RuPaul’s Drag Race: When A Fairy Met Sally

And now, for another week of our favorite race!

Before we get started, a few of you have inquired as to how I got my charming surname. To make a long story short, ’tis a term in the Em’rald Isle that denotes a slut so intent and successful in her manly pursuits that the fine lassie is promoted to the rank of whore even tho she takes no coin in recompence of her deeds. ‘Tis a surname I am proud to carry and one that must be earned, generation after generation, not simply handed down. I would publish our tartan but it has been banned in all counties by royal edict in the twelth century. It can now only be viewed under cover of night for fear of scaring small children or attracting Paris Hilton to our shores. You are only allowed one STD per annum, disqualifying her, plus our Free Clinics are overbooked as it is. So there it is. I hope I have put your minds at rest.

Back to reality, it seems as though the producers decided to allow Rebecca to write her own ticket this week, stirring up more drama and hatred, at least on my part. You thought I was upset last week? Ha! I didn’t just turn purple at the way things worked out, I was positively aubergine! At least I’m not the only one, as Shannel says in no uncertain terms that Jade was beautiful in and out and Rebecaca is NOT. Thank you showgirl, but your delivery would have been even more appreciated if it contained a little more vitriol. That is what is missing here. Real outrage. Maybe next time? Huh.

They all swan into a nearly empty workroom, the tables having been pushed back leaving a large space in the center. In Ru’s SheMail she remarks that a great queen once said that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” I know that quote from the bible and I think that JFK said something like that once but did Milton Berle ever say it? Nipsy Russell? Maybe it was Dame Edna. Anyway, Ru goes on to say that drag is a sisterhood and sisters are gonna be doin’ it for themselves. Empowerment? Giving back? Nope, although that would have been perfect for last week’s MAC challenge. Instead, he walks into the room accompanied by five of the butchest women/lady fighters this side of no-femmes night at the Cubby Hole.

We have a new Pit Crew this week which terrifies me and just guaranteed my Merlot order at the local liquor store was about to triple. No gorgeous boys for me to drool over? Why Ru, why? Hmmm. Let me try something.

Maybe if I squint my eyes and back up a bit? Nope, still a girl.

Bebe faints and falls to the floor crying, “noooooooo,” echoing my sentiments exactly and we are introduced to our butchies. We have a petite blonde tough girl named Jarrett who teaches Israeli style hand to hand combat and self defence. SweePee is a bald cage fighter, tiny but built. Michelle teaches Karate and is a Brazilian Capoeirista, and both Mia (tall, Eastern European) and Tempele (looks like a tough PTA mom) are boxers. Here’s where I close my eyes and pray that they are here to take Rebecaca (henceforth referred to here only as Caca. My recap, my prerogative) out back and beat the bitch out of her. And what is up with bitch’s t-shirt?

That smiley face has to be ironic, right?

But no beat-downs are on the menu today. Instead, it’s workout time! That gives me an idea. Wouldn’t you love a drag queen excercise DVD? Half of it would be sweating out impurities under hot lights while walking the runway and the other half would be sprints in high heels. You know most queens practice those sprints, and we ladies should too. Have you ever seen a drag queen get her purse snatched? Didn’t think so. A few have stolen cabs from me, though. Came right out of nowhere (you know who you are) and made me spill the contents of my purse all over Avenue A. It’s a good thing I was three sheets to the wind after using up all those drink tickets or there would have been a wigless queen that night on her way to the Meatpacking District.

I digress. The mini-challenge is for the butchies to put the girls through a series of increasingly difficult excercises with the one left standing the winner. This inspires Ru to channel his inner Bruce Lee.

Enter the Drag-Gunn.

It’s no surprise that most of the girls hit like fifth graders but what is even less surprising is that they have a lot of aggression to get out. Bebe doesn’t even stop when Jarrett tells her that she’s done. Nina says that it was a good stress reliever but imagine how much more stress they could have gotten out if they were punching each other.

“God, I wish you were Rebecca right now!”

They also have to straddle a bag and punch down into it, basically the same way that Ralphie punched the bully in A Christmas Story.

Only Ralphie was manlier.

