I’m not sure what mood I expected upon Gia’s departure, but the event is greeted with pointed indifference from the girls. The lone exception is of course Laganja, who is plain bouncy at the opportunity to talk more about herself. It’s really difficult for her to be in the bottom two, she assures us, because she’s used to getting praise. No really, you cannot imagine how tough her life is.
Actually, Trinity can totally imagine it, because she’s been in the bottom two before and she has HIV. So sit down, LaPothead IsPrivileged, some of us are busy demonstrating grace and talent in the face of adversity. People with real problems don’t sob over every paper cut. Learn how to write and then take note.
Elsewhere in the room, BenDeLaCreme is so full of pride over her second victory that her name might need some spaces inserted. Two whole wins? Even Shangela managed two wins, let’s not count our $100,000 quite yet. Then again, I get the sense that the whole Darienne/Dela feud is start-to-finish orchestrated by the producers and editors anyway. With Bianca acting like a human being instead of the bloodthirsty demon they expected, there’s no choice but to manufacture dissent elsewhere.
Speaking of things that cause discord, Laganja begins the next day by shouting “Good mornTing” from underneath a black baseball cap bedecked with gigantic fake red roses. She grates me so hard I could be sprinkled on pasta. Her self-sabotage actually goes meta during this week’s mini-challenge, the notorious reading segment: she provides her own glasses, but can’t see out of them. Girl, if you had as much insight as you had insecurity…
Anyhow, other than LaSitdown Enshutyourmouth, everyone works the library like it’s finals week. We all knew Bianca would leave a wake of scorched earth behind her, but the overall quality of everyone’s contributions is high enough to actually shock me. Even Joslyn shines, and before today I wouldn’t have said with any confidence that she could count nine queens, let alone read them. But it’s Darienne who takes the win, though I think her success is attributable half to skill and half to a continued effort to position her as the new villain.
Other than notoriety, the triumph earns the Lady of the Lake the opportunity to pick teammates for herself. As with last week, the effort to divide the girls into teams is entirely pointless in terms of judging and matters only in terms of the trouble it causes. But come on, Dela, would you choose you for a ‘90s rap battle? You could probably get freestyled under the table by former First Ladies of the United States, and I’m including all the ones that died before the Sugarhill Gang started making records. Fact: Abigail Fillmore was more street than BenDeLaCreme.
I’ll bet that the White House has sheltered more proficient dancers than this season’s crop of cross-dressers, too. The choreography rehearsals are downright pitiful; even the ones creating the steps look like idiots half the time. (I’m talking about the half of the time spent looking at Laganja, obviously; I keep fantasizing that she’ll somehow manage to get hit by a bus in the workroom.)
That doesn’t mean we don’t get some standout rap performances, which I think were written by the contestants themselves, though that aspect of the challenge remains vague. Nearly every performer who is shown stumbles on their lyrics once or twice, which I guess is supposed to build tension, but isn’t that just life? Snoop probably doesn’t land anything on the first take, either. Besides, Joslyn and Adore have set the bar so low that we’re impressed when they get out of bed in the morning instead of lapsing into a months-long coma. The true flops of the night are Darienne, who is farther out of her comfort zone than Gia Gunn at a MENSA convention, and Trinity, whose assertion that enunciation doesn’t matter comes back to bite her in the padded ass when she basically moos half her verse.
We’re initially told that the runway theme this week “crazy sexy cool,” but later hear that it’s supposed to be glamour that shows off each queen’s favorite body part. So… clothes? Everyone should wear clothes? Nope, even that would be too specific: Courtney sports a bedspread and some underwear, and she’s still safe because we live in a world without laws or gods.
The top contenders are consistently excellent Bianca and consistently breathing Joslyn (was everyone so terrible that she merited special judging mention?), with the top spot going to Love From The Anus. Look, it’s just what her name means, OK? For others, though, it’s tricky to rock a rhyme. We knew Trinity would be in hot water when she slurred like a drunk even without the flipper; it was just a question of who she’d face off against. Turns out it’s Milk, who is too special a snowflake to conform to expectations like “fitting the theme” or “wearing a garment that was constructed more than ten minutes ago.”
Now here’s the thing: Lady Bonet takes a lot of flack for underperforming in the challenges, but she’s not lying when she says that lip syncing is what she does. Because when “Whatta Man” comes on, we all go to that place where we’re clowning in our car with our friends, flapping our lips to the lyrics that we sort of know, giggling and acting crazy. Look at Milk, she knows precisely what I’m talking about. Trinity, however, is eons ahead of us, getting down and dirty to embody the song’s true sexual potential. Dressed as Naomi Campbell re-enacting the Free Love movement, she works the floor like a woman intent on liberating some genitals from their confinement.
Ru’s hands are tied (perhaps literally after that kinky-ass performance), and Trinity must stay. There’s just no denying the smoldering genius of her stage work. I love Milk, but her charm came from that sense that she was an old-school Ashton Kutcher figure, gleefully punking the audience and judges with her disobedient strangeness. It’s clear that she likes doing her own thing and will be just as happy sashaying to someplace where her own thing can actually be done.
