wait so like... no one is going home?

RuPaul's Drag Race AS9E3 "Snatch Game of Love" Recap

There’s a lot going right with this All Stars season. Watching queens round the corner of the runway in mind bogglingly expensive garments (Gottmik and Plastique), the return of Drag Race royalty (Roxxxy and Shannel), the return of Sesame Street royalty (Vanjie)…

But for all it’s virtues, this All Stars season is a lot like Dracula’s Castle. No stakes! (🥁)

I did my best to overlook it the first couple episodes: everyone’s Drag Queens Save the World verse ranged from adequate to great, and Plastique and Gottmik turned the ball so fiercely that I was almost able to Eternal Sunshine Nina West’s clown drag from my memory. But after Snatch Game, the lack of consequences for straight up bad drag is feeling glaringly apparent.

But again, let’s start with the good. For all her aesthetic shortcomings, you can’t deny that Nina West speaks the language of comedic performance. In the battle of the Liberaces, I had little doubt that Nina would emerge victorious over the self-serious Shannel, and indeed she does. Nina is always on, and – even better – she’s quite adept at picking up the slack of her neighbors: filling in silences that threaten to tank her panel’s already precarious vibes. (“David, I look forward to tickling those ivories, and RuPaul… those ebonies!”)

Gottmik and Angeria are no slouches either. Unlike in her original season, Gottmik is far from a dark horse this time around. While she’s typically affixed with the label of “fashion queen,” Gottmik was no slouch comedically back then, and she sure isn’t now. For her Snatch Game she chooses Pal (the dog actress who played Lassie,) portraying her as a classic old Hollywood dame who is of course… a dog. It’s a great concept. She does a solid job of landing jokes throughout and an even better job of executing her truly stunning dog snout makeup illusion. And to top it all off (pun-intended) with a top surgery runway that has both TERF and conservative Twitter in tatters? Gottmik, the icon that you are!! And in a very competent performance as Marla Gibbs, Angeria amps up her southern drawl, and gets some funny shots in at the bachelor (Kevin aka Monet X Change) and her fellow queens alike. Her progressively finding more and more wrong with Monet as a love prospect really worked for me: “Oh Lord, you do drugs too??” Good performances all around.

Alright that about does it for the good, now let’s get to the… shall we say satisfactory? Shannel, Vanjie, and Roxxxy. To her credit, Shannel does not do badly. While a far inferior Liberace to Nina’s, Shannel looks pretty unimpeachable in her prosthetic nose and expensive stoned costume. She has a line or two (“You’d be my little cockatoo… because I’ve had a cock or two myself,) that had me saying “wait… is Shannel great at this?” Well… no. But the fact that I even asked myself the question earns her quite a few points in my rubric! That said, if Shannel had come out as herself on season 1, screamed at RuPaul, the other queens, and the camera crew for half an hour and said she was being Faye Dunaway she would’ve won.

Onto Vanjie. To her credit, coming out in Trisha Paytas drag, not changing your voice one iota, and saying “you’re asking too many questions,” are all inspired comedic choices. Do they coalesce into a cohesive performance? Certainly not. Am I entertained? Well, yes !

On the other hand, Roxxxy is quite forgettable this week, choosing to dredge up yet another iteration of her Tosha Salad character from season 5. More and more each episode, it seems Roxxxy is hell bent on self-producing a beat by beat “Rudemption” for herself. “Remember that thing that annoyed you about me? It’s funny now! Remember that thing I did last time? I’m doing it again!” Self-reference can be all well and good, but when it becomes a book report-esque summary of your previous appearances on the show, the audience starts to get bored. I mean seriously who would ever retrod (or “recap”) an episode of Drag Race we’ve already seen for entertainment value… not me!!!

If this season had the courage to give us a bottom two, it would indisputably be Plastique and Jorgeous. Both fail to extract any semblance of comedy out of their chosen celebrities (Ali Wong and John Leguiziamo), but worse still, they don’t really seem to care. And why would they? There’s no punishment for performing poorly on this tentpole of a Drag Race challenge. No one particularly expected Jorgeous and Plastique to do well here so there’s no damage to their reputations, and there’s a contractual guarantee they won’t be eliminated no matter how little effort they put in. And so all these two have to do is wait it out.

In a regular season, at least we’d be rewarded with a ferocious lip sync from these two after a Snatch Game like this. Instead, we get some lackluster “well, you did your best” critiques from the judges and we’re told to move on. I’m afraid that just doesn’t work for me, doll! And instead of seeing Jorgeous and Plastique fight for their lives, it’s our top two (Gottmik and Nina) who battle it out to “Banana” by guest judge Anitta feat. Becky G. While hardly known for her lip sync chops, Gottmik handily wins over Nina, who – in lieu of performing – rips off layer after layer of sequined reveal cover-ups. A tornado of unchicness leaving a mess of ugly fabric in its wake. As we speak, I’m doing my utmost to forget this ever happened.

And so, Gottmik picks up her second badge in three episodes, establishing herself as the clear frontrunner of this competition. At this point, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else winning this season, but here’s hoping the likes of Plastique and Angeria give her a real run for her money (or, rather, Trans Lifeline’s money).

Until next week!