‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S14E10 Recap: Let’s Just Accept Snatch Game Is Very Rarely Good

Is it my COVID loss-of-taste, or was this Snatch Game only marginally worse than what we’re used to? Or that DeJa’s Lil Jon was not the comedic masterpiece the episode made it out to be? Or we don’t deserve another non-elimination episode or a seven-person lip-sync?

Michelle Visage should grab LaToya Jackson and start a true investigation by pointing the magnifying glass at production. I’m really enjoying this season, but five non-elimination episodes (E1+2 fake sent queens home, so I’m counting them) by E10 is, to quote Laganga, too fucking much — and we still have this golden ticket, too. But like S13, this is a 16 episode season, aka four months long: that’s too long!

It’s impressive that I haven’t really felt the slog until this week, despite all the non-eliminations: this cast feels so fresh and fun that they can carry most of the show’s frustrating decisions or moments. Maybe it’s just the combination of this week’s cliff-hanger (a seven-way lip-sync tournament as punishment for bombing) and the Snatch Game itself that made this so annoying, as it felt like the show set up these queens to fail.

Okay, yes, nobody was amazing: the jokes were pretty tired across the board, but when has that ever stopped Ru from laughing? There were some obvious bottoms this week — Jasmine and Willow, probably — but by any other season’s judging, most of these queens sat comfortably safe.

But Ru refused to lobby back-and-forth with any of the queens this episode, as if she’d already decided they were all doomed: almost everyone gets a laugh when they introduce their character, but then nothing as Ru shakes their confidence by being icy. Put a laugh track under this Snatch Game and it’d probably be about as good as most seasons, which is to say, it would be fine. Beyond a few stand-out performances, it’s rarely that good!

Snatch Game is hard, and it only gets harder as the years go on due to the pressure on what’s already a pretty narrow format of ad-libs, especially if Ru doesn’t give them much else to work with. I know the All Stars variants aren’t beloved, but Snatch Game of Love (and, too a lesser extent UKVTW‘s Family Feud) opens up Snatch Game a bit more and gives the queens more space with their jokes. Heaps of S14 queens overthought and over-practiced their characters for sure (Willow and Bosco should have nailed this), but who can blame them when you’re trying to fit so much into what becomes 2-3 answers on TV?

I don’t want Snatch Game abolished, but I do think it needs a rehaul so the queens can actually make funny jokes, rather than non-sequiturs that let them play with their celebrity of choice (Lil Jon saying “Pimp Juice” is not funny! It’s baseline humour! I would know!). But hey, at least we all fell in love with Dove Cameron, who is among one of the show’s best guest judges, packing jokes and genuinely helpful advice (especially compared to Ru and Michelle’s vague advice about “making it funny”).

Make It Funny!!!

Before the maxi, Daya says what half the internet (but not me) is thinking: last week’s lip sync wasn’t quite double shantay worthy. I’m really enjoying Daya being a complete bitch; it reminds me of when the queens weren’t so concerned about what the fanbase would think. As if Ginger and Violet didn’t say worse shit in S7! Give her a break, she’s just making fun TV.

We also get a mini-challenge sponsored by Bubbly where the queens create bubble-wrap looks inspired by the drink’s various flavours. I hate to admit this advertising is absolutely working on me, and I hope to find every flavour at Redfern Convenience Store sometime soon.

Ru saves choosing violence for the actual Snatch Game, and so in the werkroom doesn’t tell every queen that they should do a character that they haven’t prepared for or even considered. Let’s go through each performance, starting with this week’s winner, DeJa. While I’m wary of DeJa being my personal Shuga of the season (a technically good queen I just can’t quite connect to), I really don’t think this performance was that amazing! Comparatively, sure, she was the obvious winner, but this would’ve put her comfortably safe in most other seasons. I’m happy for to have a win, though, and she was really good at the voice.

Closely following DeJa is Lady Camden, who deserved to be at least safe for her Shakespeare. Was is ground-breaking? No. Did it follow a formula of ‘olde timey character saying lewd things’? Yes. But Ru loves to say you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and this was a perfectly fine performance with solid jokes. If we have to do the lip sync tournament next week, Lady should be sitting on the sidelines with DeJa.

