Next time : the sad story of Billy B’s crack baby.

1. As you might expect, given that of all the queens Mrs K seemed to have the fewest emotional entanglements with the rest of the cast, the mourning of her presence at the start of this week’s episode was limited. Which is a shame, because the very least one of these kiddy bitches could have done is to admire her beautiful penmanship



/lipstickladyship/whatever. If there’s anything a proper suburban dame knows how to do after all it’s to write a thank-you note…in product on the mirror the morning after. Indeed most of the post DESPY kiki revolved around who won what, more specifically everyone giggling about how it was SUCH A SHOCK that Violet was named biggest bitch, in the same voice you hear used to proclaim it SO SURPRISING that Barry Manilow is gay, and just as annoyingly. Violet, bless her, retiterated rather piously for the hard of hearing that everything she says comes from either a place of humour or a place of truth, so you can’t hate her for it. Many queens over the years have spoken out of their place of truth girl, you’re nothing special. The real shade though was bubbling under the surface as Miss Fame played Sally Kirkland to Pearl’s Cher, muttering in confessional that she didn’t deserve to win the challenge because she doesn’t even want to be here and her energy is TOXIC. Poor Famey. Little does she know that the prickly heat that radiates off Pearl







at all times is why we love her. Well that and many of the gays watching the show wanting to introduce themselves to her oyster.

2.



Nuff said. Sadly for Max, her Mary Poppins glide through the workroom, floating along on a bubble of affectation and eleganza, was brought down to earth with a bump by Katya honking “IF YOU HAD TO HAVE SEX WITH ANY QUEEN IN THIS ROOM WHO WOULD IT BE?”, dragged through the mud by Ginger cackling about how everyone would pick Katya because of her GIANT DICK, roughly shoved through a hedge by Miss Fame yelling that she wanted to do MORE THAN ONE and then finally cow-patted on by Violet asking who was a top and who preferred to take it up the place of truth.



It’s hard out here for a queen with morals. Michelle might think that grey hair is an affectation but the other girls turned it so at fright with their talk of cream-pies and eating out the raspberry jam of a bronco, madame. I do worry for Max’s future in this competition if she doeesn’t loosen up a bit and stop turning to face the wall (not like that) every time someone mentions dick. She does know whose show this is right? She has watched Starrbooty? Turning up to compete on this show as a prude is a bit like a socialist, animal rights activist, SJW turning up for Donald Trump’s Apprentice.

3. Things weren’t getting any easier for Max with this week’s mini-challenge, as the Pit Crew



multiplied out for a veritable panoply of Gratuitous Pictures. The aim of the game was to go rummaging in their panties (sadly not literally, they tugged themselves out when pointed to) for little black disks, each of which was printed with a number. The queen that accumulated the highest number of points won the challenge. BUT WAIT. SOME OF THE PIT CREW HAD A MONSTER IN THEIR PANTS, WHICH WOULD AUTOMATICALLY RESET A QUEEN’S SCORE TO ZERO AND BOOT HER OUT OF THE GAME. I have to say, this is not the variety of gay chicken I would choose to be watching these guys play, but I guess that’s what we have Youporn for. Seriously though, some of these interlopers were so ripped that they didn’t just have cum-gutters they had whole



Marianas Trenches Of Spaff. After a lot of lingering shots of abdominals, Ginger won, with Miss Fame and Max also making strong showings in this entirely random game of chance. Katya kind of won the day in reality though, by wondering aloud in confessional when she might get to blow them. Relatability is key on this show, always remember that. And let’s face it, Katya starts so many of her confessional videos leaning over at this angle



half of them may well be being filmed mid-nosh.

