Drag Race RuCap: "Snatch Game"

Like last year, Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are following and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen…

That's Emmy-worthy production design, right there.

CLÁUDIO: Well, it seems miracles can happen. We closed last week’s Rucap by casting doubts on Mhi’ya’s ability to survive Snatch Game, and wouldn’t you know it - the bitch thrived. She might not have won the challenge, but Miss Le'Paige won the episode, proving she’s more than the queen of flips while finally showing some much-appreciated personality with her sisters. Overall, this was an entertaining hour, even though this bunch’s snatches could have been better. Sometimes, you don’t need amazing performances to make good reality TV or just a showcase of drag excellence. Were you similarly entertained or does “Snatch Game” get a boot from you?

NICK: I am mixed, but mostly happy with it. We had two of Drag Race’s most iconic challenges today, and though the best turns were definitely entertaining, I wanted more from this cast. . . .

We got the season’s best lip sync yet! That’s not nothing. But after basically everyone having a good time during the Rusical, I’m surprised at how few girls actually carried the Snatch Game to glory. Suddenly Loosey’s protectiveness over winning these challenges last year makes more sense. Clearly not everyone can!

The opening’s compulsory mourning of the eliminated queen is quickly snuffed out by Mhi'ya finally showing some spitfire personality. Morphine barely finishes cooing about how much she’ll miss Megami before Mhi’ya cuts her off, going “Girl, you didn’t even like her”. This isn’t “quiet girl Liz Lemon who’s actually the school bully”, this is face-to-face shade, and she picked the right time to let it out.

Next day the queens gather for the reading challenge, which Xunami thoroughly dominates. You mentioned a few weeks ago how Xunami’s matador runway brought some early series elegance, and I’ll echo that sentiment here. Her reads were mean as hell! And they were so fucking fun. She easily got the most screen time for this challenge, and given what we see from the other queens, I have no complaints.

CLÁUDIO: Xunami and Plane were cut-throat, but Miss Muse won it with her style. Curiously, some of the bitches were better at reading when congregating at the table than when they were put on the spot by Mama Ru. I did love Sapphira’s read for Xunami, however, calling her a cancer to the drag community. Wow, now that’s some take-no-prisoners ferocity. Another interesting tidbit about this mini-challenge is how it fits into the episode’s narrative regarding our favorite Banana-obsessed twink.

For the first time, Nymphia’s struggling, and that doesn’t stop once we move toward Snatch Game preparations. Morphine, our confessional queen par excellence, puts it perfectly when she explains that, after pretending to be insecure for countless challengers before, the impending impersonation smackdown seems to have made Nymphia legitimately nervous. Then again, how could she not be? Why on earth would one pick Jane Goodall for Snatch Game? Or Amelia Earhart for that matter? Or the goddamn Gold Tooth Fairy from one of Shea Couleé’s weakest All Winners runways? This season’s girls came prepared with such a confounding set of character choices. even Mama Ru seems weirded out when talking to the queens with Cher in tow. Oh wait, that’s Chad Michaels. My bad, but you must understand the confusion.

NICK: It is incredible how Chad’s continued to alter his face to resemble Cher as they both age. No one looks better in this episode than Chad does while swanning through the werk room. To quick, the queens are playing:

• Dawn as Meghan McCain
• Mhi’ya Iman LePaige as Trina’s Cousin $haquita
• Morphine Love Dion as Anna Delvey
• Nymphia Wind as Jane Goodall, with several monkey hand puppets
• Plane Jane as Jelena Karleuša
• Plasma as Patti LuPone
• Q as Amelia Earhart
• Sapphira Cristal as James Brown
• Xunami Muse as The Gold Tooth Fairy 

As you said, many of these queen’s choices are just odd. Sapphira’s world-famous diva and Plane Jane’s Serbian pop star seem the most promising of the queens, though I trust their charisma in pulling off their characters more than, say, Morphine tackling the otherwise promising role of Anna Delvey. Mhi’ya initially pitches Tiffany “New York” Pollard, which landed Naomi Smalls in the bottom way back in season 8 and ultimately launched her path to the finale. However, nobody thinks Mhi’ya can pull it off, and she’s left reconsidering her options, so she basically just makes someone up. Could she have been Trina? I don’t know.

