RuPaul’s Drag Race Finale: Once, Twice, Three Times As Shady

This is it, kids. Our engines are revving, we’re coming down the stretch and I can see Ru with the checkered flag in her hands.

We’ve got our final three and as much as I wish things were a little different, one of them is Caca. The good news is that the judges make perfect sense this time and there is no place to hide a lack of talent or a downright stinky ass limberger cheese personality. Have you ever smelled cheese that’s gone bad? I just threw out some baby swiss that went horribly wrong in my refrigerator and it still didn’t smell as bad as a certain doe-eyed dipstick’s performance this week. I’m pretty sure I made the same face, though. Peeeee-yeewww, girl!

Pepe le Pew got nothing on you, mon cherie!

Soooo, we’re off! Once again, the workroom is cleared out in the center when our girls arrive. Caca notices that Shannel left one of her wigs behind and speaking of wigs, did any of you happen to catch the behind the scenes episode? There’s an awesome scene where Baby Ong tries on Bebe’s lioness wig. It is literally half her size.

Cousin Itt by way of Manila by way of Cameroon.

The girls have a little conversation where Bebe asks Nina if she’s ever been in the bottom two, and by golly, she hasn’t! Oh dear, I did not realize that until now. Bebe tells her that it doesn’t mean that she’s any better than anyone else but I have to disagree. I just hope that this isn’t some kind of weird foreshadowing of her getting cut first. My poor heart wouldn’t be able to take a Bebe-Caca showdown for the win.

In this week’s She Mail, Ru alludes to video Divas, herself being the biggest and best of them all, of course, and Merle and Santino visit the workroom for the first time. It is also the first time that they have seen the queens out of makeup which must have been a shock. Merle says that she doesn’t even recognise them. Well honey, I’d like to see you out of makeup……..on second thought, no I wouldn’t. *shivers*

They are there to give them their challenge, which is writing a rap with rapper Cazwell (“I Seen Beyonce…”) and learning the steps for the video with choreographer supreme Ryan Huffington, who bears a striking resemblance to Frank Zappa in heels.

You are what you is and you is what you are, and you is just a Mother Bizarre.

Someone tell me where he’s hiding his junk in those stone washed cootchie cutters, cuz just looking at them is making me uncomfortable. Can you imagine dancing in them? Did he tuck? Is he some kind of pre-op Captain Morgan meets Debbie Gibson at a shopping mall aerobic’s class? Color me confused but I love him. For a little tiny second I thought that it was Ben Stiller pulling some kind of Borat crap but this dude isn’t bowlegged so that theory went out the window. But the way he tells them to dance in synch like chorus girls but to give major face so that they stand out is soooo Zoolander. “Live here,” he says as he circles his face.

And that is a really good idea since I’m not to sure what’s living down here.

Caca lies to herself when she says that she’s not a good dancer but she’s a good “dance faker.” Puhleeze, your speciality involves a slack jaw and a dormant gag reflex. Poor Frank Stiller has to spend most of his time teaching her the steps while Bebe and Nina get down to brass tacks and actually learn them. I have to wonder if this is just a tactic to hog all the attention and play the vulnerable, innocent, naive, needy one. Ben Zappa finally tells her that he can’t keep showing her the moves because they are out of time, plus he has to get back to his real job as understudy to the Pirate King in the local community theater production of The Pirates of Penzance.

Ru pulls a Tyra and decides to have a one-on-one luncheon meeting with the three remaining queens. You know the schtick, take the girl aside, ask them poignant questions, let them be vulnerable and then profit off the ratings boost when the tears start a flowin’. Only unlike Tyra, Ru comes off as genuine and ten times more womanly.

She sits down first with Nina and they enjoy a leisurely meal of cranberry juice and an entree that has seen many a supermodel through a long day of work. Two TicTacs.

Which they promptly throw up.