4. Now you may find yourself thinking “well that doesn’t sound like a Mini Challenge that should award its winner any specific advantage, given that it was mostly luck”, and you’d be right. Which is presumably why its winner got to handpick her team for this week’s challenge (after being told what it was) and also handpick the other two teams to ensure maximum discomfort and arguments. THIS SHOW! And the challenge in question was “read out this pre-prepared script in a comedic manner”, and given that Ginger has already proven over the course of the first month-and-a-half of the show that she’s by far the best at this sort of challenge (BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY TYPE THEY’RE DOING), on every occasion immediately seizing centre stage, delivering, and either elevating her castmates if they can keep up with her (Max, Katya) or smashing them up like that surgeon did Chad Michael’s face if they can’t (Kandy), we were being set up for a NON-STOP THRILL RIDE OF AN UNPREDICTABLE EPISODE!!!!!!! Still, if it meant getting rid of the Unsinkable Blandy Blo then…so be it. Ginger hugged performance superstars Katya and (sorrrrrrrrt-of) Kennedy to her, and then paired up Sex-Slut Bitch Monster Violet with her Prudish Goodwife nemesis Max (with Kandy as an afterthought), and also brought back the beautiful Miss Fame-Pearl dynamic we all knew and loved from when they tried to strangle one another during Tan With U for the love of Trixie Mattell (who do you think Trixie would have wanted to fuck this episode if she’d still been around? Ross?) with Jaidynn bobbling along in their wake. That shady orangutang. Max couldn’t have been more thrilled by this development



if everyone had started talking about whether uncut is better. IT JUST SLIDES IN EASIER, GIRL.

5. The challenge? As if we even care with these group challenges at this point (remember when the constant group challenges were at least fun things like “do a sci-fi parody” or “write your own kids tv show” or “lap-dancing with the elderly” not “rehearse this script that would have been rejected from “The Big Bang Theory” for 30 minutes then perform bits of it so we can Frankenedit it into coherence or incoherence as we see fit”?) but it was to answer the question



“whatever happened to Merle Ginsberg?” in three groups, each performing out the story of her departure from the show as a judge from the perspective of either Merle, Michelle, or Ru, Rashomon style. The subtlety and artistry of this approach was spelled out via a number of minor details – Michelle wearing a “Bitch” necklace in Merle’s version of events, but an “Angel” one in Michelle’s ; Merle’s wig being lovely and coiffed in her version of events, but a ratty mess in Michelle’s version ; Ross Matthews VERY SLOWLY AND LOUDLY EXPLAINING THIS TO THE AUDIENCE ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS LIKE WE’RE A BUNCH OF LAGANJAS OR SOMETHING. Now Merle was always my favourite judge (being the authentic voice of the try-hard housefrau aesthetic that makes up 103% of this show’s audience, crowning fan-favourite winners Bebe Sahara Benoit and Tyra Banks, FINISHING 2ND ON THE REALITY SHOW *SHE* DID, WHERE DID YOU FINISH MICHELLE? OH RIGHT 5TH) and as such I think she deserved better. Maybe contestants could have launched their line, or smeared Vaseline on their faces or told us about things that just didn’t work for them this week?

6. The first and most important aspect of the challenge (and again, this would have been more interesting if we hadn’t seen the exact same fight play out the exact same way several times now this season) was to make sure you were playing Michelle, and if you weren’t playing Michelle, then make sure you were playing Merle. Nobody wants to end up trying to do a parody of RuPaul in these challenges, because it takes the nerve, comedic timing and random brainsharts of a Jessica Wild to carry it off succesfully. Generally? Mother doesn’t play (that) and whoever is playing Ru will end up with the most blandly flavoured script and getting overshadowed. So try to look surprised when I ruveal that it was Kennedy, Jaidynn, and Kandy who wound up trying to find the humour in the show’s matriarch and mostly failing.



No, Katya and Ginger aren’t acting there. That’s their genuine response to Kennedy trying to find the humour in how these scripts wrote RuPaul. And she did the best of all three attempts at all. *shudder*. Other drama during filming came from Violet (as Michelle) being snotty and bitchy on set (“I have to hold a cake AND a drink while I do ALL of this????! <3), Kandy forgetting her lines, Jaidynn forgetting her lines, Miss Fame forgetting her lines and doing a



massive dramatic rambling monologue about her feelings on whether she should share her feelings about how it made her feel about it until Ross told her to stop because it felt like they were on a bad date, and



THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF KANDY’S BEARD. I’m glad we got to see it one more time at least before she left us.