Shannel gets a little winded and has to lay down for a bit. Just as I was counting her out of the last round of punches (interspersed with push-ups) she gets back up and in line with the other girls. She does look to be a bit out of shape so I gotta hand it to her for trying. They line up with the queens on one side and their butchie partner on the other. They start to punch furiously and I don’t know if this was an accident of editing or just a fact but every single shot of Caca shows her face as a twisted mask of rage.

Like Shannel said, such inner beauty.

Bebe is the first to give up, followed closely by Baby Ong and Nina. We are down to our showgirl and Caca. I think that Caca pulls all the strength she can muster to get this mini challenge because she has to know how close she is to going home. She squeeked out a win in the lip synch last week (God knows how. Is she passing out free blow job coupons? With those lips you gotta beleive there’d be some takers) and a win here would help her get back in the race. I was so hoping that Shannel could do it and she tried but Caca comes out ahead.

Here’s the bad part. Because she won, Caca gets to pick which Butchie she wants to make over. Not only that but she gets to pair up all the other girls. Look at her smile when she discovers that she has everyone in the palm of her hand. Remind you of anyone?

Only her heart didn’t grow ten sizes that day.

They have to make their partner into a version of themselves, like a mother/daughter or little sister. Now I get what Ru was referring to in the SheMail. Caca picks Tempele for her partner, she’s smaller but has even features that are a perfect blank slate for Caca to go shade crazy on. Ongina gets Jarrett, talk about night and day, Bebe gets Michelle which is fine, Nina gets Mia which is actually looking like a good pairing but poor showgirl gets SweePee. You can’t get more different or have a bigger challenge than the little powerhouse that is SweePee, but remember the girl group challenge when Caca said that Shannel was her biggest competition? She is obviously trying to make it hard on her. Shannel should have gotten Jarrett and Baby Ong should have gotten SweePee. But that’s what a nice person would have done, ’nuff said.

Commercial time. I watch these episodes online so that I can get my screen grabs so now I have seen that Absolut Mango ad a bajillion times. It looks like an egg in a womb that morphs into a phallic bottle. I gotta get out more.

Shannel is trying to morph SweePee into a woman but here’s the thing; she is actually a sweet girl but she’s never worn makeup or a bra. This has got to be terrifying for her. She looks at Shannel like she’s about to apply acid on her face.

I have to hand it to her, Shannel is taking her time with SweePee and seems to relish her role as teacher. I mean, imagine! Someone who has to listen, a captive audience! That’s right up her alley. She tries to show her how to walk in high heels and it’s like something out of My Fair Lady.

Starring Fancy Pants and She-Hulk.

Baby Ong is looking really worried. She wants to straighten Jarrett’s hair but blondie wants to go all out with a big drag do. Nina has to make an outfit for Mia because none of her clothes will fit her tall frame and Babe is giving Michelle a pep talk on feeling hot and seductive. She’s going to do her usual African Queen routine and wants Michelle to be her Middle Eartern counterpart. It’s one thing to have a vision of what your partner will look like but it’s a whole other story trying to make it come to life. I don’t know who this challenge is more difficult for, the Butchies or the Queens. None of the girls can walk in heels and when Caca takes Tempele out on the runway, she whines about her feet hurting and wants to walk without the stillettoes. Yeah, whining is annoying but Caca comes off like a big meanie/slave driver and just tells her to walk faster. Sensitivity is not her strong point.

RuGunn pops in to look over their progress, checking out SweePee’s first bra and Mia’s walk. She doesn’t do half bad but she has the advantage of looking the most like a model in the first place. Ru moves on to Caca and unfortunately he missed the first time she tried to mash a wig on poor Tempele’s head. What a bitch! If she had tried that with me she’d have a permanently shaded nose by now, compliments of my fingernails. She tells Ru that she wants to make Tempele look like herself, only a MILF and more youthful. If looks could kill, there’d be a warrant out for Temple right now.

Just tell them Twunty made you do it.

We get another killer look from Jarrett when Ong says that in order to give her her persona, she’s going to have to shave her head. Ong giggles self consciously but I am really starting to get nervous for her. And it’s just about to get worse. RuGunn tells them that there’s an added twist to the challenge, like it’s not hard enough already.

Just finish the sleeper hold and get it over with already.

The Butchies have to perform an individual lip synch to Freak Em Dress by Beyonce. Our tough girls don’t look so tough after hearing this news.

