Previously on Drag Race: The girls played the Snatch Game with some blue background and Silky Nutmeg Ganache won the day. A’Keria Chanel Davenport questioned Plastique Tiara‘s honesty. And Brooke Lynn Hytes and Yvie Oddly both made lip-sync herstory and got themselves a double shantay for their trouble.

The ladies rejoice in the werk room, but Silky Ganache rubs a couple people the wrong way with her announcement that she plans on continuing to “do her” rather than work on improving herself and listening to the judges’ critiques. Also, she makes it very clear she hasn’t gotten over Yvie Oddly calling her “talentless.”

The next morning, it’s time for the best mini-challenge of the season: the reading challenge! The gals put on some glasses and read each other to filth.

Vanessa Vanjie Mateo attempts some reads, but no one laughs. Poor gal.

Brooke Lynn Hytes goes for all the jugulars and destroys everyone, calling Plastique Tiara brainless and comparing Silky Ganache to Precious.

Then Silky embarks on this acid trip of a reading session, pulling out a list of notes from her shoe, saying the weirdest shit, and screaming at the top of her lungs. RuPaul is very confused.

Brooke Lynn wins!

As such, she gets to pair up the queens for the upcoming maxi-challenge: “L.A. Drag Patrol,” an improv acting session where queens must deal with the po-po in a TV-worthy way. Brooke Lynn picks Nina West for herself, then assign each comedic powerhouse to a somewhat weaker contender.

Nina and Brooke Lynn are assigned a basic storyline where a trailer park lady calls the police on her neighbor, who is sunbathing in a very inappropriate way. Nina wants the sunbather, because duh, that’s where the meat of the role is (no pun intended). But Brooke Lynn basically tells Nina she wants it because she doesn’t think she can pull off the other one. Nina buckles.

With this week’s challenge, guest stars Fortune Feimster and Cheyenne Jackson are playing the cops sent after these fraudulent bitches.

As per usual, Silky Ganache shines with her fun, snappy personality and quick comebacks as a hip pad saleswoman. She owns her part of the challenge—particularly because poor church lady Shuga Cain struggles to land her jokes or straighten her backstory out.

Brooke Lynn Hytes and Nina West are a much more functional duo with far better chemistry. Nina plays the scandalized southern gal while Brooke Lynn goes all out as a nudist hippie.

Nina’s comedic chops get her through the skit just fine, though it could be said she gets a little overshadowed. Brooke Lynn plays up the physical comedy, bending and twisting and touching everyone. It’s shockingly great humor for Brooke Lynn.

The next skit is sadly a total mess. Miss Vanjie and Plastique Tiara are playing cat girls (?) who are arguing over… sleeping with each other’s man. Or a bottle of milk. It’s really hard to tell because they keep talking over each other.

Vanjie looks cute as a kitty girl, but her personality only gets her so far. The jokes are a bit lacking.

Plastique starts off on the wrong foot by dialing the energy up to 11 the second the skit starts, exhausting Cheyenne Jackson and making the whole performance a mess. Also, she loses her cat ears and accidentally slips into her Asian accent again.

Last but definitely not least, Yvie Oddly and A’Keria C. Davenport play a couple of “street twerkers” who are having some words—until A’Keria’s character realizes Yvie’s character is the baby she gave up years ago. Cue twerk-sobbing.

Yvie does a great job, but A’Keria completely owns the scene.

The next morning, Nina West is feeling uncertain about her performance. She thinks she made a pretty significant sacrifice giving the fun role to Brooke Lynn, and she didn’t end up doing as well as she’d hoped. Part of her is a bit annoyed at Brooke Lynn for being the cause of that.

The runway category this week is “Facekini,” inspired by that one time Ru put on a club kid-type mask and slayed everyone. So the queens are going about painting strategically since part of their face will be covered. But Silky Ganache isn’t painting anything at all. Her face is covered, so why bother? Silky just sits and dances around while everyone else is doing their makeup.

Let’s get to it!

