The team challenges usually bring out everyone’s inner bitchy on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Well, their outer bitchy side. Okay, okay. Everyone is a bitch nonstop when they have to work in close proximity with one another. The last two challenges had shade being thrown and nails drawn, and this week is no different when the queens have to parody one of Ru’s songs.
There is no mini challenge this week. Perhaps the tampon references were running a little thing this week, and they decided to devote more time to the main challenge? Ru announces that they will have to write new lyrics and choreograph an entire dance routine for a music video. Oh, and they have to split themselves into groups. Let the wig pulling and schoolyard antics commence! May the odds be ever in your favor! The teams are as follows: Katya, Trixie, Pearl, and Miss Fame will spoof “Dance with U.” Kasha, Kandy, Ginger and Kennedy take on “Let the Music Play” while Max, Violet and Jaidynn have to form a group on their own when no one else picks them. It’s sort of becoming No One Wants to Race with Violet every week.
It appears that Miss Fame just wants to become a chef, because she is constantly stirring shit with whoever will goes up against her. Pearl struggles in the recording studio, and Fame can’t seem to keep her mouth shut. I assume she feels lucky that she has made it this far, and now she has become a bit cocky. Violet talks back to guest judge (and RuPaul’s music producer) Lucian Piane, and Ginger delivers my favorite line of the season thus far when describing Kasha’s singing style: “It’s like Ethel Merman and Paul Lynde had a lovechild and came out of Kasha’s mouth.” I would watch the hell out of that show! Kasha should take that as a compliment.
During the video recordings, Max struggles to channel her inner Courtney Act in their season 6 inspired video, and Ginger’s team gets stopped halfway through their recording when their new lyrics insult RuPaul’s transformation show, Drag U. They refer to it as a rough spot, and RuPaul forces them to stop their dancing to she can hear exactly what they said about her favorite job. You can hear the tires squealing and the record skipping. It’s one of the most uncomfortable moments in Drag Race herstory.
The videos themselves are rather hilarious in their own ways. “Tan with You” has the girls prancing around on a beach and rolling around in the sand. There is a startling moment in the beginning when Miss Fame answers her phone on her knees in front a Pit Crew member. That’s…uh…weird, and that’s coming from someone who demands more fellatio in his music videos. If you ask me, Katya ran away with this video, and reminded me of Jack Plotnick fused with Tan Mom. She grinds on the Pit Crew and gets smacked in the head with a beach ball. I could watch that for days. Pearl’s character seems completely unprepared and lazy in the video.
The runway should have been called Not Easy Being Green since all the queens had to strut down the runway in their best Kermit-colored outfits. You could hear Michelle’s heart stopping at the announcement of the runway theme. It was the strongest runway of the season. Pearl looked like a sleepy snake, Katya had big hair, and Kennedy looked like she belonged in the touring cast of Wicked. Jaidynn, Kennedy, and Katya were singled out as being the strongest members of their groups, and Kennedy was declared the winner. It should’ve been Katya for that beach ball gimmick. Seriously.
Pearl was called out for playing Sleepy (“Are you a stoner,” Michelle asks at one point) and Trixie Mattel was accused of identifying as camp but never setting up her tent to succeed. They land in the bottom two, and they perform it very differently. Pearl is really intense, and Trixie hams it up and is really energetic. In the biggest shocker of the season thus far, Ru decides to keep Pearl and put Trixie Mattel back in her box. It’s almost a BenDeLaCreme level shock. Almost. Pearl isn’t going to last much longer, so this elimination is going to seem like a joke in the next few weeks.
But the burning question on everyone’s minds is this: why the living hell was Jessica Alba there hocking her products? Apparently, there are a lot of mysteries this week on RuPaul’s Drag Race.