Well, they can’t all be winners. After last week’s five star All Stars, I regret to inform you that this week’s episode attracted less stars than a one-man play in Mardi Gras written and performed Lyle Shelton. This episode was such turkey, it would be eligible for a presidential pardon at Thanksgiving. This episode was such an obvious embarrassment to us all that Vikki Campion is now carrying its baby.

This week was the Snatch Game, the holy grail of Drag Race eps that has been featured on nine seasons and one All Stars. Given the pedigree of All Stars, this week should have been a home run for the show. So why was it such a…whatever the opposite of a home run is?

This Week’s Shade

There’s an old adage in RuPaul’s Drag Race and reality TV in general: don’t blame the edit. What you do onscreen was captured by the cameras, which means it happened. We expect that the arsenal of reaction shots and to-camera commentary is an assemblage, but for the most part we are watching what happened. Even so, this week I think some well-deserved shade needs to be hurled at the editors, because this episode was a mess.

AS3 has suddenly dropped down to 40 minutes instead of the full hour. The Trixie vs. Shangela beef at the top of the episode felt like you could see the producer’s strings tugging on them. And the snatch game was all over the shop. Granted, the queens weren’t giving them much to work with, and I know more than one reality TV editor who has told me they have basically had to resort to voodoo to make an episode come to life when the content is so average. But still.

Maybe it’s the fact that compared to AS2, these queens are bound by nothing but competition. And yet for all Shangela’s repetitive Game of Thrones metaphors, AS3 is reading more like Westworld: a bunch of predetermined storylines being performed by pre-programmed (drag)bots with not enough investment in relationships. We come to All Stars to see the queens we already love (and hate) transcend their spot in the Drag Race alumni and take their place in the RPDR Illuminati. When the wheels fell off this episode, it was more meh than mythical. (Standby for next week when its another great episode and I am all “THIS IS THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE WORLD!”)

Also, what was Marc Jacobs doing in the workroom? Was he there to pick up the scraps of Milk’s dignity?

The Challenge

Now that I’ve worked out my arms by throwing the editors under a bus, let’s look at the main reason why this week was such a disappointment: Snatch Game.

These days it is almost a fait accompli that the actual Snatch Game cannot live up to the expectations of the fans… although AS2 was pretty legendary.

Again, this is an example of AS3 living in the shadow of AS2, which would be less noticeable if RPDR had mixed up the format as the show moves into a new era. Basically, this snatch game was a mess that was reminiscent of the infamous bottom row antics of RPDR season four. Let’s look at the queens on the bottom, and the middle (because just like at closing time at the bathhouse, there were no tops to be found… unless you count Kristin Chenoweth).

I’m just going to go ahead and add “This should have been Trixie’s week” to the list of auto-complete phrases on my computer, because each week RPDR lines up a challenge that Trixie could have killed, and each week she stumbles. Trixie’s RuPaul impressions (and her impressions of the other queens) are the stuff of legend online, but on the Snatch Game, she was let down by tone and timing. She just wasn’t funny. Her emotional breakdown showed a human side that helped get her over the line this week, but it seems this is one Mattel product that isn’t much fun to play with outside of the box.

Shangela has a whiplash wit and knows how to land a killer off the cuff line, better than any other queen this season. Just like her last Snatch Game as Tina Turner, there isn’t a lot of impersonating going on but Shangela makes up for that with snappy one-liners and great comebacks. It would have been a stroke of genius for her to do Snatch Game as an impersonation of herself, given how close to Shangela all her impersonations are. Her Jenifer Lewis was funny and landed her in the top two, but on any other Snatch Game would be just safe.

The best thing about ChiChi’s Maya Angelou was that it reminded me to be grateful that Sasha Velour didn’t do queer theorist Judith Butler for Season Nine’s Snatch Game. From spelling her name wrong to not knowing ANY of her iconic material, ChiChi basically bought her own ticket to the bottom this week. ChiChi is so loveable, the batshit crazy idea of her doing one of America’s most beloved African American poets and thought leaders could have been incredible. This is a queen who won a holiday to New England and thought she was going overseas. But sadly, ChiChi’s run of bad luck continued.

In a sea of worthy competitors, DeLa’s campy throwback performance as Paul Lynde would have been a worthy contender. Instead, it was the only solid Snatch Game performance and thus the clear winner. BenDeLaCreme knows how to win Snatch Game — make Ru laugh. Ru doesn’t like overly intellectual choices, he LOVES old school gay icons, and he has very little idea who the “kids” are into these days. Like Alaska’s Mae West, it didn’t necessarily matter if the younger viewers weren’t aware of Paul Lynde — the jokes landed, and Ru laughed at them all.

Oh also there was a runway this week, it was on our screens for approximately 12 seconds.

The Lip Sync And The Elimination

This week’s elimination was the only decent bit of drama in the entire episode, after Kennedy, ChiChi and Trixie landed in the bottom three, with ShanGeLaCreme deciding their fate.

After episode two’s Shangy vs. DeLa lip sync, where I controversially accused BenDeLaCreme of crossing an ethical line (LOL, what am I even doing with my life by taking this so seriously?), this week the Nicki and Miley of AS3 got back onstage together to ask “what’s good?” Turns out, not them together onstage.

Now I see part of the problem with their last lip sync is that these two have got too much ego to work well together. It was an uphill battle given they had to lip sync to the Katy Perry fauxmosexual anthem ‘I Kissed a Girl’. But these two queens had little chemistry and even less love for each other.

I strongly suspect Ru gave them both the win to avoid a fist fight onstage. And yes, to the DeLa mafia out there, I still think she is a sociopath. Don’t @ me (just kidding, please @ me, I have little else in my life apart from this show.)

So, the episode ended with a potential lipstick double elimination drama, and for a brief moment, Trixie (and all of us) thought she might have been sent home. It was a genuinely nails-on-a-glove biting moment… until Ben and Shangela both sent ChiChi home. She was ready, we were all ready. Great job, kids!

After Ep 4, Who Do You Think Is Going To Win? 

Not Trixie.

*Extreme Carrie Bradshaw meme meets Principal Skinner meme voice*: “Could I have been in a bubble of pro-Trixie supporters? Were we tricked by Trixie? No, it’s the Shangela fans who are wrong.”

Shangela was strutting around in the pre-season media like your bitter best Judy who hates your boyfriend, just found out he cheated on you, and is doing figure eight’s down the runway to deliver the good news. Girl has game face on lock though, as does DeLa, so it could be either of them.

Trixie may careen her way into the top four (highly probable) but from where we are currently sitting, it’s no crown for her.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race is fast-tracked from the US on Stan. Read more Drag Race recaps here.

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Nic Holas has written for The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, Archer Magazine, and Hello Mr. You can find him on Twitter @nicheholas, or in his role as co-founder of HIV movement The Institute of Many.