Raspberries! Or should I say, Ratthhhberrietthhh! Last night’s episode of our gay fantasia on irrational themes was surely the best, with a fun challenge involving celebrity impersonations. Some queens soared! Others left us bored. The whole episode was game show themed, which mostly made me wish there was some sort of drag queen game show going on somewhere. (Drag Queen Bingo at Pieces does not count.) Though hopefully it would be a little less depressingly low-rent than the first game last night, a Price Is Right pastiche in which the girls had to guess-price various drag queen essentials. Things like duct tape (tuct tape! har), hemorrhoid cream (for the eyes! the eyes), and brass knuckles. Oh and a wig! A really, really expensive human hair wig. For this challenge the editing focused on Raven, a two-time Lip-Sync for Her Lifer who really needed this win, just really needed it. Especially because the winner got to phone a friend to say hello. Because I’m sure everyone misses their loved ones while away filming this show over a long weekend. Anyway, on her round Raven guessed the correct price of her item, I believe it was some kind of moisturized Spanx product, and ohhh calloo callay it was a happy day. She looked into the camera and said “I think this says to the other girls, I’m here and I’m a force to be reckoned with.” No, chille, she didn’t design a fashion dress that’s going to be sold at Macy’s. She most-closely guessed the price of some soiled undergarments. But that’s the joy of reality TV, I suppose, that it’s all relative. One man’s Nancy O’Dell wearing your dress to the Grammys is another man’s fairly accurately-priced pair of Bitches brand Britches. During the next round, Jessica Wild got very lucky and won for her hemorrhoid cream guess. She said she “did not know for what this product is,” but it didn’t matter. This game, like Deal or No Deal , could just be called Guess! . I suppose there is slightly more skill involved in guessing prices than there is in just pointing to a suitcase and saying “That one,” but they’re not far off. Sonique won with Caroline Rhea for the block in the third round, and then it was the finalz. The items up for guessing were a grand Showcase Showdown of important items: the aforementioned brass knuckles, a can of peppah spray, and a real hair lace front wig. (Interesting Google note: to find the exact term for that kind of wig, I went up to the little Firefox Google search bar thing and typed the word ‘lace’ and before I could even type ‘wig,’ the first Suggestion that came up was, in fact, ‘lace front wigs.’ What does that say about Google? About me? About the world?) So these were all items that could come in handy when, what? Walking down the street in your finest and being accosted by nogoodniks, I guess. Bless her cruel heart, Raven won the whole shebang, proving that she is a WHIRLWIND OF TALENT, and she got to call home. She called her mom and was all excited about it, but then the mom was like “Huh? Who? Oh, hi. Yeah, what’s up? Look, I’m in line at the ShopRite and, hold on a sec — no, miss, that’s my ground turkey, yeah and my Nilla Wafers — sorry, hun? How’s your weekend thing?” So it wasn’t exactly the big emotional phone call some had been hoping for, perhaps. But, again, Raven’s gonna see her on Monday night. Next up was impressions tiiiiiime! Even though she used to weird me out and make me a little sad, I think I may now love Pandora Boxx. Why? Because she did Carol Channing. And amid a sea of otha queens who just want to look pretty and pouty all the time, Pandora isn’t afraid to just be silly and fun. The ice-cold bitch drag queen is fun and all, but the big bawdy ridiculous ones are too. So good for you, Pandora. Also good to the ridiculously beautiful Tatiana, who pulled off a terrific Britney Spears even though she went into the competition having no idea what she was going to do. And bad to everyone else. Pretty much! Most of the other girls just wanted to be pretty, not silly, even though Ru told them to be funny. But, no. Most of the boys are little vain babies, so they picked divas they loved, like unabashedly lurved and wanted to be. Of course Tyra, vainest queen of all the vain queens, picked Beyoncé. And, sorry, but because Tyra is about as smart as a goose pooping on an 8th grade social studies book, her Beyoncé impression consisted of “being nice” and having crazy eye makeup. Fiona Shaw this Tyra creature is not. She also got mad when Tatiana said that the real-life Beyoncé falling was funny. This gravely offended Tyra. And having written, until fairly recently, for a site on which people got gravely, gravely upset and offended when you criticized or laughed at something very faraway and not actually related to them, I could totally emphasize with Tatiana when she said “It’s not you know her personally…” Tyra didn’t care. She was upset. Next most annoying was the awful Morgan, who has that barracuda jaw and that breathy cattiness that she clearly thinks is fierce and fahrabulous but is just, well, stupid. She is the platypus that later sees