‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S13E13 Recap: Honey, This Episode Shrunk The Odds

And, on the thirteenth episode, GottMik rose again. Tamisha aside, he’s my favourite of the season: a continual surprise, effortlessly charming, quick-witted, fashion-forward yet irreverent and not label-obsessed, and, in the most impressive feat, offering DTE (Dumb Twink Energy) without making me cringe. And robbed! Robbed, I say!

By my watch, Mik deserved this week’s win: I touched upon this a few weeks back with the branding challenge, but I find Rosé’s humour a little broad for my tastes. Where Rosé hit all the notes and made all the right funny faces during this week’s acting challenge, from what we saw, Mik added herself into the character more and made the script more natural.

It also doesn’t matter at all, as all is well. The top four of Kandy, Rosé, Symone and Mik feels right. These are more or less the queens that have shone all season long, and while Olivia’s natural light is bright, she has a bit more liv-ing to do.

All four girls say Olivia is the one to go home tonight when asked by Ru. Then Olivia, in struggling to say Kandy’s name, essentially agrees. After 18 months doing drag, Olivia made it to the top five fair-and-square — it was only in recent episodes we began to see her persona’s limitations (there was a stage where I called her Symone’s biggest competiton). I know we say this about every queen, but she’ll be one to watch on All Stars 8/9.

This week’s acting challenge saw the queens essentially play fictionalised versions of themselves in a Honey, I Shrunk The Kids! spoof, only for most of them to get critiques that they need to show more sides of themselves. It’s almost like the challenge was designed to allow for arbitrary edits to make whoever they needed to fail look like they were out of ideas. Almost!

Siri, What Is A Divalicious Diva?

This week’s ...Shrunk The Kids parody is so large it overwhelms the show’s need for a mini-challenge, so we jump straight into things. While a touch long, this was much sharper than the show’s ‘spoofs’ of relevant shows or films — and the most important thing is that Ru will know the reference. Frances Joli runway when!

The queens get to decide the parts, and with each character more or less a spoof of the remaining queens, they stick to what’s comfortable. Rosé is the sassy, exasperated broad, Mik the gorge LA-bimbo and Olivia jumps at the chance to be the cutesy, nice one, despite the judges asking she please not do that again just last week. It’s a trap, and she falls for it: I think it was her time to go regardless, but it’s a death knell when she takes the part.

Symone and Kandy are the two who opt for the more challenging role: they both want to be Dominique, the villain who shrinks the other queens down. Symone wants to show versatility, while Kandy says the character is, in her own words, “the villain, crazy, delusional — that’s me!”. Kandy ‘producer’ Muse deserves her spot in the top 4 on performance alone, but even on what she offers to Drag Race as a show, not competition, it would have been a huge mistake to send her home after the Rusical.

She’s perfect reality TV: Happy to ask a confrontational question and circle back to the main issue, ask the right plot-line questions and narrate the show herself. In that way, the comparisons to S11’s Silky are somewhat fair. But where the show pushed Silky through at times for good TV at the debit of her mental health (both during filming and then again a second time in airing), Kandy is a much more self-assured person.

It’s why I love watching her; she’s comfortable, for the most part (that’s also, arguably, why so many don’t like her), and knows how to play reality TV without things ever getting too raw. Silky’s rumoured to come back for AS6, and I really hope she’s in a better place this time.

Kandy takes the villain-bitch role, leaving everyone cast loosely as their ‘archetype’. It’s a bit of a wasted opportunity on everyone’s part because no one is really pushed to be particularly OTT (again, except Mik), but it all works. Unlike this:

The queens get the chance to Zoom ScarJo and throw some questions her way. Unfortunately, none were ‘what did you say to Bill Murray at the end of Lost In Translation‘ or ‘do you have any advice on how to be a tree?’.

Not even help from the Black Widow can aid Symone in her fight against her inner saboteur. Off the back of her abysmal roast, she’s worried about bombing and disappointing everyone back home, to the point she’s sobbing in her confessionals. It hurts to watch — Symone clearly expects nothing less than perfection from herself on a show designed to make sure no-one succeeds every week.

Time and time again, the show rewards queens who ‘let go’, like Mik and Rosé. For that reason, I think either of them could take the crown ‘from’ Symone, though I really am rooting for Mik. Those fake sneezes!

I’ve Got One Hand In My Pocket, And The Other One Is Giving Me Life!

The show writers really gave up the day they decided on a ‘pocket’ runway theme, but it also gives me hope we soon get more runways based off things in the writers’ room. Pen, laptop, pizza, broken chairs, Steve!

Of the five, my favourite is Mik’s — a fun flasher-take on The Undoing, dressing as Nicole Kidman’s character in a trenchcoat selling her husband’s watches. Carson’s many puns almost make up for his tenure on the show.

Symone’s denim pocket look was stunning, if only for the fact she clearly wanted to reference Hayley Williams by name in her voiceover but the show made her say ‘lead singer of Paramore’ so a broader audience would get the reference. But we’re supposed to know who Phyllis Diller is?

Rosé’s black-and-white pocket coat is super polished, though I almost wish there was no tearaway to the mod dress.

Meanwhile, Olivia wears a dress she had prior to getting the runway list and hopes putting her hands in the ruffles makes them seem like pockets — and while we’re supposed to think Kandy’s is laughably bad, I really didn’t hate it at all. To paraphrase Detox, ‘I ain’t saying she the best/but she ain’t the worst’.

Her Japanese-designer inspired deconstructed asymettrical ribbon-tied neon dress is a lot, as evidenced by this sentence alone. And yes, there’s something off about it — but I think it’s the styling, her Ava Max wig and makeup. I also think if a Symone or a Gigi wore this, the judges would love it, but on Kandy’s bigger body, it’s ‘unflattering’.

I would have loved to see a touched-up version of this look on Instagram, but it’s uh, pretty clear Kandy hates it too.

waking up in the morning, thinking about so many things – I just wish things would get better I’m trying to get rid of them, but nothing seems to stay the same. pic.twitter.com/gEV8AgUf9I

— KANDY “TOP 4” MUSE (@TheKandyMuse) April 4, 2021

Speaking of hills to die on: Cynthia Erivo is this week’s guest judge, offering every gay ‘cinephile’ I know the opportunity to once again tell their friends to watch Widows.

Rosé snatches the win off Mik, and Symone is saved. I didn’t think Kandy’s performance was low-energy at all, but she winds up in the bottom to out lip-sync ‘Cher’ against Olivia, whose one-note nice girl character lands her the boot. At this point, it’d be an aggressive slight to not give her Miss Congeniality: I can’t remember having a girl so pointedly aim for that as her goal throughout the competition.

Next week, the final four Rumix some RuPaul song you will never listen to again. We’re so close to the end — and I hate to admit there’s a slight sense of relief in saying that too. Amazing queens, but this has been a long season! How time bing bang bongs.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race S13 is available on Stan, with episodes dropping 3PM AEDT each Saturday.

Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper and a freelancer who has written for The Guardian, The Big Issue and more. He’s on Twitter.