Side note: Go watch Russian Doll with Natasha Lyonne on Netflix right now.

Now for the club kid facekini runway!

Silky Nutmeg Ganache is giving us bug. She says it’s a fly, but it definitely looks way more like a roach. It’s a good look until you start studying it more closely, at which point you notice the clothes are a bit cheap-looking, and the holes for the eyes and the mouth are just wrong. Also, hardly any makeup. Womp womp.

Shuga Cain looks absolutely gorge in this club kid slash Victorian London fashion. I am eating it up.

Brooke Lynn Hytes is serving us Ixion realness on the runway with this amazing lewque. This steampunk zebra getup is a fucking stunner. No words.

Nina West’s look is so camp, so Nina, and super gorgeous. Her proportionizing is on point. I love a queen who can take the judges’ critiques and apply it.

Vanessa Vanjie Mateo is giving you “top-of-the-line new sex doll who will murder you when you’re done with it” realness. The silhouette is different this time, but I’m also getting a little bit of boy. Still cool though.

Plastique Tiara unfortunately misunderstood the assignment. She didn’t fully cover her face, and it really stands out among all those other masks. Her herpes-like makeup is still fierce, but just not quite what was asked. Shame.

A’Keria Chanel Davenport looks pretty wild in this nip/tuck fantasy. It’s been done before, but it’s well executed, so we’ll give her a pass for that.

Yvie Oddly looks like a murderous organic alien life form that will suck all the blood out of your body and then colonize the corpse. It’s terrifying, it’s gorgeous, it’s incredible.

Yvie and Nina are safe. Shuga, Vanjie, and Plastique didn’t do the best with the acting. Brooke Lynn and A’Keria killed it. Silky is told the lack of makeup under her mask is noticeable and ruined her look.

After an uneventful Untucked, A’Keria is crowned queen of this episode.

Shuga Cain and Silky Ganache are safe, so the bottoms this time (they’re all bottoms) are Plastique Tiara and Vanessa Vanjie Mateo. They lip-sync to “Hood Boy” by Fantasia Barrino.

Plastique does that move Alyssa Edwards once did during a lip-sync. It’s cute. Then she does a split… literally right behind Vanjie for some inexplicable reason. It’s a pretty low-energy lip-sync, but Vanjie pretty much wins it with this move alone:

So Miss Vanjie sends Plastique Tiara home. Plastique was incredibly promising earlier in the season, like Valentina, but she sadly ended up fizzling out after a while. Still, I have no doubt she’ll slay when she eventually comes back for All Stars.

Who asked for a run-down?

Silky Nutmeg Ganache – This runway critique moment may have been somewhat of a wake-up call for Silky, who seemed genuinely shook at the negative feedback on her look. Hopefully, she stops pretending the judges’ opinions don’t matter and starts applying that feedback soon.

Shuga Cain – Shuga was a little so-so in the challenge but great on the runway. She’s really been pulling excellent lewks, but with the competition getting tighter and tighter, she needs to stand out now or she’ll be gone.

Brooke Lynn Hytes – Brooke Lynn blew past her own fears this week by killing the acting challenge. She embraced her comedic side and surprised everyone. I think we have a future winner on our hands, folks.

Nina West – Nina seems like she’s starting to fall behind a little, and I think she knows it. Like Shuga, she’s going to have to spice things up soon if she wants to stick around among all these big personalities and heavy hitters.

Vanessa Vanjie Mateo – Vanjie’s been having issues standing out in challenges and on the runway, and with very few queens remaining, her time here may be at an end very soon unless she can finally straighten things out and land a win.

A’Keria Chanel Davenport – A’Keria has officially come through as a frontrunner after a little wavering earlier in the season. She’s got the drive to beat out most of these other girls, and I think she just might. I’m a fan.

That is all from me for now, ladies and ladies. Make sure you also tune in to my ongoing Game of Thrones recaps; shit’s getting cray cray over in Westeros!

I bid you adieu!