‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Recap: Selfish Sherry Steals The Show, And Dermatologists Hate Her!

RuPaul really loves this top six — this week, he went out of his way to call the S12 queens “some of the best” Drag Race has ever had, and that he wished it he could keep them forever. Hell, he might even remember their names: after all, he’s renamed Heidi Aphrodite and El Debarge.

We’d have to agree with him (okay, definitely not the best, but definitely some of the best, aka they’re not a dancer, but not not a dancer). Where a few weeks ago it felt like the crown was clearly going to Gigi (thanks to Sherry’s disqualification), the game’s been cracked open as Heidi, Jaida, Crystal and Jackie have all stepped up.

It’s a tight competition for the crown. While it’s probably down to Jaida or Gigi, Crystal could come from behind (but probably not Jackie, who sits at zero wins and has been so-so recently) — it’s almost anyone’s game. And not only is there a lingering ‘who?’ but a ‘how?’, too. Add in the fact we’re still not exactly sure how the finale will go down in pandemic times, and there’s much more suspense in the air than usual.

A big part of that is because one of the producer’s frontrunners has been disqualified, leaving the show slightly less story-boarded than in previous seasons. It’s impossible to say, but it really seems like Sherry probably would’ve taken the crown otherwise, given she was safe this episode, despite doing a 17-minute comedy routine in a 5-minute slot.

In judging, Michelle calls Sherry’s show-boating “selfish”, which sums it up. Evidently, this is a performer who loves to perform, and, as far as we can tell, is quite good at it too. But, just like fiction readings where bros go way overtime or artists who clock out when it comes to other people’s work, Sherry’s set-time betrays an arrogance that isn’t cute.

While ‘don’t ask for permission, beg for forgiveness’ works pretty well on Drag Race, Sherry going willfully over-time was incredibly rude to the other girls, especially Jaida, who followed her.

Having a tight 5 set is a completely different game to an almost 20-minute routine, and while impromptu moments stretched out her time, there was no way Sherry was ever going to clock in on time. While she gave a more heartfelt apology to Jaida on Untucked, Sherry’s runway apology/false surprise felt so insincere: it all checks out, given how self-interested we know she can be.

It’s all just very unfair, especially considering that Heidi’s idea could’ve (…maybe) worked with more time — but she ends up in the bottom. At the same time, even if Sherry ended up lip-syncing, it’s hard to see anyone other than Heidi going this week. It was her fourth time lip-syncing, and no-one’s survived that before: not even Miss Coco Montrese!

But still, even if the result would’ve been the same, it’s disappointing to see the show push through a contestant and essentially let them cheat — especially when they’ve been middling for the latter half of the competition.

It’s a shame she overhangs the season, and that, in these last episodes, it’s been impossible to edit around her. These queens deserve more: just like Ru says, they’re a really wonderful bunch.

At least, on a plus side, we finally know what Sherry Pie looks like: the sexy goose woman is dead. Joslyn Fox, can I get a ‘wonk wonk’?

i find sherry pie visually terrifying precisely because they never let me get a good enough look at her to establish object permanence. she's just this weird sexy cartoon goose woman haunting the negative space of every 200th frame. i gasp and then she's gone.

— Harron Walker (@HarronWawker) May 2, 2020

Everybody Loves Puppets, Apparently

Unless there’s a surprise mini-challenge next week, it looks like S12 doesn’t get a reading challenge — the first season without one in Drag Race history (for the pedants, All Stars 1‘s cheer challenge kind of counts).

S11’s was abysmal, to be fair, but it’s a shame to see it replaced with that #Spon mini-challenge for a box of random boutique shit. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots between the show’s mainstream success and it abandoning its most loving throw-back to Paris Is Burning for a lightweight branded version — there’s still talent here, but it loses a lot of that original charm.

Just like Snatch Game, the reading challenge isn’t always as great as we think it is, but its awkwardness is a throwback to the show’s original, slightly janky heart — and that of a pre Drag Race world too, where outfits didn’t have to be custom, and ‘crafty’ wasn’t a sin (ahem, Jackie).

But we still have puppets, another mini-challenge staple.

It’s a nice tradition reserved for the last few queens. By this point, they’ve all spent a long time together — it’s cute, always a gentle ribbing that shows how well they know each other.

