Drag Race RuCap: “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve & Talent Monologues”

For a second there, it looked like Detox was back on the Drag Race stage.

NICK TAYLOR: As with last season’s top six challenge, we get a pairs main challenge which relies heavily on the queen’s ingenuity to spin gold from straw. Comparing this episode to "Bathroom Hunties" immediately makes me grateful for how much "Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve & Talent Monologues" allows the queens shake their shit without a safety net rather than making them literally sell something. The interpretive dance/monologue combo is still a very strange prompt, but as the best duet showed, it’s a fun platform for the queen’s creativity, trust, and improvisational skills to shine through. That’s a very generous spin on a challenge the queens and the audience absolutely should not have sat through, but even so, we got a very deserving winner and one of season 17’s stronger lip syncs. But then the lip sync winner was eliminated, and that’s not fun. How about you, did you have a good time this week? 

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Mama, this is garbage…

This was the first season 17 episode I outright disliked, mostly because the challenge was so piss-poor and the outcome of the elimination so predictable. But really, the fault is on the producers for coming up with this absurd nonsense, mixing The Vagina Monologues with interpretative dance (which I hate on principle) and then shoving that concoction on a bunch of queens that are, as a group, far too earnest to tackle the challenge as the opportunity for parody it so obviously was. The final product was a chore to sit through, even when the winning group was on stage, and I’m just sad that Jerrod Carmichael was made to witness this mess. As a connoisseur of cringe, he might have gotten something out of it, but I certainly didn’t.

Anyway, the episode starts with a lovely farewell missive from Lydia Butthole Kollins, prompting the queens to be unusually sentimental. I guess they’re just glad not to be dealing with any more of Arrietty’s bullshit after last week’s mirror message. That’s not to say peace prevails in the Werkroom. No sooner have they sat down to debrief, we get a relitigation of the main stage absurdity that was this season’s “who should go home tonight and why” routine. As usual, I’m on the side of Toot and Nerve, our resident dynamic duo and the two realest bitches around. When Lexi, Lana, Jewels and Sam answered Suzie, it was a cop-out response that exposed their insecurities and missed the point of the question to start with. What a gaggle of brats.

NICK: The best part was how mad the foursome got when Suzie reframes their responses as “So you actually told RuPaul I’m doing the best and I should win?” They hated that shit. Suzie can’t pretend the other queens ganging up on her doesn’t bother her, but she still puts up an unflappable front. As she points out in her confessional, Onya’s the frontrunner now anyways, so she’d appreciate it if the other girls got off her neck. Speaking of, it’s nice to see Onya basking in her third win of the season. Girl’s eating it up, and while the other queens are busy messing with Suzie to minimal effect, she’s been given free reign to thrive. As the kids say, good for her.

The next day, the girls barely enter the werkroom before RuPaul waltzes in, this time with a mini-challenge in hand. She tells the six girls to pair up for a fill-in-the-blank game, where the girls will fill out silly, personalized bios for their partner. They’ll have to read the bios out loud, and whoever writes the best one wins. There’s not zero drama, as Sam is somewhat bothered that her bestie Lexi chose Onya for her partner, but it’s kept to the confessionals. As Lexi admits, she wants to partner with the best bitch in the game rather than her closest friend, much like Lana’s M.O. last week. The pairings are: 

Jewels Sparkles and Suzie Toot
Lana Ja’Rae and Sam Star
Lexi Love and Onya Nurve

The final results are hilarious. Lexi’s the only one who flops, filling in the blanks with bawdy, broad jokes rather than anything personalized towards Onya. In turn, Onya has a lot of damn good digs about Lexi putting on black affectations. As with their banter during the roast, Sam and Lana play very well opposite each other. Suzie’s script for Jewels is pretty fab, but the best by far is Jewels’ bio for Suzie, which starts with making her address herself as “Suzanne Boots” and stays on the same perfect note of off-kilter mockery. Ending with a joke about being too cerebral (and spelling it incorrectly on the page), she gets everything right - if only the maxi challenge had as much good-natured goofing off.

