Darlings, we won’t lie to you. We’re finding this episode a little oddly disjointed, in retrospect. First, the Library opened and Bianca did not walk away with the win, a development that really stunned us. If there was one challenge tailor-made for her talents, this would be the one. Besides, we thought Darienne’s read was quick and sometimes funny, but it veered into nasty territory most of the rest of the time.

Then the queens all got handed a ’90s rap challenge and you could feel the panic set in.

But first:

Serving big-wigged, neon-scented ’90s hip hop realness.

Okay, bitches. Let’s see what you got.

Joslyn’s really growing on us. She’s a stealth contestant, slipping into safe, week after week, because she keeps doing better than anyone expects. She’s also funnier and a better performer all around than we assumed when she was first introduced. She did a surprisingly decent job on the rap and her Library read was one of the funnier ones. Her runway look’s pretty bad, though. And it’s not good news to hear her say in Untucked that she’s going to ignore the judges’ advice about over-accessorizing. She could definitely do with a rethink of her general look. It’s not particularly distinctive.

Ben’s another one who surprised us by being far more versatile and talented than we first assumed. Her rap was excellent. Her runway look, however, skews old once again. “I’m serving up Elizabeth Taylor realness” made us cringe because it made him sound so old-fashioned. In other news, Ben also seems to think pretty highly of himself, because his pouting over not being picked for the “winner” group was more than a little snotty. Then again, Darienne’s getting kind of nasty about her. It’ll be interesting if Ben can dish out some stealth reading while still coming across sweet to the cameras.

Ugh. Who cares. He reeks of white suburban privilege. We don’t care if she has a Missy Elliot tattoo which she refuses to show anyone. She just couldn’t do what the challenge asked of her. Then again, that seems to be a theme. Her runway look is just okay. Her Library read was EPICALLY BAD, proving once again that those who can’t take it are always spectacularly shitty at dishing it out.

She really got on our nerves this week. Her tongue is pretty sharp, so when she gets threatened by a queen like Ben, she lashes out at too high a level, coming off like a huge bitch. And Ben strikes us as someone who can work the camera for sympathy a la Jinkx, so Miss Darienne betta watch herself. Her rap performance was embarrasingly, uncomfortably bad and her runway looks are starting to get stale – no variation. The only thing that kept her out of the bottom this week were her reading skills.

Tyra Sanchez 2.0. We stand by it. She’s terrible and hard to like in practically every single challenge, but she happens to be an incredibly good lip syncher, which is going to keep her in the game longer than she probably should be. She claims to have had some sort of breakthrough on Untucked, but we remain unconvinced. We couldn’t understand a word of her rap and her Library read was the worst of all of them. That’s probably one of her better runway looks, though.

Part of us feels like Auntie Ru is under-rewarding Bianca to avoid a Raja-like situation of crowning the winner too early. Another part of us thinks her runway skills are what’s holding her back. We don’t know… they just never seem as polished to us as we’d expect them to be. Having said that, her rap and her Read were both awesome. It’s gotta be the runway keeping her from being the favorite. She’s ahead of everyone else on all other fronts. But it’s weird because she doesn’t get very specific or consistent critiques of her runway game. Santino ragged on her for her rap look, but Michelle was right to jump in and point out Bianca got the look dead perfect.

We agree with Ru: resting on pretty. And she’s already shown herself to be quite talented, so there’s no need. To be honest, we have no memory of her rap at all.

Poor thing. Increasingly out of her element with each week. She clearly tried to girl it up more in response to the judges’ critiques, but her rap performance was funny in a laughing-at way and her runway look looks slapped together.

Breakout star. Absolutely a deserved win. We knew she had it in her. So did Ru and Bianca. Her rap was PERFECT and she looked amazing. When she really polishes her look, which she doesn’t do enough for the runway (as you can see here), she looks world-class. And she got a ton of funny one-liners off, especially the one about Bianca being 57. Definitely a finalist.

We think a lot of people thought Milk should have stayed in, but like we said, Trinity’s a much better lip-syncher, and she was handed a song that couldn’t have been better suited to her. In terms of potential, they’re both largely the same, but Milk just couldn’t save herself with this song. If the show’s fair, Trinity will probably be gone before long. If she doesn’t save herself with another perfect lip synch, that is.

[Screencaps: tomandlorenzo.com]