CLÁUDIO: Jumping into Snatch Game proper, this season’s contestants are two Pit Crew hotties. Oh, how I loved to see their chests go up and down as they laughed. And don’t you just love the heart cutouts at their crotch? Emmy-worthy production design, right there.

Regarding the queens’ performances, there are a lot of rough ones to go through before we get to the good stuff. The four bitches up top are all gradations of mediocrity if not downright disastrous. Q is just loud, reprising her brick persona from RDR Live! without coming up with any successful joke. Xunami is boring, and Nymphia is so bad she almost goes all the way around to being entertaining. By the end of the game, she was either post-verbal or talking environmentalism with no hint of humor, leaving RuPaul looking puzzled - honestly, camp. And then there’s Dawn, whose choice should have been a slam dunk. Yet, no jokes about her father seems a ridiculous miss for a Meghan McCain parody. And what was up with her nose ring? Such a weird styling choice.

NICK: Xunami’s first joke about stealing bones made me howl, so she gets a point for that. And she looked better than Shea. But other than that, her Tooth Fairy is wildly undercooked. Q never makes Amelia funny, and the fact that we got so little of her and Dawn feels almost suspicious. How bad were they? Nymphia just looks scary, her whiteface and old age makeup compound into a pancakey mess. Why do Jane Goodall as an old woman? Where is any of the kookiness Nymphia has displayed in the werkroom and other challenges? We’ve seen charismatic, naturally funny queens bomb Snatch Game before, but I did not expect Nymphia to pick such a bizarre character, and do so badly with it

The bottom row is much better, though let’s get the big disappointment out of the way: Plasma’s Patti LuPone is dead air. I’ve been told she looks a lot like Patti when she did Company, but that doesn’t explain why she doesn’t resemble Patti. Plasma’s Amy Sherman-Palladino cadences are cranked to eleven and flatten her own jokes. Mhi’ya has a good time as a basically made-up person, doing a self-absorbed good-time girl routine. Roxxxy’s Tamar Braxton looms over her character, but it’s a fun bit, and it’s nice to see her let loose and have fun with a maxi challenge.

Still, the clear peaks are Sapphira’s James Brown and Plane’s Jelena. Sapphira gets several great moments of actually combating with Ru’s jokes and assertions, namely an interaction about the dance heels she wore last challenge. “My dance shoes last week? The last time I met you was in 1969!” Hysterical. Plane probably does the best job of inhabiting her character, tossing off risky asides about the Bosnian war as easily as she throws shade. Two fully realized characters. Bless.

CLÁUDIO: I was honestly shocked by how quickly Plane honed on the Bosnian war as a punchline. And it was even more surprising that she made it work, as funny as it was risquée. The cutaway to Dawn’s Meghan McCain waving a whittle American flag was priceless, probably the best thing our Elvish queen did all challenge. I also appreciated Jelena’s reminiscences about her Babooshka when looking at Jane Not-Good-at-All. The season’s shady aircraft really made Snatch Game her bitch, but that doesn’t mean Sapphira’s James Brown was a distant second place. Indeed, she’d have won many other games, if not for the character shoe business, then for her flexing musculature. At the very least, Kyra Sedgwick was besotted.

And speaking of The Closer herself, she’s this week’s extra special guest judge. Joining her on the panel we have a bedazzled Carson Kressley, a sequined Michelle Visage, and Mama Ru looking a million times better than she did last week. Remember that discombobulated monstrosity of a frock? What was Zaldy thinking?

NICK: Some mysteries are better left forgotten. Onto the runway, where the theme is Dance! Each queen must strut down the main stage in an outfit that represents a specific form of dance, and perform that dance all across the stage. Fun stuff! How’d they do?

Q is first, serving robotic stiffness (ie - her usual fluidity and grace, which she fully admits) as some kind of primary colored crash test dummy. I don’t like it! It’s not a great robot costume, and the color scheme doesn’t work as historical reference or futuristic pastiche. I am also growing tired of her headgear, even if the funfetti tendrils are the part of the outfit I most enjoyed watching in motion. But even the threat of Q going ballistic in the comments section is not enough to make me like this look.

