Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves continue to follow and recap and despair over the new RuPaul’s Drag Race season…
Live, from Tuckahoe, it's RDR Live! And yes, that's a threat.
NICK TAYLOR: Well diva, here we are. Another week where this fun cast of queens did their level best with a very fun runway prompt and a new maxi challenge staple. Another week where Mandy Mango is improbably fucked over to save a presumptive frontrunner from potentially being sent home, only this time I found almost all of the judge’s critiques baffling as hell. When was the last time the show worked this hard to eliminate one of its contestants this early in the game? I mourn for Mandy, and really, I feel so gaslit by the last 15 minutes that an otherwise solid episode is retroactively rendered meaningless. If Ru’s not watching the challenges, I’m not sure why I should either.
CLÁUDIO ALVES: Especially when those challenges are as desultory as RDR Live continues to be. Three weeks in, season 18 delivers its first truly bad episode, a trainwreck that’s only saved by the queens who do their level best to keep a sinking ship afloat…
Despite the darkness ahead, this TV hour starts in good spirits, as Mandy does her level best to keep things light after DD Fuego’s elimination. Still, the queen doing the most to elevate the early passages isn’t the fruit-named nurse, but Briar Blush, whose ribbing of Athena Dion has turned into the season’s most entertaining storyline. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun if not for the grand dame’s imperiousness, a sense of superiority that turns her into prime comedic fodder for the younger girl’s nonsense. More than anything, the Florida matriarch has major “big sister on her last nerve” energy, while Briar flits about like the glamorous emotional terrorist she is. Indeed, their bickering extends across the episode.
But before we can see more from the frenemies, it’s the next day and Ru has come with horrible news. Well, horrible to me. It’s time for RDR Live, the worst new Drag Race staple. The queens seem excited, however, deluding themselves into thinking they’ll be able to turn straw into gold. Juicy Love Dion is the only gal who has enough wits to realize the horror ahead, dreading everything to do with this comedy challenge from the word go. I’m right there with you, Juicy!
NICK: Juicy’s right to be worried, but she’s not giving up! I expressed some outright optimism at the end of our last RuCap, and I at least stand by being excited for this cast. The pedigree of several queens as hostesses and entertainers suggests a low basement of performance quality no matter what the script is giving. The self-appointed comedy queens have mostly lived up to their own hype, and are foaming at the mouth to do their thing. Myki Meeks is over the moon; meanwhile, our newest maxi challenge winner Jane Don’t has taken her well-deserved victory and immediately collapsed into nagging self-doubt about peaking too early and turning the other girls against her with all this love from Ru.
The casting process is surprisingly smooth. Everyone gets the part they want, with one glaring exception. Athena Dion really wants the QNN guest role of the most powerful queer ally Midwestern mom, and would rather die than be stuck hosting RDR Live! in a skit where Briar Blush plays her Inner Saboteur. But Jane Don’t has her eyes on the same part, and the remaining queens make a decent argument for Athena being better suited to the hosting gig without telling her to her face they want Jane on QNN. Mostly they seem delighted by the prospect of Athena being tormented by Briar. The aggrieved big sister dynamic has infected the whole cast, and Athena decides to power through it, all the while manifesting a future where Briar has laryngitis.
CLÁUDIO: This whole dynamic has managed to redeem Athena in the sense that she’s actually a fun presence to watch this week. Can’t say the same for Jane, who continues to do excellently in the competition and then crying about it for no discernible reason. While I can empathize with a neurotic queen, her whole thing this episode felt excessive and a tad alienating. It’s not the judges’ praise that risks turning her sisters and the audience against her, but this torrent of unwarranted self-pity.
Anyway, moving on to the pre-show preparations proper, Kenya is loud and in charge, smartly deducing that the way to make this challenge work is to embrace the writing’s stupidity. Is her unapologetic excess part of a plan to intimidate the competition? Perhaps, and perhaps it’s working, judging by the looks some of the other gals throw her way - admittedly, this is probably just editing trickery, Kuleshov Effect the house down. On the polar opposite of the confidence spectrum, we find Juicy, who’s leaning on Myki as her scene partner to get her through the ordeal of this unwanted comedy challenge. Thankfully, Miss Meeks has enough chutzpah for the both of them, proving herself to be an ideal team player and collaborator.
