Greetings, RuPaul’s Drag Race fans and welcome to another week with the fabulous queens of season 12 (and Sherry Pie.)
Last week, we had our first double shantay, as Ru keeps Jackie Cox and Heidi around to slay another day. As the episode opens, Jackie feels that she’s used up two of her three wishes and said she feels like she’s on “RuPaul’s Therapy Race” (or, as Heidi put it, she had a “hephiphany”…I love Heidi).
Gigi is shook and said she was kind of sad when no one was sent home. Jackie looked a little offput, which led Jaida to state that, “When you send your friend off to the airport, that doesn’t mean you love them any less.”
Heidi is in the throes of an identity crisis. In the confessional, she says, “You can call me Heidi Ho, Heidi Doody, Heidi Hutton, Heidi Heidi Heidi, Heidi Almighty and now I’m and now Heidi Aphrodite.” I am hoping she can add “Heidi Congeniality” to the list this season.
This week, the queens take part in a beloved mini-challenge and put their charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent on display as they perform their own one-woman shows. I honor of guest judge Whoopi Goldberg, the queens don fashions in the color purple on the runway. Who will make it into the top 5? Let’s find out as we look back at the top moments from this week’s episode.
Everyone Loves Puppets
Ru enters the werk room and tells the queens that it’s time for a “good old bitch fest.” And if you’re gonna bitch, you might as well do it with puppets because everyone loves puppets. Each queen reaches into a hole and pulls out a puppet representing one of their competitors. They have 20 minutes to get the puppets into quick drag and do a little back and forth with the queens’ felt covered counterparts. The results were pretty funny – and a little shady.
Crystal called her Jaida puppet out for wearing the same pair of earrings on every episode (she only gave one pair a command performance on the runway) and the puppet came back with Jaida’s new catchphrase, ‘Look over there!”
Jaida’s Gigi puppet recreated her dotty dress, talked a lot about her Mom and implied that she might actually be a robot. Sherry gave her Heidi puppet a tooth gap and had her wig fly off. Heidi queried, “Does that puppet look soft and supple?” and pointed out “the level of disrespect” in her roast. Jackie poked fun at her fellow NYC queen Sherry, who she said was “force feeding America” and chewing the scenery.
Gigi got Jackie’s genie look down for her puppet (the only puppet with five o’clock shadow), but the jokes were noticeably absent. Heidi made her Crystal puppet a hot mess and joked about her thrift store fashions. Jackie was declared the winner of the challenge. She joked that since she’s won three mini-challenges, that should equate to one main challenge win. That’s not the way this works. Sorry, girl.
One-Queen Shows
The main challenge this week has the queens creating and performing their own one woman/drag queen shows. Ru says they can play multiple characters or just be themselves – anything goes. The queens are going to be coached by EGOT winner and successful one-woman show artist Whoopi Goldberg. Since Jackie won the mini challenge, she gets to determine the show’s order.
All she wants is to go first, and the only problem is that no one wants to go last – as Jaida put it, “Nobody wants the butt slice of bread.” (It’s my favorite piece of bread, so that doesn’t apply to everyone. Just saying.) Everyone wants to be in the middle, but they were finally able to come to a compromise. Jackie’s first, followed by Crystal, Heidi, Sherry and Jaida grudgingly closing the show.
Coaching with Whoopi
One by one, the queens get to workshop their show ideas with Ru and the legendary Whoopi Goldberg, who, if you’ve never seen her 1985 one-woman show, find it and watch it immediately.
Jackie introduces her idea as “Drag Race 101: A Brief Her-story”, which is a rambling monologue lacking in jokes. Instead of laughs, she’s faced with blank stares from Whoopi and Ru. Ru says there’s a disconnect and that an audience doesn’t know who she is. Whoopi told her not to do stand-up, but to “tell a mean story”.
Heidi wants to take us to a “Family Cookout” complete with “nonsense cutting up and misbehaving” with characters based on her Grandma, as well as Cousin Slick, Li’l Boo Boo and her drunk Uncle Rob. She gives us a taste of Rob with an unconvincing pratfall. Whoopi pointed out that “no drunks move like that” and showed her how to be a drunk on stage. She was told to “let us fall in love with these characters.”
Crystal’s character is a male exotic dancer…? She really wants to make people laugh and gets Ru and Whoopi giggling when she shows how she thinks (Ru’s favorite) El Debarge would move.
Ru then asks her “Do you know how to do the swim?” and Crystal gives us the moves. When Ru follows up with “Do you know how to do the jerk?”, she does something that’s not the dance, but is absolutely hilarious.