CLÁUDIO: It’s the weakest look in her package so far, there’s no doubt about that. Beyond being ugly, I’d say the biggest issue is that it doesn’t even work as a reference to the robot. If you saw this thing on a mannequin would you think robot or clown? It’s giving circus.

Xunami Muse was moving around so much I could barely find a stable screenshot of her salsa dress. It’s a pity because it’s a fetching ensemble, delicate yet bouncing with energy, the beaded fringe accentuating every movement. While on the simpler side, I think it gets the job done. No complaints from me. 

NICK: Xunami danced up a storm. Someone at my watch party complained there wasn’t enough in Xunami’s look for it to qualify as drag, but I think the fringe helps tip it over that line, and I agree the salsa dress is quite stunning regardless.

Nymphia Wind stepped onto the stage performing Japanese Butoh. In her confessional, she explains how the dance originated after World War II, as an artistic expression of grotesque horrors in absurdist manner. She looks like a plant sprouting from irradiated soil. What materials did she even use for this? It’s stunning, perhaps the best runway of the night. 

CLÁUDIO: It totally was the best runway of the night. I legitimately gasped in awe at this beauty. She looks a walking ruin, a dereliction of torn, burnt lace cascading down her body and looking like roots fixing limbs to floor by the time we come to her ruffles shoes.. More than copying costumes used when performing Butoh, she has embodied the theatre movement. And even on a technical level, the construction is impeccable. Using a hat to elevate the sprigs and better frame her face is the kind of detail that makes all the difference. I’m usually not into runways saving one from a shoddy performance, but this is the kind of breathtaking sight you only see once a Drag Race season. Nymphia is her own immunity potion!

Dawn served polka down the catwalk, elevating folkloric costume with her oddities in styling and paint. Looking at this, I’m unsure if she twisted it enough into a drag lewk, but there’s certainly something chic about her getup. For once, basic black ankle boots were the right choice and a nice rhyme with her simplified bodice. 

NICK: This might be my favorite Dawn look, honestly. It’s so crisp, the right middle ground of distilling all the clutter, color, and kookiness that defines her aesthetic without being unremarkably simple, or missing the prompt. And she did the polka pretty well! The mug is stamped, the headpiece is gorgeous, the ears are correct. She’s got it.

Sapphira Cristal served Drag U Majorette realness, and if it’s not my very favorite runway of the night, she sells the fuck out of it. The high kicks!! The ass-kissing built into the reference!! The smile on her face as she shouts “Drag U!!”!! It’s so good. The sash around her waist really brings out her ass, and the giant dandelion-head Afro is perfect. What a woman.

CLÁUDIO: My winner energy spidey sense is tingling. This is such a delight, wonderful enough to almost make one yearn for another season of Drag U. Also, bless her for recycling those dancing shoes again.

Leave it to Plasma to bring classic musical style to the main stage. This is a spin on one of Vera Ellen’s costumes in White Christmas and a fine recreation at that. It is, however, too simple to really make an impact on the runway. I don’t understand why she went with this particular costume when that flick’s full of much better Edith Head designs. Kudos for the tap-dancing but it wasn’t enough to redeem her mediocre Patti Lupone. 

NICK: It still throws me how if Plasma isn’t winning the challenge outright she’s flailing to be safe. Her look  and her tap routine are perfectly fine, but as Dawn said earlier, one fears Plasma might vanish completely up her own ass with this mid-century Broadway schtick.

I don’t know enough about flamenco to say whether Morphine Love Dion’s runway is sufficiently dragged up. How is her face always so perfect? Why doesn’t she wear hair that big more often? When will she start va-vooming up her pretty but contained runways? Morphine dances well, but this simply isn’t a good enough runway to recuperate her Snatch Game performance.

CLÁUDIO: She looks beautiful, but she always does. Critically, there’s little to make this generic flamenco costume read as high drag. The fact she lined the main fabric of the skirt yet all those ruffles aren’t finished makes my eye twitch.

Well, I’m not an expert in 90s Hip-Hop, so maybe I’m missing something, but Mhi’ya’s look feels a bit unspecific. It’s nice enough, even if I’d like those cuffs to be flush against her wrist, and the mullet wig is a fun bit of styling. Sadly, I can’t muster much enthusiasm for Mhi’ya’s runway offerings, not even when she shines in the maxi challenge. Miss Le’Paige needs to step her pussy up.

