Drag Race RuCap: “Villains Roast”

Villains look good in red, don't you think?

NICK TAYLOR: What a maddening episode of television this was. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with the Villains Roast. This cast continues to surprise me, for better and worse, and season 17 continues to give us sheer entertainment at a delicious pace. But the cast’s harkening to the shady charisma of OG Drag Race has now manifested some of the most unprompted fits of delusional sabotage we’ve seen in years. Arrietty and Lexi spin out hard over absolutely nothing, falling victim to their inner saboteurs at the earliest possible second, and tearing down Jewels with a petty nastiness that kept bringing me back to Phi Phi O’Hara. They overwhelm the underdog victories of Lana and Lydia, who finally and deservedly get their first stellar critiques of the season. It’s sour enough that I’m really reconsidering Lexi’s long-assumed placement in the final four. How do you feel?

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Oh honey, I have OPINIONS on these bitches…

But before we get into a rant, let’s assess the episode in order. Way before our beloved Mistress Isabelle Brookes, the always entertaining Kandy Muse, and Kori King’s sister showed up for this hellish roast, it was time for Lydia to mourn her lover’s absence. What a sweet beginning to an hour that’ll be short on sweetness. Though, there are signs of trouble from the get-go. Because Lexi is, once again, up in her feelings, unable to feel happy for Jewels’ first win, still reeling that her only victory thus far was the premiere’s talent show. It’s giving Loosey, it’s giving Q, it’s giving insufferable.

As ever, I want to remind the readers, the fans, and myself that these are edited and heavily produced versions of real-life people taped during a very stressful situation. My disparaging words towards the queens aren’t personal attacks, merely human reactions to their TV character personas as presented in the show. And on that level, the flower of my devotion to Lexi has really withered away after one too many emotional breakdowns. At least, she’s lucid enough to recognize how this will look and apologizes before this first scene’s over. Where was this maturity for the rest of the episode?

NICK: Where is the maturity! That’s a great question. Who’d have guessed Lexi throwing her hurt at Jewels would be a major theme of the episode. I’ll co-sign your last paragraph, and add some supporting evidence for the courts to your statement: It’s been so nice to see the girls rallying around each other on social media, refusing to tolerate any bad behavior coming directly their way from the fandom. At least whatever’s going on, as mediated as it is for the audience, has been resolved in some way between the queens. Very real “I get to talk shit about my sister, but you don’t” energy. May we be spared by not sending this directly to anyone’s DMs.

There’s also one more bit of silliness to get to. The girls have barely entered the werkroom before Michelle Visage enters with big news. She announces a diva who left too soon has been brought back into the competition, and she gleefully lets this hang over the queens before revealing who it is: The Badunka Dunk Tank! The queens are relieved, but not for long, because Michelle tells them to remove any clothing they don’t want soaked before coming to the main stage. Jewels could not be more terrified, with all the product in her hair holding that beautiful floof together. Alas.

When they get to the stage, Michelle is waiting with Entertainment Weekly writer Joey Nolfi and Ms. Dunk herself in the usual resting grounds. The promise is simple: Michelle and Joey will subject the queens to a trivia game, and if they win they won’t get dunked. This is a lie. Lydia is up first, escorted to the tank by Bruno like the dainty thing she is, and their exchange goes a lil something like this:

Michelle: “What’s your favorite color?”
Lydia: “Blue.”
Michelle: “Wrong, it’s red.”

All the queens suffer the same fate. It’s not even a mini-challenge. This is abuse, child abuse in the case of baby queens like Lana. Arrietty is saved for last like the sacrificial lamb she is. Michelle is so fucking excited to dunk her ass in the tank, and the bitch makes it so easy by actually fumbling the question Michelle gives her, stuttering in reconsideration about whether she’s a top or a bottom. Flop behavior from the very beginning of the episode.

CLÁUDIO: I loved how there was no pretension that this was a mini-challenge, though some queens posed like it were when dropped into the tank. Jewels thought she was back in the season 5 premiere, didn’t she? Anyways, this was a lot of fun, ending with Nolfi himself getting to experience Michelle’s wet justice. Also, for what it’s worth, I loved little moments throughout the sequence, including Lexi toss-toss-ing her hair and hitting Arrietty square in the face. Bitch couldn’t catch a break this episode, and she made sure that was everyone else’s problem, too.