CLÁUDIO: Honestly, I was optimistic about the episode going by this mini-challenge. For the first time, I kinda get what the judges mean about Lexi being funny by flopping because her sheer incompetence was amusing, indeed. But you’re right that Jewels ran away with the thing, getting full marks on intentional and accidental humor. It was made even better by Suzie’s befuddled reading - you can see the bitch wasn’t expecting Jewels to be this funny, which is fair when you consider the roast farago. Whatever the case, Miss Sparkles wins and her victory comes with a poisoned apple of a prize. Once again, she’ll get to choose the performance order. The prospect is terrifying for the traumatized twink, fearful of earning her sisters’ wrath once more. Almost as scary as her white walker contacts. For a second, I thought Coco Montrese was back on my TV. 

But I may be getting ahead of myself. This week’s maxi-challenge is a Vagina Monologues parody called the “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve & Talent Monologues.” Not that the queens will only be monologuing for the judges’ pleasure. Instead, one will be doing the talking while the other does an interpretative dance. Heavens, I hate interpretative dance and how often it falls into puerile literalism cum pantomime. It doesn’t help that Ru is so vague when presenting the challenge, not making it clear if the queens should be earnest or silly, if they should draw from personal experience or make shit up on the spot. I guess she says to look within and use heart and humor, but that still leaves much to interpretation. The most she gives them is a prompt concept straight from Bruno’s pink furry box. Here are the ideas each girl has to consider for their presentations:

Jewels - Out of this World, a story about the supernatural.
Suzie - Learned That the Hard Way, a story about when you lost but learned a lesson.
Lana - Lost, a story about a time when you didn’t know if you were coming or going
Sam - Triggered, a story about something that set you off
Lexi - Payback’s a Bitch, a story about everyone’s favorite bitch - karma
Onya - Obsessed, a story about how an intense obsession took you on a wild ride

I guess there’s material here for a fun performance, but bitch, I got to be honest. My dread-o-meter started going up throughout this introduction and it never went down. I commend the producers for originality and wanting to change things up, but there must have been another way to do it. Anything but interpretative dancing!

NICK: Why must you hate interpretive dance so? Honestly, even though this is not a remotely intuitive challenge concept, I was looking forward to seeing what the queens would do. Re: the open interpretation aspect, I’m reminded of conversations we’ve had about past challenges like AS7’s graduation speech, which was similarly open-ended (or perhaps just vague) on tone and approach, resulting in varied responses from the queens. I’m not inherently against this kind of approach, so long as the drag’s good.

Right away, the bitches jump into workshopping their material. Lexi is worried her experiences with karma were too heavy for this platform, and is racking her brains for an appropriate story. Onya has her shit locked down quick, settling on her former relationship with a form of veganism. Her main goal is to stay loose, have fun, and keep Lexi out of her own way so they can kill it. The senior citizens of season 17 have each other’s back.

Lana and Sam have less luck sparking inspiration together, but as she did with Lydia last week, the pageant queen really works to help this underdog get her feet under her. Part of this is just Sam keeping herself out of the bottom, but also a genuine fondness for Lana and a sympathy/pity she hasn’t really broken out even amidst a quickly dwindling crowd. Suzie and Jewels at least have their material down fairly early, though Onya sees Suzie’s studious oversight as far too controlling for an interpretive dance routine. Both approaches make some sense to me - I agree with Onya’s take on principle, but Acacia Forgot makes me hesitant to doubt Suzie’s artistic smarts. I won’t ask you whether you agreed with Miss Nurve or not, since your prevailing mood seems to be no approach to interpretive dance will lead to good art, but which pair seems most promising to you at this point in the episode?

CLÁUDIO: In lieu of good art, I’ll accept entertaining clownery, so I’m on Onya’s side. The edit seems to agree, or maybe I’m just too startled by Jewels’ newly Aryan glare to respond positively to anything coming out of the Tooting Sparkles corner. The structuring of the episode is also quick to remind us that Lana’s days on this competition are numbered, with one more dive into her personal experience. This time, the show highlights her reality in a big family, religious upbringing, and the like. Later on, it’ll deliver a nice moment of church mime silliness, but the death knells are ringing every time we cut back to Luxx and Plasma’s lovechild. 

To be honest, this portion of the episode is a bit shapeless, broken in the middle by Jewels announcing the performance order. It’ll go Suzie, Jewels, Onya, Lexi, Sam, and Lana for the last spot. Though everyone’s a little tense considering what happened the last time our Latina princess did this, it’s all chill and Miss Love even seems a bit playful. So glad she’s back on her good time gal vibes rather than the ball of anxiety and hostile insecurity she’s been for the past couple of episodes. I’m almost reminded of how much I loved Lexi at the start of the season.