In no time, Ru arrives in the Werkroom with SNL’s Sarah Sherman in tow. I wish I could say they give invaluable advice to the queens, setting them up for success. However, I pride myself on being honest, so no lies will be written into this RuCap. At least, the comedian is serving fashion-harlequin glamour as a prelude to her main-stage creepy clownery later in the episode. Also, for what it’s worth, we finally get to see Ru address Discord’s walk to the queen’s utter confusion. In past seasons, Mama might have coached some better modelling out of her girl, but this isn’t that kind of show anymore. So, instead, our host encourages the groin-forward clomping, which makes for good gag, but I’m not so sure about it being good drag.
Oh well, I’m very grumpy this week. Do you have kinder words to share on this section of the episode? Maybe you didn’t find Ru and Sarah as useless as I did.
NICK: She gave Crystal Methyd realness, which is about the most tangible thing she did. Actually, I take that back, because Sarah instructing Juicy to think of her Young Michelle character as “present day Michelle talking to her younger self” makes something click for her. She also informs the queens that this week’s runway theme is “Animal Attractions”, so we might learn who’s a furry and who’s a zoologist. Ru giving Discord zero advice with her walk is wild, but I’m kind of amazed to hear this season’s punk diva say she has absolutely no idea what Ru is talking about. Have none of the queens talked to her about her physicality, even during the girl group challenge? That’s a wild thing for the edit to assert.
I’m also struggling to remember much from the preparation stations. The funny, prickly rapport between Briar and Athena in rehearsals is haunted by the knowledge that their skit won’t be this funny. Conversely, the synergy between Discord, Mia, Mandy, and Darlene seems pretty promising. The latter queens in particular are ready to redeem themselves from last week, and I for one am excited to see it!
In no time at all, the queens are lined up against the wall to perform RDR Live!, and the first group is the quartet I just said I was excited for. What a fun coincidence! It’s the best opener this challenge has ever had, and the best ensemble work of the evening. Discord and Mia do the news anchor prattle better than any QNN hosts, while Mandy’s fundamentalist and Darlene biker slut are the best kind of deranged comic creations. Two ideologically opposed women in a butter-churning contest is not a guaranteed success, but the queens make it entertaining.
CLÁUDIO: When you say this is the best opener the challenge has ever had, I can’t help but feel like you’re reading these girls for filth. Talk about damning with faint praise.
Or maybe that’s just my bad mood bleeding into this unfunny trainwreck of a maxi challenge. You’re right to give some positive notes on these queens, though, as they almost make the opener amusing to watch. Certainly, Darlene and Mandy do their very best, starting as opposites in sluttery before converging on a butter-churning frenzy that produces a heavy cream “money shot” for the ages. Getting splattered with suggestive milk products is the best thing Mia has got going for her, while Discord achieves that Drag Race comedy challenge combo of doing both too much and too little. Still, there’s something vaguely entertaining to her broken robot stiffness, even if it’s unintentional on the queen’s part.
Next comes Athena doing hosting duties, a perfectly safe performance despite a severe case of blush blindness. I’m not as forgiving of Briar playing the old war horse’s inner saboteur, though their anti-chemistry blesses the writing with some nice tension. While Athena has an easiness to her delivery, Briar is all staccato rigidity, strike a pose and fire a line with little to no awareness of comedic timing. She’s serviceable, I guess, though clearly hindered by the lack of a live audience to play off of, someone who’d help her calibrate the schtick.
NICK: Both of them seem limited by not having a live audience, but Briar is noticeably stiffer than Athena. I wasn’t expecting all of Briar’s animation to vanish on the main stage - very Kori King of her. If nothing else, I appreciate the minimal increase of the host role, allowing Athena to pop up sporadically and do a Basic Instinct crotch reveal.