Because, right after they’ve had a chance to dry - Jewels curls were never the same again - it’s time for Michelle to announce this episode’s maxi challenge. It’s time to get this roast a-cooking, and this year’s victims are villains of seasons past. You’d think Arrietty was handed a death sentence by her reaction, but that sourpuss facecrack is nothing compared with what’s to come. Since Miss Sparkles won last episode, she’s given the power to choose the roast’s order, a minor advantage that rarely affects the final judging, negatively or otherwise. And yet, over the years, many a drama has erupted from this formality. Till now, UK2 had the honor of having the stupidest comedy order meltdown, but Lexi and Arrietty just snagged season 17 the win on that front. In Lexi’s case, it’s especially nonsensical because she asked to be last.

What was Jewels supposed to do? Lexi asked to be last, Onya wanted to be first, Suzie wanted to either be first or last. So, the Latina princess put Onya first, Suzie second to last, and gave Lexi what she wanted. But, somehow, that’s shady toward Lexi? The fuck? Arrietty has more cause to be pissed, since she wanted to be square in the middle of the presentation, but Jewels put her second and herself as third, perchance anticipating her sister would crash and burn. Which is a bit shady but it’s also fair play. This is a competition, not kindergarten, so why must every bitch be coddled all the way through? Honestly, the way every queen and even the judges have stood by Lexi every time she falters or has a temper tantrum must have given her a complex. Why else would she react this way? She and Arrietty are being rude and hateful, forcing Jewels into the part of season villain without any rhyme or reason or anything. 

Again, I acknowledge these are essentially reality TV characters playing out an edited drama, but still. I nearly had to pause the episode, I was so frustrated. That said, it’s great entertainment in that old-school way of early Drag Race seasons.

NICK: You say you almost paused the episode. My husband Tommy paused repeatedly so we could talk about how petulantly those two were behaving. I can’t say I disagree with your statement about Arrietty and Lexi trying to force Jewels into playing the villain and confessing some evil plan, but it’s amazing how not a soul in the room is on their side. Not Jewels, not the other queens, not the editors after who knows how long they’ve been tinkering with this footage. They’re so in the wrong it’s crazy. All the other queens say this to their faces, multiple times. Oh, and the order of the roast is:

1. Onya Nurve
2. Arrietty
3. Jewels Sparkles
4. Lana Ja’Rae
5. Sam Star
6. Lydia B. Kollins
7. Suzie Toot
8. Lexi Love

As Jewels described it, she wanted to keep the girls who already had a win away from the middle, pushing them into the bookends to give them more of a challenge while Lana and Lydia get to sit in the middle. Maybe I’m crazy, but that makes sense to me. Lexi’s the only one who gets the exact placement she asked for, which is apparently some next-level evil mastermind behavior, but everyone’s a seat or two from where they said they wanted to be.

After seating is delegated, the queens workshop their material with Michelle and Whitney Cummings, a stand-up comic responsible for writing and producing the “sitcom” 2 Broke Girls. And in one sense, the workshop goes very well, because Cummings has good advice for all the queens. We both walked away from RDR Live! and Snatch Game wishing the queens had received actual constructive criticism before they performed their routines, so I’m considering this as much an act of wish fulfillment for us as it was for them. 

Cummings is particularly good at figuring out how one’s persona can elevate a performance, telling Lana that her stoicism up til now has laid the groundwork for the currently unseen silly side Ms. Ja’Rae is claiming to possess. Butthole can’t stop yawning, and as a fellow yawny girl I understand her plight. Whitney is not amused, but she tells this sleepy twink to lean into whatever warped sense of humor led her to pick her name in the first place. Sam and Onya came prepped and ready, and get high marks for it. Whitney sees a lot of potential in Jewels’ ditzy sweetness and Lexie’s punchy deliveries, basically telling them they’re on the right track and just need to sell it onstage. Suzie claims she’s worried about her jokes being too cerebral, and Onya immediately calls her out on setting up false expectations for the judges so they can be “surprised” when she does well in the challenge. It’s a fucking great interaction, and because Ms. Toot knows how to not hold a grudge against the tiniest infractions against her, she laughs at getting caught, processes the embarrassment, and keeps on trucking. 