Indeed, the only reason this hour doesn’t drag more than it does is how lovable these messy girlies are, striking good chemistry even when the aftermath of strife still suffuses the air. The latter half of Drag Race seasons always depends on the cast to make it shine, especially when the challenges falter. And I think this group is helping keep things engaging despite everything going against them. As much as I mourn the loss of Crystal and the King-Kollins couple, it’s hard to argue against this top six as the best-case scenario for season 17 as far as group dynamic is concerned. Look at me trying to be positive despite it all. Is it convincing, or will I have to lipsync for my life at the end of this acting challenge?

NICK: Crystal, as game as she was for just about anything, does not strike me as the font of personality needed to make this kind of challenge fun. Then again, I’d have guessed the same about Lana if she’d left by now, and she’s really surprised me by being such an engrossing figure. I suspect Lydia would have had more fun than Lana, though she might’ve had the same edit for the episode. Would the girls have softened to Hormona if she was still here? I miss her.

Yes, the queens are keeping things afloat, but their camaraderie is now colored by a very palpable tension, like someone’s about to be randomly sent to death row. They’re getting close to the finish line, and any slip could be the end of their Drag Race journey. Long gone is the cavalier confidence of last week’s challenge. At least they still have the temerity to look dumb as fuck in the werkroom, rehearsing their dances and riffing off each other at the makeup table.

Before we start the challenge, we get a rare glimpse of vulnerability from Suzie Toot while everyone’s getting dressed for the challenge. Sam uses her “Triggered” prompt as a springboard to ask the queens about their own triggers, and Suzie replies that she can’t joke about alcoholism, due to histories of addiction in her family. It’s an affecting interaction, though it does more to highlight how guarded Miss Toot has been throughout the competition compared to her peers, and how little prodding she’s received to share about herself compared to Lana or Sam or Lexi. She didn’t come here to cry on national TV, she came to win $200k.

And speaking of Suzanne Boots, she and Jewels are up first to recite their monologues and dance their dances. Suzie’s story about seeking her father’s approval, and how that manifests during a third grade spelling bee, is ideally calculated for heart and humor. It’s practically a textbook example of how to tell a good story, for better and worse, with Jewels giving the right balance of childish levity and desperation in her dance. Sadly, they both flatline when they reverse their roles. Jewels’ story about her “imaginary friend” urging her to embrace her gayness and her drag is cute in a dangerously basic way, and the first of many stories to function as coming out narratives. It might’ve been better if Suzie put more into her dancing  as the imaginary friend, contrasting Jewels’ fun, flat retelling with a big performance - but as you said at the top, she’s too earnest to give it any kind of embellishment.

CLÁUDIO: Where. Is. The. Drag? Why is this whole thing so po-faced, coupled with those sad costumes and wigs that do nothing for any of these bitches. I guess Jewels had the decency to style herself like Sue from The Substance, even though that wasn’t a thing when this was filmed last year. Suzie is professional and polished, but her earnestness gets to a point where it starts to feel over-rehearsed, even calculated. It reminded me of nothing more than Ginger Minj’s red shoes monologue from All-Stars 6, a similar flatlining piece of personal story-telling. At least there’s clear intention behind every moment of her delivery. Whereas Jewels’ cadence seems almost reticent, if not arrhythmic. One thing I didn’t get is why the Latina twink describes this dazzling presence as her imaginary friend, yet Suzie embodies none of it, going for something close to melancholy instead. And again. Where. Is. The. Drag? C’mon girls, make it fun, make it silly, make it fabulous. This ain’t it. 

After that interminable slog, Lexi and Onya come to save the day and show everyone what this challenge could be in the hands of someone who actually knows how to entertain. It helps that they look like a pair of clowns thrown out of the circus for trying to do a Detox-inspired routine. Lexi, in particular, moves like a 1930s cartoon, her limbs an arrangement of rubber hose, stretching and squashing with impossible expressivity. Her dancing of Onya’s diet tale is better than their reverse act and makes a good case for Lexi as a solo winner of the episode. That said, Onya does great, too, acing the mugging required to transcend the interpretative dance nonsense and turn the whole enterprise into a comedy routine. They really turned straw into gold this week. 

