in the top

and I don’t disagree, it’s got a fun, unique silhouette and was well made enough to have at least landed in the top, I could see them justifying her not winning based on the fact she used napkins and there were parts of it that looked a bit messy – there were a few bare patches and the attachment of the mermaid skirt is suspicious but it was undoubtedly one of the most interesting outfits in this category, and I mean that positively, whereas if we’re talking about Darienne it’s a whole different case

it’s wild to me that the main critique she got from Ru was that the length of the skirt puzzled her and not a single soul mentioned the Chinese spy balloon trailing behind her, Kandy having at least used a similar material to a more successful degree

I’m just glad it’s not as boxy as Kandy’s fashion sketch made out

I will never get bored of drag queens doing fashion sketches on this show, this is another banger. But you know when people dress up as the Millennium Falcon for ComicCon as a joke? That’s what Kandy’s outfit reminded me of, as well as Miss Fiercalicious’s second non-tumorous attempt at a design challenge which she somehow avoided the bottom 2 for

while Kandy had mostly tied a piece of foil covered cardboard to her chest, she had at least done a bit more to finish off the outfit than spray painting a pair of pants silver and praying it was non-toxic.

Lastly we have Jaymes who I was worried for because she kind of fell into that design challenge trap of creating a character look instead of something fashionable which usually goes badly (Karen from Finance, Maddy Morphosis, Maddy Morphosis again…) and she was only saved this time because Darienne and Kasha looked like a pair of extremely pissed off birds

it’s perfectly Jaymes and I’m glad I finally got a puppet, which might have been the best made part of this outfit because I find the decision to make it separates an odd choice and I am convinced that as small as that apron is, it is hiding a multitude of sins.

Getting Judgey…

The judging in episode 3 is always a bit of a crapshoot because the judges like to have given everyone a critique by this point, which is the only reason I can think of why Kandy was in the Top 4 (I am still baffled by this format decision) – nothing the judges said to her warranted her staying on that stage, she was low-safe at best and as much as I love Lala Ri, I don’t think she was top. The show however is really invested in the Lala redemption arc and now that she’s done really well in a design challenge, she is left in that precarious position of Storyline Limbo so unless she decides to start feuding with someone I can’t help but think she’s a future Snatch Game casualty.
I would have substituted those two with Kahanna and Heidi, keeping Jimbo and Jessica up here and still giving Jessica the win because I don’t want to rob my imaginary alternative universe’s Ariadne’s Drag Race of the La Veneno Coconuts lipsync and I like to think that it at least makes Heidi feel a bit better because she was going through it in UnTucked

I hope she doesn’t quit but I fully understand it under the compounded reasons of feeling extremely overlooked and having Ru bringing up her recently passed grandmother in a way that was faker than her pretending to be charmed by JoJo Siwa playing word association during the runways

Ru knew her granny had died and the only reason he brought it up was to blindside Heidi and get as emotional a reaction as possible and I don’t blame Heidi if she came away from that exchange feeling a little used.

That’s Super Crazy Coconuts…

This week’s lipsync song was Kim Petras’s “Coconuts” and guess which lipsync Jimbo has been practicing in his hotel room since they started filming

She and Jessica are now locked in a breastplate showdown.
Jessica’s opponent was of course Ra’jah O’Hara, reigning champion of the nebulously connected together Vs The Worldseseses

do we think they care enough about the Vs the World series to count either Ra’Jah or Blu Hydrangea in an All Winners series? Because I could go for another round of Ra’Jah O’Hara, but for now we settle for her phoning in a lipsync because I think she knew she’d lost the moment Jessica took off the coat to reveal her La Veneno outfit

it’s so good! And I believe we do have confirmation that these are the same tits Yara wore in the first episode of All Stars 6

so we just need Alyssa Hunter to appear next year to continue the Puerto Rican Sisterhood of the Travelling Breastplate.

Jessica won by a country mile, earning herself $30,000 and preventing Kandy from muttering “forty thousand dollars…” under her breath and thus had to reveal her lipstick choice, choosing to eliminate Kasha

it’s not surprising given that Kasha had basically said goodbye and thanks for all the free craft services in between TS Madison saying she was tacky and she hated her

it didn’t stop people still voting Darienne though and was a fairly close call at 5 for Kasha and 4 for Darienne – but it’s justifiable on the grounds this was Darienne’s second time in the bottom and I’m sure it’ll all go down real smooth next episode.

And so, 9 queens remain…

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