If you want stiff, then get ready for Vita’s butch lesbian in the ‘50s melodrama sendup Lipstick Ladies. Vita sounds like she smoked a whole pack of cigarettes before walking onstage, and judging by the way she’s forever looking offstage at cue cards and not making eye contact with her scene partners, she clearly doesn’t know her lines. It’s the worst performance of the night, a shocking miss from a queen who’s otherwise had a dominating stage presence. Nini’s basic fruitiness is much livelier by comparison, and Kenya’s charisma is a great life raft.
I think Vita’s stiffness hampers them both somewhat, but Nini and Kenya and their Carol Burnett-costumed sapphic subtext do their thing and get the hell out.
Speaking of stiffness, how do we feel about Mama Ru’s musical performance? I loved how the Pit Crew were barely pretending to play their instruments. All of the tricked-up editing and camerawork hits like a talent show number that needs to be glammed up in post to work. I bet you loved it.
CLÁUDIO: Hate isn’t a strong enough word for what I was feeling while Ru wasted my time with the most AutoTuned robotic musical break in recording history. There’s something funny about how desperate the editing was and how those hot gogo boys couldn’t have been less convincing with those instruments if they tried. It’s camp, but at what cost? We only have a limited time on this earth and it shouldn’t be spent with RuPaul's “live” musical performances.
Kudos for the post-production team on that black-and-white melodrama with pops of color, like Carol under heavy medication and an Instagram filter, plus a concussion or two. Or maybe it was supposed to give Lubitsch. Or maybe I’m mentioning things I’d rather be watching than this episode because I’m starting to spiral. Anyway, I’ll say this for Vita - she looked hot. That’s the praise I have for her. Nini also looked good, very glam, a lipstick with earrings, but no ears, and some sense of silliness that’s certainly better than Vita’s clichéd smoker-voiced butch. Still, the star of the sketch was Kenya Pleaser, whose fighting of the Vita dummy actually got a laugh out of me. Just for that, she deserved the episode’s win, or maybe some sort of Humanitarian Award.
QNN follows, and the anchors are flatlining as usual. Briar trips herself up on one line, but Ciara isn’t much better. I do think they are better than past iterations of these same roles, mostly because they recognize their part in the scene’s comedic alchemy. It’s all about deadpan delivery of absurdity, before playing the straight men to whatever kooky guest they have to share the screen with. This time, it’s a super-supportive mom, Joan Chen’s character from the Wedding Banquet remake, fused with Hormona Lisa due to a mishap with The Fly’s teleportation apparatus. Jane Don’t does well with the role - the best written of the entire episode -, but it’s far from a homerun. At points, one feels she could’ve gone bigger, even if that might’ve unbalanced the already precarious dynamic at hand.
NICK: You can just say Ciara and Briar are better than Lexi and Crystal last year. All three queens understood the assignment without quite embellishing it enough. You can tell Jane knows this woman, but I imagine her Seattle sisters could’ve done something much more deranged than Jane’s final creation.
Last but not least is Myki Meeks and Juicy Love Dion in the Young Michelle pilot. There’s a fun friction to their performances - Myki doing too much in very deliberate steps vs Juicy holding an iron grip on one brash note is a fun dramatization of their conflict in the skit. They look fabulous, and it’s a fun duet, albeit more rewarding as a paean to their diligent teamwork. Myki made me laugh more, but neither screams winner for me.
CLÁUDIO: By this time in the episode, I’d lost my will to live and, sadly, neither Myki nor Juicy gave me any reason to keep on living. The latter, at least, looked great and was trying to deliver some soap-opera melodrama, which I appreciated. Miss Meeks, on the other hand, was being very loose and loud but felt as if she had no direction or concrete idea of who her character should be. None of it read as a parody of Michelle… which was the whole point of the scene!
Honestly, the real Michelle’s intro to the “Young Michelle” skit was the best part of this entire RDR Live! nonsense. She should get the win while all the queens went into a lipsync smackdown next episode, all of them bottoms, season 14 style.
