‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Recap: Stop Trying To Make ‘Jantasy’ Happen (Or Just Wait For ‘All Stars’)

Allow me to take from straight culture, just this once as I quote Crowded House’s most famous sing-along: “hey now, hey now, Jan’s dream is overrrrr”. But hey, there’s always Drag Race All Stars 6 — and doesn’t Jan know it.

Less than 24 hours after her elimination aired, she was tweeting that she hoped she’d have the chance to “be a little less try hard” on All Stars.  And she’s right to put it out there: since Jan’s first episode, Drag Race has been pushing her “overzealous” narrative, as soon as she said she was the show’s “biggest fan”.

There was a clear plan here: push Jan into the well after all-but promising a win last week (the show’s ‘biggest fan’ would know the musical episode should’ve been Jan’s break-out moment), and then see her emerge with a Samara-esque grudge to bear, if Samara was the Troy Bolton of drag.

It hurts me to type this, but Michelle Visage nailed it this week in her critique. Jan was trying so hard to please that she never had a lot of fun on the show, and you could feel it.

Take last week’s Madonna challenge. Jan had the moves, voice and look down, but Gigi nabbed the win for inflecting a bit more personality and, for lack of a better word, spirit into the performance. Jan just couldn’t get into the groove, and in this week’s informercial challenge, she was so concerned with showing all her talent that she invented a product that invited users to become her.

To be fair, this week’s challenge was super confusing. The dolls had to create an infomercial for their own product for Goop parody ‘Droop’. But the Gwyneth of it all wasn’t really enforced, and only a few girls stuck to parodying wellness: most just created a product, as per the ‘Drag Con merch’ challenge in All Stars 2.

It’s an awfully specific culture to mock, and maybe the show realised that, because the episode really loses the ‘Droop’ aspect after Ru gets in a few werkroom punchlines in about Yoni eggs. Sure, wellness affiliate and The Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper comes in to advise and direct the infomercials, but that’s about it — it’s a far-cry from the sponsored Frozen runway two weeks ago, which went all out with the theme. What about a ‘New Age’ runway, where the queens come out in their best Gwyneth/Big Little Lies drag?

Either way, it seems like only Sherry and Widow really ran with the Goop-energy the challenge’s direction asked them for, and both ended up in the bottom — deservedly for Widow, who also forgot to include any jokes. Rewatching the episode, Sherry’s was an excellent parody of Wellness culture: it just wasn’t a Drag Race informercial. No wonder Harper had no idea what he was doing while directing — this isn’t his gig.

The Biggest Loser might be the least camp or self-aware reality show out there, and his advice about “selling yourself” was incredibly cringe: Drag Race should tear apart wellness, not act as promo for some gay who sells abs.

Reading Is Essential, But Product Placement Pays The Bills

Before the maxi challenge, this week’s mini is a bizarre insult back-and-forth gifting-brunch, centred around gift boxes you’d only give someone if you had absolutely no idea who they were. It’s unclear if this was a #sponsored stand-in for the reading challenge, which usually occurs around this point in the competition.

Hopefully not. It’s such an important staple of the show, and removing it, without making too much of a point of it, would be a synecdoche for how the show, at it’s worst, warps queer culture for a quick buck. To quote Principle Skinner: “Prove me wrong, children! Prove me wrong!”.

That aside, this mini-challenge format sucked, forcing the queens to centre products in their punchlines was super cringe, even if most rose to the challenge. Of the queens, Crystal and Heidi both lag a little in the back-and-forth, but it’s a real ‘Year 9 improv assessment’ of a mini-challenge. They’re easily the top two in the main challenge, which requires a lot more wit.

Of the advertisements, Crystal’s is by far my favourite. Given the mullet ‘storyline’ (as RuPaul loves to say, as he seemingly considers everyone around him to be a fictional character), I was shocked Crystal didn’t win for her ‘magic mullet’ commercial. Not only did she play off something RuPaul loves, she paid homage to Fifth Harmony’s misuse of hammers in their ‘Work From Home’ live performance on Jimmy Kimmel — a deep cut, to be sure, but undoubtedly canon.

Hell, she even made the pit crew, aka the straightest straight men there are, funny.

But Heidi nabs the win for her lotion ad, which plays off her natural charm with some really sharp jokes — and a fart. Rock M lives on, and Michelle has nothing to say: it would be curious, but it’s always been clear the show has a lot more love to give some queens than it does others.

Heidi and Crystal both clearly have Ru’s heart (or, well, what hasn’t been fracked of it), where Jan was evidently someone he didn’t really connect with or see much ‘CUNT’ in. It’s a pretty hurtful rejection, to more or less be told you don’t have caps-lock ‘IT’ — it’s not fair, either, and hopefully Jan doesn’t read it that way.

It was lovely to see Heidi win, though, especially after she revealed she made just $9000 the year before she went on Drag Race. That’s $750 a month, which is far below the poverty line.

It’s amazing to think she’s performing so well on the show, considering she’s against queens wearing outfits worth double her yearly income, and re-contextualises her so-so runway looks (this week excepted). It’s all drag on a dime, and in an era where our appetite demands perfect, expensive drag looks, it’s a reminder that drag doesn’t need to be designer or custom-made to make an impression.

With lesser competition, Jackie easily could’ve scored a win this week, and Jaida did a stellar job too. Now we’re down to the top seven, it’s honestly foreseeable that any of these queens make the top four: they’ve all had moments to shine and excel.

In Untucked, Gigi struggles with her first week of receiving negative critique, which is the kind of thing you do not voice out loud. It’s a testament to just how well she’s been going — and to how clever she’s been so far. Her ad this week wasn’t very funny, and repeated an ‘uptight yet blue character’ she’s used a few times now.

To be fair, Heidi’s done the same: she repeated ‘soft and supple’ because it makes Ru laugh, and Crystal played this week smart, too. But it does show that Gigi might have a particularly ‘trained’ wit for the show — it’ll be interesting to see if she breaks her self-made mold in weeks to come.

Beautiful Gowns, Beautiful Gowns

This week’s runway was black wedding or whatever who cares. Everyone looked wonderful, but most of all Chaka Khan, who was hidden beneath her hair for the whole episode and barely strung sentences together: representation matters!

The queens really did all look wonderful though.

Ultimately, Jan ends up in the bottom against Widow. In Untucked, Jan essentially gives up — as a super-fan, she knows that the odds are stacked against her, given that she’s about to lipsync a Chaka song in front of Chaka against one of Chaka’s biggest fans.

Still, she gives it her all on-stage, which is to say, Jan does way too much. A desperate drag queen is hard to watch. She’ll reign it in for All Stars, but for now, Widow is given a kick to get out of her head.

Next week is a presidential debate, a repeat of S4’s iconic challenge where Phi Phi O’Hara made a racist joke against Latrice and still wasn’t the worst part. That goes to Chad Michael’s pink pom-pom-haired character: sometimes, when I’m almost asleep, I hear her shouting: “up-DO! up-DO!”.

Still, it could be good: call me Shameika, because I think next episode has potential.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race streams on Stan, with new episodes available 1pm Saturday AEST.

Jared Richards is Junkee’s Night Editor and a freelance writer. He’s on Twitter.