Arrietty, meanwhile, spends the whole session sucking on lemons, barely even engaging with Whitney’s fairly solid advice to go into the challenge with any other mindset but impending doom. She doesn’t, but Arrietty ultimately finds a new wrinkle to this mindset: sabotage Jewels outright by stealing her jokes. Is there an endgame beyond petty retaliation? Probably not! She just looks over at Jewels’ notebook, copies her shit, and starts grinning in her confessional like she’s done something. “Karma’s a bitch!” says the girl who is making her bad mood everyone else’s problem. Nasty behavior. Great TV, but so childishly proud about lashing out at her friend that it’s more ugly than fun.

CLÁUDIO: I have to say that there’s no greater indicator of this fandom’s anti-Black biases than the reaction to Arrietty this week. My “For You” page was full of nastiness towards Onya after her debacles with Jewels and Lexi. And yet, this week, it’s all defensiveness for the Latina elf, claiming that what Arrietty did was shady as fuck but fierce, great drag shenanigans and all that. Sorry, but no. This was just nasty and all the folks celebrating it are showing their asses.

The most irritating thing is how Arrietty keeps acting as if she’s cute and on the right for the confessionals. Not to mention how she plays the injured party the next day, as they’re painting their mugs for the main stage. Hell, Lexi and Arrietty move tables away from Jewels, just to ostracize her a bit more and keep talking shit about the gal the whole time. When did Drag Race became an afterschool special on tween bullying tendencies? Girls, you’re too old for this bullshit, learn how to regulate your emotions. The weirdest part is how Onya, Suzie, Sam and, to a lesser extent, Lana and Lydia, are seeing right through these bitter Bettys, wavering between astonishment and pity toward Jewels, some half-hearted attempts at lightening the mood.

Lexi’s righteousness is especially galling - not to mention insane coming from someone in their mid-30s who spent the past nine episodes talking about her street smarts, her maturity compared to these nepo babies, her life experience, etc. Bitch, the Kumbaya Girls are handling the pressure alright. It’s the Mean Girls who keep crying about any reminder that, yes, they are in a competition. When the Southern twink tries to calm Lexi down, he even goes as far as saying this is silly. Lexi responds that 200,000 dollars isn’t silly to her. But wouldn’t that justify Jewels screwing them over - which she didn’t even do - since she’s also vying for that prize? It reeks of entitlement of the sort I’d never expect from someone like Lexi, who I’ve been praising for weeks on end in these RuCaps. It’s so ugly.

At least, it all ends with Lana getting shut down again when she tries to steal the spotlight with a joke. And you know what? That’s fun, precisely because this bikini-obsessed queen is laughing at herself, too. It’s not that serious, people. Lighten up!

NICK: I saw someone call Arrietty’s sabotage “so unserious” and I simply don’t understand taking it lightly when she herself is acting so bitter and nasty. You’re gonna prostrate yourself at the altar of your friend’s supposed bad behavior while you’re plotting against her the whole time, and pretend you’re in the right for one second? Baffling. I simply don’t get it, nor do I get Lexi just spiraling, episode after episode after episode. She posted on social media previously about how her hormones led to a lot of high-strung, overly emotional behavior during filming she’s not proud of, and hey, hindsight’s 20/20. I’m sure she’s coming to the reunion. It’s still really wild to see how easily she can get in her own way and stay there until someone - or multiple someones -  has to shake her by the shoulders like the one broad in Airplane!

It’s a very ugly mirror fight, leading into a roast full of unexpected twists. One positive right off the bat is everyone looks good, from the judges to the queens to the villains offered up for roasting. RuPaul looks fucking fabulous, maybe my favorite thing she’s worn all season, and I love Whitney’s tracksuit of mobile casino game panels. TS Madison always looks good draped in flowers and butterflies. Plane’s stoned, blood-red cartoon devil suit is maybe my favorite of the villains’ costumes, but Kandy’s feathers are such a lovely answer to the prompt. The queens? Fabulous across the board.

