‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ S3E4 Recap: Tears, The Saddest Spice

Who do you fink you are? This week, our top eight queens take on the girl group challenge with ‘Big Drag Energy’, a track that can’t quite measure up to the MNEK-produced BDE of ‘Break Up Bye’ and ‘UK Hun?’ — but even still, it’s definitely making my coveted ‘drag race songs but good’ playlist.

As a first, we’ve got two different versions of the track — a classic pop version, and a ‘mid-tempo power bottom ballad’, which makes no sense given that the power bottoms I know are still blasting Club Future Nostalgia. It’s a nice twist, even though it’s a bit obvious what’s going to happen: the ballad is the better performance by far, a nice break from the ‘give me the crown slay puss down’ rap verses we’re used to by this point.

We also got to know everyone in the ballad group ‘Pick ‘N’ Mix’ a lot better, which, like the name suggests, was the ragtag group of the more peripheral queens at this point in the season: River, Vanity, Choriza and Ella. Meanwhile, Scarlett has a crisis of confidence, crashing hard after last week’s win, and despite having a song called ‘BDE’, UK legends Shygirl and Slowthai aren’t guests. Instead, we get Steps on the steps, and Emma ‘Baby Spice’ Bunton on the judging panel, with a Spice Girls runway theme to match — justice for Victoria, who NONE of the queens paid homage to. Pay respect to the queen of 73 Questions!

Big Drag Energy Is Self-Love, And That’s A Slay. Can I Get A Gay-men?

No mini-challenge this week, though we do get Scarlett telling River she doesn’t sense a sense of drive or passion from her yet, questioning how much she wants to be there. The later convo around River’s mother dying of COVID five months before filming clears that up: if she’s a little distant at times, it’s probably from the overwhelming mix of emotions she must be feeling.

My housemate laughed at River’s line in her verse about her mother being in heaven, if only because it was so awkward to shove in there — it is a weird thing to include in a pop song and it definitely won’t be a verse I memorise and sing-yell any time soon. But it was also such a raw, sincere expression of loss, awkward in the way grief always is. River is growing on me week to week.

In lieu of a mini-challenge, we also get a brief moment where Ella lets the world know she’s a top: I’m interested, especially post Spice Girls runway.

The group leaders are last week’s winner, Scarlett, and the lip-sync survivor, Vanity. In this order, Scarlett picks Kitty, Charity and Krystal AKA the Slice Girls; Vanity goes with Ella, River and Choriza AKA Pick ‘N’ Mix. Scarlett also gets to assign the tracks, and falls for the semi-trap by picking the pop version.

Steps helps out with recording and choreography — it’s the standard fare of some queens struggling, some succeeding blah blah blah. While recording, Choriza has chaotic energy that makes for a fun, bi-lingual verse; Scarlett goes for a full-on cockney rap verse; Ella struggles to hit the notes she assigns herself; Kitty proves she has the girl-group thing down.

And when it comes to choreography, Pick ‘N’ Mix didn’t realise they were choreographing the dance and the Steps team were just ‘assisting’, as they arrive to rehearsal unprepared. To me, this pretty much proves the show filmed UK3 in a super-tight schedule (a rumoured ep per day, rather than 2-3 days per ep), given they weren’t across what they actually needed to do: the show keeps in their confusion to portray them in trouble, but all it does is show that the queens once again didn’t have much time.

They get it together though, because Pick ‘N’ Mix is a talented group: like I said, it was nice to see them take centre-stage as the season’s been dominated by the likes of Krystal, Veronica, Victoria and Charity so far. This is a great cast.

Eight Become Eight

First up is Slice Girls, who do a perfectly good job. Krystal’s verse gets read by the judges for being generic (fair); Kitty kills it (UK3 winner???); Charity is critiqued for not dressing in the same colour as everyone else (dumb) but her actual performance is fun, and then there’s Scarlett (ooft). It hurt to watch — she fumbles her lip-sync and lets it show. Her confidence is completely shaken from that point, and she looks downright miserable on the runway. I really, really felt for her.

Pick ‘N’ Mix are excellent — the choreography is genuinely funny, their verses all offer a nice range, and the track works much better as a ballad. Vanity nails the ‘ ’90s rap verse’ vibe, and Ella is clearly a West End girl as she comes alive in a way we haven’t seen yet.

If there was a top dog of the week, I’d say it was a toss-up between Ella or Kitty. Instead, the whole of Pick gets a badge. It’s a nice levelling field/doesn’t feel underserved, but it also means of the remaining cast, it’s only Charity and Kitty who don’t have a win, which feels… incorrect. I do also have to call a moratorium on Drag Race girls making a moan noise in songs to censor a dirty word. By my count, at least three of the verses did it! Too many.

Of the Spice Girls runway, I’ve got to give it to Krystal’s Baby Spice look. Utter perfection, as was, to me, Charity’s scary-inspired cat look, though the judges didn’t get how it related to the theme. It’s a pretty limiting critique, to limit interpretations to the literal. Whatever: of the week’s looks, that’ll be the one we remember.

The rest were fine. Vanity paid tribute to both Scary and Gothy Kendoll; Kitty’s Baby look was technically on-point but not terribly exciting; Scarlett’s was cute, but she could barely hide her heartbreak over her performance, and, despite winning me over this episode, River’s Ginger look does not work for me at all. And I almost forgot to include Choriza’s, so take that for what you will.

I love the artist tribute runways, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed no-one paid tribute to my personal favourite Spice Girls moment, which was when Mel B told Eric Andre that Margaret Thatcher embodied girl power.

It’s clear that Scarlett’s in the bottom, and while I think they could’ve chucked Krystal in there just for a bit of fun, she lip-syncs against Charity because she wore a blue outfit when everyone else in her group wore silver. Charity’s drag isn’t connecting with the judges, and while I think she’s excelled so far, it seems like she’s only got a little time left on the show. But this week isn’t it: it’s a (somewhat undeserved) double-shantay for the Spice Girls lip-sync.

Both queens do a good job, but it lacks that ‘wow’ factor of most double saves — it feels more like they had to give one after Victoria’s premature exit, and this week worked, as it would be a bit too sad to kick Scarlett while she’s down.

Next week’s a branding/advertising challenge, where the queens try to sell and embody a drag version of Alexa. As Manila Luzon would say, ‘Okay, werk’.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race UK S3 is available on Stan, with episodes arriving each Friday 6am AEST.

Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper, and a freelance critic who has written for The Guardian, The Monthly, NME and more. He’s on Twitter @jrdjms