NICK: The leotards and the accompanying wigs were surely handed out by production, but yeah, why the fuck did they have to wear those when reciting their monologues? Let them wear drag! I’m even a little hesitant to praise the Detox cosplay until we learn they got to pick those fits themselves. But the important part is Lexi and Onya absolutely killed it. Both of them win points for picking such different stories from each other and from the other two groups, but god do they seize the opportunity to be so melodramatic and goofy. Onya wins the best story prize, Lexi the best dance prize, and they’re both runners-up in the opposite categories. They’re hysterical.

Last and least is Lana and Sam. To her credit, Lana looks fabulous with her white brows and wig. She interprets Sam’s very basic story about going from homecoming king to homecoming queen with such lively dancing and bright emoting. Sam’s rendition is even more pageant presentation stilted than Jewels, and if that’s bad, wait until you see her gangle stiffly to Lana’s story about drag saving her life. It’s not an inspired tale, especially after two broadly similar monologues, but there’s humor in her line readings and drama in her religious upbringing and family dynamics, and Sam is so flat and literal in her movements that she sucks any potential out of Lana’s story. It’s the worst routine of the night, and I felt so bad for Lana knowing she’d get dragged down with Sam despite doing basically fine - not great, but not worse than the proficient standard of the starter group.

CLÁUDIO: I mean, in the context of this cursed challenge, fine is still calamitous, but I agree that Lana did better than Sam, maybe even Jewels. But dear lord, that Alabama twink was really the worst of the lot, delivering her story as if she’s at a Miss America pageant, clipped and so forcefully inspirational I wanted to gag, and not in the good way. She was so bad twirling around with that lantern that it almost came full circle to being entertaining. It’s like seeing a Magikarp splash around - at a certain point, it becomes endearing. It’s almost funny, especially if you are a Sam Star hater, which I am not, but still. Again, Lana wasn’t especially good but her partner was like an anvil tied to her ankle, taking her down into the depths of oblivion (aka the bottom two).

But enough about bad pantomime. On the main stage, RuPaul is glorious in sequins and a strawberry blonde wig, doing Megami cosplay the right way. Michelle looks like she stepped out of the White Lotus set, Ts Madison is all aglitter and Jerrod Carmichael looks dreamy as ever. For the runway show, category is… a season 7 10th anniversary celebration! Let’s see these bitches model their take on the “Ugliest Dress EVER!”

Suzie steps into the runway dressed as the Grinch’s worst nightmare, a Christmas-y schmata that maybe doesn’t read so much as a frock as it does a parade float. Everything’s wrong here, from the skirt at the bottom being cut too wide so it keeps curling on itself, to the tinsel that’s always getting stuck in the rest of the outfit. It’s a truly hideous piece, which is a win, in my book, since it doesn’t depend on the styling to sell the idea of ugliness. The Tooting queen’s jaundiced star-like mug is the rotten cherry on top of this nuclear waste sundae. 

NICK: I fucking love this. You’ve complimented a lot of this outfit, so I’ll single out the way Suzie keeps her arms outstretched as she soars down the catwalk like she’s Jay Jay the Jet Plane. Watching her be as unflappably confident as she’s ever been during Untucked while wearing this monstrosity is the best thing that happened this week. To act like you’re hot shit wearing this? I want her chutzpah.

Jewels Sparkles is next, looking so endearing in a tacky ‘80s prom dress. I can’t say I agree with Michelle’s argument that this dress was too seminal to actually be ugly. That’s not fair to all the ugly ‘00s fashions we could parade onstage with no edits and be declared the winners of this week’s challenge. I do think it’s fair to say Jewels could have pushed the ugly duckling angle further, with even gaudier, gaucher ‘80s affects in the design and with her makeup. Good, but could be better. 

CLÁUDIO: I just don’t think this is an ugly 1980s prom dress. Trixie wore something similar on season 7 and then redid the thing for the Rudemption runway on AS3. Just because something is out of style, doesn’t make it ugly. If you saw this dress on a mid-80s romcom, you wouldn’t clock it as an ugly dress, but other styles from that period would surely strike you that way. Hell, be cheeky and come dressed as Molly ringwald at the end of Pretty in Pink. Now, that was a nightmare of a frock. As it stands, Jewels is relying on the styling to sell the ugliness and, to me, that’s missing the point of this theme.