Onya starts strong, with her superb showmanship giving extra oomph to material another queen might not have sold as well. She also gets bonus points for being the only queen not to lazily lob fat jokes at Kandy and Mistress, and for somehow being the only bitch to make fun of Kandy’s lisp. Much like her hosting gig on RDR Live!, she’s so assured with her material that she makes it look easy, and sets a good baseline for the show to come. Great opener, followed by Arrietty’s giggly trainwreck. Her delivery is awful. I’d be surprised the spite that powered her to steal Jewels’ jokes didn’t inspire her to actually perform them well, except for the part where she never had a plan outside of hurting her bestie. She’s so bad she gets the villains to raise their paws and swat at her incompetent ass. The way everyone cheers when Arrietty says her set is almost over is the best part of the set.

And it works! Jewels is hurt and rattled when she starts her set, especially after Arrietty ends her set saying to watch out for the friends who stab you in the back. To her credit, Ms. Sparkles mostly powers through it, but an already mid routine is made even more unsteady. But you know who’s got it? Lana Ja’Rae, who opens with the only good dig at Jewels in the whole show before letting loose with a great, bitchy energy. Her asking Plane how she’s doing and immediately shutting her down is spectacular, as are the race jokes directed at Plane and Sam.

CLÁUDIO: Onya’s delivery is better than her jokes, the definition of a safe roast performance. Arrietty is a catastrophe, somehow screwing up everything she could except her look. Honestly, Mistress was the winner of that portion of the program as far as I’m concerned. Her responses were infinitely funnier than anything the elf said. Jewels gets one good jab at Arrietty, calling her set “intelligent,” but flounders the rest of it. She even repeats the same line about Mistress being a fat joke that her thieving sister already messed up, though she paraphrases a tad. Also, for what it’s worth, I was disappointed that her entire set was just a litany of facile mockery of Mistress and Kandy’s bodies. Even if her delivery had been stronger, I doubt she’d have ranked anything higher than safe.

Lana is a revelation, going there like nobody else did. She also sets the stage for Sam rather well, making for a nice quarreling dynamic between the Black provocateur and the Southern belle. Sam, for her part, looks gorgeous and performs at her usual professional standard. No surprises there, but no failures either. Lydia, however, is intent on shocking us all, nailing the challenge like nobody’s business, breaking every expectation along the way. Moreover, she pushes the show’s limits, even incurring some bleeping for the American broadcast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Plane lost for words as when the Butthole jokes about still having Kori’s jizz in her stomach or when she propositions Mama Ru for her opener. Even if she didn’t know how to deliver these, you must admire her sheer gumption.

NICK: Lydia’s performance was so goddamn good. For a queen who’s struggled hard with the previous comedy challenges, she’s incredibly funny with her deranged zingers. Her opening potshot at Whitney is a delightful way to open her routine, and almost as funny as connecting a punchline about Mistress to oscillating fans. An absolutely magnificent night for Ms. Butthole. I’m surprised Sam’s routine was so compressed in the final edit, but she looked great and the jokes were uniformly good. Given how Trinity bombed her first two Drag Race roasts before getting the most generous/least deserving win of AS7 for the Kennedy Davenport Center Honors, I’m honestly very impressed with how many tools Sam has in her arsenal.

Suzie is a bit surprised to realize she won’t be resuscitating the roast after Lydia goes on, so instead she’ll build off her energy and deliver the same good set she was good to give. As with the reading challenge, Suzie knows how to twist the knife in her comedy, going hard without losing the joke or getting outright distasteful with it. But much like Jewels, her offhand comments did not take Lexi’s inner saboteur into account, so when she introduces Ms. Love as “a former addict with no friends”, Lexi takes this as a signed letter confirming her behavior blew up her relationships with the other girls. So she fumbles. Jokes that seemed promising at the table read are delivered so haphazardly I honestly can’t tell if her material had any potential in the first place. Was the Jinkx Monsoon for dummies line good, or was it the one joke she didn’t flub? Hard to tell, it seems. Utterly incapable of saving herself, Lexi is.

At least the show ends on a high note, as the villains take to the stage to roast the queens. All three bitches had good retorts, but nothing beat Kandy pointing at Arrietty and telling her she’s going home. Sometimes it’s just that obvious.