And yet, back in the Werkroom on elimination day, most of these queens are feeling pretty darn optimistic about how their performance came across. Only Vita seems to be seriously second-guessing her choices, while Myki is feeling her oats, with Juicy feeding her scene partner’s ego by calling her a “powerhouse performer.” Athena’s granddaughter tells drag Arya Stark that she nailed that role and that might be the dumbest thing said this episode. Or maybe she’s just being nice. Jane could do with being nicer to herself, since, again, she has managed to turn a good performance into a neurotic breakdown. What do you mean you feel guilty? Get over yourself! It’s all probably being played up for the cameras in hopes of creating character arcs, but insecurity as a defining characteristic of one’s Drag Race competitor persona can easily turn tiring. Just ask Lexi Love.
You know what was actually entertaining? Ciara Myst going over her CV, which includes film and TV and the secret service, apparently. And then there’s Nini joking around with Vita about the latter doing whiteface and it occurs to me that it’s unfair to rag on the girls. They are actually very funny. It’s the showrunners who are to blame for how lacklustre RDR Live continues to be as a maxi challenge.
NICK: Not to defend RDR Live!, but I’d blame the showrunners before trashing this particular challenge format. Is this truly a worse form of scripted comedy than Ross Matthews vs the Ducks, Gay’s Anatomy, Breastworld, so on and so forth? Then again, all those skits would be even worse at only a fraction of the runtime. We’re never gonna escape the backwoods of Tuckahoe County until something big changes. We need to tear down this establishment board by board, Cláudio!
In no time at all, the judges take the stage. And here’s the nicest thing I’ll say about them all day: they look absolutely puss. But are they as puss as the queens? Category is... Animal Attraction!
;)
First on the runway is Discord Addams, giving high fashion in a Gaga-adjacent mug. Presenting as an albino alligator, Discord’s key fashion statement might be the flesh-textured handbag with her own screaming face molded on one side. She’s taken the animal-leather bag and flipped it on its head, instead, walking as an animal with a human accessory. The gator-skin dress and skull are striking to behold, and her walk has already improved.
CLÁUDIO: Improved, but still terrible. Anyway, this whole idea has a whiff of those PETA ads, though the human skin handbag harkens back to some truly horrid chapters in human History. Sorry, sorry, I don’t want to be the friend that’s too woke about a Drag Race runway, but it was what came to mind. Overall, this is her most successful look so far this season. I only wish the purse’s face were more obviously Discord. Why didn’t she match the makeup of the two? Why didn’t she wear contacts since the blue eyes are such a striking part of that animated accessory?
;)
Mia Starr pays homage to her pet labradoodle by dressing as a poodle. Or as a conglomeration of multiple DD Fuegos. It’s a cute look, basic but fun, and this dancer queen’s mug is looking fresher and more youthful than usual, rendering her a pop girly in Pleaser boots. I’m not mad at it.
NICK: Co-signed 100%. Mia is cute as hell, and we always love when someone pays homage to their pets on the main stage.
;)
Mandy Mango is next, clip-clopping as a deer by way of a forest sprite. Maybe she’s the child of the nature spirit and the elk in that one Fantasia 2000 number? An earlier reference to Dawn in the episode isn’t doing Mandy any favors, though the hooves would look iffy either way. Love the mug and the horns, wish the cape had more fungal growth to show off, but the garment itself is lovely - a perfectly safe look.
CLÁUDIO: There’s a lot of merit here. The skirt is beautifully constructed and the whole thing has the vibe of an elegant illustration come to life. The details leave something to be desired, though. As you said, the forest floor should have extended up her cape, but I take a bigger issue with the lack of a necklace or choker to disguise the line where the deer bodysuit ends and Mandy’s own skin begins. Still, overall, yassified Bambi looks lovelier than she did for the past two episodes.
;)
Darlene Mitchell has decided to go with the visual gag of a cow dressed like a cowgirl. A darling idea that’s poorly conveyed. With that particular hat shape and cape, a milk bottle purse that kinda looks like an oil lamp from a distance, she’s serving more Paul Revere than Calamity Jane. The dress doesn’t help - why not wear pants or even chaps? - and the flat feet make it all look clumsier than it needs to be. If she didn’t want to add a heel to those hooves, a cowboy boot would probably help elevate the Western vibes that this look currently lacks. I do love the nosering and the ear tag, though, so points for those.
