From the top of my head, I can name most of the turning points in RuPaul’s Drag Race herstory that has made me truly, genuinely gasp out of sheer shock. Yara Sofía gives up on her final lip sync. Willam’s disqualification. Roxxxy Andrews’ wig is revealed. Sasha Velor’s Rose Petal Cascade. BenDeLaCreme removing herself. There were many more events in the many seasons of this show that left me cheering like crazy (Dida Ritz’s “This Will Be”) or reeling from the drama (Valentina doesn’t know the words!), But the moments that caught me completely off guard. and left me wondering what could happen? Those are a rarity.
So I’m amazed that this episode not only took my breath away, it made me gasp over and over again. I had a feeling that the lip sync Assassin twist wasn’t the only gag we’d get this season, particularly since there seems to be no queens challenge on the horizon. No, Ru throws the All Stars 5 You reign a great curved ball this week as it announces that as of this episode, no one but the winner of the challenge is safe from elimination. None. Combined with the quest to eliminate the queens, and it really seems like anyone could go at any time.
But this episode didn’t stop with the gags there. India Ferrah, at the bottom for the fourth week in a row, hear this twist and careers with him, immediately throwing Alexis Mateo under the bus to challenge the winner Shea Coulée. She says it was Alexis and Mayhem Miller who teamed up to try to get her to vote for Shea two episodes ago. And since Mayhem left, that’s one more reason for Shea to take out Alexis. The result is an absolute frenzy of broken alliances, spectator queens trying to piece together the puzzle pieces of the drama, and a clamor for decision that almost sent a strong queen home.
If this episode only had its exciting deliberations, it would still be a higher level Endurance race episode. Add a great Snatch Game edition, a gorgeous looking catwalk and a panel of judges who have fun throughout the episode, and you get what is the best episode by far All Stars 5 and one of the best episodes of All the stars usually.
Following on All Stars 4Following the steps, Snatch Game is once again Snatch Game of Love this season, a riff on The dating game That asks queens not only to pose as celebrities, but to fight for the heart of a lucky single judge. The show brings in actor Tommy Dorfman and Canada Endurance Race Judge Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman as singles, and each is a game for shenanigans.
Tommy’s potential suitors are Miz Cracker as Lady Gaga (specifically the A star has been born Gaga, from the Oscar campaign), Alexis as astrologer Walter Mercado (who sadly passed away since this season was filmed) and India as Jeffree Star (tragically bad at some point). This segment is a roll of steam from Alexis, which dominates the performance when landing blow after blow.
Alexis did well in her original Snatch game as a rather cheeky Alicia Keys, she was pregnant, and she was constantly flirting with guest judge Amber Rose, but this time she takes a much more methodical approach. She has prepared phrases for any questions Ru and Tommy may throw at her, all playing with Walter’s personality. Alexis also replicates her iconic look quite well. Cracker has some good Lady Gaga jokes prepared, but both she and India can’t bring much laughter. (Jeffree Star from India is not a disaster, but a disaster would be more memorable than what India gathers). Alexis is an easy option for Tommy at the end of the segment.
The second round with Jeffrey is much more competitive. Jujubee is hilarious like Eartha Kitt, getting her gestures and speech patterns better than Chi Chi DeVayne or Valentina did in their own riffs on the character. (The way she gives her answer to how she would keep Jeffrey warm in the winter: “I’d walk sensually toward the thermostat and turn the thermostat up to a sensitive 74 degrees,” is brilliant.) She keeps up with Shea Coulée,. Shea acknowledges that while he is a straight man, cis, Flav it is drag, and both his larger-than-life personality and his dating reality show background fit this format perfectly.
Blair St. Clair does a good enough impersonation of Ellen DeGeneres, but she lags far behind her segment mates. It just isn’t a print fun enough to keep up. It would probably be nice if there was a natural background two, but of course that’s not the case for this episode.
After a graduation runway with fun and varied results, more than the final thoughts section, Ru drops the format-change bomb on the queens. Only Shea will be safe, and everyone else is eligible to be voted. I have to imagine this will throw away the often obsessed fan base with records: how can you deduct report cards when everyone is at the bottom but the winner? Who will get the designations “high” and “low” on Wikipedia? This development is a real game changer, both in the way the program will proceed from here and in the way the queens run. All the stars They are evaluated. It is highly possible that the winner is in the “bottom” multiple times based solely on this rule change.
