‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S13E5 Recap: Please Welcome To The Stage, Emotional Baggage!
If you didn't watch this week's Untucked, you're missing 90 per cent of the story.
For once, the tagline is underselling it: if you didn’t watch this week’s Untucked, you’re missing 90 per cent of the story.
Sure, the bag ball was exciting — 36 looks, an amazing lipsync to Igloo Australia’s best track — but it was nothing compared to what went down between Kandy Muse and Tamisha Iman. That was a lot, and a day after watching, we’re still reeling: what the fuck happened?
For a few moments, it seemed like we might see a physical fight, after Kandy took offense after Tamisha admitted he doesn’t like her (and a few other queens) because she finds Kandy “arrogant”. And look, Tamisha was clearly trying to start something — it was an unnecessary comment, but Kandy was much more cut by it than I think Tamisha intended.
She may be ‘arrogant’, sure, but there’s also a clear insecurity on display, too. To go from telling Elliott she needs to be more “self-aware” with no explanation/context to then finger-pointing and demanding each queen tell her whether she is arrogant was so profoundly ridiculous that Alanis Morrisette has finally understood what irony actually is.
tag yourself: untucked version #dragrace pic.twitter.com/KibkzMFngq
— Natalia (@lindaquaria) January 30, 2021
Sure, her lip-sync was completely overshadowed by LaLa Ri, but Joey Jay cemented her place in my heart as one of the only queens to tell Kandy that she was being ridiculous and ‘arrogant’ in the heat of the moment. Kandy’s “crush” on Joey probably eased the blow, but it still offered a pause on the moment, though the only thing that could ease the tension was a bug chasing after the girls outside.
And the award for Best Supporting Actress In A Comedy goes to… ‘this bug!’.
Kandy loves drama and talking shit — that’s part of her charm! But if she seems overtly ‘aggressive’ to you, it’s worth remembering that it probably comes from a lot of context: as an Afro-Latinx large queer man living in New York, she’s probably dealt with a lot of aggression herself. Tamisha evidently struck a nerve with Kandy, and there’s clearly baggage here.
Untucked wasn’t cute, but it was great TV. It’s really disheartening to see Kandy tweet out that her mum is getting abuse online for the way her son acted in a five-minute fight from a highly stressful reality competition. Simply put: grow up!
Gottmik constantly laughing at the fight might have not been the most helpful thing, but oh my God was it relatable.
The pressures of reality TV make people lose their minds; it brings out the worst in people, time and time again, and is, if you want to get real, fundamentally an exploitative and amoral genre. As Drag Race gets bigger and bigger, moments like these become cancellable offenses, when really it’s just Housewives-level drama: fascinating, voyeuristic and kind of dumb, with a lot of space to read between the lines.
There’s more to analyse here about the queens’ behaviour in Untucked (Tina, Mik and Symone’s support of Kandy made the ‘winning’ group come off as a bit too into the Stanford Prison experiment of it all; Eliott sucking up to Kandy after just talking shit with Tamisha was very disingenuous and sycophantic; Tamisha has no fear because life has thrown her everything is can), and it’ll be ‘interesting’ to see how this episode shapes the season.
Ultimately, the most important things to note are that Kandy Muse is now selling gold necklaces with the word ‘arrogant’ on them, and my Tamisha Iman hightop sneakers arrived last week. That’s how you win reality TV.
Anway There Was Also A Ball Or Something
The drama started on Untucked‘s companion show, RuPaul’s Drag Race — it’s really worth a watch! After Symone’s second challenge win last week, the queens de-dragged and debriefed (tautology?) in the werkroom, only for Tamisha to correct Kandy when she said Symone was her biggest competition.
There are two ways to read Kandy’s comment. One is that Symone is the one to beat right now (true); the other is that Kandy thinks she’s second to Symone’s first place right now, despite having no wins. Tamisha took it to mean the latter.
If Tamisha ever called me a little girl, I would crumble into dust.
Not sure if Tamisha read this one right (again, there’s clearly a context here we don’t quite see all of in the show), but she’s still the saint of this season.
She commands attention, isn’t afraid to call out these girls, and is ready to teach them a lesson or take Utica to a ball at the drop of a hat. I cannot imagine being anything other than completely obsessed with her: what a fucking gem, and it is so, so nice for the show to treat an ‘older’ queen with respect for once.
Well, respect-ish: this week’s mini-challenge demands that the queens debase themselves by dressing as babies and dancing to a RuPaul remix of ‘Happy Birthday’. It’s possibly the worst thing the show’s ever done.
This is the only screenshot of the mini-challenge that won’t put me or Junkee on a government watch list.
LaLa Ri ‘wins’, but it’s all downhill for her from here. This week’s maxi is a bag ball, where the queens must create one look from an assortment of bag material, and present two pre-designed looks: a ‘bag pun’ look, and a ‘money bags’ look, which is really just Executive Realness Redux.
They also have to pair the money bags look with an ugly giant purse from Coach, in a piece of horrific, awkward spon-con that almost ruins each look and will make absolutely no-one buy these bags. In a way, it’s a return to the show’s janky roots.
Jeffrey Moran, eat your Absolut heart out: Stuart Vevers is the new completely robotic corporate shill in town.
Of the queens, Utica, Gottmik and Tamisha are the ‘designer’ queens; LaLa and Symone are this season’s ‘can’t sew’ girls. In a really sweet moment, Utica shows LaLa the ropes — she’s slowly becoming one of my favourites for her gentle heart, offbeat humour and killer design sense.
Why is Utica touching LaLa like this? It’s so awkward but affectionate in such a docile way. I love it.
