CALM DOWN BEYONCE. We finally got to our recap. Sorry it took so long, darlings, but poledancing for our book took precedence this week. All y’all who bitched about the lack of a recap are some entitled hos, but we love you, because you clearly can’t live without the benefit of our opinions, which is exactly as it should be. Now strap yourselves in. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.



There it is, girls. Your Recommended Daily Allowance: Five servings of vegetables, a legume, some fruit and two pieces of meat.

Thank you. We’re here all week. Tip your drag waitress.

We think what we loved most about this mini-challenge was the HILARIOUS conceit that it had something to do with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” program. We’re gonna go out on a limb here and suggest…

… there was no coordinating with the White House on this one.

Proving once again that this is not a reality competition, but a variety show masquerading as a reality competition, Ru spewed a continuous stream of hilarious one-liners all through this segment and then gave the win to Laganja, for no other reason than to stir up shit.

Also: proving once again that Ru is a master at self-promotion, the main challenge had the queens hawking yet another Ru joint; this time her cosmetics line for Color Evolution.

It seems we say this once and only once a season, but we don’t like this look at all. It feels like blasphemy to say it, but it kind of looks like a rainbow flag that got washed in too-hot water and too much detergent.

Laganga and Adore were the clear front-runners in the commercial challenge. Wait. That’s only half right. Adore was the clear front runner. Because if there’s any queen here who can do the perfect bitchy mean girl character, it’s her. Her reading of two simple words, “…is ugly,” was press-the-pause-button funny.

Laganja was her usual twitchy, self-conscious, jonesing-for-a-fatty self. You can trace the rise of the withdrawal symptoms through the competition. We’re probably at about week two of their sequester, which tracks with her behavior this week. Gets high every day then can’t get high for two weeks? That’s Laganja right now. The only reason these two won this week was because of Adore. And Laganja, whose paranoia should be reaching epic levels by now, knows this.

You’d pretty much have to be a queen going through withdrawal to put together a scary-ass look like this. That was some of the worst makeup we think we’ve ever seen on the show.

We liked Adore’s runway look, but that hat seemed unnecessary for the look and a little distracting to us.

And while we think Adore nailed the challenge above all others, Bianca gave her a close run for her money, while Trinity deserves most improved. The storyline developing with Bianca is both manipulative and heartwarming at the same time. Not that we think she was being phony or anything, but her new role as drag mother to both Adore and Trinity should yield some good stuff down the line. While it would be hard for us to see how she’d justify it, based solely on Trinity’s output so far, we could see a finale with Bianca, Adore and Trinity. It would be awfully tempting for Ru to put those three up against each other in the end.

Anyway, Bianca was hilarious – especially in her side-eye action, and Trinity pulled herself together and surprised everyone.

And they both looked amazing on the runway. It’s getting harder and harder, in retrospect, to understand why they weren’t the winners, but then we come back to “… is ugly,” and we remember.

The only interesting thing about their pairing this week was the prickliness that developed between the two of them. Let’s face it: Ru paired everyone for maximum storytelling. Courtney, a veteran performer and reality television personality, took that ball and ran with it, turning on her bitch rays and blasting Joslyn in the face.

To be honest, it all comes off a little arbitrary. Every queen slings shade at every other queen; some more effectively than others (Bianca) and some for more obvious emotional reasons (Darienne), but pretty much every bitch gets a chance to claw at every other bitch. So when someone suddenly gets butthurt because someone else got shady, we kinda have a “That’s nice, dear” reaction to it. We figure Joslyn was probably genuinely taken aback, but honestly, Courtney didn’t say anything to her that Bianca wasn’t saying about Trinity, except in a slightly harsher way. The fact is, Joslyn – who we should add is a far better queen than we originally assumed – really could use a little more polish and variety in her work.

This was great. Original (for this show, anyway) and memorable.

She really does need to start listening to everyone who keeps telling her to change her stage looks. Too damn much crap every week.

The irony of Ben and Darienne’s commercial was that it was pretty damn funny. The problem was it was also pretty damn weird and made a pretty damn awful way to sell makeup. We think they lost the plot here and wound up making some sort of parody of a makeup commercial instead of an actual commercial. We suppose you could say that of all the entries this week, but as goofy as the other ones were, they did at least try and sell the idea that you’d wind up looking pretty if you use this product.

Darienne’s jealousy is starting to get really annoying but y’know? We don’t a hundred percent buy Ben’s act. It’s just a little too wide-eyed and “Who, me?” She comes across as phony as Laganja in a lot of ways and the judges called her out on it this week, as they should.

