Monday, April 9, 2018 at 5:30PM

From the desk of sick bed of Nathaniel R

I'm totally sick and two days late so I'm racing through typing up this Race. Please excuse possible incoherency ahead. The mini-challenge was a sleazy commercial in front of wood panelling (very 1990s Calvin Klein) where the queens had to make RuPaul laugh while talking to or um... embodying or seducing a chocolate bar. The winners were the exploitable primness of Blair St Clair, Monique Heart's lusty-busty thirst, and Monet X Change's "Irish" jig. Eureka, totally back on her game, mimed an invisible wall while lustily self-narrating. Weird but also "WERK!".

Winners and losers and drama-creators are after the jump...

Backstories & Personal Dramas & A Big Long Rant

This week's episode was short on good quotes and excellent performances (though the runway soared) but both the peak and nadir of the episode was the personal drama. Blair, Monet, Aquaria, and Dusty's disparate reactions to the subject of churchgoing represented quite a wide sampling of what LGBT people go through with that: you have incongruous 'look the other way' acceptance in Blair's conservative family embracing her career in drag and still going to church with her; you had full progressive congregational support with Monet going to choir practice in full drag; you had the horror story via Dusty's conservative family's attempts to exorcize the "gay demon" out of her ; and the 'no thanks not for me' dismissal with Aquaria opting out of a suggested drag queen sunday at Church ('meet you at brunch later') which might be the most relatable for the widest swath of LGBT viewers who have of course been treated horribly by churches / religious communities over the years. We already suspect that Monique Heart's situation is closer to Dusty's since she said in a previous episode that her family thinks that "this," pointing to her drag, is "blasphemy."

Monique and Dusty and Cracker displaying my moods during Vixen vs Aquaria round #3 (??? I've lost count of the arguments)

That was all very interesting but unfortunately the bulk of Untucked was a replay of the animosity between Aquaria and The Vixen. The Vixen feels like Aquaria leaving the room or crying when they fight makes the camera, and thus the audience, see The Vixen as "the angry person of color" while it paints Aquaria as "the victim" even when she started the fight. She is correct. But The Vixen doesn't, to my mind, win the argument because she seems delusional about her own behavior and even the argument itself. If Aquaria is playing the victim for the camera to further this narrative isn't she by the same logic, playing the angry person of color to further the same narrative. And then, like Aquaria actually, balking at her role after the fact. It takes two to fight.

I am surely in the minority but I find both of them insufferable. Aquaria, for the reasons Vixen points out (dishes it but can't take it) and The Vixen for her negativity* and, much worse, taking pride in escalating contentious situations. She even wants to fight when the fight doesn't involve her (as with the Miz Cracker vs Aquaria which you'll note ended very swiftly because Miz Cracker isn't negative and just moved on rather than escalating it.) And it's also telling that the shady comment about Vixen's red wig did not originate with Aquaria but Vixen doesn't go after the originator (I forget who -- was it Asia?) and goes straight for Aquaria. We can't know why but it further reveals that it takes two and this is not all Aquaria's engineering but that both Vixen and Aquaria are to blame for the fight.

* Being called "negative" by Aquaria obviously upsets The Vixen but why? Is it because she didn't choose the adjective for herself? The Vixen repeatedly excuses her own bad behavior by naming it -- she keeps referring back to her opening line "I'm here to fight" as an 'I warned you!' moment and also to reiterate the warning. By her own admission she takes pride in her combative nature. When the others suggest she take it down from a ten to a five, even after basically showing her that they're sympathetic to her point of view, she's not having it. And this is where I have the disconnect with The Vixen. Being asked to modulate your own anger is not a bad or an unjust thing or even a race thing -- human beings should all always be doing that, and for multiple reasons. Here are just three of many: life is hard enough without being nasty to other people, anger is not always productive (though it can be in some situations), and because you should save your total fury for the big battles and this particular fight over the casual use of a red wig couldn't possibly be considered one of 'the big ones.'

Plus warning someone of bad behavior does not actually make that same behavior good. It's still bad. You've just named it, is all. Even when The Vixen has a moment that at first appears to be praise for someone else (an impulse you could safely call the opposite of negative -- I literally was suddenly all "maybe I was wrong about her?!" and ready to change my tune) it turns out to be a red herring because by the time The Vixen has finished her speech she's negated the compliment entirely by reversing it and indicating that all the success was actually hers all along, reducing her team to mere props rather than contributors to her success. Blech!

That said, I want to say something positive about both Vixen and Aquaria since I would like to avoid the wholehearted embrace of negativity that I'm complaining about and to counter the feeling that I'll be glad to see them both sashay away whenever that is: They both looked amazing on the runway giving their best looks thus far, with Vixen serving a great walk and fun swoosh of her peacock gown, and Aquaria mixing Saint Sebastian imagery with the feather theme.

You're a winner, baby

Asia O'Hara's million dollar smile (and wittily performed hair blowing), elevated an already stellar pop art tweety-bird look and her one-expression mugging was the highlight of her team's buttrface commercial.

Sashay away

Though the judging has been incoherent in many ways, they've been spot on with the bottom two choices each episode. This week Mayhem Miller, who utterly receded, and Yuhua who just tanked were the correct choices to lipsync. (The runway SHOULD count for something, though it doesn't always, and Kameron Michaels, who like Yuhua tanked in her performance obviously has her runway look to thank for missing the bottom two). On to the lipsynch. Yuhua Hamasaki couldn't come up with something more engaging than playing the air-guitar while Mayhem Miller did total justice to Hole's "Celebrity Skin". That great song was a rather atypical one for this show but Courtney Love was a guest judge so there you go. Mayhem's use of one key phrase "have you ever felt so used up as this" to deliciously shade her opponent with a simple hand gesture, followed by the ferocity of tearing into her own feather dress as climax just slayed.

Shantay you stay! OBVIOUSLY.

Quotable Bitches

"Drag is a contact sport." - Miz Cracker

"I'm cutting up all your wigs... All of them." - Monique Heart

Name dropping

Pop culture references this episode: Twin Peaks, Lucy the missing link, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Clue, Bob Mackie, Cruella de Vill, Moschino, Snow White, Mother Goose, Mae West, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, NeNe Leakes, The Little Mermaid, Tweety-Bird, Alexander McQueen, Saint Sebastian, Maleficent, Cher, two different Prince songs (!), Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, and Amy Adams.

Rankings

Shifts from last week indicated with arrows...

Prediction Preference Extremely subject to change as we get to know them 1. Asia O'Hara 1. 🔺 Asia O'Hara 2. Miz Cracker 2. Dusty Ray Bottoms 3. 🔺Blair St Clair (haven't yet grasped why the judges are so into her) 3. 🔺Eureka 4. Monét X Change 4. 🔺 Monique Heart (haven't yet grasped why the judges aren't into her) 5. Mayhem Miller 5. Monét X Change 6. 🔺 Eureka 6. Miz Cracker 7. Dusty Ray Bottoms 7. 🔺Blair St Clair 8. Aquaria 8. 🔻 Mayhem Miller 9. The Vixen 9. 🔻 Kameron Michaels 10. 🔻 Monique Heart 10. 🔻 Yuhua Hamasaki OUT 11. Kameron Michaels 11. Aquaria 12.🔻Yuhua Hamasaki OUT 12. The Vixen 13. Kalorie Karbdashian Williams OUT 13. Kalorie Karbdashian Williams OUT 14. Vanessa Vanjie Mateo OUT 14. Vanessa Vanjie Mateo OUT

Due to my sickness there is no gif as episode grade because I didnt make my own gifs this week.

So which app would you download first: fibstr, end of days, or buttrface?