NICK: More than a cowgirl, Darlene reminds me of Clarabelle Cow. Above the waist, this is superb. All the jewelry is perfect, and I dug the cape and hat as a very fashionable belle, even if it’s not as country as it could be. The skirt is definitely a weird choice for this look, and the Dragula girlies could absolutely show Darlene how to smuggle a heel inside a hoof or claw prosthetic. But what can I say? I’m charmed.
;)
For the first time since she entered the Werkroom, Athena Dion serves an unambiguous slay on the main stage. Her white-and-gold barn owl is a marvel, fulfilling the Greek goddess fantasy through alienating, finely constructed beauty. Love the mask as a prop and a callback to Greek stage masks, and how she manages to wield a tight silhouette with so much plumage to contend with.
CLÁUDIO: It’s a lot, giving more Baroque than Ancient Greece, though not necessarily in a way that’s detrimental to Athena’s vision. Nothing here feels accidental, every detail a deliberate choice, from the contrast of white feathers and golden tassels to the alien-esque facekini that suggests something inhuman without being avian in shape. It’s the best Athena has looked in the competition, which feels appropriate since she’s paying homage to the deity for whom she’s named.
;)
Briar Blush has decided to embody both the white and black swan from Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet, while avoiding tutus or other dancer elements. Nevertheless, the gown has incredible movement, those ostrich feathers filling the screen with jittery flutters, a mesmerizing sight. It’s not perfect, however. First of all, the dress seems somewhat disconnected from the story, the shoes make her legs look shorter, and the beehive winks at the 60s for no good reason.
NICK: I wish her look felt more overtly swan-like. The wig doesn’t make sense at all, and I would appreciate the contrast of the black mask if we could see her eyes. It looks like she’s wearing a batarang. As a thing flowing across the runway, excellent, but it’s still a letdown.
;)
Vita Vintesse Starr is serving wounded zebra, showing Mandy how to wear hooves that aren’t too big for the body and proving to Darlene that hooves and heels aren’t mutually exclusive. Michelle’s joke that this reminded her of Kennedy Davenport’s bloody chicken (in a complimentary way?!) was a wild but apt pull. The bodysuit is tailored perfectly, the plumage on the mane pops beautifully on camera, and the ruby red slashes against the stripes are an eye-popping accent. Still, the larger graphic impression of Vita’s runway is undone by her makeup. Why is she doing her face up like a zebra while also wearing a zebra headpiece? Why did she leave her ears unpainted and displayed for the world to see?
CLÁUDIO: HATE the facepaint, but the outfit is a serve. Well, it’d be even more of a serve if not for that center seam bringing attention to the mismatched print. Still, it’s good, and it tells a story, as the best Drag Race runway looks do.
;)
Nini Coco is this year’s first serious contender for “best look of the season.” While it’s true that the queen took a very literal approach to her poison dart frog fantasy, the execution is where it’s at, to die for, from the general shape to the tiniest detail. The pattern is graphic as fuck, and the interplay of scale between the several components is genius, down to the miniature print on Nini’s signature oversized lash. Still, my favorite tidbit here might be the bejewelled flies punctuating the ensemble, both as earrings and brooches. It’s sheer perfection.
NICK: It’s such a serve, for all the reasons you describe. I love Nini’s literal approach. She has a good brain on her shoulders for picking eccentric spins on the runway theme and executing them with technical precision. It sure beats the least inventive versions of this prompt, which just slap feathers or animal prints on anything and call it a day.
;)
Speaking of such an outfit, Kenya Pleaser is prowling the runway in a rhinestoned tiger-themed getup. It’s not a bad look per se, and the hat is great, but the creativity and risk are so minimal. The Pleaser heels are a choice, as is the black sash around her midriff that suggests her corset doesn’t actually fit on her body. And it looks even worse in motion. Might be my least favorite look of the night.
