‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ S2E3 Recap: As Nelson Mandela Said, ‘Rude!’
It is impossible to guess who will go home next at this point, but who cares when it's this much fun?
Drag Race UK, don’t start (making sense) now: sure the challenge winners are questionable and I’m continually shocked that ‘frontrunners’ are being sent home one after another, but it’s all so fun that it’s hard to really care. But still, to quote Jonathan Van ‘at least Reagan jelled his hair’ Ness, “can you believe?”.
When Asttina was put in the bottom against Tia, I feared for my favourite: when Dua Lipa started playing, I knew it was Tia’s time to go. But the only certainty in this world is life, death and RuPaul related controversies, and Asttina sashayed away, despite arguably winning the lip-sync.
Maybe it’s for the best? At least now, we don’t have to worry about her doing/not doing Azealia Banks for Snatch Game (when you think about it, both outcomes were dangerous). And she’ll always have Ru quoting Nelson Mandela as her send-off, so who’s the real winner here?
Ru clearly sees what I do in Tia: as he said, her wit is a ten, even if her looks are a two. From start to finish this ep, she’s all entertainment — sure, her look is horrendous, and there’s no question she should be in the bottom, but her runway commentary makes up for it. Hell, her limboing in the mini-challenge makes up for it.
Me bending over backwards to explain why Tia should stay despite absolutely being the worst this week.
This week’s design challenge put the queens in competition against their best Judy, which means that we had five tops and five bottoms — and some (Veronica) lucked out, avoiding the bottom by virtue of their partner being even worse (Tia) than them.
Before all that, we had a great mini-challenge, plenty of werkroom banter and a lot of cute, supportive moments which gave us time with each and every queen. What more could you want?
The Bar Is Low, The Fabric Is Boxed
Before we jump into the maxi challenge, we’ve got a prescient mini about wealth inequality, where the queens put on their best venture capitalist drag and try to bend around the rules in order to make profit.
Jodie Harsh is there to ‘DJ’ the limbo competition, which may purely be so people stop asking her when she’ll compete: as her little fringe proves, she’s simply above it.
Jodie single-handedly reclaiming TERF bangs.
Tayce and Veronica tie for the win, which means, after the queens choose their ‘bestie’ for the maxi challenge, they designate which colour each team has to work with.
Veronica picks green despite Tia pointing out it’s a cursed colour in the Drag Race Extended Cinematic Universe, and it works out great for both of them.
Veronica continues to baffle me. What an odd choice. I love her.
Veronica’s a little too confident this episode: she’s a seamstress, but this look isn’t particularly creative when you compare it to the lot. If Asttina wound up in the bottom for keeping things too simple, Veronica was very lucky to be paired with Tia, who has the double disadvantage of not knowing how to sew and having a terrible sense of fashion.
Asttina and Bimini get blue, and the former’s attempt at an ‘anime girl’ feels a little underdeveloped: perhaps more adventurous make-up could have sold the fantasy. We should have known from the edit she was heading home, as whenever a girl ‘finishes’ her look before everyone else, they’re probably in danger.
Bimini, on the other hand, looks absolutely beautiful, and her dress is see-through at the back: it’s sharp, sexy and completely overlooked in the edit, as she has been each week. Attention must be paid!
Maye Asttina could have continued down the cosplay path of last week and went with a Sailor Moon/Dasha Nekrasova look? That would have been more developed, if not a little played out.
The nicest part of the episode was how much time we got to spend with each pair: Sister Sister has no storyline in sight, but it was nice to see her keep up with Ginny’s jokes and show off some personality. We learnt a lot more about Ginny too — in absence of a Lawrence ‘confidence’ sub-plot, they squeeze the Lemon.
In his werkroom walkthrough, Ru questions why Ginny doesn’t ‘do’ sexy looks, and the answer’s pretty dark: she was raised to believe she was ugly and stupid, and struggles to overcome it even after moving on from her past.
Ginny is (like most of this cast!) such a star, and it hurts to hear her say she doesn’t love herself “at all”. She’s given a challenge to tart it up this challenge, which involves hip pads, a breastplate and a more glamourous face — it doesn’t look good by any means, but the judges give her a pass for taking a risk.
Together, they look like dolls someone’s older brother has drawn over (not necessarily in a bad way, Siste looks great! But definitely in a way).
The overtly ‘feminine’, traditional drag look she lands on could be seen as a clash with her other talking point this episode, which is how being non-binary and discovering the term has freed her as a person.
Her look is a far cry from her normal clownery, which she explains to Sister is a way to avoid being overly masculine or feminine: that’s why she loves yellow, a typically ‘gender-neutral’ colour. While I’ve already seen a few viewers point out the politics of asking a non-binary queen to fem it up, Ginny seems to get a kick out of trying something new.
It also gave us this, and for that, I am forever thankful.
Bimini, whose last runway was supposed to play off her own non-binary identity, comes over when Sister and Ginny stop talking, and the conversation goes into a deeper direction as they chat about the how non-binary identities aren’t seen as legitimate, and the power it holds for them.
It’s great that one queen doesn’t have to share the burden of explaining it to the audience alone, especially while transphobia runs so rampant in the UK media.
A’Whora Is My Mother’s Name. Please, Call Me A’Mean Bitch
As a designer by trade, A’Whora is sure she has this week in the bag, but her Curella De Vil-nod doesn’t take top honours. She’s visibly pissed backstage, and directs a lot of the anger towards slagging off Tia, who she thinks should have been first out.
It’s sweet to see Veronica stick up for Tia, and I’m sure A’Whora is going to get a lot of hate, but I love it all: she’s literally playing the villain, and she’s playing it well.
The outfit’s already done: why did she need to skin Tia?
A’Whora also has a nice side: yes, her and Tayce are good friends/roommates/’roommates’ already, but she spends a lot of time helping her sewing-challenged sister out this episode. Tayce’s look is divine, if not a little unpolished, but, of course, she wears it well.
This would not read as fashion on most of the other queens/they wouldn’t get away with it, but, as Peppermint would say, we cannot deny that on Tayce, it’s fashion.
The final pairing is Scottish queens Lawrence and Ellie, who both glitter in gold. Lawrence takes the win for a well-designed and beautiful gown, which was somewhat surprising: Ellie’s is far more elaborate, but it also could have read in person as a bit thrown together.
*obvious joke about a Golden Girls reboot*
That’s probably why the judging is a little confusing: sorry to go back to Veronica again, but it was sewn really well. Craft clearly comes into it, though the show could probably bare to actually showcase the judges talking about it a bit more.
Then Dua comes along, and Tia lives to destroy the runway another day. The queens are surprised, to say the least:
Tag yourself, I’m Veronica.
Next week’s the last of filming before COVID-19 interrupts things, which could give Tia the chance to fix her outfits when they return for the second half. Luckily, the queens overact through an improved morning show segments — surely she’ll ace it. But this season is impossible to predict, just like our world… wow… drag… a mirror to society.
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is available on Stan, with episodes dropping each Friday 8AM AEDT.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and freelancer who has written for The Guardian, The Big Issue and more. He’s on Twitter.