belligerent

Who ever could have predicted that both immunity potions would be used in situations where it didn't matter. It's almost like in that one season where it was always chocolate until it wasn't, hmmmm. How crazy and zany. It's interesting to juxtapose Sapphira using her potion when she didn't need it at all vs. Plain Jain giving it to someone else when she arguably could have needed it. Was this supposed to air before Super Tuesday and something got pushed back? Because it's really weird and unfortunate timing otherwise.

Those characters are made-up in a way that’s different from what I mean. Kimmy Jong Un was based on an actual person and “Maria the Robot” was based on a real robot personality (that felt weird to type) named Sophia the Robot. These were still impersonations on some level. What happened this Snatch Game felt different than that, because “the gold tooth fairy” wasn’t an interpretation (however loose) of an existing personality, she told Ru that it was all from her head. Likewise, when it was mentioned by Michelle (? I think) that she thought Plain Jain’s character was someone she “made up,” it didn’t seem to matter that she had or hadn’t. They also seemed iffy about Tiffany Pollard but were fine with Mhi’ya rebranding what she was going to do as Tiffany Pollard as an original character. I know there’s a lot of grey area here. I feel like once Trinity decided to do Lucifer, they probably decided it was fine to do whatever. However, it would be nice to hear what the parameters are so the viewers know. If the criteria for a snatch game character is “someone,” then why not just be your own drag persona? I’m sure that’s off the table. I guess I would rather they make up things like the Gold Tooth Fairy instead of impersonating random tiktokers, so I’m not complaining so much as I am wondering what the actual rules are. I think increasingly, snatch game is the challenge where the fourth wall has been knocked down between the viewers and production, exposing how much of the judging outcome is just whatever Ru wants it to be, regardless of the performance, which makes it feel less fun to watch for me.

I find it super weird that the editing made it appear as though Planned Jan said something about being distracted by “shiny breasts” specifically at Laith Ashley, who happens to be a trans man. I doubt she had any idea who he is and it was probably directed at both pit crew members but wow, editors. Nobody can make her say words she didn’t say but the editing really has been showing a good number of questionable things. Beyond that, it annoys me how much Ru can interfere with the outcome of snatch game. All she really has to do is express doubt to someone in the workroom to make them second guess or just refuse to play “yes and” to derail them fully. I also didn’t think it was totally fair in untucked that Q was getting accused of pulling out the Brick for Amelia Earhart. Ostensibly she’d practiced Amelia beforehand, so she was more spoilering her own performance in the SNL episode by choosing to use the mannerisms she had planned for Amelia. Did they change the rules for this season to allow made up characters? I think in the past, you weren’t supposed to do that, but they didn’t stop Xunami from doing it when they had the chance, and someone mentioned that they had thought Plane’s character was made up.

I don’t really like Plane Jain, but we have to let her off the hook, I guess. Season 16 started filming almost exactly when AS8 was airing (the premiere would have been the only episode shown), so I feel like this was really poor planning on the show’s part. I don’t know why they had essentially the exact same skit or why they aired the parts where they praised Planned Jan for the same things they praised jimbo for. Do they think we’ve seen so many seasons of drag race in the last year that we’d forget?

My pet theory for a while has been that Ru (a Scorpio) will never crown another Scorpio on a season of American drag race but now he has no other option. Hmm. Missed opportunity for a "Kandy Musk" scent. Imo it was boring that the queens all mostly had their designated twin outfits and a name ready to go. I get they didn't really give them time to do the challenge in an interesting way, but it is not entertaining to me for Kandy to dictate what drag her daughter is going to do and pretending (badly) like she's not doing exactly that. I know they've been doing that for the last several seasons, but it was extra transparent to me this time. "What name goes with Kandy??? Cookie???? I know, we could spell it with a K!!!!!"

This episode was emotionally exhausting somehow and I'm not invested enough to have emotions about this season, so I'm not sure how they managed that. RuPaul doing the "if you think you can throw a big fit, I will throw the biggest fit of all" thing was mildly amusing, though. I wonder if he would just decide to pull a whole season to spite them if they kept trying to quit.

Pretty annoyed at the praise Kandy got for singing when her track was the most obviously pitch-corrected of them all, especially when their criticism of Kahanna was that she was pitchy. Like, I realize all the queens had some level of pitch correction but it seems disingenuous to pretend they didn't. Oh well.

I feel like Loosey sealed her fate by voting for herself as the next to go in the mini challenge. Even though the entire point was to vote with the group, I think that's the kind of move that Ru secretly holds against queens. Loosey is a Taurus so I guess that means she is going to be mad about this forever. I'm still hoping for either an Anetra or Sasha win. I think Anetra has had higher highs and lower lows, but Sasha has been consistently pretty good. I loved them both with their drag daughters this episode.

