RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

RuPaul’s Drag Race would like to remind us who the contenders are. Last week, the show blew the roof off this mother, putting the top contenders like Jewels and Lexi at the bottom, while the judges gave major kudos to bottom-dwellers Lana and eventual challenge winner Lydia. This week, they were like, “That was fun. Anyway…” and threw Lydia and Lana in the bottom two. I’m not saying that it wasn’t justified, but I am saying that last week is a little less fun in retrospect, because the season is ultimately just back on the track that we already felt comfortable with. Last week was a curveball; this week … well, I don’t know enough about sports to come up with a metaphor using the opposite of a curveball, but it’s that.

Plus, it’s an acting challenge. I am of the belief that acting challenges are incredibly important on Drag Race since that’s a skill that the girls might legitimately be tested on in the real world, and knowing who has the ability to memorize lines, take up space, take direction, and deliver punchlines is important. But they are also awful to watch. I have nightmares about “Breastworld.” This one is pretty par for the course, which means it is simultaneously excruciating and informative. The issue is that the information we get isn’t that thrilling. The combination of little plot movement and an acting challenge makes this episode the blandest of the season, and after the excitement of last week, it’s disappointing.

It’s a testament to the strength of last week’s episode that the most exciting thing that happened this week was just the fallout from last week’s drama. At the top of the episode, the girls enter following Arrietty’s lip sync to learn that she left Onya a bitchy note on the mirror about her breath, telling her to brush her teeth after their Untucked fight. It then turns out that Onya confided in Jewels that she has a condition that renders her breath bad. Seeing as Jewels says that Onya confided in her, specifically about the condition, it’s not really reasonable to accuse Arrietty of making fun of Onya’s breath knowing that. Still: It’s a really bitchy move to throw shade like that on your way out, the kind we haven’t seen since the days of Raven and Mariah Paris Balenciaga, and even those queens didn’t get so personal. I’m not a fan.

The acting challenge is then announced, and it’s a parody of Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, sorta, called “Ross Matthews vs. the Ducks.” Mostly, that’s just an excuse for Ross Matthews to do his Truman Capote impression (not bad!) while the girls play assorted other characters that are occasionally versions of real people and, at other times, just archetypes.

After reading the script, Lana asks Onya to do a scene with her (which turns out to be a mistake), and most of the part-taking goes smoothly until we get to the final role. Jewels and Suzie then fight over the role of “Chicago,” a Tiffany “New York” Pollard parody that performs a version of New York’s anti-Gemma Collins diatribe from Celebrity Big Brother UK. Suzie wants to do it because it’s a monologue, and Jewels wants to do it because she loves the original version. Generally, I wouldn’t count on either of these queens to give a particularly high-quality New York impression, but I get why they want the part. Lexi chimes in that she doesn’t want Suzie to get the role because she has a Suzie complex, and after a little support from the other girls, Suzie gets tasked with the role nobody wants.

If I’m giving Lexi perhaps a skosh too much credit, I’d say she pushed Suzie to get that role because it means they’d be working together, and that’s great for her storyline. She must know by now that her one-sided feud with Suzie is her big story of the season, and the only way that this doesn’t end with them lip syncing is if she neutralizes the storyline ASAP. This week, she does a pretty good job of it until the very end, which we’ll get to. But also … I’d still like to see that lip sync. The (potential) drama!

The acting challenge is nominally directed by Cheyenne Jackson, but functionally, scene-partner Ross never shuts up about what the queens should do, so it’s equally directed by him. Lana does surprisingly well, but her chosen scene partner, Onya, does better. Sam does well, but Lydia has trouble bumping up the volume. Suzie is great, and Cheyenne calls her an actor, and Lexi can’t get the words out. Jewels gets tired of waiting around and then can’t remember the words. Overall: Nobody is bad enough at taking direction that the filming scenes are actually funny. Give me Kenya Michaels saying, “I kinda like the smell,” and Madame LaQueer being incapable of saying “Ew!” like Lucille Ball any day.

The makeup section is cute if uneventful. Sam and Lydia like each other now, and Lana can’t rap. On the runway, the category is black and white ball (an event Capote threw).

Sam looks good in a masquerade, jester, harlequin-inspired look. I don’t love all the patterns that she mixes, but the overall effect is so impactful it makes up for it. Lana’s big sleeves are great, as is the wig. Can’t help but think this look would be much better if she padded. Not obsessed with Onya’s look — her proportions are a little off again. I love Lydia’s look a lot. The patterns are fantastic, the wig is fabulous, and this is my favorite look she’s ever worn. Suzie’s fringed cat look is great, but I agree with guest judge Sam Smith that a defined waist would help. Lexi’s dress is too short and the ombre is too quick. Jewels’s drawn cat look has the judges obsessed, which is great for her. I think it is pretty good, too, but Ross thinks it’s going in the Smithsonian, and that’s a step too far for me.