So…umm…yes…. Sherry has a high concept act about a psychic goldfish – and that’s all we will say about that. Poor Gigi has a great idea – playing a flight attendant on the plane to hell, but the execution comes off “memorized and rote” according to Ru. Gigi attempts to go off-script and flounders. Whoopi and Ru encourage her to flex her improv muscle but Gigi seems to have lost her confidence and felt thrown off. Jaida speaks a mile a minute as she tells the story of her father meeting her boyfriend. She explains that excited is in her DNA.
Afterwards, Jackie decided to change up her act and do impressions of her parents – who are characters in their own right. She has been hurt by her Mom with things she said and isn’t fully healed, especially because she feels Mom never really accepted that he’s gay.
Gigi doesn’t know what to do with the feedback she got from Ru and Whoopi and is being super hard on herself but knows now is the time to attack her insecurity head-on. Heidi is excited about her performance but joked that the hardest part of the show is “knowing I’m going to be disowned by my family.”
The Big Pink Furry Box Theater
RuPaul hits the runway in a gorgeous violet gown and a sky-high platinum blond wig, looking absolutely stunning. She greets the judges and introduces the queens to the crowd, which includes Dahlia in her sexy broccoli outfit, to the performers.
Jackie Cox is up first with “Between Two Parents.” Using two pairs of glasses, she conveys her relationship with her scientific parents and shows lots of heart discussing how she discovered drag at Chicago Pride and how her unsupportive mother found her souvenir from the experience, a white feather boa. It was really sweet and inventive.
Crystal took to the stage as Phenomenal Phil, “exotic dance instructor to the stars” in exaggerated foam rubber muscles, a tank top, distressed jeans and she was working that mullet. She gave us a taste of her dance training DVD, “Phil Me Up,” by teaching us the “litter box” and the “Brazilian banana inspector.” She was bizarre and so funny.
Heidi really tried to give us the family cookout experience in “Cook Out with Your Cheeks Out” but had a hard time trying to bring so many characters into the fray. Gigi’s show, “Welcome Aboard Brimstone Airways” was better than I thought it was going to be. She looked amazing in her flight attendant outfit and did some solid crowd work. It just still seemed too scripted and she lost focus a few times, but overall, I liked it.
Sherry is funny, I will begrudgingly admit, but her “Bubbles and Sherry” show went on way past the 5-minute time limit, clocking in at almost 20 minutes, much to the chagrin of Jaida. Speaking of Jaida, her show, “The P in Pageant” was basically a tale of how she accidentally gave her boyfriend a golden shower while she was judging a pageant. The crowd wasn’t having it, but she looked so pretty.
The Color Purple
In honor of Whoopi’s classic movie, the runway fashions were all purple this week, and the queens brought it. Jackie gave us her tribute to the novelty song “one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater” in a pop art confection, complete with a huge mouth with a tongue that pulls out. It was conceptual and magic.
Speaking of magic, Crystal came out in a look inspired by Nick Cave’s soundsuits (yes, I had to Google this, and it’s pretty interesting.) She was kind of a patchwork purple cow kind of creature with her signature makeup, which completely works in this context and again, I love it.
Heidi looked stunning in a plum-hued lacy gown with a mermaid skirt and an open back., showing off that “soft and supple” skin. Her makeup is on-point and her hair is lovely. Gigi is giving us Daphne from Scooby Doo realness loosely inspired make it fashion purple velvet mini dress with chiffon sleeves and big green buttons, matching tights and beautiful red locks. Sherry is a flapper cat.
Jaida, as always, delivers the glam in a purple gown that is short up front (to show off her long legs) and long in the back with a slit cut up to there, matching over the knee boots and a large disc of a hat. Michelle quipped that she “puts the ‘p’ in purple.”
Tonight We’re Gonna Lip Sync Like It’s 1999
The judges had a tough decision this week but made their decision – and Crystal gets her first win! Sherry, Gigi and Jackie are safe, leaving Heidi (for the fourth time) and Jaida in the bottom two.
When the runway theme is purple, lip-syncing to a Prince song seems like a given, and the duo delivered with a fantastic lip-sync to the legend’s hit song, “1999.” Jaida whips off her long wig to reveal a short, Prince-esque ‘do underneath and struts across the runway like a boss.
Heidi is also giving it her all and I don’t envy Ru for having to choose a winner for this lip sync. In the end, our beautiful soft and supple flower from Ramseur, North Carolina, Heidi N Closet, Heidi Ho, Heidi Doody, Heidi Aphrodite, or just Heidi, must sashay away. As sad as I am to see her go, I can’t wait to see her on All-Stars 6.
And now, there were 5. Who will make it to the finale? When will there be a finale? This and many questions will be answered next week, so until then, remember that if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen? Stay healthy and safe!
More Drag Queen Goodness
[huzzaz id=”drag-queen-fabulosity” vpp=”12″ pro=”1″ layout=”below” search=”1″ nocoverart=”1″ class=”hzWrap-below”]
