‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S14E15 Recap: Out Pizza The Hut, Girl

The reunions are back! After S12’s Zoom-a-palooza and S13’s bizarre-yet-boring clip show, we have a good ol’ season debrief where the queens pretend to be angry about remarks made off-hand a year ago and do their best Housewives impressions. This didn’t quite reach S9’s heights, but there were some fun moments, great fights, some tears and incredible reads.

Before we dive in, as a topline, the reunions have a tendency to accidentally reveal who’s taking the crown — we don’t have confirmation re; this year’s just yet, but usually the reunions are filmed a day or two after the finale, so sleuths (hi!) can go wild trying to gauge a temperature check from the finalists.

In S11 (the last proper reunion!), it felt like Yvie had it in the bag despite Brooke’s superior track record. Here, it was hard to pick out a definite winner as most of the top five barely talked during the reunion — bar Daya, naturally.

Instead, the reunion centred around Jasmine’s many arguments across the season. And while I love her and think the season wouldn’t have been half as good without her presence, I also don’t think Daya is wrong in calling her an energy vampire, even if she and Korbread were too harsh. She does suck up the air around her! Call it main character energy, call it charisma, call it annoying — it’s all three.

Even when there are 14 other drag queens sitting on-stage with her, it all comes back to Jasmine. I really have a soft spot for Jasmine as a queen and person, but I probably wouldn’t want to be in a competition with her either: she reminds me of those friends who launch into monologues about every trivial problem in their life as soon as you see them, not realising that some of us simply don’t need to externalise every thought or narritivise every life occurrence.

Take Willow, who barely spoke this reunion except when Ru asked her a question. She doesn’t need to butt in all the time; she’s in her lane, unbothered! That’s the dream as a person, but also, the Dayas and Jasmines of the world are the ones who make Drag Race a fun reality show (they also do make for fun friends too, which is why you allow the monologues); for every master-player like Willow or Sasha, we need a queen to give that Lisa Rinna/Ramona Singer chaos to the show. The difference between Drag Race and Housewives is that those fights are accepted fodder for the latter; for queens, stupid little feuds end up shaping their whole career and life, and they get death threats from 12-year-olds.

People would LOVE Daya or, say, Silky on S11 if they were on some equivalent of Bad Girls Club or Big Brother, but we don’t allow Drag Race queens to be messy and mean even though making good TV outside of the challenges and runway is unofficially part of the competition, too. Sear Bosco’s point into the show’s title credits: when did we decide that drag queens aren’t huge bitches?

Imagine the current fanbase watching S3 as it came out, a season so mean-spirited that I can’t think of a single queen who didn’t ‘bully’ another (Phoenix???). It’s why I’m excited about AS7, the long-awaited ‘All Winners’ season officially revealed this week: it’s going to be so so fun to see Raja and Jinkx bring that ‘old-school’ Drag Race energy to the competition. Anyway, rather than rehash the rehashed arguments here, let’s go through the winners and losers of the reunion — the queens who managed to make the most of their last moment on S14, and those who did not out pizza the hut.

It’s Milk’s Chocolate

This was a rough night for third-out Orion Story, who had her fair share of screentime but didn’t really want to do much with it: in a now-deleted Tweet, she said she didn’t bother to prepare anything for the reading segment as she was “over it”. She was barely present and didn’t seem to take any of the reads directed her way well, which makes me think that she didn’t really connect with her castmates or feel respected by the show. Even the ‘reveal’ of her ‘showmance’ with Jorgeous (a word that means a fake romance for the cameras where this was a real flirtation off-camera, bless Jorgeous!) was off, as Jorgeous went on a little spiel about how she was lonely and needed affection but “didn’t even” touch lips with Orion. I’m 100% certain it wasn’t meant anyway, but my God, what an accidental backhand.