7. This week’s Heartwarming Backstory That Would Otherwise Have Gone On Untucked But We Have To Fill That With 10 Minutes Of The Eliminated Queen Looking Sad And Walking Whilst Hitchcock Music Plays Now was delivered by Jaidynn Diore Fierce after



by the looks of it after having the sort of encounter with the Pit Crew that Katya was hoping for (LADY, YOU’VE GOT SOMETHING ON YOUR FACE). In fact Jaidynn’s revelation was prompted by Katya, who was blythely explaining to Kennedy how her parents love her doing drag and have never made her feel uncomfortable about it. And of course when you cut that sort of bait loudly enough in a room full of gay men, you’re going to land a whopper at some point. And so it was that Jaidynn laid out one of those “my mother is my best friend but also thinks my sexuality is perverted and keeps on trying to passive aggressively set me up with women and I haven’t even tried to tell her properly that I’m gay” situations that are sadly still so common. And



cue the single Sinead O Connor tear and the sad music. Not only does all this make me like Jaidynn more as a person, it also adds context to those first few weeks of her stomping around yelling camp catchphrases and asking Pearl to sit on his face, knowing what his family’s reaction probably was (whether they’re watching or if…it’s been brought to their attention by the church ladies). A rather sad piquant sort of context. Maybe we should all think before judging people before trying too hard or overcompensating (*Headmistress Max face*)

8. The presentation of Ru Hollywood Stories took place on the Main Stage, in the presence of God, Merle, and El Arianna Grande and as presented, Merle’s version of her departure was a trail of betrayals and



titty-twistings, Michelle’s version of Merle’s departure was a trail of betrayals and



robo-miming and Ru’s version of Merle’s departure was a trail of lolrandom lines like “my monkey made you potato salad” and “german tourists often wear sandals” and



jelly-fights. Maybe I need Ross Matthews to very slowly explain it to me, but I’m not sure what the point was in the case of that last one in particular. Is it that Ru doesn’t pay any attention to what other human beings say? Or that the Ru udges who aren’t her talk a load of random crazy garbage? Because I could believe either. Either way by far the best parts of the videos (other than Ginger, who nailed everything and should have won, sorry about it) was the “surveillance footage”







coincidentally the only part of the films that the contestants wrote themselves. Oh and also, that one Pit Crew Member



found a use for Kennedy’s beard pubes of three weeks ago. Make do and mend guys.

9. This week’s Runway was based around the theme of “Death Becomes Her”, with the queens asked to dress up as the manner in which they think their drag queen will die. And it’s no surprise that with such a highly specific and costuumey specific brief so many of the queens failed to 100% exactly fulfil it with the clothes they’d brought with them, instead opting just to do a vaguely ghoulish unspecific look. I mean let’s be honest



a knife through Miss Fame’s brain would not kill her. It would barely slow her down. Amongst the rest of the flock we had Pearl



taking the brief a little too literally and actually coming as the film Death Becomes Her, Jaidynn as



The Great Pumpkin, Violet’s





WAIST, JESUS TITTYFUCKING CHRIST VIOLET’S WAIST (my favourite part of Merle’s return as a guest judge was her waxing lyrical about the famous corsetiere Mr Pearl who she’s always wanted to meet, and Michelle looking bored off her ample tits), Katya and Ginger between the two of them explaining that “would you rather be eaten by a shark or mauled by a bear?” question from the Meet The Queens video,





Max as a ghostly jilted lover who cut out her own heart,



and hands down my “favourite”, the worst outfit ever in the history of RuPaul’s Drag Race by far (apart MAYBE from Milk in boy-drag),



this monstrosity. Now I know the temptation is just to focus on the fact that it’s the colour of fried chicken coating after its been reconstituted as vomit, and it looks like there’s guts prolapsing out of her tit, but drag your eyes away from the centre and focus on everything else going wrong here. THE HAIR. THEM BOOTS. THAT CROTCH! THOSE CRYSTAL WARTS STUCK TO HER FACE! And what’s the concept behind this?

