Last night… on RuPaul’s Drag Race: Beyonce. Honey Boo Boo. The late Maya Angelou. No, we’re not talking about Oprah’s cardio mix: we’re talking about Drag Race’s beloved celebrity impersonation challenge, Snatch Game!
The anticipated challenge got the foreplay it deserved when it was paired with that other Drag Race classic for the mini challenge, The Reading Challenge. Snippets from the shade-throwing summit included such bon mots as Miz Cracker quipping of Aquaria, “People don’t appreciate how much money you have to spend on makeup when you are covering two faces.”
Eureka, who concluded with a self-deprecating, “I can’t wait to hear your reads about me being fat,” was proclaimed the challenge winner, triggering an eye-roll from The Vixen.
After the queens, guided by special guest Bianca Del Rio, had made their Snatch Game selects, the final lineup was:
– Monique Heart as Maxine Waters
– Kameron Michaels as Chyna (as in the late wrestler )
– Miz Cracker as Dorothy Parker
– Asia O’Hara as Beyonce
– Monet x Change as Maya Angelou
– Aquaria as Melania Trump
– The Vixen as Blue Ivy Carter
– Eureka as Honey Boo Boo
Asia and The Vixen had established a sort-of impromptu alliance, agreeing to banter as Beyonce and Blue in advance. The results: Beyonce coming for Blue like she was about to haul her off to the shed from Room. The awkward results were best summarized by Monet: “I didn’t know Beyonce was that kind of mother. Somebody gotta call CPS for her girl cuz that is not cute!”
Seated behind a Michelle Obama placard, Aquaria triggered the giggles as Melania Trump from the moment she presented Ru with a powder blue box containing a hand-scrawled note that read, “HELP ME!”
Category in the runway challenge was Bette Midler-inspired mermaids, chauffeured on wheelchairs by the Pit Crew. Already a darling for her Melania, Aquaria served a second helping of fish as a post-BP-oil-spill mermaid, dripping in black, complete with shreds of latex hanging from her bodice. She was the challenge winner.
Condrags FLOTUS! @aquariaofficial #DragRace pic.twitter.com/nNEqR4gZIN
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) May 4, 2018
The two fish under consideration to be tossed back into the ocean were The Vixen, who’d created a bratty Blue Ivy, and Monique Heart, who had let down three-time Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit cover girl Kate Upton by not doing justice to U.S. representative for California Maxine “reclaiming my time” Waters.
In a Lipsync For Your Life to Carly Rae Jepsen’s 14th best song of all time, “Cut To The Feeling,” The Vixen cracked out some moves that we cannot name but know are actual real things, because we have seen them in figure skating. Not to mention whatever this was:
In the face of such dazzling lipsync-ronicity, Ru gently bid Monique Heart adieu. But there were other bottoms, and tops!, that caught our eyes this week. But enough about us — there were also these highlights from the show:
Most Likely To Be Working On Her Arya Stark-style Vengeance Scroll: The Vixen
In that classic reality TV show ice-breaker, “Who deserves to go home tonight?”, four out of six queens chose The Vixen. The Vixen visibly recoiled every time like she was Melissa McCarthy getting zinged by Sandra Bullock. But, in those queens’ defence, they made that call before they saw her Carly Rae Jepsen lipsync, and after all of The Vixen’s psychological torture. So it was a very specific window.
Most Likely To Be Calling His Agent In The Form Of A Question: Alex Trebek
After RuPaul’s appearance on Jeopardy last month, Alex Trebek returned the favour, posing a question in the Snatch Game, quoting the immortal Latrice Royale’s “funky yet chunky” during the judging, and even offering up an “Amen” at the close of the show. Next time Trebek needs to show up in person and check out the queens’ true daily doubles.
OMG Alex Trebek is a @LatriceRoyale fan too?!! #DragRace pic.twitter.com/xccYgdgxJG
— RuPaul’s Drag Race (@RuPaulsDragRace) May 4, 2018
Best Wit From A Person Who Admits They Can Barely Speak: Aquaria
Half the time on this show, Aquaria looks like she’s trying to get off-book in a play instead of, you know, speaking words that become sentences expressing her thoughts, also known as human communication. “I don’t get my words right, I don’t form sentences very well, so I’m trying to play that up with Melania,” he told Ru. And yet, when it came time to banter, she beat out such great wits of our time as Miz Cracker. As Asia O’Hara’s Beyonce scribbled her answer, Aquaria noted, “This is the first time Beyonce’s ever written for herself.”
Most Likely To Sit At Whitney Houston’s Right Hand in Heaven: RuPaul
Not that Asia’s proposed impersonation of Whitney Houston, one liberally sprinkled with “powdered sugar,” was the most original idea, but it was still a shock to have Ru swoop in and cancel it, thus giving birth to the third, and hopefully final, terrible Beyonce impersonation in Drag Race herstory.
Best Evidence That Your Face Actually Will Stick Like That: Asia O’Hara
When it came to Asia’s polarizing mermaid mask, which she described as “lion fish meets mermaid meets a cucumber,” we tend to side with the surprisingly insightful Kate Upton, who said it changed the way she thought about mermaids. It also changed the way we thought about Asia’s face. How does she still kind of look like her Buttrface App character while her face is entirely encased in plastic?
Next week, on RuPaul’s Drag Race?: Only the most famously gay gays are worthy guest judges as the queens pay tribute to the mother of all drag queens: Cher. Billy Eichner and Andrew Ranells are on deck for what Miz Cracker cryptically calls “American Horror Story: Cher Edition.”
Will Cher grace us with an appearance, even though she has probably found drag tributes exhausting since the late ’80s? Will The Vixen channel her hurt from this week into the most evil Cher of all time, aerobics video Cher? Is “Believe” ready for an ironic revival? Are we already living in an ironic “Believe” revival?
Find out on episode eight of RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 10 on Thursday at 8 PM E/P on OUTtv.
