RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: It’s a Trap!

This week, RuPaul’s Drag Race set a trap for the contestants. They introduced a new challenge, refused to tell the girls what rubric they were going to be graded on, and then punished the girls who didn’t give them what they wanted (which they had not told them). In Untucked, Suzie Toot gets very mad about this, and I certainly empathize with her. But also: Girl … you should have seen this coming.

The challenge this week is another live performance, a speaking challenge, which are some of the hardest in the Drag Race canon. It’s known as the CharismaUniquenessNerveTalent Monologues, a play on the Vagina Monologues, which are legitimately serious expressions of womanhood. Last season, notably, the girls did not have to stand on a stage alone and deliver a monologue a single time all season — they had those team-based PowerPoint presentations instead. That was probably to shield Nymphia from an embarrassing bottom-two placement (a mistake, for what it’s worth — it heightened the occasional feeling that she was being treated with kid gloves). This year, they did it twice: first, in a roast, and now this.

Four of the girls interpret this as an opportunity to share something personal and vulnerable about themselves while their partner dances a solemn routine. And I get it! RuPaul likes vulnerability. RuPaul likes emotionality. RuPaul, in fact, truly believes that without vulnerability, one literally cannot be a successful drag queen. But also, RuPaul loves to laugh, and any challenge stupid enough to include the “interpretive dance” element should not be taken too seriously. Of course the judges don’t want to see a touching dance that reminds them of a third grader’s modern dance recital. Why would they want that? Watching the challenge, it felt like everybody except Onya and Lexi actively ignored their best instincts to be fun and charismatic performers, to be what they presumed RuPaul would want from them. I don’t think it’s random that the two older queens figured out exactly what the challenge actually called for: A little more life experience goes a long way.

Backing up: The episode begins with a discussion of the “who should go home tonight and why” question. Onya thinks the other girls, except Suzie, gave cop-out answers, and those girls are defensive. I enjoyed Jewels throughout this discussion, particularly, because she just kept backing up that she said Suzie because her wig line was so jacked. Fair enough!

Then comes a paired mini-challenge that is just Mad-Libs about your partner. Notably, Lexi chooses to go with Onya instead of Sam, leaving Sam pissed and paired up with Lana “About to Go Home” Ja’Rae. It’s rude, but it’s the game. Lexi really needs a win, and she knows how to get it. Jewels and Suzie end up together. The Mad-Libs are almost universally fun — Jewels wins, and Onya could have won if that wouldn’t have benefited Lexi (who does a really bad job at Mad-Libs somehow), too.

The challenge is ridiculous: In pairs, they have to each tell a story of “a time in their life when ____,” while their partner performs an “interpretive dance” about their story. Suzie and Jewels, who remember that RuPaul loves vulnerability, clearly see this as an opportunity to get real and serious in a “What would you say to (insert curly haired twink’s name here)” way. Lana and Sam go a similar direction, but with less finesse. They cut to Lexi and Onya, meanwhile, and Lexi says that her problem is that she doesn’t want to choose a story that’s too serious. Immediately, though the edit doesn’t underline the difference, the groups are off in wildly different directions.

It’s worth noting that, though “monologues” aren’t necessarily common on Drag Race, there’s some precedent here: I think of All-Stars 6’s “storytelling” challenge, which Eureka won, and I think of season 12’s “one-woman show” challenge, which Crystal Methyd won. Both of those challenges’ winning performances were draggy and funny. Eureka told a story about pooping her pants, and Crystal played Phenomenal Phil, an exotic dance instructor. They both won over performances like Ginger Minj’s potentially fake story about getting beautiful red shoes and Jackie Cox’s story about growing up with one Canadian and one Persian parent. The history is there. RuPaul is almost never looking for “dour” on stage.

One stroke of genius here is that the girls receive no coaching. Normally, I’m a fan of them getting some direction, but the fun of a “random” challenge like this is watching the queens come to their own interpretations of what this should mean for their drag. It is to the winning queens’ credit, then, that their win isn’t just because they performed the best, though they did; it was because they looked at the challenge and interpreted it as drag queens. That’s deserving of the win.

Okay, let’s talk about the individual performances. Jewels and Suzie are up first, with Suzie telling the first story and Jewels dancing. Suzie talks about wanting to win a spelling bee to get the approval of her masculine father, then realizing she already has it, while Jewels dances. Jewels’s dancing is good, and Suzie’s speaking is good. It’s definitely boring, though, and for all that Suzie wants to be vulnerable and serious, the fact that her story is so stereotypical for a gay kid means that we don’t actually learn very much about Suzie. You’re gay and you want your dad’s approval? Not to be rude, but … join the club! It’s just not specific enough and doesn’t tell me anything about who Suzie, specifically, is. Jewels has the same overarching problem, but she’s also a less polished speaker than Suzie is, and Suzie is a less expressive dancer than Jewels is. Thus, their second segment is worse in every way than the first.