Of all the dolls, Gigi struggles the most to land on a punchline with her Jackie doll, mostly just stating facts. It’s a synecdoche for her time in the competition, where she is reluctant to think on her feet. And in this week’s one-woman show challenge, Gigi falters when she refuses to let go of her script — something she readily admits during the mirror chats.

We get the sense that Gigi came extra-prepared for Drag Race: she had a repertoire of jokes and characters ready to go for whatever they would throw at her. It worked well in the first half of the show, but in recent weeks, we’ve seen her struggle or rely on old gags/robot personas. Which is why her routine this week was a mixed bag.

Gigi is funny, but struggled to fill the space between the moments, freezing a little instead of having confidence in her natural charm. Of course, Gigi was 21 when filming S12: at 21, I could barely order at a café, let alone perform on a world stage.

Jackie wins the mini, and so has to decide the running order for the one-woman shows — no-one wants to go last, and Gigi tries to blink her way out of it.

The blinking works, and Jaida has to go last. As she says, “if it’s funny, it’s funny”, and it turns out it wasn’t: her anecdote about pissing herself while judging a drag pageant was incredibly cringe, and also quite confusing.

At first, I didn’t realise her “shaking leg” meant she needed to piss, then I thought her boyfriend was going into the bathroom because he wanted to be pissed on, then I stopped paying attention because I moved to Berlin just before a pandemic hit so no one has even offered to piss on me while I’ve been here, which is frankly not acceptable! Arrest Bill Gates.

The queens get to workshop their sets with Ru and Woopi Goldberg, which was cute.

‘We Are The Comedy Queens’ – Gia Gunn

Last week, I wrote that the show clearly didn’t want to give Crystal a win, as it wasn’t part of their narrative. While I’m happy she has one now, I wasn’t exactly wrong: the top two this week were her and Jackie, so they gave it to the queen they have more investment in. And they were right to do so.

While Jackie’s performance about her parents was quite sweet, it also wasn’t ground-breaking by any means — Crystal’s was.

Meanwhile, Heidi’s performance was incredibly cringey, as was Jaida’s.

This one guy, however, abso-fucking-lutely loved Jaida’s routine. He seemingly came when she mimed pissing on her boyfriend.

The awkward part of this episode is that it was upstaged by Secret Celebrity Drag Race, which arguably had one of the franchise’s best roasts we’ve seen. Last week’s makeover challenge matched up too, with all-AFAB makeovers featuring on Drag Race and Celebrity — it seems odd to not swap the episodes around, to avoid fatigue.

Celebrity, which has one episode left, has gotten a lot better since the premiere: this week’s episode is truly a must-watch, and not just because Dustin Milligan is really hot. The show spells out Drag Race‘s thesis (‘you’re all naked…’) in a very basic way, but the show offers something new when it tackles how masculinity is a prison, honey, for straight cis males too. It’s still not canon, but it’s worth a watch — maybe down the line, as the show currently consumes hours of my (otherwise very busy) Saturday!!

Purple Reign

This week’s purple runway was stunning — especially as Jackie and Crystal went into monstrous Where The Wild Things Are x Moschino cosplay. While sitting through Heidi and Jaida’s performances were tough, I’ve never cringed more than Michelle Visage repeatedly calling what is clearly an acid tab on Jackie’s outfit’s tongue “Molly” and everyone going along with it.

As is this insistence on deriding things for being ‘cheap’ or ‘crafty’. They’re drag queens! Not everybody has a heap of money to create custom looks, and there was nothing to me that didn’t suggest Jackie’s look wasn’t elevated, especially given how outside the box it was for her as a performer. It’s a silly, arbitrary critique, but hey, if it got Crystal the win over her, I can’t be too mad.

Meanwhile, Gigi dressed as “a certain childhood cartoon favourite”, Jaida and Heidi looked stunning, and Sherry fucking dressed as a cat in the same episode she pretended to be a fish. She was literally a catfish this episode: well, fish cat, chronologically. But still.

Heidi and Jaida lip-sync to Prince’s ‘1999’ and Heidi, though she gives it her all, goes home, but not before getting one of Ru’s sweetest sendoffs in years.

Next week’s the final challenge before the finale. The writing’s on the wall for Jackie, but it’s possible they’ll do a last-minute edit, AS4 style, and eliminate Sherry. It’ll be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out, and how they look.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race streams on Stan, with new episodes dropping each Saturday 1pm AEST, with Secret Celebrity following at 2pm.

Jared Richards is Junkee’s Night Editor, and is on Twitter.