After her elimination, Orion said she was homeless just before filming and in withdrawals during filming too: I get why she jumped at the chance to go on the show and escape some hard circumstances, but it seems like she wasn’t quite ready to be on S14. There was a bit of ‘except for Serena’ energy in the edit here, where it seemed like she was shut down every time she made a point in a way other early-outs June or Alyssa weren’t: it was just a shame. Take her telling Kerri her Versace J-Lo moment was a boot — her point was that it wasn’t ‘drag’ per se because it was just Kerri wearing THE dress, which I agree with to an extent. But to criticise it for being ‘off the rack’ isn’t the right wording (off the rack from Versace’s temperature-controllect archival vault!!), and allowing yourself to be read. Orion’s heart and mind just weren’t in it, and I can’t really see her coming back to Drag Race, but I do like her a lot and hope she blossoms online after the show.

Nobody else had a terrible night: it was mostly just a question of screen time. Beyond breaking out her Lil Jon impression, I don’t think DeJa was asked a single question directly? Even Alyssa got a whole mini-segment, even if it was just about how people wanted to fuck her, and June got some solid reads in, too: I’d love to see more of both of them on the show. Jorgeous also barely featured, but she’s featured enough/we’ve all fallen in love with her anyway.

And then there’s Daya, who had plenty of screen-time but none of it really spelling out ‘winner’ for me despite entertaining the idea in last week’s rucap. While I’m an apologist, I don’t think the show is gearing her up here for the crown — and the same can be said for Bosco, who barely spoke. Willow wasn’t too present, but that’s in keeping with her personality in big group settings; Angeria and Lady had some nice moments, but Lady had heaps of quick one-liners and just felt very comfortable and confident, embodying her ‘apply that dancing energy to everything’ narrative. If we’re going off the reunion vibes, I reckon it’s her and Willow in that final lipsync (they film both endings to avoid leaks, so they wouldn’t know who won between the two either).

Golden Boot

Everyone else came off great, though I can’t be the only one questioning whether the feeling is mutual between Kornbread and Willow: one of them is dressed like the other and has a giant tattoo of them (less than a year of knowing each other), and the other… does not.

Either way, I loved Kornbread’s fit, especially changing ‘angle’ to ‘ankle’ and even more so, her face during Maddy’s monologue about the reception as Drag Race‘s first cis, straight queen. It’s easy to take screenshots of a queen’s neural listening face and say they are being ‘shady’, but there was a LOT of emoting going on — watch it back, and I think there’s something going on here. It’s nothing against Maddy herself, but it feels funny to spend so much time on the straight man’s perspective and experience (but it also is interesting! AhhH!)

I haven’t thought about Maddy since she was eliminated, and I really did enjoy her on the reunion: she’s very witty, had some amazing reads (“how’s your last name Story when you can’t even read?” and “no, SHE bombed Snatch Game” were so good) but I still have mixed emotions as a whole. I guess she just seems like a fun theatre kid who likes dress-ups — that’s not to say she’s not a drag queen, but I don’t think her drag suits Drag Race. I do really like her, but I don’t see her on All Stars.

Kerri and Jasmine, on the other hand, are shoe-ins. I know I spent the first part of the recap talking about Jasmine being annoying, but God she’s good TV, has a wonderful outlook and is on the precipice of realising herself more and more: I can’t wait to see her come back and kill it in a few years. And it’s wild that auntie Kerri is 25, as she carries so much wisdom that’s obviously come after going through a lot in a small time. Get her a talk-show, stat!

Kerri Colby could win 1 million Emmys if she had her own daytime talk show. “Dive into the heart space” sends me. #DragRace pic.twitter.com/fZzO37h3uf

— Joey Nolfi (@joeynolfi) April 16, 2022

Next week’s the finale! In a nice hybrid of S12’s home-made videos, the queens will present their own individual performance, then the best two will lip-sync it out for the crown. I’m glad we’re not just doing a straight tournament — maybe we won’t even get a single reveal?

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RuPaul’s Drag Race S14 is available to stream in Australia on Stan, with episodes dropped each Saturday 1pm AEST. 

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