NICK: This kinda looks like a dollar store pirate, with the red and yellow accents on the black leather boots and the puffy white sleeves. I do not see hip hop here, especially after Mhi’ya’s moderately more successful Lil Kim look.

Last but not least is Plane Jane, serving Valentina realness with Latin ballroom. This is kinda boring! Michelle mentioned how not dragged-up this look is, and I agree wholeheartedly. Xunami outserved.

CLÁUDIO: I feel that Plane is serving realness above all else. Considering her ballroom dancing past, I can understand the fantasy fulfillment of looking like the women baby Plane admired in that environment. I’ll say this - her frock reads expensive, if far too simple for the Drag Race runway. And again, why can’t her legs ever match the rest of the body?

After the runway show, Plane Jane declines to use the immunity potion. After this week, she’ll only have two more chances to down it, but it doesn’t seem like she’ll need it. I also can’t imagine the Russian-Latin dancer will help a sister, so the potion’s fate is a mystery to me. Following that anti-climatic nonsense, it’s time to divide tops, bottoms, and safe queens. Plasma, Dawn, and Q are dismissed, meaning that, for once, Xunami isn’t going to host the Afters on Untucked. And tragically, it’s not because she’s in the top three.

Miss Muse is joined by Morphine and Nymphia in the bottom, while Mhi’ya, Plane and Sapphira are all vying for the win. While I can’t quite argue with those latter picks, I’m starting to get a bit tired of Dawn skating by on mediocre performances week after week. She’s got star power and the potential to be a major contender, yet that promise seems to fall short most of the time, even when the judges praise the bitch. 

NICK: Dawn feels like she should be a bigger frontrunner. I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t racked up a win yet, despite her consistent gold as a narrator queen. Plenty of folks (including me, sometimes) still suspect she’s got a good shot to make the finale, but we can’t all be Crystal Methyd hun, it’s getting down to the wire.

I think these are the right tops and bottoms, though I don’t fundamentally believe Morphine was more of a dead spot than Plasma or Q, and I’ve decided footage exists that could justify that trade. Q’s outfit absolutely warrants lower placement. I’m happy for Mhi’ya, who deserves this spot, even if this feels a bit like Derrick Barry placing high for Snatch Game because they finally weren’t awful. Sapphira and Plane are the clear contenders for the win, and it’s ultimately Plane who eeks out the win. The queens are fucking gobsmacked when Sapphira is called safe. I was fucking gobbed with them. Plane’s snatch was fantastic, but better queens than her have lost a maxi challenge for lackluster runways.

As for the bottoms: Nymphia Wind is spared, and though her runway was more than stellar enough to buoy her, she also fucked up the challenge badly. Wouldn’t it have been a gag to see her lip sync for her life in that outfit?

CLÁUDIO: Maybe this was a case where production was afraid for one of their finale picks, specifically because of their runway. I’m sure Nymphia could have pulled through after discarding that headpiece, but the lace around her shoes may have been a tripping hazard or precluded her from moving that much at all. Similar to Mistress’s Beyoncé gown saving her from lipsyncing last year, or Asia’s fish-faced mermaid on season 10. There’s also the example of UK 5, when Cara Melle lost her first lipsync because her incredible outfit was so restrictive. Either way, Nymphia was catastrophic on Snatch Game, and she better not count on her fashion to be a saving grace going forward.

For the lipsync, Xunami and Morphine are asked to perform Whitney Huston’s “I Want to Dance with Somebody” in what might be the season’s most interesting duel so far. Xunami is intent on turning their smackdown into a joint performance, exuding joy while trying to pull Morphine into some ballroom antics. The Miami queen, for her part, mostly resists Miss Muse’s attempts, though there’s no antagonism between the two. These are two sisters on stage, fighting for themselves but not against each other. Ultimately, Morphine outdances Xunami, though her face is too stuck on fierceness to engage with the song’s effervescent tone. However, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” demands fabulous moves so, for once, I have to concede that the best dancer deserved to take the win.

