Hullooomosexuals! Here we are! Already on episode four, and can you believe it? Only ten queens remain. It seems like only yesterday that some erstwhile Seattle queen called Magnolia Crawford went down in a fabulous ball of very satisfying flames (LIARS BURN IN HELL, MAGNOLIA!), Vivacious (or “the stegosaurus,” as Ben calls her) took her pointy angles and peculiar heads back to NYC, and…well, I’ve already forgotten the queen that was kicked off first, so best to just move forward.
First! Let’s get things out of the way: SO. OVER. LAGANGA. I can barely stand her ass-face (or her gangly spider limbs, or her giant Crisco-can curl) anymore, do you hear me?! She turned out to be nothing but a big whiny sourpuss boohoo pants. (Sniffle, sniffle, wah, wah! Stuff it in your training bra, you big cry baby). Booo.
Also! I am even more determined at this juncture to believe that Courtney Act was probably born with real honest-to-biology ladyparts, and until I see a few candid penis selfies, I’m sticking to my guns. (Please Tweet them to @theadrianryan for objective analysis).
And speaking of sticky guns, reeallly Gia Gun? “WHAT’S A TONY AWARD”? Any drag queen who could ask that with a straight (ahem) face seriously deserves to be beaten soundly about the head and neck with one. You best check under your bed at night and shower with one eye open—Nathan Lane is a vengeful thing, and the bitch never sleeps.
And you know? I don’t hate Bianca so much anymore. Her evil now pleases me. It’s hard to stay mad at her when she’s so RIGHT about everything all the damn time. It’s all Hatfields and McCoys between the very annoying Gia and the very vicious Bianca Del Rio as they enter the work studio—Gia is being her usual annoying self, and Bianca just ain’t havin’ it. “She’s fish”, Bianca says, “but she’s gonna be floating on top. Dead.” Scurry! Also, Adore has Spock eyebrows. Just sayin'.
And they're off!
The mini challenge! The girls played a round of “Female or She-Male”—a rather tone-deaf game in which the queens are shown isolated body parts and must determine if that person is a drag queen or a biological lady. Ben went up first (GOOOO BEN!), was forced to look at some spindly janky orange-looking chicken legs sticking out at odd angles, and nailed it in a heartbeat. Turns out the janky orange legs belong to the infamous Tan Mom—technically a female. So gross. Bianca bombed out by guessing female to a picture of Detox’s waterbed lips (an easy mistake), Courtney got hers wrong, too when she thought the wrestler China was a boy—also an easy mistake—and almost EVERYONE got Tyra Banks wrong, which was hilarious. The highlight of the mini challenge was definitely our friend Darrien guessing that Michele Visage’s inhumanly huge funbags belonged to a biological boy. Ha! In the end, our beloved Ben WON THE CHALLENGE! (Woohoo, #Teamdelacreme!) Well, so did Adore, I guess, because technically the mini challenge always has two winners. So. What the hell evs.
Ben, who is clearly more sensitive to the trans community than RuPaul, would personally like you to understand that she thought the premise of the game was tack-o-rama and that she doesn’t endorse such anti-trans slurs as “she-male” at all. And on an unrelated note, I would personally like you to understand that Adore’s ditsy bimbo voice is starting to DRIVE ME OUT OF MY FRECKLY GINGER SKIN. Would somebody vote this bitch off the island already?
Of course now the queens start working on this week’s big challenge, “the most ambitious challenge in drag race history." The queens are tasked with producing, Shade: The Rusical! “I LOVE musical theat-ah!” Courtney wants you to know. Of course she does.
And so the queens pick their teams! Ben wisely chose Courtney for her love of musical theat-ah! and her sharp, clear Australian Idol-winning voice right off the bat. Ben ended up with Courtney, Bianca (“how to succeed in bitchy without really trying”), Darrien, Gia (ANNOYING!), and Trinity, who was picked last and you could tell nobody really wanted. Adore (who also has a pretty great SINGING voice) got Laganga (crybaby!), Joslyn (who I keep forgetting exists), April (still my favorite, after Ben—BEN BEN BEN, WOOHOO!), and Milk, and they all set off to assign roles and begin rehearsing. What a shady mess!
Adore and Courtney start growling at each other immediately, and Ben so astutely observed that “this has become the battle of the Idols” since Adore was a contestant on American Idol Season Twelve Gajillion or something, please remember, and didn’t win a gosh darn thing, unlike Courtney. Courtney vows to take Adore DOWN. Blond, milky white boys can be so scary sometimes! Darrien said Gia’s voice resembled, “Fran Drescher steamrolled by a dying duck," which cracked me up with its absolute truthiness. Wise queen, our Darrien.
AND NOW WE HAVE TO GET SERIOUS FOR A GOD DAMN MINUTE. This challenge directly addresses a painful and growing schism in the drag community—the ever-widening rift between so-called comedy queens and alleged pageant queens. Shade: The Rusical! is basically about a young and queeny ingénue (Penny) arriving in the big city, crammed with hopes, dreams, and Styrofoam. She is immediately tempted by a group of comedy queens to become one of them, while the pageant queens vie to convince her to join their fishy ranks. Will she go the way of Jinkx and become a universally beloved superstar? Or go the way of, say, Roxy and become a big schlub? THE SUSPENSE! Can’t we all just get along? What a mess!
Once properly cat, the queens rehearsed, and I am still shocked there were any survivors. Bianca, who has a problem with, well, everybody, decided to aim her catty little claws at Trinity, who totally deserved it for being a moody bitch. She could give Laganga some serious lessons. April, Joslyn (who I forgot again just now) and Laganga (boo hoo hoo!) were simply God awful, and Adore’s eyebrows? Even Spockier when she’s nervous. Just sayin'. The challenge was divided into two acts, with the girls sharing parts: the lead ingénue was split between Courtney in the first act and Adore in the second, and Ben and Milk shared a kind of creepy narrator/evil queen/antagonist role. Ben kicked ass, naturally. As she does.
The runway was pointless this week, so let’s just forget it like Joslyn Fox, and get down to the important stuff: Bianca, Milk, Laganga (who looked on the verge of tears, as usual) and Gia were all declared safe. I found this quite outrageous. Gia? Really? That queen is harder to kill than a Kevlar cockroach. Trinity got chewed out for mush mouth (say WHAT?), and Michele cussed Darrien out for being lost, but Michele says that to everybody, so. You know. Grain of salt. Ben was applauded for her “evil Betty Paige look” and her lovely voice, but Michele said that she could have gone further—WHICH SHE ALWAYS SAYS TO EVERYONE. Sheesh. Maybe Michele should apply her critique to her critiques. Sweet little April really took it on the chin for overall suckage in general, which I don’t think was entirely fair because GIA, but in the end she and moody mushy-mouthed Trinity were forced to lip-synch for their lives to Chaka Kahn’s "I’m Every Woman" (huh, I always thought Whitney Houston sang that). Courtney ended up the winner. Surprise, surprise. (BEN WAS TOTALLY ROBBED!)
And poor April.
After surviving a way-too-close elimination last week, April seemed very bound and determined to make it all work, and oh! How I wanted to believe her. But in the end she went down like a hooker on the first day of shore leave and was forced to sashay away in a perfumed cloud of shame and regret. A tragedy of our time. But! It's our duty to keep our chins up, look to the future, and keep in mind what’s really important: our girl Ben? She isn’t going anywhere.
