RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Recap: Good Tuck, Babe
Life was so peaceful in Bracket Two before we reached the Messy Points. After Mistress appeared as plucked as a Thanksgiving turkey after not winning last week, we should have expected chaos. If you look on the horizon, all birds’ migratory patterns have pivoted away from the Drag Race studio. Baby, there’s a storm a-brewing.
Naturally, back in the workroom, Mistress walks Kerri and Nicole up to the door of manipulation before she and Jorgeous say, “Ding dong bitch!” There’s confusion over a Brooks family alliance, with the Texas girls unsure which one might give their point to Kerri. Mistress’s loud deception causes Nicole to give her point to Mistress just to shut her up. Cue the gay dominoes: Kerri politely gives to Texas sister Jorgeous, and then Jorgeous and Mistress bepoint each other, leaving Kerri and Nicole in the dust with zero points.
Shattering the niceties of the first bracket, Jorgeous and Mistress have themselves a little teehee like they’re the gay Pinky and the Brain. It’s not only a shady move but a risky one: they may need some MVQ points later, but I doubt they will get any after this cutthroat move. Regardless, there will definitely be some kind of fallout for this, one of the biggest middle-finger stunts ever pulled off on Drag Race.
I would at least applaud the gameplay (especially after bracket one’s maneuverings were so boring) if they weren’t also acting deeply annoying about it. Now would be a good time for NPB(FAG) to reference back to her season-two reunion “malicious gay faggotry” line. For Tina and Lydia, the added benefit of lip-syncing in this format is being exempt from the Messy Points shit show.
“I’m the queen of drag race beefs,” Mistress brags in this episode. The likes of Raven, Phi Phi O’Hara, and Kandy Muse would like a word! She knows how to get under almost anyone’s skin, but this is maybe the first time her mind games could affect the game. Mistress isn’t the queen of drama, but she is the queen of making herself the main character, and this episode was another resounding success for an undefeated champ. Jorgeous, meanwhile, is just happy to play along — she gets to have her evil cake and eat it, too, while Mistress takes the majority of the heat.
The queens get a visit from Chappell Roan in the workroom. [Michelle Visage wah-wah voice] “‘My kink is karma?!’ I don’t even know-a!” Shut up, Michelle! Anyway, am I on an island of not loving when pop stars show up in the workroom? It can be lovely to see queer icons shower affection on the queens and for the queens to show their appreciation for a star’s outspoken support of the queer community. But even for a brief, well-meaning moment, the show takes the spotlight off the queens, which means less revelry for drag on my television. At least Chappell is a star who has given local drag queens work and a massive audience as opening acts on her shows, so I’ll allow this one.
This week’s rap roast mashup feels a lot like bracket one’s makeover-songwriting challenge: once again, the queens are being set up to fail or succeed according to the judge’s whims and unclear expectations. It left us with too many questions: Is it the roasts or the songwriting abilities that matter more? How do you hold all of these queens to the same standard with a slippery set of criteria? Why is Lydia dressed for motocross, and will stunts also be involved? Let’s get this roast a-rappin’!
Ultimately, all of the queens performed pretty well this week, making the criteria seem extra nebulous depending on who the judges are talking to. The single funniest rap reads coming from Lydia (“it’s Tina Burner, people run and hide when she turns the kerrnerr”) and Jorgeous (“all the fans know you as Nicole Paige Who?”). Mistress may have rhymed “Tranos” with “Thanos,” but part of what set her apart was the unique 1990s hip-hop flow she gave her verse, making her seem more naturally at ease with songwriting.
By not calling out queens by name in her verse, Kerri serves the judges the knife to stab her with on a silver platter. It’s a shame because had this been strictly a songwriting challenge, she had one of the better verses and could have landed a win. Pair that with the best runway of the week — a nude reveal evil flower to suit the Little Shop of Whores prompt — and you can’t escape the feeling like Kerri got screwed in every possible direction in this episode.
As for the rest of the runway, what a freaky thing to be happening: Tina once again steps outside of her box with a lily tribute to her mother, Lydia goes literal and references Audrey 2, and Mistress looks like the beautiful version of Ginger Minj’s much-maligned glamour toad All Stars 2 entrance. However, Kerri’s rival for the best look goes to Jorgeous, giving Poison Ivy as a Venus fly trap.