In the challenge, Onya and Lana are up first, playing dueling rapstresses. Lana does objectively well, but she’s entirely overshadowed by Onya as Big Fupa. It’s tough to watch Lana get critiqued for fading when she tried so hard and did so well in comparison to her earlier work in the competition. Still, Onya destroyed her. I’d go as far as to say that Onya is in the top three actors ever on the show. She’s completely professional, chews up every line they give her, and, through her eyes, is basically able to create new jokes for herself. Her timing is impeccable. The word that springs to mind watching Onya perform? Hirable. You could put her on a real-life sitcom playing a drag queen any day, and she’d fit right in. You can’t say that for any other queen this season, and you can’t say it for any queen most seasons. She is a remarkable performer.

Every scene that follows suffers for not having Onya Nerve. The judges ultimately act like the win comes down to her and Sam Star, who plays a Southern housewife, but it’s no competition. Sam is good, certainly better than her scene partner Lydia, but she’s also unexceptional. This is the level of acting challenge performance that gets a lot of queens high placements, and sometimes wins, on other seasons, but those seasons don’t have Onya.

Suzie is, to my mind, better than Sam in the challenge. As a “Real Housewife” type, gives a real performance that is incredibly clear and professional. But her makeup and wigline are actively bad, and the problem I have with Suzie as an actor is that she’s rarely giving “drag queen.” She’s not even really giving Jane Krakowski-level cartoon, she’s just honestly performing the scene. It’s very good, but I think that to get to the next level in her drag performance, she needs to be grander. Still, the judges act like she and fellow Housewife Lexi are equals, likely because that storyline is convenient, but they are not. Lexi is competent but could easily receive critiques similar to Lana’s about being overshadowed from the judges if they so wished.

Lydia, playing a proctologist opposite Sam, and Jewels as Chicago have similar issues: They’re just not big enough performers. Lydia fails to chew her words enough to pull focus, and Jewels is pretty flat as “Chicago.” Sometimes the judges get annoyed at queens for putting themselves into boxes, but it seems like an unforced error to me that Jewels was so desperate to be Chicago. The character is wildly different from her, and she’s not primarily an actor. She should have done Suzie’s role.

Ru then asks who should go home tonight and why. Big moment! Everybody but Onya and Suzie whiffs it, however. Suzie says Lana because of her track record, Onya says Lydia because she’s bad at Drag Race, Lydia says Onya because she’s competition, and everybody else says Suzie. Obviously, Suzie is not going home. I think this is a particularly bad decision on Lexi’s part, because it just makes it all the more likely that she and Suzie will lip sync, after a pretty good week for the two of them.

Onya wins the challenge (duh), and Lydia and Lana end up in the bottom, partially because they’re all obsessed with Jewels’s outfit, but also because, excluding last week, Lydia and Lana are just … kind of comparatively bad at Drag Race. From the time that the lip sync pairing was announced, through the lip sync song being revealed (“Unholy”), up until halfway through the performance, I was pretty positive that Lana was going and Lydia was staying. Lydia can’t move a ton in her dress, but she’s super expressive and fun. Then, she decides to cut her dress open during the all-important Kim Petras verse and gets all tangled up in her own shards. Lana, meanwhile, does a split. Ultimately, Lydia gets sent home, which blows — at this point in the competition, one of the girls should be winning the lip sync. This week, it’s not so much that Lana wins it as it is that Lydia loses it. Gee, I wonder who’s gonna go home next week?

And also on Untucked…

• Our first Arrietty-less Untucked is unsurprisingly uneventful. Sam Smith comes backstage.

• Two people I just watched the episode with heard “Janet Jackson” instead of “Cheyenne Jackson” and were confused as to why (1) the show wasn’t making a bigger deal about getting Janet Jackson and (2) why Janet Jackson would direct an acting challenge (clearly they have not seen Poetic Justice).

• Lana again claims that her runway look is “something I don’t ever do.” Some people online are getting annoyed by her continual claims that each look is new to her, but I think it’s hilarious.

• The biggest laugh of the night was Ru saying, “At this point in the competition, all the kids are doing really well, but I think we know what we have to do… send home Suzie Toot!”

• Gay thoughts from gay people: On that note, my boyfriend seems to think that Suzie Toot is drawing dead in terms of winner chances. I think Onya’s our most likely winner, but I also think Suzie’s still got a shot, so I made him explain. “When I watch reality shows, I only dislike contestants that still have a chance at winning. The moment they go home, my negative thoughts go away and I start appreciating them outside of the show. After RDR Live!, I became anti-Suzie while many were still fawning over her — but now I am completely neutral on her, which means she doesn’t have a chance at the crown,” he claims. Why didn’t he like her? “Because she acted like a pompous know-it-all on top of not being able to hang. The last thing a drag queen should be is a wet blanket; RuPaul is the ultimate hang. But now, the audience has turned on her and the editors seem apathetic towards her, so it seems unlikely that she’ll win.”

• Predicted Top Four: Onya, Sam, Suzie, and Jewels, in that order.