The next group is Onya and Lexi, who universally blow the other girls out of the water. The first pairing is Onya as speaker and Lexi as dancer, and it’s the best segment of the night. Onya is a remarkably expressive speaker, as usual, and tells a story about briefly going vegan, while Lexi acts it out via dance. This week reminded me of what a remarkable mover Lexi is since she hasn’t gotten to really get much use out of her incredibly long limbs since the “Alter Ego” lip sync (“Where is the girl group challenge?” I still ask, sadly, to no one in particular). The “Lexi as speaker, Onya as dancer” segment is less strong. Lexi is a good speaker, but her story is difficult to follow. Onya is great as a dancer, but she just doesn’t have the freakishly long limbs that make Lexi’s segment so engaging.

Finally, it’s Sam and Lana. This is not their challenge. Lana is okay as a dancer and a black hole as a speaker, while Sam is bad, though not catastrophically so, at both. Lana was probably always going home this week, but this week is terrible for Sam because it sees her backslide. The judges end up critiquing her as not loose enough, bringing back an old critique that Sam had previously gotten over. That’s “season losing” type of stuff.

On the runway, the category is “ugliest dress ever.” A note on this challenge: The best looks take “bad taste” as an opportunity to do something truly fashionable. I’d say exactly one girl does that. Suzie comes as a Christmas tree. It’s an ugly dress, sure, but it’s also not really a dress. This is a challenge that’s partially about taste, and Suzie just went for the overly obvious “pile shit on shit” approach. Jewels wears a very ‘80s prom dress that the judges don’t think is ugly enough. I also have seen the “wears braces, does an ‘80s look” enough on this show. Gigi put it to rest. Onya dresses up as a turkey. It’s fine, but she again has problems with proportions. A headpiece or some big hair or really anything going up would help this outfit immensely. Lexi does the best by a wide margin. The outfit is a series of stacked tutus that is absolutely in “bad taste,” but also has something deeply fashionable about it. It’s ugly in a Versace way, not an “I’m wearing a Christmas tree” way. Sam’s look is not ugly, and that’s all there is to it. In fact, it speaks poorly to her taste level that she thinks it is ugly at all. Lana wears Kandy Muse’s “pocket” runway from season 13. Yeah, it’s ugly, but at this point in the competition, I am not interested in seeing references to another drag queen’s work.

Lexi and Onya share the win, which seems about right. That’s the kind of momentum that Lexi desperately needs right now entering a stage in the competition where, by my count, everybody but Onya is eligible to go home. Lana and Sam end up in the bottom together, which is also right. Sam can blame Lexi all she wants for not choosing her, but her instincts were all kinds of wrong this week. They lip sync to Dua Lipa’s “Illusion.” Lana straight up wins it. It’s her best lip sync of the season by far, and she does a legit great job throughout. Sam isn’t bad, though, and it’s clear that Lana cannot stay. They send Lana home, and, honestly, good for her for making top six. That’s no small feat.

And also on Untucked…

• Suzie is utterly convinced that there is no way she could have known the judges would want them to be funny, and Lana gets pissed that Suzie assumes she’d be in the bottom. Pretty straightforward week.

• It seems like they were provided, given that the judges didn’t critique any of them, but WOW are the challenge outfits awful. The winning pair’s wigs, in particular, are some of the worst wigs ever on the show. It’s not even cute and campy, just hard to look at. What happened there?

• The guest judge is Jerrod Carmichael, who is low energy, which is par for the course for him, but gives real notes and seems pleased to be there. Side note: I loved Jerrod’s narcissistic train wreck of a reality show that was actually performance art last year.

• Gay thoughts from gay people: I’m not really an r/rupaulsdragrace acolyte, though I was before I got this gig, so it still comes up for me. One thing I adored that I saw this week was this thorough breakdown of how the girls chose their pairs. Made me thoroughly laugh.

• Finale thoughts: Usually I predict the top four here, but we’re at the top five, so that’s just saying who I think will be eliminated next week (Jewels? I’m unsure, but she only has one win). Instead, I’d like to use this time to express that I hope that they do a top three again because we’re finally at the point in the competition where every girl is baseline good at Drag Race (it took a while to get there this season, didn’t it?), and I’d like at least two weeks of real competition.