CLÁUDIO: As much as Lana and Lydia deserve their flowers, Ru should have broken the format and given a three-way win to the villains themselves. Suzie was good, similar to Sam, in that she wasn’t interested in surprising the audience but still delivered a polished, funny set. That last line about Lexi was a nice punch of acidity. If only Miss Love could take it, but she can’t. Not at all. Once more, I feel everything she said about the Kumbaya Girls was actually about herself because the bitch is rattled. At least, she looks incredible - much better than Suzie, whose wig was the saddest part of the entire roast.

But enough about failed comedy. Let’s talk fashion. On the runway, category is… Who Wears Short Shorts?!...

Onya’s first on the catwalk, serving a weirdly proportioned wedgie look that’s like a second cousin to her pink sneaker couture from a few episodes ago. It’s nice enough, though the nude illusion isn’t selling said illusion and the bling is an awkward fit for the jeans. I get the denim and diamonds pairing, but we’ve seen it done much better - Sasha Colby sends her regards.

NICK: I like the jeggings, and she looks good in that fiery Jean Grey wig. The wedgie is a miss for me, but it was fun seeing her hoist up her bra, and therefore her entire outfit, in Untucked. 

Arrietty is next, and I promise it’s not just the haterade talking when I say it’s not very impressive to me. The shoulders are fun, as is the occasional impression she has no arms, but this also looks very cheap to me? If only compared to her other outfits. It’s at least great camp to go out in a giant crown and white-girl-wasted sunglasses after bombing a challenge this badly. How can she say she has no sense of humor?

CLÁUDIO: This is an odd one. Generally, I like the split cape, and the whole head styling is exquisite. But is it me, or is this unusual color story kinda ugly? And yeah, the materials read cheap in conjunction with an appeal to Catholic finery. Oddly enough, I think this could have been saved by pants that imitated the shoulder’s opulence or a more priest-like vestment. Then again, it wouldn’t fit the category.

Maybe I’m letting myself be manipulated by the editing, but I rather enjoy this. Jewels Sparkles brings back the saloon vibes from some episodes ago and mixes it with a French poodle-like unit. Now, I realize I can’t expect people to know fashion history but what in this screams Marie Antoinette? Michelle Visage was crazy for that one.

NICK: The Marie Antoinette comment was absolutely maddening. Jewels was getting undeservedly shat on from all angles this week and I hated it. This look is so gorgeous, with the giant bow-decked updo. Really lovely, and the sight of her strutting down the catwalk is probably the most joy I’ve seen on her face all episode.

Lana Ja’Rae is the first queen bold enough to just wear shorts. It’s not a backhanded compliment, there’s something really nice about this prompt answered so straightforwardly. I would not have caught the Naomi Campbell reference without the accompanying Getty, and the judges aren’t wrong to say this needs to be dragged up a little. Personally, her commitment to the red baseball cap perversely makes me wish she’d have gone out in full-on right-wing cosplay, but that’s just wildly irresponsible of me to ask from her.

CLÁUDIO: Sorry, but I’m on the judges’ side on this one. This is pedestrian in ways that would’ve been called out even in early seasons. The worst bit is how Campbell’s original chunky knit looks draggier than what Lana served down the runway. At least, she knows how to move her body and work that robe. Alas, it wasn’t enough.

Sam Star’s American football drag can’t help but recall Onya’s sneaker getup. Fortunately, for this Southern Belle, her take on the same aesthetic is much more polished. The wig is major and the bedazzled football is the cherry on top. Nothing gag-worthy but cute enough.

NICK: She’s got her patented Silky Nutmeg Gamache anal bead ponytail on, which is always a winner in my book. I’m not organically enthused about Sam’s look, but you’re right that she’s executed it with real polish and pizzazz.

Lydia B. Kollins avoids showing a lot of skin and instead goes for flaunting sinew, muscle, and gristle, with a skin peel gone wrong rendered in all kinds of plush red fabrics. The shorts are the only skin left on the body, with a bedazzled butthole to show the boys where to go. I love the blonde wig, and the goofy grotesquery of the bodysuit. I’m not sure if this is my favorite of Lydia’s outfits, but it’s a damn great fit, and a standout in this runway even without such a great maxi challenge performance to back it up.

CLÁUDIO: I remain befuddled at Lydia’s insistence on showing as much skin as possible, even when backing a concept that asks for full body coverage like this one. Also, the shoes are hateful. All in all, it’s an impactful lewk and she presents it beautifully, but her story isn’t quite understandable enough, and the skin-toned tulle doesn’t really read as shorts.