CLÁUDIO: Maybe I’m just blinded by my love for Kenya, but I don’t think this is too bad. The whole thing is mixing tiger print with a Puss in Boots/pimp fantasy that appeals to my silly side. Plus, it’s beautifully constructed. I don’t see the same fit issues you mention, find the waist swath a necessary bit of black to make the boots more congruent with the rest of the look, and I like how the corset features panels where that black netting is overlaid with the main fabric. Even the tail is a win in my book, having the proper length and heft to read as a tail rather than a sash. My only issue is how she modeled this. It needed more looseness and a playful twist.
;)
Theoretically, this is quite amazing. In practice, I’m not feeling it as much as I want to. There was so much said about Ciara’s prosthetics, but considering the helmet she’s got on, that cosmetic wizardry almost feels unnecessary. It’s also overshadowed, further contributing to a general sense of disconnection between the spindly body of this putative chameleon and the head. Still, I applaud the Greninja nonsense of wearing the tongue as a fleshy, oversized scarf.
NICK: One of the friends at my watch party was openly gawping at the horns, wondering how she could have safely packed them to travel for the show. Ciara’s construction of each individual part is astonishing. The Greninja tongue is a hit, but I agree the excess of the headpiece and facemask wind up working against each other, distracting to the cost of the whole body.
My general feelings about Jane Don’t’s dress are very similar to what I expressed for Briar’s: It’s ravishing, sure, but the scarlet macaw reference doesn’t go as far as it could. No complaints about her headpiece, the lush color palette, or the feathered breastplate/shoulder feathers. But I’m gonna pass the mic to you a little early, because I don’t know what to make of that dress at all.
CLÁUDIO: I enjoy the wide range of approaches we got for this runway prompt. Some went campy, others went fashion, some went literal, while others abstracted their animal. Jane Don’t went for the latter strategy and I commend her, especially since the judges were probably expecting something in line with her giant mouth from last episode. She’s the idea of a macaw sublimated as evening wear, and the gown is too beautifully constructed for me to care about the potential mismatch of subtlety and animal drag. I really admire the many ways feathers were incorporated into the look, especially the more understated touches on the skirt, complicating the sleekness of those organza panels.
;)
Myki Meeks offers a nice counterpoint to Jane Don’t feathered couture. Like the Seattle comedy queen, this Floridian menace chose an outfit that suggests the animal rather than embody it. Specifically, a cheetah as reimagined by an iconic bit of Mugler cowgirl cosplay. The issue is not with the idea, but the execution. Where Jane’s gown was intricate and beautiful to behold, this is too simple for its own good, poorly proportioned and altogether underwhelming. I also hate how on-the-nose the mug and wig are when everything else about the ensemble is working at a different level of stylization.
NICK: You’re making me realize how much I expected (wanted, would have answered the prompt myself with) a certain kind of outsized animal representation. Jane abstracting the beast is valid, as is Myki’s attempt to make Mugler into a pin-up girl. Another great hat for this runway, but I agree it’s too basic to really stick the landing.
;)
Last but not least is Juicy Love Dion’s pangolin realness. The proportions of this are so strange - the bulbous headpiece, making the shell into a kind of thorax while subbing in some cunty shoulder pieces. She’s still snatched, while giving a very cute, endangered animal its due. The curved nails are icing on the cake - Juicy’s got that shit on.
CLÁUDIO: Incredible stuff, maybe my favorite lewk of the week, with only Nini’s toad as rightful competition. I guess what I most appreciate about this is how high-fashion it feels, eschewing commonplace prettiness for something more aesthetically challenging, on the threshold of grotesque. This is MET Gala-worthy stuff, a metallic walking sculpture.
It’s a marvelously high note to finish the runway presentation, so good it almost managed to convince me I was watching good TV instead of the trainwreck that was the return of RDR Live. The judges quickly disabused me of that notion, with Ru playing mind games with the girls by calling the safe queens in two groups. Poor Myki Meeks thought she was going to be on top, maybe the winner, but it wasn’t so. Then again, she should consider herself lucky because, in my ideal world, the Cheetah Girl would’ve secured herself a place in the bottom. Maybe not bottom two, but certainly low.