One wonders if this would have been a double shantay in something like season 14. It certainly felt like Xunami wanted a Raven vs Jujubee All-Stars moment, but that was not on the cards for the latest of Aja’s lineage to get booted off the show. 

NICK: It was a very moving lip sync, with the two interacting beautifully, but Xunami’s romance got overwhelmed by Morphine’s exuberant movements. I love their kiss. Raven vs Jujubee is absolutely the blueprint, or maybe something like Willow Pill’s battles against Angeria and Camden, where they all like each other too much to not party together onstage. As much as we’ve both carped that Xunami should probably have lipsynced by now, I’m gonna miss this sweetheart.

Morphine survives another week. She was out for blood on that stage, and it’s enough of a light show to make me wonder if this might wake her BBL up for the competition. Could she crest at exactly the right moment? Am I overhyping a fluke, as I am known to do on occasion? She’s the last queen of this group who reads as filler to me, so if she’s gonna break through it’s now or never.

Next week on RuPaul’s Drag Race - a Neo Gothic design challenge! All black fabrics! Do we have any predictions? This seems almost tailor-made for Dawn to scoop a win and for Nymphia to get back into a winning groove. Meanwhile, I wonder if Plasma’s repeated failure with design challenges could catch up to her here. We’ve had three design challenges this season, that’s kinda nutty. Any last words for the readers, Cláudio?

CLÁUDIO: I’ll just say that I love this season 3 realness with all the design challenges and I’ll miss Xunami. Giver her Miss Congeniality!

Previous RuCaps: 

• Episode 1: “Rate-a-Queen”
• Episode 2: "Queen Choice Awards"
• Episode 3: "The Mother of All Balls"
• Episode 4: "RDR Live!"
• Episode 5: "Girl Groups"
• Episode 6: "Welcome to the DollHouse"
• Episode 7: "The Sound of Rusic"

Comments

[Philip H.]

"I’m happy for Mhi’ya, who deserves this spot, even if this feels a bit like Derrick Barry placing high for Snatch Game because they finally weren’t awful."

Yes, but it's also a testament to how bad this Snatch Game was overall. Aside from those three, truly any of the other queens could've been in the bottom.

I feel as Drag Race continues to skew younger and younger, queens continue to miss references and lack the skills needed for challenges like Snatch Game.

I digress.

I'm over Dawn, officially as of this episode. She's a mean girl. I don't like her attitude at all, all of her little side comments turn me off more and more as the episodes go on. After talking so poorly about Meghan McCain, THAT's what you deliver? Girl, that characterization made absolutely no sense at all. Anyway...

I agreed with Plane winning. She did the best this episode, imo. But I did think they were leaning slightly towards Sapphira, so it was a little shocking.

I also agreed with Nymphia being saved. Runways should matter in this show more than they seem to. When you pull out the best look of the night and it's THAT, you deserve to be saved.

Especially when you consider she was so bad that she was almsot good. Xunami and Morphine were not giving anything at all in Snatch Game, and their runways were too under the radar, especially compared to Nymphia. She deserved to be saved from the bottom.

Plus, these two queens have been middle of the pack the entire season. It's time for them to lip sync. Xunami is a very cute boy, a beuatiful queen, and I like her energy, but I was hoping Morphine would pull it out. She's one of my favorite confessional queens, if not my fav, and I felt I would miss her more. I don't see her making it much further, due to her pedestrian runways, but I like her as a character on the show. Plus, it was really nice to finally see a true moment of her star power in that lip sync. Good for her.

I honestly think Mhi'ya will go next week. I think this was a lucky week for her (and I'm proud of her!) but one week like this isn't enough. At this point, Morphine, Mhi'ya, and Dawn are skating on thin ice, but who knows what will happen.

I'm glad it's finally getting to crunch time where the filler queens are mostly gone and the queens have really got to cross their T's and dot their I's.

[nore]

I love love love Dawn's drag, but do agree that she's just been safe and not performing up to a standard I believe she has in her. Sapphira is a fucking star, and I look forward to her performance every week. Plane is talented, but I just cannot stand her personality. She's not shady, she's just mean. I also also agree with Nymphia being safe. Love her and want her to be in the finale. Why score a runway otherwise?