‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Recap: Impeach Her? I Hardly Even Understand Politics!

Hypothetically, if I was to still feel hungover at 10pm on a Sunday night, I would simply remind myself that life is full of high and lows, that it’s impossible to be on your A-game all the time, and that McDonald’s still don’t deliver to your area. Most of these things are applicable to RuPaul’s Drag Race — despite the show feeling like an out-of-control upper, it’s far from immune to a lull, especially around the episode four mark.

It’s just an awkward section: now we’ve met the queens, we’re waiting for the cards to fall as we know they will. I have mixed feelings about the concept of ‘Trump: The Rusical’, as well the Rusical episodes more broadly too.

As the writing’s shakier than, say, hypothetically, a hungover person still vomiting in the bathroom at 10.30pm on a Sunday night, it’s hard to argue the roles are anywhere near equal. And while the show proves time and time again that queens can turn a smaller role into a winner (Silky’s Oprah and Shae Coulée’s Blac Chyna say hello), some characters (Ivanka Trump, who has no single moment to herself) are almost destined to fail.

Add to that some very weird Political Messaging, some not-so-sincere emotional breakthroughs and the fact that the show seems to hate both Ra’Jah and leotards, and you’ve got an episode that says a lot about the State Of The Ru-nion in Season 11. But ultimately, the right queen went home: democracy still works!

Hamilton 2: Electric Boogaloo

This week’s episode begins with the girls shaking over the six-way lip-sync, which is continually referred to as a “gang-bang”. Shuga cries and seems to get the scraps of a storyline about wanting to show herself, which surprised me: truthfully, I discounted her as an early out a while back, but she’ll probably be around for at least a couple more weeks. While everyone cries, Vanjie plays with her nails and says nothing. She remains perfect, despite landing in the bottom three for a so-so Rosie O’Donnell.

Before we move onto Trump, there’s a Rachel Maddow-themed mini-challenge, where the queens live-read fake news from a prompter. There’s nothing necessarily bad about it, but Maddow feels super superfluous to the show’s world — when early seasons had odd ‘celebrities’ pop-up, it was naturally irreverent, but these big names seem to be there now just because they can be, rather than if they should be. Sure, it was funny-enough tv, but it just feels… off?

Scarlet Envy wins, and pretty fairly matches the queens up with the right roles for them, though there’s an incredibly awkward moment when Mercedes half-heartedly pushes to be the lead, Shandy. In the edit we see, no one outright says ‘no’, but the queens all agree it should go to Ariel instead, which is a little crushing to watch.

As is Mercedes this whole episode: despite her best attempts, you can see the insecurity behind her vox-pops and occasional outbursts of energy and noise. She’s utterly defeated, which is why the discussion around ‘Muslim not being a terrorist’ is super hackneyed. It’s like she’s realised that’s the only reason she was cast now (instead of in a few years, where she could totally shine on the show, once she’s readied with the trauma of her stroke), and so reluctantly gave the producers the sound-bytes they wanted.

There’s one other Big Moment this ep, as Nina West talks about receiving death threats while at college in the ’90s. She reflects on Matthew Shepard’s murder in ’98, and the connection is a reminder that, between hate crimes and the AIDS epidemic (the US government’s inaction on it is, arguably, also a hate crime), there is a generation of queers we have been robbed of. The conversation feels a little shoe-horned in, but ultimately it’s terrifying to think we could be without someone as wonderful as Nina West — and, conversely there is so much talent and queer light being extinguished across the world.

We also learn that Silky Ganache has registered as a Republican to counter gerrymandering, which wouldn’t work unless a significant amount of people also did it, and also locks her out of voting in the Democrats’ Primaries. Collective action matters, people!

Speaking of collective action, a lot happens during the rehearsal. In short, Ariel struggles, Scarlet can’t dance, Yvie reveals she has Ehlers–Danlos syndrome type 3, and choreographer Yanis Marshall is shady but sweet, which leaves a frustrated Ra’Jah (who is a dancer, but “technically 15 years ago”) more pressed than a panini.