Instead, the panel singles out Mandy, Vita, and Briar as the worst of the week, one of many baffling decisions. While the pageant queen turned monochrome butch was awful, her companions in flotsam were nowhere near her level of disgrace. Ciara was even less entertaining than Briar, even if she read the cue cards a tad smoother, and, if anyone from the first group deserved to be singled out in negative light, it ought to have been Discord. Mandy’s placement and critiques are even harder to swallow when one considers off-screen revelations made by the Mango queen and her scene partners. Though the judges dinged her for abandoning the conservative lady character and going all wild with her breastplate, that was in the script provided by production. It’s giving season 7 Max all over again, iykyk.
The tops are less preposterous, but still. Darlene deserves her flowers, yet that outfit deserved more scrutiny beyond Ru’s note about her lack of heels. And while Juicy was decent, her runway miraculous, she’s wildly overpraised. A win-worthy performance this was not. Only Jane Don’t gets what I’d consider a just assessment of her performance this episode. Where was my beloved Kenya? Was her runway underwhelming enough to warrant total dismissal?
NICK: I’d agree more about Jane if Sarah Sherman didn’t say she was taking notes to bring back to SNL with her. It’s a tad excessive! I’m very happy with Darlene’s placement, and I would’ve been even happier if she and Mandy were being praised as a pair. I’d probably give them the win, give or take Kenya and Jane’s heroic resuscitation of dead bits. The show is clearly invested in Miss Mitchell, and I hope she snags a challenge win soon. Juicy’s win speaks to the same kind of strategic note-taking, especially after not receiving a high placement last week. Bestow the dancing diva with a comedy challenge win and suddenly her pedigree is that much more versatile.
I don’t disagree about Ciara’s performance warranting a low placement, though if the argument is that her runway saved her, so be it. Vita flopped harder than anyone else this challenge, and I can’t fathom why she’s not lip-syncing this week (I can, it’s because the judges like her too much). So for the second week in a row, Mandy is selected as the sacrificial victim for a pageant queen face-planting on the main stage.
She and Briar face off to Lizzo’s “Love in Real Life”, and it’s either very generous or very cruel of the judges to even bother when Mandy is getting Old Yeller’d at the end of this, no matter what. Briar’s tweeted about how surprised she was not to be sent home when she didn’t know all the words, and it shows. Neither queen did exemplary, but Mandy’s bounciness fit the song and she knew the words. Plus she revealed the cute lil’ deer tail hiding under her skirt, which I was baffled she hadn’t shown off on the runway.
Even so, Briar is saved and Mandy shantays away, leaving the largest lipstick message I’ve seen in some time. It’s also the most rigged elimination in a hot minute, particularly for this early in the game. Casting queens to be early outs isn’t new, but this feels genuinely vindictive. Ru can joke all she wants about Mandy needing a little more time to mature, but diva, you cast her! And her prize for doing better than expected is to go home. I’m gonna miss that Mango’s shenanigans, and I resent the show insisting it was her time to go so vehemently that it belittled her drag in the process.
CLÁUDIO: I get that Mandy is a little messy in her performance, but surely knowing the words should have ranked her above Briar. Moreover, Athena Dion’s worst nightmare lacked the same hunger shown by her sister, whose naked despair catalyzed into a bubbly enthusiasm that fit the tune better than whatever her competition was doing. Neither served a lip-sync for the ages, yet to my eyes the victor seemed evident. The judges obviously disagreed and, up to a point, I can understand their choice. Though Mandy has done better than expected, Briar feels like a character with more potential for some season-long arcs, shenanigans, mayhap a Rudemption. Still, when Drag Race abandons all pretenses of being a competition or even a variety show, and embraces its potential for overproduced realityTV melodrama, it can make viewers sour on the entire thing. I know it had that effect on me this week.
So, farewell Mandy Mango, and fingers crossed that the next episode is an improvement on this RDR Live! tomfoolery. The tease we get sounds promising - quens will pair up for a red carpet-inspired design challenge. I’m expecting great things from the likes of Vita, Nini, Jane and Discord. Don’t disappoint us, girls!
Previous RuCaps:
- Episode 1: "You Can't Keep a Good Drag Queen Down!"
- Episode 2: "Q-Pop Girl Groups"