Onya Nurve is also doing a lot with the styling of this turkey bird fantasy, but the dress itself is so ugly I can’t really say she’s not fulfilling the prompt. The asymmetrical hem with the “tail” in the back is so smart, especially as it bunches up with every step. It’s like someone tried to come up with the most unflattering possible iteration of a little black dress. And then there’s the avian quality of it all. Those poor birds get slaughtered every holiday season and they’re still getting insulted on international television? They can’t catch a break, can they?

NICK: Nor should they! Did you see Hormona Lisa was going to do Snatch Game as the first turkey to receive a Presidential pardon? Glad someone’s repping the gobblers this season. Onya’s pants, which are awful in color and cut, are maybe my favorite part. She’s still wearing heels under those stockings, but the feet are shaped to look like she’s clomping around in flats, and those talons are an inspired choice. The way the tailfeathers look like she’s wearing a lopsided backpack is similarly delish.

Lexi Love’s tulle-coated fairy is quite the maximalist confection. Her mug is still painted for the heavens, but this is about 500 individually pretty pieces of fabric sandwiched together into a hot mess I really like looking at. Part of me wishes Lexi didn’t cinch her waist, but since it still extenuates her weirdly cylindrical silhouette I’d call it a win.

CLÁUDIO: Lexi is this season’s Pearl/Miss Fame, in that the look she’s presenting genuinely looks like an outré high fashion creation. I can’t help but notice how well-made and fitted this is, how the colors were chosen to tell a garish but gracious story. In other words, she missed the mark because this thing is more mesmerizing than ugly. It’s hilarious that her idea of a hideous outfit is cheap fabric, nothing trailing behind her, and nearly no skin showing. It’s not so much the ugliest dress ever as an attempt at presenting the antithesis of her drag aesthetic without humiliating herself. But the joke’s on her, ‘cause humiliation was the point, sorta.

Sam is doing the same as Lexi. She’s not so much presenting an ugly frock, as a beautiful summation of what falls outside of her aesthetic. It’s about ugliness as perceived by Sam rather than ugly in itself. She couldn’t even let the blood be goopy or some latex drip in irregular shapes. No no, it must be rendered in pageant-ready bling and beads. At the end of the day, this feels like a laughable unwillingness to do what the runway prompt specified. Say what you want about Violet Chachki’s rigid taste, but she actually presented an ugly garment in season 7.

NICK: You could’ve told me she stole this from Lydia’s closet and I would’ve believed it. You mentioned Fame in reference to Lexi, but Sam’s head wound reads so explicitly like a redo of Fame’s Death Becomes Her runway. Lexi at least embraces some superficial garishness in her fabrics - this is all too beautiful to qualify for the challenge.

Lana Ja’Rae finished the runway with a blast from the past - Kandy Muse’s patchwork pockets dress from season 13. Did she modify it almost at all? Not really, aside from wearing a different wig. Is it still a hideous garment? God yes. Ru wistfully saying “That is one ugly dress” as Lana exits the catwalk is so funny my sides hurt. I want you to tell me on a metabolic level what makes this direct repurposing different from Luxx’s references, but as far as resurrecting an iconic fashion moment goes, this couldn’t have happened to a better dress.

CLÁUDIO: I actually think this was smart on Lana’s part. Everyone re-wears stuff on Drag Race - half of Sam’s package is repurposed from her family’s closet - and we’ve seen our fair share of meta references on the runway - Kori in Monet’s old drag, Luxx recreating a RuPaul look, Naomi Smalls with Raven’s finale outfit. So, I don’t feel this is as wild as some in the fandom. Moreover, I actually think not altering helped because it meant the dress didn’t fit, that it hung off her body even worse than it did Kandy’s. Also, there’s something to be said about the subjectivity of beauty. All the other queens tried to guess what the judges might understand as ugly. Lana modeled something she KNEW they hated. And honestly… werk.

I may be growing crazy, because I almost wanted Lana to be safe this week and throw Jewels into the bottom two against auntie Sam. Apart from that, the judging felt fair across the board. Which means congratulations are in order for Lexi Love and Onya Nurve. The former gets her second maxi challenge win, while the latter is at her fourth. If anyone still thinks Suzie Toot is the runner-up, they should go get psychiatric help. And also, I get that she can be annoying in her stalwart confidence, but please stop coming down on the bitch, girls. It’s making you all look like delusional bullies at this point.