There was a rumour that Drag Race banned doing RuGirls on Snatch Game, but I’m so glad Angeria did Tammie Brown — or some sort of thing resembling Tammie. Was it good? No. Did it capture any of Tammie’s mannerisms or involve any of her catchphases? No. Did it completely endear me to Angeria? Yes. If Jujubee’s Cher was ‘so bad it’s good’, I’d think Angeria was safe too, if not only for that bizarre accent that couldn’t have been further from Tammie’s. Bless.

Next up is Bosco’s Gwenyth and Daya’s Ozzy, who both bought jokes but really didn’t go the full way with it. Snatch Game is about adding an element of ridiculousness to your impersonation that compliments who you are as a performer (this LA Times article explains how Aquaria used her own aloofness to create Melania to nab a win, for eg), and while Bosco almost gets there, she needed an extra twist on Gwen beyond bringing out ridiculous new-age products. That’s not really a joke; it’s just a fact, the sort of thing you’d retweet or read in The Cut ranking of Goop’s most crazy items.

Meanwhile, Daya just copies her answers, which is, to paraphrase Bob The Drag Queen, wild! It’s not mentioned again this episode, but I’m sure it’ll come up again.

And then there’s my pick for the bottom three: Jorgeous as Ilana Glazer, Willow as Drew Barrymore and Jasmine as Betsy De Vos. Jorgeous loses the whole thing immediately with a half-hearted shakas when she’s introduced, which she stops doing prematurely and then starts again when she realises the camera’s still on her. It’s easily the worst part of the whole Snatch Game, but generally I think her jokes weren’t bad!

Her references are pretty old hat (Broad City seems like an eon ago), but she does the Ilana-isms that would otherwise save her in another season. Honestly, it’s probably one of Jorgeous’ better weeks.

Willow’s Drew isn’t big or broad enough for Snatch Game: there are some funny jokes (“environmentally conscience”), but it was an impersonation, not a Snatch Game character. There’s SO much you could do with Drew: hype her up beyond belief, go down a super dark route re; her childhood (I’m not saying this would necessarily be good, but it is an option), or play off any number of her roles.

Be Josie Grossie! Pretend to be her Scream character and have every response be her on the phone, talking to Ru as if he was Ghostface! Play her 50 First Dates character and repeat yourself every round, with slight variations! This one was worthy of the bottom two because it was such a disappointment, though I do think Ru’s little hissy fit (about Willow not being aware that she and Drew were both judges on a single-season CBS talent show) really threw her off.

And then there’s Jasmine, who chooses Trump’s secretary of education Betsy DeVos. It is such an ill-advised choice and obviously doomed from the start: it requires a real SNL-level talent to impersonate a politician well and make it funny, and it’s just not in her wheelhouse. I really admire her ability to get continually excited about challenges week in week out, regardless of whether they’re suited to her.

 

Hole-y Moley Couture (Bashing Someone With A Golf Club At King’s Cross)

This week’s runway is a little off: the theme is supposedly “holy couture” but it’s clear the queens were given a different prompt around ‘worship’, as only a few go with religious iconography (or maybe they were scared of being blasphemous?). Angeria and Bosco are the only two who head to church, though they’re very different churches. Oh and DeJa is apparently Joan of Arc (sure, DeJan).

The rest of the queens run with a ‘what I worship’ theme, which is how we get so much variance. Willow comes out as a fungi, in reference to how psychedelic experiences helped her accept her illness (destroying Orion’s mushroom look in the process); Lady comes as Spice Girl; Daya comes as Gaga in the ‘Judas’ video, kind of; Jasmine pays her respects to astrology; and Jorgeous comes as a pope who smokes joints, which is so fucking stupid and funny but she seems to have no awareness of how camp it is, which, of course, is straight from the Karlie Kloss school of camp…

Nobody is sent home, and the bottom seven queens will spend next week lip-syncing. Poor Dove Cameron, who misses out on watching a lip sync (is this the first time ever an episode didn’t feature one??). Here’s hoping it’s a double or triple elimination just to speed things up, and we hopefully use that golden ticket, too: I love these girls, but I need blood, not chocolate. (If this recap is bad and my takes are off, I have House of Mince-variant COVID!! Be nice to me!!!!!!)

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RuPaul’s Drag Race S14 is available to stream in Australia on Stan, with episodes dropped each Saturday 3pm AEDT. 

Jared Richards is Junkee‘s Drag Race recapper, and a freelancer who writes for NME, The Big Issue, The Guardian and more. He’s across the internet as @jrdjms