Last week’s round of MTV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race saw our queens compete in the “Villains Roast,” serving comedy and fashion looks on the runway.
RuPaul’s Drag Race gets messy this week – leave it to the roast episode to deliver on the drama, especially when hosting and telling jokes have so many of these queens absolutely terrified. As for the actual comedy roast portion of the week, the queens had to roast Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Kandy Muse, and Plane Jane in the RuPaul’s Drag Race Villains Roast. Since Jewels won last week’s challenge, she got to assign the order and mama, never have I seen more roast drama since Laganja’s season 6 post-roast explosion in Untucked.
The tops of the week were alright, nobody really hit it out of the park, but there just isn’t a Bianca Del Rio this season where it was obvious who does this two shows a night and is good at it. Regardless, Sam Star was cheeky in her southern belle way, Lana Ja’Rae surprised everyone and was actually amusing, and Lydia Butthole Kollins ended up winning the week.
The queens who did not fare so well are Lexi Love, Arrietty, and Jewels Sparkles. There’s something to be said for the feud between Arrietty and Jewels getting in the way of at least safe performances from one or both of them, but it would appear that Arrietty sunk them both with her constant accusations of Jewels sabotaging her with the order and not believing in her comedy potential (after she herself said she’s going to do bad and this is not her thing).
Onya Nerve and Suzie Toot are the only two safe queens and I live for the “Toot and Nerve Power Hour” in Untucked this week. Shout out to Suzie’s runway – she delivered King Henry VIII Renaissance realness with the little short pantaloons that have “Fruity” embroidered on the ass, serving 1500s Juicy Couture realness. That look wins the week for me, and I will be thinking about it on a weekly basis from here on out.
As far as looks go, the runway category was “who wears short shorts,” and Sam’s “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce all in one” football drag look was excellent, as was Onya’s “Daisy Dukes worn as a super wedgie bodysuit” look. The only interpretation of the “short shorts” runway I felt was missing is something with a full bush and/or hairy legs. The runways were great, but nobody really took it in a campy comedy way – give the queens a budget, and they all just want to go to the red carpet designers and have some gown or something gorgeous made (except for Lana this week, whose Naomi Campbell homage was called out by Michelle Visage for basically wearing Shien and a throw blanket on the runway). Lydia’s was closest to it, but her look did not match the theme, and it was physically sickening, but not so much in a fashionable way.
It feels like, for the most part, the queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race lately (and really, this problem extends to a lot of other shows – looking at you, SNL) are too afraid to be stupid and just plain dumb, mostly because of the internet and legacy. You have a global platform and want to present your best, back in the 1970s or 80s or even 2006, nobody really overthought it, they just said “oh yeah, this makes me laugh, why not” and sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes it required an apology tour.
The larger point is, be on the internet less and actually have an opinion that’s not focus-grouped for maximum monetization and content clickbait – just do shit because it makes you giggle, not because the network thinks it will do numbers on TikTok. Please bring back Ornacia or toaster bath talent shows or Lily Tomlin dressed as a bee singing a bee-bop in B flat. This is where comedy truly shines, not so much under the glossy veneer of perfectly calculated scripts and over-produced trappings.
Lydia won the week, naturally the judges love them some butthole, but something smells rigged, because Arrietty is lip syncing against Jewels this week, and I’m a little annoyed. She wasn’t that bad, but after the whole storyline with sabotage allegations and joke stealing, of course, the producers had to make sure if this was an option that we got that lip sync battle.
I’m so glad Jewels won and sent Arrietty home for real this time, she was angling for a villain edit of her own and just got plain mean in the last few episodes. Good riddance to an ugly queen, inside and out. It will be hard for anyone to be as malicious as she was, unless someone takes a hard villain edit late in the game. Bye, Felicia, should’ve stayed gone the first time.
I’m finding myself getting to Hormona Lisa levels of annoyance with watching Lexi Love week after week. We don’t care about your inner saboteur, I can set my watch to her breakdowns in the werk room, and her looks aren’t that good – guest judge TS Madison even called her out for doing the same “dragging something behind me on the runway” look as the last time she was a guest judge, and RuPaul was like, oh she does that every week. The edit even cut away to her doing THE SAME LOOK multiple times, and I live for that level of shade.
Emmy for the editors (and none for Gretchen Wieners). All in all, Lexi’s time felt like it should have been up a few weeks ago, and each time she gets in her head and beefs the challenge, the judges pity her because she is all “my inner saboteur” and spins some sob story. She has big pick-me-girl energy, and it feels completely fake by this point, along with a lot of her personality – it’s like she engineered a version of herself specifically for Drag Race, and it’s faker than her 8-inch rainbow cat claw nails.
Next week is a scripted acting challenge, where the queens are tasked with starring in a “high camp tale of betrayal” called “Ross Mathews vs The Ducks.”