They strap their ipods on to learn the song along with lyric sheets and it’s kind of cute to see them all mouthing the words and getting into it. This reminds me of a particularly embarrassing moment of my teen years when i was geting down to Pat Benetar in the listening library in downtown Akron when I looked up and saw people snickering at me. My brother walked over, removed my headphones and informed me that I had been belting out “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” for the last two minutes. I went and hid in the Foreign Cultures section until our mom came to pick us up. I’m turning red just thinking about it. Imagine doing it on national TV!

I am distracted from my painful memory as once again we get a fabulously egotistical diatribe from showgirl Shannel. She explains that she is “about representing eyes and glamour and Diva and stregth and body” and that somehow SweePee is going to have to embody all this in one day. Oy. At least she is proving herself to be a great teacher.

Getting ready for the show, they have the same amount of time as they usually do only they have to do two people. That has got to be stressful but does Caca have to take it out on poor Tempele’s head? She shoves that wig on her so hard I think Tempele has permanent disc damage in her neck.

Sounds like a good alibi to me.

What a bully! Bebe has a nice conversation with Michelle about how drag is an illusion and that she doesn’t live her day to day life as a woman. It is a popular misconception that drag queens are cross dressers but I know first hand that they are not. Only two girls I used to know dressed as women 24/7 and both of them got sex changes. Queens love their penises, thank you very much and drag is a proffession, not a lifestyle.

We get a shot of Mia in a chair getting made up by Nina and at first I thought it was Nina in the chair, the transformation is so perfect. I don’t know how she does it. Years of practice at mama Flowers’ make up table in Puerto Rico, I’ll bet.

It’s showtime and Ru comes out in a hot pink dress with flowers in her hair, looking less southern belle this week and more Dixie brothel Madam.

With a little somethin’ somethin’ extra.

One of our guest judges this week is Robin Antin. She created the Pussycat Whores, I mean Dolls and she looks like a brunette version of Laurie Peterson from the Real Housewives of Orange County.

“You’re paying me in botox, right?”

The other judge is Lucy Lawless who was Xena, the Warrior Princess and was in one of my favorite SNL sketches where she impersonated Stevie Nicks and sang a goofy song about a bar food menu. I’m going to see if I can find it, she actually sounded a lot like her but now she looks nothing like I remember. She looks like she could star on Dallas or is about to shoot a Prell commercial after she picks up her residual check from that Enjoli ad she shot in the seventies.

“I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan….”

Bebe and Michele are a vision in gold as they walk slowly and seductively down the runway. Michelle looks like she could star in Lawrence of Arabia or a Bollywood movie and she is gorgeous.

Shannel and SweePee are dressed in head to toe black with a bondage flair.

Mia and Nina are wearing purple/pink with sky high hair. Nina looks like a blonde venus version of the evil queen in Snow White while Mia is a scarier Stepford Wife that went a little cuckoo with the teasing comb.

Jarrett comes out before Baby Ong, giving good fierce face but their outfits are somewhat lacking. They both do a hunched over pose and compliment each other but I’m still worried.

Caca and Tempele come out together wearing the exact same cheap wig and duplicate black mini halter dresses. She has succeeded in creating her own little mini-me and just as ten dollar hooker looking.

The butchies have to lip synch now and what is the point? The judges never mention it and it plays absolutely no part in their decision making. I don’t know if it’s because they are equally bad or what. It’s a throw-away moment.

Caca and Tempele are up first for the judges to mull over and I notice that the similarities are pretty amazing. Tempele even has the same mouth. She tells the judges what she learned from Caca and it’s how to be a mean, pretty bitch. Merle says that they are dressed down compared to the others but that it works for her. WTF? Number one, no self respecting drag queen would be caught dead with such a cheap Kim Kolziak plastic wig on their head and those outfits show no effort, none. Unbeleivable. The fix is in, Gasmii.

And by the way, that extreme nose shading has creeped over to include her cheeks and I’m starting to miss the old Caca who spared us her fake, smug smiles. She looks sinister to me like she’s gloating or something.

Barbie wants her hair back, bitch.

Poor Baby Ongina gets massacred. They hate the hair, say it’s too boyish but excuse me, Merle loved it last week! Talk about mixed signals. Robo Antin thought that Jarrett should have showed more leg and Santino says that Ong should have worn the dress and put the pantsuit on Jarrett. Ong does seem like he got a bit mixed up with this challenge, thinking more along the lines of a masculine and feminine versions of himself instead of two girls. I’m quaking at this point and it’s getting worse every time I see Baby Ong’s “Uh Oh” face.