Nothing, seemingly, can help LaLa, who runs out of paper bags to glue to her corset and just kind of stops? It’s unclear what she was going for originally beyond ‘bags on corset’, but it is clear that in the confessionals, she accidentally calls the Lord a bitch and then apologises.
‘I thought it was couture’.
It’s a mess, through and through. It’s not clear who’s joining her in the bottom till we hit the runway: Symone struggles in the werkroom, but she, of course, sells her outfit on the runway as if she was debuting Fenty Swim.
Before the dolls head out, they chat about Black Lives Matter: with S13 filming last August, the height of the protests had only just passed. It’s clearly prodded by the producers as This Week’s Important Issue, but the conversation that follows is genuine, sincere and filled with a lot of pain, anger and sadness.
LaLa says she lives right near the Wendy’s where Rayshard Brooks, 27, was murdered by police last June, and breaks down in the confessional talking about how it could have been her. It reminded me of an interview Monique Heart gave which I’ve quoted in a recap before, where tearfully she says: “I’m not a black drag queen, I’m a black man. And black men are not beloved in America”.
Everyone competing on Drag Race has been through a lot: as queer people and artists working in a gender subversive art form, it’s par for the course. The show is also easily one of reality TV’s most diverse (racially, at least, through it’s come a long way with trans/GNC representation), and loving these queens should come hand in hand with understanding that the BIPOC contestants are shaped by the joys and oppressions of their race, in addition to their sexuality. Blackness, in particular, is integral to not just Drag Race, but so much of ‘drag culture’ — as Tamisha reminds us when she offers a mini-ballroom explainer.
It’s great, in short, that the show is centring these conversations, though it and the audience have continually sidelined Black queens, most prominently The Vixen. Watch back S10, and you’ll see how far the show’s come.
36 Bags? Sounds Like A Friday Night At Bondi
Of the three categories, the ‘bag pun’ was my favourite, if not only for the variety. No Kimono double ups here: each queen, for better or worse, really showed us how they think and who they are as a performer.
Denali’s futuristic crash-doll dummy look was easily my favourite: campy, vaguely Gaga, morbid, silly, fashion. The other top toots were Gottmik’s body bag (also campy, vaguely Gaga, morbid, silly, fashion) and Utica’s ‘doggy bag’ (also campy, silly and fashion, but more Gwen than Gaga).
When he lied in that song he wrote about you.
Wrapped in plastic no more!
Really disagreed with Ru’s lines about Utica’s ‘campiness’ undercutting her fashion: it’s drag! Felt like they just needed to say something negative to give Mik the win.
Most of them were, ahem, more of a mixed bag: no jaw-drops, but fun.
Tina’s really faded into the background since the first episode, with the show barely giving her much camera time. Very curious, as I pegged her for top 4.
Okay I just can’t be objective about Tamisha, I love this.
“Disgoosting”: Lawrence Chaney, learning there’s a third Scottish Drag Race queen.
It’s a shame for Olivia that Symone did a boxing look a few weeks back. This is great, but Symone’s was just perfection.
Honestly, I thought this was really fun!
Kandy’s magician outfit was fine, but I LOVED that she pulled out a giant pole from her purse then immediately threw it off-stage, as if she was merely cleaning out her bag.
Symone’s ‘fun bags’ look was excellent, of course, but the Diana Ross reference made me think of her House of Avalon sister Gigi: too much reimagining can eventually fall a little flat.
She’s a frack destoyer!
Joey and Elliott really have questionable taste levels: the former’s posion IVy look doens’t quite hold up, especially as our himbo queens seems unaware of the pun she’s making. Eliott’s ‘gift bag’ look is my least favourite of the night: yes, that includes LaLa’s.
Return to sender.
A Silent Hill I’d like to lose my mind in. :)
The She-E-O looks were mostly pretty uneventful, but as someone who likes coffee, I liked that Olivia held a coffee cup.
“Today on the runway I’m wearing my finest ‘don’t even talk to me till I’ve had my coffee’ powersuit, honey, with rip-off pants for that post-espresso instant shit’.
Okay, how can you not love her?
This is great, but the judges acted as if it was one of the show’s best looks ever. Am I missing something?
Category Is: Baga Chips
This week’s top three was a little surprising, as was GottMik’s win.
To me, Utica absolutely deserved the win for that regal sleeping bag hooded robe, and her biggest competition was Denali, whose Dios de la Muerta-esque look was merely safe. Denali and Rosé both really grew on me this week: maybe it’s that they just both talked about more than being really excellent queens.
Maybe in-person the design was a little shoddy, but on TV, this looked gorgeous.
Gottmik and Rosé’s looks are stunning, but it’s hard to go past Utica. Look, your eye went straight to her!
I’ve seen a few people say Kandy could’ve been in the bottom for her schoolgirl backpack look, but I thought the somewhat rough clashing/layering of bags made her look a little cartoonish. I was into it.
This is the exact type of mean girl I craved validation from throughout high school.
Symone doesn’t just sell the garment: it’s more of a wholesale situation. Radiant.
When she came out, I screamed “NO!”. Thankfully, Joey was worse: this is just overwhelming to look at.
Then this happened:
BLESS HER SO MUCH.
Thankfully, the LaLa Ri experience is everything she sold it as: she wiped the floor with Joey Jay in the lip-sync and collected tips, too. It’s sad to see Joey go, who was much more endearing and witty than I pegged him at first glance, but it’s a good impression to leave on.
RuPaul’s Drag Race S13 is available on Stan, with episodes dropping 3PM AEDT each Saturday, and UK episodes 8am AEDT Friday.
Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper and freelancer who has written for The Guardian, The Big Issue and more. He’s on Twitter.