‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ S2E5 Recap: We Didn’t Do It, Joe
Never in RuPaul's life has she yelled at a girl like this! (Citation needed)
Despite all the twists thrown at the queens this episode — a seven-month filming shutdown, Veronica not returning because she had COVID, Joe Black making a (brief) re-entry — the biggest had to be that Ru, somehow, missed the chance for a Mommie Dearest reference: “no more off the rack clothes!!”.
Maybe she was just too angry (then again, it doesn’t quite pass her rules for puns and cadence, which she would talk about a lot on What’s The T?). She certainly was pissed off this week: and as someone who has done two weeks of hotel quarantine, I get it. Emotions run high (and it makes for good TV, of course).
Plus, Joe’s return was pretty disappointing, even ignoring the H&M dress that saw Ru pop off. Her elimination in E1 felt ridiculous, but her half-hearted attempts in this week’s main challenge show that, if anything, she’s probably too big to fit in on Drag Race.
We’ve seen it before: a successful queen enters with hype having honed a specific craft and niche, and realises over time they have little interest in playing by the show’s (often arbitrary) rules. The H&M dress was just a symptom — we saw that she knew it’d be a problem, but she just didn’t care enough to change it. Joe’s an excellent reminder that being ‘bad’ at Drag Race doesn’t make you a ‘bad’ drag queen (and, sometimes, vice versa). We didn’t get to see much, but she’s ready for her close up, off the show.
Prepped And Pumped
I don’t get the toaster addition at all, but I am fully on the A’Whora train, carbs and all (sorry Derrick!).
With seven months off, the queens return with new wardrobes, new faces and, in the case of Sister Sister, new teeth. There’s also a 40-minute doco-special accompanying this ep, where all the S2 queens (even Ginny?) film themselves at home, adjusting to their new worlds.
It’s by no means essential (for example, they could have cut that montage of the queens cleaning their houses), but there are some gems in there, such as learning that Ginny’s in a throuple who two people who look exactly like them. A few queens had a particularly rough time — all went without their drag income, and some had nothing else to lean back on. Ellie’s whole family couldn’t pay rent and so all had to move, leaving Ellie momentarily homeless before she found an apartment (her first time living out of home, no less).
The special also makes Veronica’s COVID-19 diagnosis all the sadder, as we see that she fell into a pretty deep depression during lockdown, and didn’t leave her house/bedroom for 12 weeks. You gotta feel for her, especially given her last moments in the werkroom were spent being very snippy with the other queens. At least she has an open invite for S3, so hopefully, we’ll see her back on our screens later this year (yep, we’re supposedly getting UK3 this year too?).
After a quick catch-up, the queens get to vote on whether Joe, Asttina or Cherry gets to take Veronica’s place, and save for Asttina’s besties A’Whora and Bimini, it’s a unanimous vote to repaint it black. Meanwhile, RuPaul spent his quarantine shopping online at Party City:
Is this a reference to Ginny? Was it explained? Did I miss it?
This week, the queens are tasked with matching the highs of The Frock Destroyer’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ in a girl group challenge, with two groups putting their own spin on a new track, ‘UK Hun?’. Ding Dang Dong!
It’s pretty clear early on that the ‘United KingDolls’ group — Tayce, A’Whora, Lawrence and Bimini — are the winners this week; their recording is smoother, and their choreography much more impressive. ‘Bananadrama’ — Joe, Ellie, Sister and Tia — really struggles in the choreography, as they have to simplify it a lot for Joe.
Tayce, meanwhile, refuses to pare it back for Lawrence, who again soon gets in her head. It’s evidently pretty frustrating for the group to see her try to overcompensate for insecurity by being loud and funny in rehearsals, but Tayce’s tough-love approach works: Lawrence uses his fear to focus, and carried his own in the main challenge despite being with three dancers.
Pictured: Me (foreground) writing another non-sensical “I hardly even know her!” ‘joke’ in these recaps; readers, editors, loved ones (background, l-r) displaying increasing concern.
MNEK helps the queens record their verse, and I hope one plus side of COVID is that we see him as a rotating judge for the rest of the season. He quips with the queens well, provides genuine feedback and has some great one-liners on the panel.
Bimini started rough with the falsest falsetto in history, but MNEK coached her in a genuinely helpful, kind way. We love to see (and hear) it!
Singer? I Hardly Even Know How To Speak To Her (After My Social Skills Have Rescinded Completely During Lockdown)!
‘They weren’t bad.’ ‘No they were good.’
Recording two versions of the same song is a great equaliser, giving each team the same (literal) beats to play with — and for the record, it’s a clear Eurovision spin on ‘Ning Nang Nong’ as immortalised on PlaySchool, in case you can’t quite place it. And where the United Kingdolls filled their performance with so many little moments, Bananadrama was a little flat, too simplistic. Ru gives the win to the whole group, but if I had to pick one winner, it would have been Bimini. She’s just killing it: can anyone else bring together Pitbull-esque lyricism with veangism?
in the line 'I like it rough but my lentils tender' poet Bimini Bon Boulash subverts the pop music cliché of 'liking it rough' by juxtaposing it absurdly with her culinary preference for boiled legumes
— J. William James (@JWilliamJames) February 12, 2021
Bananadrama, on the other hand, are fine. Sister has come back with something to prove and technically kills her verse (even if she’s not quite connecting on camera), and Tia is excellent as always. But Ellie, once again, just seems a bit too reserved on stage, and Joe is just out of place: my eyes kept gravitating to her movements and bits, which didn’t really transfer her character over successfully.