But it’s time to get down to the heart of the matter: “the meat of the cactus.” Now, I see what Nicole was going for. A cactus shedding its skin is certainly one way to reflect Nicole shedding her so-called “prickly personality.” Plus, it isn’t not like a plant taking off its clothes, fulfilling the prompt! It’s all so divinely roundabout, so refreshingly un-self-aware, so je ne sais quoi (which, per Google AI, translates to “the meat of the cactus”).
Every few years, Drag Race gifts us with such an iconic wackadoo turn of phrase — Kennedy Davenport’s “After a long night of hooking…” explainer, Tammie Brown’s “walking children in nature” — that attention must be paid to. No matter how hard they may try, they will never make me hate Nicole Paige Brooks from Atlanta, Georgia. If she leaves the season with nothing else, she’ll likely earn the status of most quotable.
At this point, my complaining about the judging on Drag Race is giving Old Man Yells At Cloud. Forget it, Jake, it’s Planet Drag Race! But this week’s patently ludicrous critique that the judges couldn’t understand the queens because they used too many words reeks of “because I said so” narrativizing — it’s a flimsy argument that allows the production to advance whatever queen they choose. It would be fairer to call this week a photo finish than to say that Tina or Lydia fell that far behind the pack. The best thing Chappell Roan does this episode is to call out Michelle for this bogus critique.
It’s hard to tell who the judges might think is in third place (a problem!!), but they declare Mistress and Jorgeous the winners. And after they perform Chappell’s “HOT TO GO,” a tie is called for the schemesters, forcing them to split the point awarded to a lip-sync win. So, in this format, we’re awarding half points now?! I smell production shenanigans, a blatant attempt to keep tension high for how things shake out. Call me Goldilocks, but the format’s balance has not reached a just-right amount of drama — it’s either been too boringly obvious or too manipulated.
This is maybe even more frustrating considering it was simply not a tying lip-sync — apologies to Mistress and her boob bounce, but she was no match for Jorgeous’ effervescent high energy. It was more “hot-to-go vs. take-and-bake.” If I was either of them, I wouldn’t be too happy about this half-point tie! After their point strategy showdown, it makes their gameplay indistinguishable from each other, and this isn’t the team game of All Stars 1. Even in an alliance, you want to be the one breaking away.
Over in Untucked, Mistress proposes Tina and Lydia screw over Kerri and Nicole in the distribution of their Messy Points. I fear the damage is already done, and they will both get screwed even if no knives get twisted next week. Nicole’s insistence that she is unreadable because she knows her own faults doesn’t come across like that means she doesn’t care, but I do think she might be satisfied with just showing up and trying her best. For Kerri, however, I think she’s climbing the competition with nothing to show for it but disappointment.
However, this plot leaves Lydia torn between her new alliance with Mistress and the promise she made with Kerri before the challenge, making Lydia a surprising battleground for how this bracket might come to a close. Will she be Lydia Brookshole Kollins or will she be Colon Colby?
Extra Two Pieces and a Biscuit
• “All of these queens ‘bout to be burnt toast”? Ru, are you having a stroke?! Someone!! Call a doctor!!
• Kerri may not have named names in her rap roast, but in her confessionals while preparing for the challenge, she proved to be from the Utica school of flat rude (and therefore accidentally hilarious) comments as roasts: “Tina Burner is and always will be a complete man in a wig.”
• Maybe the best roasting all episode, challenge or no, is Nicole dragging Mistress for blithely taking on new drag children with the breeze. “We don’t throw our lineage around like that! Does your momma let you give the name out like that, like it’s water?”
• The flashbacks to Jorgeous’ All Stars 9 roast are the only parts of that season I ever want to see again! But why not show her hilarious card tosses?!
• Chappell entering Untucked carrying a blowup doll to match her look? As the great poet laureate Chad Michaels once said: we got it, girl, we got it.
• Once Kerri tried to also align with new girl Lydia, Drag Race finally did start to feel like drag Survivor. Is this bracket not like when one new person enters a tribe post-merge and becomes the safest to stay because of everyone else’s conflicting rivalries? Or is Lydia just the sweetheart of All Stars 10?