Okay, so Snatch Game wasn’t a pleasant experience. On that, the fandom seems aligned, although the conclusions being drawn from that outcome range wildly. Some considered the episode a blip on what has otherwise been a strong Season 17 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, while others soured on the cast because of their failure to perform in a signature challenge. For me, at least, my disappointment was almost exclusively reserved for the judging; the queens may not have delivered, but it’s hard for them to do so when the judges don’t even offer comprehensible challenge criteria.
But that’s in the past now! We’ve moved on to another iconic Drag Race task: the Rusical. This season, we’re taking inspiration from the various adaptations of Dorothy Gale’s journey to Oz: Wicked, The Wiz and the OG, The Wizard of Oz. The timing is ideal, with the Wicked film adaptation still very much in the pop cultural zeitgeist as the Oscars loom next weekend. (Contrast this to how Global All Stars’ ill-advised Barbie parody challenge, “Boobie,” came long after that movie had fallen off our collective radar.) But this Rusical adds an extra wrinkle, as it’s also a parody of A Chorus Line. I would say it makes more sense in context, but it’s really a vibes-based Rusical more than anything else. If you’re on its wavelength, you’ll love it! If not, I’m not sure it’ll make much sense.
Perhaps feeling the extra pressure to deliver after collectively bombing Snatch Game, the queens fight hard for the roles they want this week. Suzie Toot, Acacia Forgot and Sam Star all want the big ballad, the “What I Did For Love”-style 11 o’clock number, which means they all want the role of Kansas Dorothy. Sam is pretty quickly dissuaded by Lexi Love, who brings up the judges’ previous critiques that she needs to loosen up and stop doing what they already expect. Sam wisely pivots to picking the Wicked Witch of the East instead, a Cher-inspired part that is totally different from her usual, buttoned-up pageant persona.
That leaves Suzie and Acacia fighting it out for Kansas Dorothy, and you can tell Suzie’s lost the support of the room here. Lexi, who’s doing quite a job wrangling these queens into different parts, brings up that Suzie got what she wanted in RDR Live—time to let Acacia have a turn. Acacia, meanwhile, reveals a bit of a mean girl streak in the confessional as she explains why Suzie should take the “Green Witch” part (Elphaba in all but name). “Suzie’s like a fucking 98-year-old, washed-up theatre nerd,” she says, so the very Broadway sound of the Green Witch’s song is right for her. Suzie hates it, but she’s outvoted, and she relents on being Kansas Dorothy.
Most of the other assignments are easy: Lydia B Kollins gets one of the Flying Monkeys, Lexi gets the Lioness part she really wants, Onya Nurve gets Harlem Dorothy, Arrietty gets the Scarecrow and Lana Ja’Rae gets the Tin Woman. That leaves just one Flying Monkey and another coveted part: the Good Witch, aka Glinda. Her number is inspired by “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” from A Chorus Line, and is all about showing off the singer’s breasts and booty. Kori King’s point is that she’s known for her body, so the song makes sense for her. Jewels Sparkles, however, says she’s a better fit for the comedy stylings of the song, and she refuses to give in. After some (pretty intense!) back-and-forth, Suzie tries calling for a vote to get Kori the part. She’s the only one who votes that way, though, so Jewels wins out, and Kori is relegated to being a Flying Monkey with her boyfriend.
Let’s pause for a moment and talk about some logistics. Somehow, we are still at the Top 10, owing to three of the first seven episodes being non-elimination. However, the way this Rusical is written, you basically need 10 queens to be left in the competition. (The only number I’d say is remotely cuttable is the Flying Monkeys’, and you’d have to cut both parts—it wouldn’t work with just one Monkey.) I don’t think we’re ever going to get a resolution to the question of whether the Badonkadunk Tank was rigged, and I’m not even sure it’s worth our time or energy. But it’s worth noting that there are a lot of contradictory bits of information at this point:
- Hormona Lisa was saved from what would’ve been an embarrassing first elimination for Ru’s chosen queen.
- Arrietty, meanwhile, seemed like a somewhat random save, especially after the worst lip sync loss of the season.
- The levers turned out to be 1 and 7, for Season 17.
- Las Vegas, the sponsor of the twist, stopped giving out free trips after Arrietty’s correct pull, which gives credence to the idea that they only had a limited number to offer.
- Snatch Game was overstuffed with too many queens.
- This Rusical likely needed exactly this number of queens to work.
Draw your own conclusions, but from my perspective, at least, it seems like the show might’ve lucked out in terms of how things went down.
Anyway, tin foil hat off, and time to put the dancing shoes on! The Rusical features vocal coaching from Michelle Visage and choreography by Jamal Sims, but neither of these segments is that notable. Sam reveals she was first exposed to Cher in Burlesque, which Michelle does not bite her head off for but instead notes that it might be an advantage, since she’s so Cher in that movie. Meanwhile, Onya has some trouble picking up Jamal’s steps, a development that has no impact on Onya’s actual performance but Jamal fixates on during critiques. More on that later.