Suzie’s giving Queen Elizabeth I doing drag because she got jealous that Gwyneth was having all the fun in Shakespeare in Love. Part of me wants to criticize Suzie for being so literal with her idea, but it’s so perfectly constructed I can’t bring myself to be a bitch. I do wish her shoes were more on theme and that the back bodice wasn’t splitting open. 

NICK: The construction’s immaculate, and the FRUITY on the ass is so fun. I want those shorts. Great mug, fun look, I’ll take it.

Lexi Love is also living out a Sasha Colby shredded jeans dress fantasy. She looks fabulous, and her story of stoning the outfit with her mother and her drag family is very moving. Love her rainbow wig and whatever the fuck is on her nose. Stitching all those jorts and daisy dukes into a cape is a really inspired approach to the prompt, though this is the right week for TS to ask exactly how many skimpy outfits elevated by dramatic capes Lexi has brought with her to the competition.

CLÁUDIO: I love this. Nevertheless, it’s getting ridiculous how much Lexi relies on her body for the runway and how repetitive some of her styling choices are becoming. For once, the shaggy wig and rhinestone “glasses” feel like needless affectations. And yet, she looks fabulous.

This week, we need to talk about Untucked, but let’s consider the judges’ choices first. Suzie and Onya are deemed safe and sent backstage, leaving Lana, Lydia and Sam to fill out the top, while Arrietty, Jewels, and Lexi are our bottoms. Personally, I believe we could have done with Suzie on top instead of Sam, or maybe even a top two of Lana and Lydia alone. The lower placements feel correct, but the coddling of Lexi continues, even as she throws Jewels under the bus for her apparent Machiavelian sneakiness. I don’t get why the sparkly doll didn’t fight back at this point. Confront the fact Arrietty stole the jokes and maybe even mention that gassing up Lexi is doing nobody any favors. My heart yearns for Tatianna levels of pettiness and mess. Gimme a reprise of season 2’s bridal runway bitchfest.

NICK: I’d have traded Suzie in the top over Sam in a heartbeat, though she and Onya are so good setting the stage in Untucked I can’t actually be bothered. The judge’s choices make sense to me. The bottom three are inevitable. Frankly, as frustrating as Jewels’ silence is, I can imagine seeing it as not adding fire to a situation where she’s already been struggling to speak up for herself. Maybe I’m projecting my own bad thought processes when shit starts spiraling, but it’s hard to imagine the energy in the room getting better from revealing Arrietty’s deception, or to think it would actually save Jewels from being in the bottom two. Or maybe the mindset is the problem, and Jewels should have forced Arrietty to actually defend herself before the judges and her competitors.

But setting the Latina sisters aside, this shit with Lexi is so frustrating, since the judges know as much as we do. They give her the fiftieth rendition this episode about not getting in her head and treating every obstacle as a death knell, and as sweet as it is to see them console her, I’m tired. Where’s the accountability!! That’s a stupid thing to say about Drag Race, but we’ve seen the judges slap some sense into talented queens floundering like there’s no tomorrow. Surely having her lip sync against Arrietty of all people would be an easy confidence boost.

While the judges deliberate, the queens all sequester in Untucked, where Onya and Suzie have been rehashing this episode’s nonsense and roast Lexi and Arrietty for being such sore losers. Once all the queens congregate, the mood sours quickly. It’s amazing we get any amount of time to celebrate Lana, Lydia, and Sam’s high marks before tensions start to spike. Where Suzie tries to deflate Lexi’s argumentative behavior before it gets worse, Onya straight-up tells Arrietty and Lexi they owe Jewels an apology for how they treated her. Lexi at least grasps the truth in Onya’s words after she has her tantrum, but Arrietty is pressed as fuck about it. It’s genuinely ugly to see her lash out at almost everyone in the room, escalating her RDR Live! tantrum by a significant factor. 