the pooping goose and asks how its day was and the goose says “Ohh fine,” and the two just stare out at the pond and think dumb thoughts for the rest of the evening. Anyway, Ma Platypus decided to be Pink because she really liked Pink, mostly because I’m sure she thinks she looks like Pink, which she don’t. If Pink were played by a tired Nicole Tom in a Lifetime biopic, then Morgan could do a fair impersonation of that. But not the real Pink, Pink. Raven went as Paris Hilton and, as always, looked good, but didn’t do much of anything with the character. Sonique basically just picked random drag detritus up off the floor and glued it to her face and was Lady Gaga. Gaga with absolutely no personality or humor or anything. Just Sonique with broken spectacles and other shit glued to her face. Sahara Davenport did a decent Whitney. There was some semblance of a joke there — she was supposed to be Being Bobby Brown era Whits — but it didn’t connect in the way that Pandora and Tatiana did. Oh, and Jessica Wild. Ohhhhhhh Jessica Wild. Never has a drag queen more fully lived up to her last name. If her name was Jessica Wild ‘n Crazy, that would be most accurate, in the most literal way possible. She is feral and insane, basically. She decided to do a RuPaul impression and while Ru loved it, doing RuPaul as some preening and oblivious weirdo isn’t exactly the best read of the character, I don’t think. Jessica spent all of her time tossing her badly-styled wig around and doing strange, lurching jigs that made everyone around her nervous. It was sort of embarrassing! But not as embarrassing as Morgan just pouting there like an idiot. Quack. (What sound does a platypus make?) So basically Pandora and Tatiana were the only funny things, just real slightly absurd senses of humor, and everyone else dumbly farted around while Ru and the gay guy from Ugly Betty , the fashion reporter one, pretended to laugh. Apparently Lisa Rinna and Niecy Nash were watching from places unseen, because they were there for final judging and had some perspective on the fake Match Game game. (Oh, right, that’s what the girls did once they were dressed up like celebrities. They played the “Snatch Game” and had to come up with funny answers.) I have an image of two side-by-side portraits hanging on the wall of the Drag Race garage studio and the eyes are moving. And it’s Lisa Rinna and Niecy Nash. Only Lisa’s portrait has the lips cut out too, for comfort’s sake. Alas we didn’t see that. We did see the girls in drag again! They always all look pretty good for the glossy runway show, with, sigh, Tyra being the standout. She just had this really fun costume that was a little suit and hat and a bunch of shopping bags (that said Santino on them! harooo!). Most of the other girls wore booty skirts or dresses, so Tyra doing a real costume kinda costume was a good time. Ru said her usual crazy things on the runway: “Ohhh, Morgan just sold Alaska to Seward with that little number.” “Sonique my love, Bella Abzug called and she wants her hat back! Divine.” “Misty May-Treanor is that a wig and a half, Sahara!” “We regret to inform you that your husband has died in a grist mill fire, Tatianna! Nice work!” She could just say those things all day forever and ever and that would be a fine show. Why don’t we do that instead of a competition? Coming this fall on Logo, RuPaul Says Things About Other Drag Queens . Or, Conveyor Belt of Queens ? In the meantime, it was time for winners and losers. Raven was in the chewy middle! Good for that old crab. Obviously Pandora and Tatiana were in the top, while Morgan (yay!), Sonique (meh), and Jujubee (a borrring and unimpressionable Kimora Lee) were the bottomz. Tatiana ended up winning, mostly because she was prettier than the wild-eyed Pandora, so there you go. I liked Carol Channing better, but that’s just who I am. MORGAN AND SONIQUE DUELED. Sonique didn’t really know what to do, so mostly she just flailed and jerked around, finally removing her sad orange dress to reveal a sad orange bikini, in which she gyrated awkwardly and messily lipped to “Two of Hearts.” Unfortunately Morgan the Gorgon did pretty well in the whole lip-syncing department. RuPaul said it was the best she’d seen on the show. Blah. She also did that weird rotating arm dancing that you see drag queens and dudes that guide planes into the gates at the airport doing. All stiff, directional arms. Drag queens love that stuff! Does that mean that airport workers and drag queens share a lot in common? I sort of hope. So that was that and the lackluster and frowny Sonique was made to sashay away, while Morgan chomped into a passing school of clown fish and Jessica Wild started screaming and yodeling somewhere backstage and the next time anyone saw her, she’d gnawed her way through one of the exterior walls and was rolling down the boulevard in a laundry cart, singing a song of freedom. Jessica, into the wild.
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RuPaul’s Drag Race: Britney and B. and Gaga! Oh My.
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