“After a night of hooking I got attacked and thrown in the fire and crystalised, so I come out the fire as a fierce Glamazon”.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Oh yeah, and Kandy was a vampire. It’s a wonder she got this far at all isn’t it?

10. Those of you complaining that the lip-syncs have all been to the oldies so far this season must have been so pleased to hear an Ariana Grande track being used for this week’s foregone conclusion battle between Jaidynn and Kandy. Personally…I’ve never really heard of it before and thought it was awful, but hey, you have to make concessions to get stars like Ariana to come and provide wisdom like “THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!”, “I JUST DON’T THINK SHE WAS MEMORABLE!”, “SHE MAY HAVE BEEN PLAYING A DEAD PERSON, BUT I WAS LIVING FOR HER PERFORMANCE!” and “stares at own tits” and *gasp*. As a high speed lip-sync it didn’t really provide any stunts or drama (I hear Kandy did the splits and it was edited out and her fans (note – get verification on this) are outraged but let’s be honest, it’s the splits, nobody’s getting excited over the splits, it’s season 7) and was a muted end for Kandy Ho, who promised to go back home and rub it in the faces of all the other Puerto Rican queens that she was on the show.

All The Other Puerto Rican Queens : “first we’ve heard of it mami. Were you one of the Pit Crew?”

Next week : SNATCH GAME THANK THE LORD.

Meanwhile on Untucked :

Katya was really pleased that her Myrtle Gainsberg stole the show.



Don’t get Ginger wrong, she’s proud of her team and glad that they’re all safe and she thinks they deserve nothing but good things in life but she should have won the challenge and Kennedy’s outfit was a flaming garbageheap of shit.



I hope Jaws enjoyed his eyeful of this particular boat show

Kennedy thinks that Jaidynn is trying too hard to be memorable and it’s coming across as sloppy and desperate

Kennedy thinks that Kandy looked cheap and awful on the runway

Kennedy thinks that Pearl threw her outfit together last minute and then half-assed a concept off the top of her head.

“After a night of hooking I got attacked and thrown in the fire and crystalised, so I come out the fire as a fierce Glamazon”.



(In fairness Kennedy did admit that she too half-assed her concept onto a costume she’d already bought. This does of course mean that she thought that fucking thing was worth bringing in its own right, not to fit a challenge brief)



Katya bitched that Max spends a lot of time on a really basic boring make-up job every week, but everyone in DAH FANDOM pretended it didn’t happen because it just feels weird calling a skinny white person bitchy and most of all bitter because that’s just not a thing that could happen.



Nobody really knows what Kandy was supposed to have died of. Kennedy thinks it was crows. Katya thought it was bird flu. Ginger thought it was from lip-syncing for her life too many times.



Kennedy and Ginger agree that Max is actually secretly the bitchiest person in the cast and serves the same look week after week. Katya either agreed or had a bit of acid reflux, it was hard to tell.



Katya has been finding it really hard to masturbate without access to good porn.



Having spent the first 8 minutes of the episode bitching it up, Kennedy and Ginger COULD NOT STOP and then spent the next 20 pulling faces at everyone behind their backs (<3) until they were called on it, at which point they were all “NO WE’RE NOT, WE’RE MAKING THE FACE OF WE’RE NOT IN THE CONVERSATION AND IF I HAD SOMETHING TO SAY I WOULD SAY IT AND IF YOU CAN’T SAY ANYTHING NICE DON’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL” and I laughed so hard, SO MATURE.



Pearl and Kandy also had a fight but it involved Kandy so it was boring *shrug*



Pearl thinks that Ginger is one of the most unoriginal drag queens she’s ever seen



Miss Fame’s mother is even more looped than she is.

Something Something The Weather Girls Something

Violet does a *really* good Ginger impersonation, really

Pearl reassured Jaidynn that even if she was going to lip-sync, it was probably going to be against Kandy and there’s no way anybody was going to save her lame-arse again een if she came out and lip-sync’d harder than MacArthur Park and This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) combined.

And as we’re halfway through : polling