Jewels is just grateful Onya is speaking up for her when she can barely keep herself composed. After all that, I’m fascinated by the small one-on-one Arrietty and Jewels have, where the elf bitch apologizes for stealing her jokes rather than the extremely bitchy behavior she’s been throwing all episode. I’m sorry, but that felt like another petty swipe at Jewels to me. And Jewels barely engages before going back to prepping for the lip sync. She gets a resolution with Lexi, and they’ll have time to sort through all this mess, but I didn’t expect Jewels to meet her sister with such a deservedly cold note.

CLÁUDIO: You can really tell that, between the two of us, I’m the friend who likes to argue and fight. Because, baby, if I were Jewels in that Untucked, things would have gotten ugly. Sure, I might have started crying at some point, but Lexi and Arrietty would have gotten such a tongue-lashing the editors would have had to soften me up before I became the villain of all seasons. Also, the elf queen complaining about too many comedy challenges when a full third of the past episodes have been design-focused is absurd beyond words. She’s so delusional! Honestly, like someone on Twitter joked, Jewels deserves to win Miss Congeniality for the simple fact that Untucked wrapped up without any murder attempt. And though I admire Lexi’s accountability at the very end, it took way too long to materialize. She and Arrietty come off as such brats, while Onya deserves some sort of maxi challenge win for her truth-telling and tough love diplomacy. Suzie was great, too. Now I want them to have a podcast or a web series or something - Toot & Nurve sounds so fun!

It makes for super engaging - mildly infuriating - reality TV, but I wish these girls could calm down and realize how bad and irrational they’re looking. Some might call it fierce, but there’s a difference between, for example, the sort of shady chaos Mistress brings to the table and this interpersonal venom. If nothing else, it’s embarrassingly unprofessional.

So, back on the main stage, Lydia is declared the episode’s winner, while Lexi gets a safe placement after all that drama. Jewels and Arrietty must battle to the sound of Beyoncé’s “YA YA,” the season’s best lip sync song choice by a country mile. Yes, it’s an even better soundtrack for a diva-off than “Alter Ego.” Because of that, it’s kind of sad we have Arrietty in the bottom, ready to waste a Queen Bey tune like only she can. I guess she tries in her ugly half-outfit, but it’s erratic and desperate and try-hard, a whole lot of mess performed with next to no finesse. In comparison, Jewels is a smooth criminal of a lip sync assassin, turning a literal stumble into the smackdown’s greatest moment as she twists the fall into a pose and a kick to send Arrietty’s crown flying off the stage. While I’m sad they didn’t save this song for the finale, Miss Sparkles put on a good show and justice was served by the end. 

So goodbye, Arrietty. Can’t say I’ll miss her much after this episode. Even her farewell interview and mirror message are dripping with childish petulance. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a queen crash and burn so spectacularly on their elimination episode. 

NICK: The edit tried hard to make it seem like a fight, but to paraphrase Ms. Toot, Jewels just floats across the stage. She’s so elegant, showing us what she can do with an actual song rather than the nonentity she performed to in the talent show. Bitch, it’s the serve. It’s no contest: Jewels stays, and everything Arrietty does in her five minutes out the door is funnier than everything she’s done in the season. She really showed her whole ass on her way out, and I can’t pretend I’m gonna miss her after all that mess.

So after ten episodes, seven queens remain. Will it be a top 4? A top 3? Even a top 2? Who can say. The fun part is the race is still tight as hell, with a wide spread of challenge wins and a couple great weeks for queens I didn’t expect to stick around this long. Can you imagine the gag of Lana pulling off a Naomi Smalls slow burn in a season with twice as many episodes as season 8? Or making a pair of the two-win girlies have to lip sync against each other? Everything feels possible, no one feels ironclad, this is the good shit babyyyyy. Next week’s challenge will be a riff on Feud: Capote vs The Swans, another scripted comedy challenge. The teasers suggest yet another rough week for Lexi, so more of the same really, but I do hope she gets her shit together.

Previous RuCaps:

• Episode 1: “Squirrel Games”
• Episode 2: "Drag Queens Got Talent"
• Episode 3: "Monopulence!"
• Episode 4: "Bitch, I'm a Drag Queen!"
• Episode 5: "RDR Live!"
• Episode 6: "Let's Get Sea Sickening Ball"
• Episode 7: "Snatch Game"
• Episode 8: "The Wicked Wiz of Oz: The Rusical!"
• Episode 9: "Heavens to Betsey!"