‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race All-Stars 7×02’ Review
It has been recorded in previous Drag Race reviews how I believe that a musical challenge on the opening episode is the perfect way to open any season! On regular seasons of Drag Race, these lyric writing challenges give the queens an opportunity to introduce themselves to the audience which is especially important for early eliminations. For the first episode of all winners Drag Race All-Stars, the queens had to write, record and perform an original verse to Ru Paul’s song “Legends” that matched the prestige of the extremely successful queens involved. This song was the perfect opportunity for the queens to reintroduce themselves to the viewers (as one of them competed just over twelve years ago) but also allowed them to inject their performance with bucket loads of personality that reminds everyone why they won their original seasons! The track itself is available on Spotify and has been added to my highly discussed Drag Race playlist that I listen to on any long journey. The more I listen to this song the more iconic that Jinkx Monsoon’s wonderfully eccentric verse becomes, which includes lyrics such as “rub a dub dub get in my tub” which was so entertaining! However, it was Shea Coulee and Monét X Change who were declared as the two top All-Stars of the week and so they had to lip-sync against one another to “Old McDonald had a Farm”… after a rather unique battle it was announced that Shea gets to decide who would be blocked from winning a superstar star on next weeks episode and it was none other than Trinity the Tuck!
Last week we saw a musical challenge and this week saw the return of the snatch game with a twist! Instead of the usual format of the queens showcasing one celebrating impersonation, trying to make Ru Paul laugh, this time they had to perform two unique impressions! For context think of Bob, the drag queen’s iconic performance as both Orange is the New Black star Uzo Abuda and Carol Channing but instead for two fully-fledged challenges. The reason, I believe, that the creative team working on this season decided to do two snatch game performances instead of the usual one is because this season has some of the most iconic snatch game performers for all of Drag Race seasons including Jinkx Monsoon (as little Eddie on Season 5), Trinity the Tuck (as Caitlyn Jenner from All-Stars 5), the Vivienne (as Donald trump in Drag Race UK Season 1), Shea Coulee (as Flavour Flav on All-Stars 6) etc and so the bar was already set extremely high. For these queens it there was extreme pressure to surpass their original iconic performances however there were also some queens who did very poorly on their original season and so the gap of development need was so much wider. Both Yvie Oddly (as Whoopi) and Jaida Essence Hall (as Cardi B) were incredible infamous performances with the former actually ending up in the bottom two, which did bring us that iconic sorry, not sorry lip-sync so I suppose every cloud has a silver lining!
Each queen had to showcase two separate celebrity impersonations and so I will run through each performance based on the queen rather than the iteration they appeared on. Trinity the Tuck demonstrated an extremely flamboyant portrayal of the Devil which was hilariously called Luci-fer which was an obvious critique of modern religion. Some extreme religious groups believe all homosexual people are going to hell and so to deliver a camp devil was very clever although there are some people online who believe that the Devil is not a character as so cannot be portrayed in such a challenge. It was been rumoured that Trinity had created a fake reddit profile called “Shedevilbynight” where they would post hateful comments about other people. The nod from the devil in this name to her snatch game performance was a very interesting connection to play off of! As the devil, I thought that Trinity looked amazing in a sparkly flame filled outfit with fantastic horns which matched the flamboyant portrayal perfectly. Her second character for this challenge was Lesley Jordan (who had actually appeared on the show) who opened with a hilarious gag about needing a booster seat and delivered many flamboyant jokes throughout. Monet X Change decided to showcase an impression of Mike Tyson complete with a face tattoo and a lisp. While her look was amazing I do think that her jokes relied very heavily on his eccentric rant again Lennox Lewis. In this challenge, I thought that Raja was the most surprising as I ignorantly viewed her as simply a fashion icon but it turns out she is pretty gifted in celebrated impersonations. Raja did a wonderful performance as Diana Vreeland (who was the first editor of Vogue) that had wonderful make-up and delivered some eccentric responses throughout. However, I thought her performance of Madame the Puppet (who I did not know about prior to this challenge) was hilarious, with an amazing look that included steel rods with an iconic laugh. Raja moved in a way that was very reminiscent of a puppet which I thought was a wonderful inclusion to help keep to relationship to the original character at the forefront throughout the whole performance.
During Drag Race UK season one, the Vivienne was told that her performance of Donald Trump during the snatch game was one of the best performances of all time and so the pressure was on to try and surpass this amazing performance. While I thought her performance as Catherine Tate (who is rumoured to return in an upcoming episode of doctor who) as Nan (who has recently starred in her own film) was very accurate with the crude humour and voice being a great match, it didn’t quite live up to the prestige of her original performance. Yet again it was clear that Jaida really struggles with the improvised format of the snatch game, as her performance as Prince started off fairly well but quickly fizzled out with Jaida clearly struggling to come up with in-character responses. Some of the queens in this season did insanely well the first time around and flopped in this season and some went the other way round but Jinkx yet again proved that she is the unchallenged queen of the snatch game! Her first performance as Natasha Lyonne (who has appeared on shows such as Russian Doll, Orange is the New Black and Big Mouth) was worthy of a win on any normal season. However, it was her impression of the late Judy Garland that cemented her status as a legend in the snatch game! Not only did she manage to perfectly capture the voice of Judy but we also have the stereotypical lopping microphone wire gag and had everyone laughing throughout. She showcased incredible vocals as she sang classic Ru Paul songs in a Judy way that had everyone (other contestants included) in hysterics. Jinkx was also cleverly able to reference the veteran she made over during her original season who claimed he might have killed Judy which was such a meta-reference which showcased her comedic skills and insane intelligence. It was instantly clear that Jinkx was going to be in the top this week and if it was down to the challenge alone I would have handed her the win there and then!
The runway theme of this episode was the pleather principle which was a reference to the song “The Pleasure Principle” by Janet Jackson. Monet wore a wonderful brown pleather outfit that was sculpted perfectly to fit her body. I thought that this look treads carefully on the line between masculine and feminine energy and looked stunning on her! I thought that Shea Coulee’s look in this had all the makings of a very high fashion look but was too complex and busy. Her white kitty-inspired look had black writing all over it complete with an actual whip that she cracked on the runway. It was announced that, obviously, Jinkx was in the top this episode alongside Trinity who was famously blocked by Shea in the previous episode. This weeks lip-sync was yet again a unique choice with “Rumour Has It” having been selected, which is a much more subdued song than we are used to from Drag Race. Jinkx did a much more classic campy and cabaret style that leaned more into a live performance than a lip-sync act which I really enjoyed, so it made sense to me when it was announced she was the winner of this week’s episode. After much deliberation, Jinkx declared that she would be blocking Shea from getting a badge next week which just so happens to be a design challenge!
Overall, this was one of the greatest snatch games in Drag Race her-story where the queens showcased two performances rather than the typical one. Some queens struggled but there were also some of the best performances we have ever seen, and Jinkx’s performance transcended the art of imitation, feeling almost as if she was possessed by the ghost of Judy herself. Plus the runway this episode was fairly good with the lip-sync tracks being a bit more relaxed than I usually enjoy…
