Last year, I was thrown when each episode began directly after the elimination, rather than opening with a brand new day. This season, they’ve built on that editing choice by using the first few minutes of the program to immediately establish who we’ll be picking on next. What? April’s gone? Oh, let’s all take potshots at Milk. Everyone’s straight-up lactose intolerant in this gig.
Except for Laganja, of course, because hating others would mean thinking about someone besides herself. After pointing out “that was a lip sync” (good, baby, now can you name the president or tell us what year it is?), she’s still crying about the fact that she had a TV moment taken away from her. Dry those eyes, honey child: there’s a camera on you right now! See? All better. The lack of attention must have kept her up all night, but at least she put those hours to good use by creating a head wrap complete with faux dreadlocks for the morning’s entrance. I’m guessing she braided that monstrosity out of her hotel bedspread. Yes, fine, we see you, Maria Von Crap.
Knowing that we’ve been waiting all year for this moment, Ru cuts right to the chase. After a brief, utterly beautiful invocation of St. Lohanthony, she dispenses with the pretense of a mini-challenge and opens the floodgates on, praise be to Cher, THE SNATCH GAME. The excitement in the workroom cannot possibly match the excitement I feel in my soul. I get an immediate… I don’t know, what’s the drag equivalent of an erection? I get a watertight tuck just thinking about it.
And this bevy of beauts and brutes does not disappoint. Ru’s rounds expose a shocking breadth of preparedness and ability. Some, like Adore, seem to have progressed in a straight line to this moment from the womb. Others, like Gia, are confused on a Shady Pines scale. Luckily, Laganja is there in a confessional to explain that an impersonation involves both a look and a voice. Sharp as kindergarten scissors, that one. Maybe that’s why they’re such good friends: Gia needs basic concepts spelled out for her, and Laganja is just smart enough to offer their literal definitions.
The oft-previewed claim that this was “the tightest Snatch… Game ever” is true only because the bar had previously been set so low. Let’s face it, usually there are two people who know what they’re doing, a couple more who aren’t actively embarrassing themselves, and then a crowd of lunatics exploring the diverse routes that lead to spectacular failure. This time, though there are still clear standouts, the overall level of competence verges on eerie. Like, Joslyn’s middle-of-the-road Real Housewives act would have given Roxxxy Andrews’ Tamar Braxton a run for her money. And we’re talking about Joslyn, who is frequently outsmarted by her own wigs. She’s a better Fran Drescher impersonator than Courtney, too.
Adore (who was a scant four years old when The Nanny debuted, as a reminder of how current Ms. Act’s reference is) deploys the performance of a lifetime, or at least a Lifetime movie, by playing to her strengths as a sloppy, slurry Anna Nicole Smith. Also accentuating her positives, meaning the negatives, is Bianca Del Rio as the one Judy to judge them all and in the darkness shade them. Her success is hardly a surprise. The same cannot be said of BenDeLaCreme, whose usual manic optimism falters in the workroom when she reveals that she isn’t particularly confident in her British accent. Some might take that as a sign not to opt for a British celebrity, but in the end she carts out a Dame Maggie Smith so stuffy that I instinctively reached for my Afrin.
Of course, where there’s a top, there’s a bottom (if you’re taking the Pit Crew’s advice and using Scruff correctly, anyway), and some of these stars are collapsing into black holes. Milk needs a few more ingredients if she’s going to cook up a decent Julia Child, and Trinity brings no personality to her embodiment of a woman known for rifling through voices like Robin Williams in his cokey heyday. (Allegedly.) The real dud of the week, though, is Gia, who is right to abandon her Selena aspirations but wrong to settle on Kim Kardashian. Or maybe just wrong in general. This Gunn only misfires.
The runway theme of “dress like RuPaul” honestly sets everyone up for defeat. Like, remember how great that dress was when Ru wore it? Here’s some other dude wearing something similar but not as good. The only one who manages to stand out is Milk with her C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER sparkling suit. The daring choice to cart out man clothes of course earns her some criticism. This, in turn, leads to a meta-read from guest judge Gillian Jacobs, who rightly points out that every queen who says she will stay true to her vision quickly gets dismissed. Her observation re-earns her the points she lost for pronouncing her first name with a hard G.
It’s tough to know who truly deserved the win this week because editing, but BenDeLaCreme becomes the first two-time champion of the season for her sunny frock and funny talk (even though, be real, after a rough night at the bar I look more like Maggie Smith than she did). And since Milk barely skims by, the bottom two are the ever-united-in-my disdain Gia and Laganja. Miss Estranga at least tried harder than some of the other contestants (surprise), but her level of charm is so far into the negatives that she achieved the impossible and made me miss the real Rachel Zoe.
The overall letdown of the ensuing lip sync is not entirely the fault of the ladies involved. Lisa Lisa’s “Head to Toe” is too slow to jam to and too fast to groove to. Gia gives an appropriate amount of well-curated sultriness and a decently executed reveal, but her competitor opens with her signature death drop (one assumes that seven or eight more of them are on World of Wonder’s cutting room floor) and maintains that fevered, desperate intensity we know and hate.
Ultimately, the Gunn is out of ammo and gets sent packing. I think it’s a poor choice, honestly. Laganja is probably going to get some lame-ass, completely undeserved redemption arc that I’ll never, ever care about, whereas Gia would have continued to be the blend of dumb and mean that alchemically combines into perfect reality TV. Plus, that wonky eyelash makes it look like she’s always winking at me! If I must be forced to watch one of the most grating human beings on the planet, at least make it the funnier one.