And yes, they bring the looks from home so it’s hard to coordinate, but even if they painted similarly or worked to have one small cohesive addition to the outfits, it would have tied in the group/Joe a bit more.
‘Idk just grab a banana and like hold it, it’ll be funny’
Let’s Go To The Beach, Beach!
This week’s runway is inspired by 10-year-old me reading Beaches while at the beach and feeling a great connection to Cee Cee and Bertie. Tayce is trapped in a net but makes it fashion, much like how Cee Cee and Bertie take the difficulties of their lives and make the best of it though friendship and platonic love.
The shells, of course, represent the growths and scars that come to define our two heroines, beautiful in their imperfections, defined by not what has happened to them but how they have in turn healed and moved on.
Bimini comes in a lacy interpretation which plays off the way Cee Cee and Bertie (Hilary in the film) may detach from one another over their lives but always remain together.
In a word: Beaches-esque.
Lawrence’s outfit is a homage to the way life-long friendships can buoy us through our darkest hours, just like that of Cee Cee and Bertie.
Powerful.
The rest of the group take the easy way out and play off the sites and objects found at the beach pier where the girls first meet.
Both Sister Sister and A’Whora come out as chip packets, which causes a bit of drama in Untucked-ish, as A’Whora insinuates that Sister used her seven months off to steal the idea, which she would have seen hung up in A’Whora’s werkroom area pre-COVID. I don’t buy it, if only because I think it’s a bad game plan to copy an outfit idea: it’ll only dilute both people’s presence, so why bother? If she did copy it on purpose, it’s a stupid move, which is a worse crime.
I loved when she threw out the giant fork, which was obviously a reference to the giant forks in the road that the Beaches women faced in their lives.
Sister misread the runway prompt and put on her best Tammie Brown face.
Ellie comes as the seagull swooping Sister, and while I love it, it’s a shame she doesn’t beak-sync for her life later on, just to see what that could’ve looked like.
A queen dressed as a seagull swooping another queen dressed as Tammie Brown as (a) Baga Chipz? This show has gone too self-referential.
Joe’s look is wonderful, reminiscent of Chelseaboy of Drag Race Holland‘s windswept runway: a fun allusion to the UK’s terrible weather, and the reality of a day at the beach. On Instagram, Joe said this was her original ‘hometown look’ for E1’s runway but she saved it for this theme: if she’d done this then, there’s no way she would’ve been on the bottom. I would say it’s a Sliding Doors moment, but it would be disrespectful to pull the spotlight from Beaches.
If you have to leave on any look… this is so great.
And then there’s Tia, who gets a rinsing from Ru for not stepping up her game. She claims this is the worst of her new looks, but I’m not so sure: I don’t hate this, but the problem with it is more one of fitting than anything. Tia is a lanky body, and doesn’t quite know how to make that work in drag — the proportions always seem a little off, even if all the elements are there.
I was rooting for you!
Ru gives a winning badge to each queen from the ‘United Kingdolls’, which is very generous to Lawrence, considering it marks his third in three weeks. That group’s likely the top four at this point, give or take a Tia if she can pull her looks together. And she better, because Ru’s real mad during the critiques at both her and Joe. She’s angry at Tia’s runway outfit and Joe’s girl group dress, which was brought off the rack at H&M.
There’s a fair point in ‘dragging’ the H&M dress up for the show with embellishments/stones, but stepping back a little, the rant falls a little flat. Sure, these queens had seven months to ‘fix’ their looks, but those seven months were largely without work — with what money could they re-do their runways? Cut ’em some slack: it’s a valid critique (particularly for Joe), but geez, have these queens had it rough.
I’ve also seen a few comparisons to Joe’s critiques to Asttina’s win in E1 for her ASOS-jacket ‘London girl’ look, essentially asking why store-bought was a winner one week and a travesty another. But Asttina’s jacket was part of a performed, drag-ged out character: Joe’s was just a dress she wore, not stylised or zhuzhed up to a Drag Race standard.
There’s a lot to be said about the ‘Drag Race standard’ and whether it’s fair given the queens don’t have the same budgets and connections (it’s not, in short), but I’m not sure that’s exactly what’s happened here.
Anyway, Tia joins Joe in the bottom because looks matter more than performance this week, which is good news for Ellie. Tia relatively slays, gets to stay, and Joe sashays again — and uses the same exit line again, bringing Drag Race‘s Glenn Close references up to an unforeseen level for a BBC show.
Next week is Snatch Game, where the queens will take on loveable UK figures we probably have never heard of. Can’t wait!
It doesn’t matter if you love him or capital H&M 😩🙌 happy 10 year anniversary to Born This Way and happy 1 day anniversary to @RuPaul not wanting to see any fucking H&M
— Aquaria 🤌🏼 (@aquariaofficial) February 12, 2021
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is available on Stan, with episodes dropping each Friday 8AM AEDT.
Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper, and a freelance writer who has written for The Guardian, The Big Issue and more. He’s on Twitter.