NICK: Big congrats to Onya, who is now in such clear frontrunner status it makes my native Cleveland heart sing. Granted, I’m overthinking things to such a degree that I’m becoming paranoid some twist will unseat her. Four wins means a bitch is going to the finale no matter what, but I’m gonna treat this like a race until she crosses the finish line. Big congrats to Lexi, who can hopefully ride her win this week into some good spirits for the final lap of the competition.

I’m with you on thinking Jewels should have bottomed this week instead of Lana, but I can’t say I fundamentally disagree with the judges keeping Sam and Lana grouped together to lip sync for their lives. Remember last year when Q should have gone down with Morphine? But the uniting ethos between those examples, or even in the choice to put Lana in the bottom last week, is the judges putting the queens they see as disposable on the line. And since Lana also didn’t deserve to bottom last week, I absolutely refuse to believe she deserved this inevitable march to the bottom when Sam dragged her down. Jewels is a much stronger competitor than Lana, and I like her more than Sam, but this is the second week in a row I’d have thrown Miss Sparkles to the wolves.

But instead we get the bottom two we may have been destined to get since the mini-challenge. Lana and Sam lip sync to “Illusion” by Dua Lipa, and it’s a serve above most of this season’s bottom two performances. Based on her stiffness with her interpretive dance and her talent show performance, I expected much worse from Sam, but she serves face, emoting and mugging while keeping to the song’s energy. Her upper half is far more animated than her lower half, and while kicks and tricks are not necessary for a good lip sync, I can’t say she’s turning it. Lana, however, starts strong and only gets better, dancing across the stage and using her stoicism to fit the song’s “I’m better than you” lyrics. She puts up much more of a fight against Sam than she did Lydia, and for my money, she trounces her completely.

CLÁUDIO: It’s sad to see Lana go after what’s probably her single best individual lip sync performance of the season. I, too, think she excelled above Sam, but Miss Star still held up her own, delivering a solid take on the song that made for my favorite lipsync from this year’s crop. I still prefer Lydia as a lip sync assassin over these two, but there was a balance here that’s been absent from most other face-offs as of late. Luxx and Plasma’s babygirl leaves the competition with her head held high, knowing she departed on a high note, brought down by an insufficient track record rather than a specific failure. She looked great sashaying away and maybe with some more baking, she’ll be ready for an All-Stars season in years to come.

Next week, it’s makeover time. While the judging of these challenges can be iffy, the werkroom dynamics are often moving, just as the promo promises. With the queen’s family members brought in as partners, we’re bound to see some tears so let’s look forward to that. Till then, stay fabulous and cunty and say no to interpretative dancing.

Previous RuCaps:

• Episode 1: “Squirrel Games”
• Episode 2: "Drag Queens Got Talent"
• Episode 3: "Monopulence!"
• Episode 4: "Bitch, I'm a Drag Queen!"
• Episode 5: "RDR Live!"
• Episode 6: "Let's Get Sea Sickening Ball"
• Episode 7: "Snatch Game"
• Episode 8: "The Wicked Wiz of Oz: The Rusical!"
• Episode 9: "Heavens to Betsey!"
• Episode 10: "Villains Roast"
• Episode 11: "Ross Matthews vs the Ducks"

Comments

[DK]

I don't get the Lord of the Flies shit they're pulling on Suzie Toot.

She's a little annoying/affected but pretty solid overall—hardly the favorite/threat they're treating her as. It just comes across as pointless meanspiritedness.

[Ale Alejandro]

It's almost as if Suzie jokes along with it and that gives the queens more fire. But still there must be something they're not showing us because it treads to closely to actual annoyance from the queens than playful banter.

I for one didn't mind the episode. I also wish the show was willing to genuinely boot the worst performer of the week (Sam), but this late in the game I'm more understanding. It just doesn't make for great tv. Even with her upwards trend, Lana was so far behind the top of the back she was so clearly not a threat for the win that. Her strongest episodes still don't make the case for her to win those episodes, so out she goes.

[Philip H.]

There are so many times this season I've felt Sam is just recycling old drag race ideas/concepts/looks and this Miss Fame look is no different. I pray Sam is the next to go, never got the hype despite how much they've been trying to gaslight me all season.