Mia and Nina fall in the middle with the judges with Lucy saying that Mia looks like a real model. Santino says that the outfits are out of whack, one shiny and one floral. Merle makes another stupid observation about how the hair is too extreme. Where have you been the last few weeks?!? That is what she does and has been doing from the very beginning, it’s her style. Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t this challenge about transforming a butch girl into another version of yourself? I think that Nina did just fine.

Ru calls our showgirl Shannella de Ville and they do look like a mother/daughter S&M team. Santino asks SweePee to take off the bondage collar and she looks even better without it. All in all I think that SweePee was the toughest girl to make over and I give serious props to Shannel for pulling it off. So, suck it Caca, your little plan didn’t work.

The criticism of Bebe is almost as harsh as what Baby Ong got from the judges. I must be living on another planet because I don’t agree with Ru’s observation that the makeup was too heavy handed and looked like a mask. I think Michelle looks amazing. She doesn’t help Bebe one bit when she agrees that it’s way more makeup than she would ever wear. No shit, dumbass. Way to thank the generous queen that turned you from a complete frump into a beautiful belly dancer. Robo Antin, once again can’t understand why the skirt isn’t shorter. In Pussycat Whoreville it is fine and dandy and even encouraged to show leg up to your cootch but when was the last time you saw a middle eastern costume with a mini skirt? Uh, that would be never.

“I’m sorry, what did you say? I was too busy imagining your head on a spear to hear you.”

The judges talk amongst themselves and I’m in total shock when the judges agree that Michelle looked prettier with no makeup on. Santino calls out Baby Ong for not tucking properly in a pantsuit and says that Mia looked like a drag queen. I will agree that Ong’s outfits did not look finished, they were a tad sloppy, to be honest but the praise they heaped on Caca had my blood boiling so bad that I had to calm myself down and take a break in the bottom of a glass of Malbec. Okay, maybe it was a bottle.

They all say that Shannel and Sweepee looked the best so why in hell did Caca win? The only thing that was off about Shannel and SweePee’s presentation was that they didn’t go down the runway together. Maybe our showgirl didn’t want to overwhelm her partner or maybe she just wanted to shine on her own, I don’t care at this juncture. All I know is that Caca will be back next week and therefor someone I like is going to go home.

It comes down to Bebe and Baby Ong in the bottom two and they have to lip synch to “Stronger” by Britney Spears. They both pour their hearts out, Bebe is over the top and Ong does a more emotive job without moving much more than her shoulders and arms. My heart is sinking as I realize that this may be the end of the road for cutie pie. She just can’t match Bebe’s campiness and she makes the mistake of glancing over at her, probably to make sure that she doesn’t get knocked over by the ham that is trying to take over the whole stage.

When they are done Ru says that the decision is too difficult and excuses herself from judge’s table. I need smelling salts but after the big shocker last week when Jade got ousted, I’m still holding out hope that Bebe will go and my Baby Ong gets to stay.

Ru comes back out and milks the moment for all it’s worth, hanging her head and covering her face like she’s about to send one of them to the electric chair.

Or she’s imagining a world without krylon and booby tape.

She tells Bebe that she did the one thing she didn’t think possible. She outshone Ongina. Ongina is gracious in defeat and tells Bebe she deserves it. They hug and tell the other that they love them.

“Shhhhhh, now here’s a knife you can cut Caca with on your way out…”

All the queens tear up except for one. You guessed it, Caca doesn’t even bat one of her evil eyelashes. When Ru asks if she can get an “Amen in here,” the response is half hearted and the clapping is muted, as was the weekly dance to Ru’s “Cover Girl” song. Sadness all around once again this week. Well, I have to admit that we are getting served plenty of drama, as heartbreaking as it is, it still keeps me on the edge of my seat.

How are you guys feeling? As spent and disappointed as your Twunty is? Never in a million years did I think that Ongina would be the next one to go, so I’m going to dust myself off and hold my head high and get out the Caca voodoo doll. I wonder if the craft store carries extra long pins….

Love and Kisses, Twunty McSlore