Salina's boy drag was giving me Mike Meyers vibes. I think it was the eyebrows. Also, Loosey's boy drag kept reading as Emilio Estevez to me. I don't know that they actually looked like these people if you put them side by side, but my brain said they did. I'm surprised they didn't have costuming do something to hide Loosey's visible tattoos. That's not her fault, but I kept noticing the ones on her legs. I think either Mistress or Luxx would be fine, but the two of them together make what they're doing exponentially more tedious. It's a weird one-two punch where Mistress is being strategically shady but it's just a joke, can't you take a joke????? and then Lux is plainly stating an alternate reality with such conviction that it's a perfect storm of gaslighting whether the two of them intended it to be this way or not. The edit seems to want me to side with them and let Loosey get Derrick Barried, so I'm assuming that means one or both of them goes farther than she does. I don't hate either of them, and I think either of them by themselves would be a funny villain, but the two of them together take it somewhere unpleasant. (Although Mistress finding a security tag on Luxx's coat was funny and I'm glad we have longer episodes again because idk if they'd have kept that in a shorter edit.) This wasn't my least favorite Rusical (the kardashian one or the orange one probably take that for me. I've liked Rats the most) but we were robbed of seeing what Marcia³ would do with it. I'm surprised anybody ever wants the lead role in the rusical, because I can't really remember a time when that's gone well aside from the one with Adore and Courtney Act, and that one involved actual singing. It's not like the acting challenges where you can take more liberties with the character, because the tracks are already recorded. The more stage time you have, the more time there is for the judges to find reasons to put you in the bottom, and you're not getting the win because the leads are usually not written as very funny, which is what Ru likes. I think Anetra and Sasha were definitely the tops here. I liked that Sasha had a very specific way of moving and emoting as boy Carl that she carried into the drag Carl (I don't remember Carl's drag name lmao, was it Ethel Sperman??) persona so that it didn't just feel like suddenly, Sasha. I liked everything Anetra did. She performs with her entire soul on display and it's mesmerizing. Maybe I am still feeling overexposed to "Running Up That Hill" from dragoncon (not dragcon) last year due to Stranger Things being the big fandom of the summer, but this was not my favorite lip sync, either. Orville Peck seemed really random as a judge for this challenge, although I know it's based on schedule availability who they can get.

The editing made this feel like a clip show.

I agree. She's kind of literally doing the "look over there!!" thing but being smart enough not to call back to it.

Same. Unless there's a surprise upset and that girl doesn't somehow magically surprisingly unexpectedly truly madly deeply have the golden ticket (or more likely, if Jorgeous gets eliminated to attempt to put a fire under her and shockingly jawdroppingly no-earthly-groundhog-could-have-predicted-it-ly rigory morrisly does have the ticket and then two of those four end up in the bottom and one has to go), I would have almost bet chocolate on these four being the last four standing from about....the first few episodes? I would be happy with any one of them winning, although as someone on Team Gemini, I will be especially pleased if it's Bosco, since I don't think we've had a winner since Violet Chachki, IIRC? I like Deja but I think she got immunity at the right time. I don't see her surviving that lip sync deathmatch with anyone except Daya. Speaking of, is Daya trying to gaslight the entire cast and dragrace fandom into forgetting that she actually should already be at home with all this "i can't believe i did just as bad as jaaaaaaasmiiiiiiine" bullfuckery? I'm glad Jasmine called her out on the "no offense" method of trying to stop people from calling her out for being an asshole. I also thought it was interesting that she has different rules for how and when other people get to be honest. So you can say whatever you want in front of the group because you're saying "no offense," but somebody else has to come to you privately to bring something up? Yeah, no. Jasmine has good instincts to bring that stuff up in public where she has witnesses. Willow has been playing the game better and more intelligently than just about anyone that's been on this show. I think Bosco and Camden have also been playing fairly smartly, so I hope they can all figure out a way to get rid of Daya. I have to rewatch the episode because my internet starts getting laggy about 30 minutes into the live feed and the only matches I saw clearly without it freezing every five seconds were the first two. Willow vs Bosco is probably one of my favorite lip syncs I've seen in recent memory.

I almost would bet a chocolate bar that we saw the least funny parts of snatch game in order to have an in-story reason to justify the lip sync palooza next week. I really don't think production could set up an entire new episode in a short time, and they already saw the silky episode of all stars work as a good twist. And how many of these episodes are non-elimination? To have the right number of episodes that were ordered, they would need to know in advance which ones would be non-elimination. Kornbread threw them a curve when she had to go early, but they've brought people back, had non-eliminations, and there's still a gold chocolate bar, ostensibly. (what if Ru has the gold chocolate bar?) That said, I doubt it was actually good, either, and I will make up my mind on what percentage I think was shenanigans when I watch it again (because I was trying not to burn banana bread* and missed a minute or two), but I don't think they were really set up to succeed or edited in a favorable way. That's a shame because I think a lot of them are super talented and I don't want production gaslighting them. More opinions after I watch again, I guess. I did like the analysis in Untucked of how to do snatch game correctly, and I thought Bosco was particularly insightful and succinct about it and am kind of surprised they aired the talk at all. Basically there are rules unless there aren't. Yeah, that's the show. *The banana bread is slightly overdone, but not as overdone as production shenanigans on drag race! I agree with that, but I think it would take away the aspect that they were discussing on Untucked. If you make something against the rules, then you can decide to reward people for taking the risk to break them if it's funny. Like Bob having a second Snatch Game character. Nobody told him he could, but he did it, anyway, and it wasn't a disaster so he was rewarded for doing his own thing to stand out in a way that they must have thought improved the show. The "Nerve" criteria they allegedly use as a judging parameter is underutilized by queens, although I can understand why.

I feel like there's an inherent advantage to whoever won the previous lip sync because she knows what's about to happen and is already mentally prepared, whereas the newly eliminated queen basically hears about the Game Within A Game (GWAG? is this acronym a word or did they miss a chance to make a pun?) and has to instantly be ready. That's a lot of emotional whiplash to navigate. I'm still not a Silky fan but I was entertained by this episode at least.

I don't really understand why Ginger won but it's Ru's show, not mine. I, too, thought Kylie did a better job. However, the person I actually laughed at was Ra'Jah. I think it's because the weirdness felt more organic to me than one liners.