The actual Rusical is pretty good! The Chorus Line setup gives basically every queen a chance to shine—or, in “Defying Gravity” terms, a chance to fly—with a solo. Only the Flying Monkeys share an entire song, but they get a fun interplay dynamic that makes theirs unique. If I had a quibble, it’s that the whole thing feels like a few too many ingredients. A good example is Sam’s character: she plays the Wicked Witch of the East, but to make it a The Witches of Eastwick reference, she’s actually playing Cher. Again, this is in a Chorus Line parody that features elements of three separate Oz adaptations. It’s a lot!
Luckily, Sam is more than ready to thread the needle that is her role. Her number is a showstopper, as she nails the Cher inspiration, the dancing and the vocal. A lot of the queens do well, but Sam’s on another level. The judges credit her for picking a role that you wouldn’t necessarily predict her to—hat tip to Lexi there—and she manages to pull off a pivot in her style that still feels very Sam. Combined with a gorgeous take on the parasol runway prompt, and this is Sam’s best week yet. She takes her second maxi-challenge win, putting her at the top of the pack alongside Suzie and Onya.
Both of them also finish in the top this week, along with Jewels. If I were ranking them in my mind, Onya and Jewels would be close second- and third-placers, while I’d have Suzie quite a bit lower. I actually think Suzie was in the right to try and fight for Kansas Dorothy—especially when we see what Acacia does with the part—because the Green Witch’s song is just too expected from her. She’s good in the number, no doubt, but as we see with Sam’s victory, it’s important to be both good and surprising. I can’t blame her for this too much, since she does try to do something different, but at the end of the day, if Suzie wants that third win (and oh boy, does she), she’ll need to find a way to throw a curveball at the judges.
Jewels’ own curveball pays off this week, as she gets major praise for her number. I give her kudos for realizing she needed to fight for the Good Witch part, because it showed a side of her that we haven’t seen so far. Jewels is a savvy one! She may not have a challenge win yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time. Meanwhile, were it not for Sam, I think Onya might’ve scored her third win this week. She is terrific as Harlem Dorothy, delivering a Broadway-ready performance. As mentioned before, Jamal strangely fixates on Onya’s trouble in rehearsal even when admitting that she nails it in the performance itself. The challenge is the Rusical, not the rehearsal for the Rusical, so I’m not sure why it really matters. But he brings it up both in critiques and deliberations, and while the call-out order for the top four is somewhat confusing, it does seem like Suzie edges Onya out for that second-place spot as a result.
Owing to the high average performance quality this week, there’s only a bottom two, and of those, I would say only one is actually bad in the Rusical. That’s Acacia, who, much like Bosco once upon a time, fought hard for a role she couldn’t actually perform. Credit to the sound team and the inventors of auto-tune for turning a flat vocal in the recording booth into a fairly lovely one on stage, but even a nice tone can’t save what is an absolute snooze of a performance. The judges tell her that she failed to match the campy vibe of the musical, but I’ll take it one step further and say she didn’t deliver much of anything at all. Her performance was just her lip-syncing to her own vocal, walking around the stage.
In both this performance and her talent show, Acacia fell into the same trap: she gave an earnest musical performance in a competition that calls for anything but. If Acacia wants to be a serious musician and singer—and judging by her multiple plugs for her music at the end of the episode, she does—that’s great! But that’s not Drag Race. We’ve seen time and again queens be punished for playing musical performances too straight: Adore Delano on All Stars 2, Silky Nutmeg Ganache on All Stars 6 and so on. Acacia forgot the lesson she should’ve learned after the talent show, and thus lands in the bottom this week.
To be honest, even her fellow bottom two queen Kori is leagues ahead of her this week. She just suffers from a limited role and being outshined by Lydia, but she’s not bad.The judges have to hem and haw about “missed opportunities” for Kori’s bottom two placement to really make sense. This is the rare week where a bottom one would’ve been sufficient.
Before we get to the lip sync, Acacia opens up about the day of filming being the anniversary of when she last saw her grandmother. This explains, to an extent, her more reserved nature in this episode, as she’s clearly still affected by her grandmother’s death. I’m impressed that despite that, Acacia puts up as much of a fight as she does in the Lip Sync for Your Life. But Kori’s performance style simply fits the song better, and she does much better on this song than she did on “Buttons” a few weeks ago. This sadly marks the end of Acacia’s journey, giving us one more week with Kori at least.
It may be just one more week, though, as another design challenge is coming down the pike. She was in the bottom three for the first one, although she was surprisingly good with unconventional materials in the Ball. Other queens potentially in danger include Suzie, Lana and potentially Lexi—especially if someone spray-paints her outfit again! Speaking of which, do you think everyone will keep their garments and materials as far away from Onya as possible next week? We’ll find out then!