While we’re on the topic, Yannis could press my panini — and also shove his dangly earring into my eye until I’m blind. I hope he returns!

Ra’Jah has continuously given some of the greatest vox-pops of the season (I regularly whisper “get ’em girl boots” to myself during my day-to-day), and I really hope her lip-sync this episode lights ‘The Fire’ so she sticks around. If not, “I’m not liking it, I’m not loving it, and I’m not featuring it!”

The Rusical itself is much, much better than I thought it’d be, thank God. It makes little sense, of course, but there are some great moments, such as Yvie “crypt-keeper” (thanks Ra’Jah) writhing around as Kellyanne Conway, Nina as Sarah ‘I Love Huckabees’ Sanders, and Scarlet as an incompetent, drunk Betsy De Voss.

Ra’Jah, Vanjie and Mercedes all miss the mark with less-than-memorable parts — the latter two, possibly, due to simply not knowing the people they’re imitating. Nothing could ever be as disturbing as Ginger Minj’s boy-drag Trump, however, and I will not include a screenshot because I’m not a sadist.

The musical’s messaging — that ‘the future is female’ means that terrible women should be in positions of power  — is pretty tone-deaf, not that we watch this show for its sharp political commentary. Still, it reminds me of Sarah Hanson-Young congratulating NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian for being the state’s ‘first’ elected female premier. Yes Queen, support women’s rights by doing little to protect them! Drink a Pepsi! Vote for Ivana!

Girl, Look How Fucking Orange You Look

The runway theme is orange, and Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard (!!) and Joel ‘YEAH!’ McHale are there to judge. The latter is quite odd. As BeBe Deluxe tweeted, McHale “loudly shouting during the runway is a perfect representation of every asshole straight dude that comes to a drag show and has to ironically express loud enthusiasm to make himself more comfortable with how un-designed the space is for him”. Go home, fucker!

The runway, however, is wonderful.

Shuga Cain came dressed as Trump, which felt… fine, though apparently she didn’t know this week’s runway would be paired with the Trump challenge. It’s mostly bad timing, since we just saw Ginger do the exact same look.

There were a few boots on the runway too. Generally speaking, there’s a clear divide between the queens who have a lot of cash and connections (Vanjie, Brook Lynn, Plastique) and those who don’t (Mercedes, every queen who has left so far), and there’s also this odd judging rhetoric about ‘catsuits’ or corsets being boring. As Monét X Change tweeted this week, they’re a drag queen’s bread and butter, and also much cheaper than a couture creation. As much as we love a high-fashion The Fifth Element look, All Stars, with a cast of queens who are all on a similar economic level, offers us that. Perhaps the show could afford to give queens a budget to spend, so it’s a bit more equal?

Silky Ganache wins this week’s challenge, since they can’t give it to Yvie again. Vanjie is in the bottom, but it’s Ra’Jah and Mercedes who battle it out to James Brown. Ra’Jah is magnetic, and Mercedes knows it’s her time to go. On the plus side, it’s an absolute delight to watch the queens dance and yell along to the song from the back.

Next week the challenge is a horror-themed ball featuring Elvira! We’re quivering with excitement: it’s the exact sort of challenge that puts the queens on an equal playing field, and shows off how creative and clever they really are. Money’s down on Sharon making some sort of spooky appearance too, but ideally Yannis comes back to murder me live on stage :)

This week, I leave you with Get Krack!n‘s seven-second ode to one of the best Drag Race lip-syncs of all time, Coco Montrese and Alyssa Edwards’ showdown to Paula Abdul’s ‘Cold Hearted Snake’.

well @getkrackinshow has peaked. nothing will ever be better than this 9 seconds pic.twitter.com/wm1iy9tvnf

— z train (@ZaneJD) March 20, 2019