We realize that “vulnerability” is an arbitrary criterion to apply in a drag competition, but that’s kind of how reality TV competitions work. There’s not a lot about Project Runway that correlates to the real fashion industry or America’s Next Top Model to the modeling profession, or even Top Chef to running a kitchen in a restaurant. RPDR doesn’t define drag. But because it has to award a prize, it has to come up with some sort of codified set of skills in order to award it. And because it’s reality TV, they’re looking for emotional payoffs. Thus: “We need to see your vulnerable side.”

Not a great look, to our eyes. It’s costumey, which is fine, but we can’t for the life of us figure out exactly what kind of costume it is. Is she a flower? A sci-fi space queen? It just seems ill thought-out.

Props where it’s due: this is our favorite looks of hers yet. It’s nice to see her bring some campy exaggeration into her normal glam-drag.

In the end, Ru decided they were the worst of the lot and put them up against each other for the lip sync. We pretty much figured this was going to be the “You both get to stay” moment for the season. Ben’s a favorite in a lot of ways. It was her turn to get beat up a little in the competiton, but Ru clearly likes her. And there was no question Darienne was staying. She’s been consistently glamorous and occasionally pretty funny. And she gave a much better lip synch than Ben did. What was with her wandering all the way to the back of the runway to take off her dress? Darienne took that moment and ran with it, commanding the judges’ attention and getting them to laugh.

But wait! There’s more!

Nothing to add to this picture. Just leaving it here for your benefit, darlings.

This challenge was pointless and HILARIOUS. Pointlessly hilarious, if you will.

Who cares who won it? How would you judge such a thing? Although when Adore licked off her eye and spit it out, we could see how that would determine things. Again, a pause-button-funny moment. We never dreamed we’d love that vapid little girl, but she really does have pretty awesome comic instincts.

Bouncing back gloriously from the previous episodes runny rainbow flag dress.

We actually felt a little sorry for the rest of the queens. When Ru announced the challenge, she was essentially saying, “Here you go, Bianca. Here’s the one I promised you.”

And yes, it was a much deserved win. She was machine gun-rapid in her delivery and couldn’t possibly have been any more polished in her performance. Hilarious. And the whole Kathy Griffin/Laugh-In drag was an inspired choice. This was hers to win and she didn’t disappoint.

Credit where it’s due, Darienne did a pretty damn good job herself. Polished and pretty hilarious. The ninja line was perfection.

We think Trinity deserves a ton of praise for getting out of her head and really giving it her all. It was as good or better than her makeup ho performance last week. Everyone kind of over-praised it, but Ru got to have a perfectly Emmy-worthy tearful drag mama “I’m so proud of you” moment. It was sweet.

As for the rest of the girls – because they really don’t warrant a lot of examination, some quick n’ dirty assessments:

The song was awkward.

Her awkwardness was almost funny. “I’ll mow your lawns later” was a pretty great off-the-cuff closer.

YIKES.

This TOTALLY got ignored by Ru. We’re sorry, but she definitely should’ve been back in the bottom again this time.

Granted, Joslyn’s performance (or lack) is pretty hard to defend.

And don’t even get us started on this twitchy mess. Even the “knitting” grannies planted in the audience were all “Girl, go give a blowjob in an alley if you need to score some weed that badly. You’re a MESS.”

But here’s what’s funny about reality TV – and we know this from blogging about it for almost 8 years now: you can, as a producer and/or a judge of a reality competition do all you can to further certain outcomes and produce certain moments, but sometimes, something true and pure happens, despite all that manipulation.

Sometimes, pure fucking magic happens, right out of nowhere, coming from the last people you’d expect to produce such a moment.

Seriously, it was one of those “holy SHIT” stage moments that literally caused all the hairs on our necks to stand up. Clearly, it wasn’t planned, because why would they coordinate when they’re each fighting for their life? If we give either of them credit, we suspect Joslyn knew Laganja’s style well enough that she could figure out when she was going to try one of her splits or death drops and yanked the spotlight off her. If that’s true, she’s a much, much savvier performer than her competitors realize.

Either way, Joslyn gave the better lip synch and Ru could see she’d wrung all the drama out of Laganja she could get. It was a pity-sashay, really. She’s setting her free so she can go out in the word and score weed off the first likely source she can find. Go and get yourself some, girl. Or just plain go. Whatever.

As for the Untucked meltdown, what needs to be said? For once, we were perfectly happy watching Bianca sharpen her claws. It was time for a shredding. This messy pothead had it coming. Honestly, if we were there and we’d heard one more “OKCURRRRRR?” out of her, someone would’ve had to restrain us. Frankly, Bianca was remarkably gentle, given how annoying Laganja’s been. And Adore’s constant “Girl what the fuck” side-eyes were quietly hilarious.

[Screencaps: tomandlorenzo.com]