However, all that is a problem for the future. For now, I just want to live in every second of this segment of deliberation. Alexis is furious that she could go home after receiving nothing but good reviews. Shea admits that there has been a “lingering thing” on her mind after Alexis rejected it, but Alexis insists that her vote was not personal. Initially, Shea says that she is not going to do one-on-one meetings with the girls, but India requests one anyway. India then drops her bomb and tells Shea that Alexis and Mayhem approached her two weeks ago and asked her to vote for her.
Shea brings this to the group, and hell breaks loose. “India is the queen of stunts!” Alexis says in her confessional. She flatly denies India’s claim and asks the other queens if she campaigned for any of them. They all say no. Alexis runs off and Juju follows him to try to have tea. Alexis swears Juju up and down that it is not true. He also does some quick electoral calculations with Shea, noting that just three votes would not be enough to eliminate her. If Alexis wanted to campaign to get Shea out, she would need everyone. “Politics,” he says in summary. And in fact, we are dealing with some real political animals now.
It’s all pretty messy, and it’s not very clear getting into the lip sync that Shea plans to send home, the group vote is even more messy. We could all use a laugh to ease the tension, and luckily Vanessa Vanjie Mateo is here to cheer us all on.
Vanjie is a somewhat unusual choice for a lip sync killer, considering that she won and lost the same amount of lip syncs on her. Endurance race career (two wins, two losses). But you don’t necessarily bring Vanjie for his lip sync prowess. You bring her because she is hilarious. She jokes around, even regretting that she doesn’t get the $ 10,000 tip if she wins, and she also has a lovely hug with her drag mother Alexis, who seems to need the comfort of her drag family in such a scary situation.
Shea easily wins lip sync with Madonna’s “Open Your Heart”, earning another $ 10K to add to her pot during the season ($ 30K so far!). While revealing the possible plot to take her to the judges, he eventually chooses to eliminate the queen on his fourth consecutive trip to the bottom and send India home. I’m a little saddened to lose someone who is clearly so committed to playing the game the way India is, turns like these need people to work, but there’s no question that she deserved to go to her performances alone.
Then we have our top five! Shea clearly leads the pack with his two wins, but Juju and Cracker are not far behind him. Can Alexis and Blair pull off a victory next week and get into the game? Or do we already have an idea of our finalists? For now, let’s enjoy the chaotic glory of this episode. It is an incredible journey, and I am not ready to go down.
URu focuses on Blair this week in different ways. First, he is likely to be tougher on Blair on his run as he considers Ellen DeGeneres insufficient. “It was an interesting character study! But it didn’t make me laugh. “He then notes that he and her husband regularly reference one of Blair’s moments on the track from Season 10, when Blair made a shaky move on the track. It’s interesting to see him focus on her this week after she has been so smooth so far this season.
💄The joke about Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and Ru’s sexual chemistry All Stars 3“The Bitchelor” returns. Its alot!
Todas Of all the graduation tracks, which are pretty cool across the board, Shea’s is the standout highlight. She refers to Carrie and Sasha Velor’s rose petals revealed. “I just wanted to build on a moment when I thought I was going to be the queen of the prom,” Shea explains. “And it didn’t turn out that way for me.” She shares that fans would make rose petal revelations in front of her in encounters and greetings, and it felt like a joke. Ross Mathews has a delightful moment to cheer her up, telling Shea that he will never consider her a joke, and that she regards him and the judges as people who want to cheer her on. It is a genuine and emotional moment, inspired by an excellent track.
Eres “You’re a liar, and that’s why Derrick doesn’t like you.” Alexis is hilarious, even when she’s furious.
💄If you have not had the opportunity yet, I recommend you visit Canada Endurance Race, available at Crave in Canada and WOW Presents Plus in the US The premiere is very cool and fun. (And once you’ve read, be sure to check out our summary!)
UJUJUBEE: “Hey, you didn’t choose me.”
JEFFREY “What was I thinking?”
JUJUBE “You were not there”.