You can tell that Ru genuinely likes the little flower and she tells her that she has a sweet personality in contrast to her severe drag personae. Nina tells her that her most difficult moment in life was her mother dying and one of the happiest was when her homophobic dad came to see her in drag at a club in Puerto Rico. That must have been a big deal. I’ve never dated a Latino but I hear that the only thing more common than their machismo is their pride.

Meanwhile, Caca meets up with the rapper Cazwell in the studio to go over her lyrics. I roll my eyes in glee when he tells her that she only wrote half of her rap and that she needs to write another 4 bars before they can continue. Guess what else she didn’t do. Bring a pen. Sometimes I wonder, was I this clueless at 26? This unprepared? Something tells me no because there is no way that I would have survived. New York doesn’t look kindly on people that try to skate through life. They do have a booming business for girls with oral ‘skills,’ though!

She finally gets up to the mic and keeps flubbing and asking to try it over again. And what does little miss delusional think was her biggest problem? She speed-rapped. That’s right, she was too ambitious. It had absolutely nothing to do with not being prepared. She remarks that she might have just “thrown the noose over her neck,” and all I can say is, “couldn’t you have done it sooner? Like before the last episode?”

It looks like Cazwell got a good whiff of that talent.

Bebe sits down to her TicTac lunch with Ru and here’s where we get the money shot. She starts to tear up when she tells Ru that she wants to get involved with community outreach in Africa because she has seen people die right in front of her from HIV in Cameroon. She says that she wants to KAHN-trib-ute in some way. I hope she is being genuine because otherwise it would be extra shady to win points by waving aroung the AIDS card. I take that back. I have no idea what it has been like for her. I’ve had my share of friends die from AIDS but not right in front of me. That would be horrifying. I beleive that she is an old soul and you can tell by looking into her eyes that she has seen a lot more pain and suffering than most of us could ever fathom.

Back to Cazwell, who is with Nina this time. Little flowers is having her usual difficulties with the language. I admit to cracking up when she kept pronouncing ‘as,’ ‘axe.’ Then I promptly shut up when I realized that I only speak English and French, and the French part is stretching it. The dude I bought cigarettes from every morning on the Rue de Crapaud back when I was living in Gay Paree would always say,”Quoi? Quoi?” so I assume that most Parisians kinda didn’t understand me. Or maybe it’s because my teacher was from Stuttgart. Yeah, I’ll go with that excuse. Anyhoo, Nina does her first take perfectly if a little pitchy, Dawg, and all is well in Flores-land.

Loca, baby!

In what I would regard as sheer torture on par with the Spanish Inquisition, Ru has lunch with Caca. And bitch has the nerve to complain that the other girls are giving her shade! Honey, you are lucky that you aren’t at the bottom of a well right now. Girl passes out more shade than Levelor and the entire rainforest combined. Ru asks her what she has done to contribute to the situation and the best answer she can up with is that she keeps to herself and that might come off as unfriendly, but that’s just the way I am…….. boohoo, bullshit. Ru is not falling for this and from the looks she’s giving her, they get along a lot better when Caca has her mouth full of something, and we’re not talking TicTacs, people.

Shut up and untuck me.

It’s Bebe’s turn to rap and she nails it on the first take. You can’t even hear her accent, she’s that professional. Cazwell says that he’s scared of her and they seem to get along really well, I mean REALLY well. He high-fives her before she leaves and Bebe shows restraint by keeping one hand in her pocket when you know that she totally wants to make out with him. He is really cute, after all and I’m too lazy to look it up but is he gay? I’m not getting a read either way.

Please be gay! Please be gay!

We’re off to the video shoot and see Ru in all the outfits you see in the opening credits plus a gorgeous Studio 54 era number that I must have. It’s a gold lame blouson top over leggings with a headband over a fab blonde afro.

I can totally see her kicking it with Liza and Bianca in a corner banquette doing lines and laughing as a go-go boy humps Halston while Andy Warhol takes pictures. As you can probably tell, I read too many celebrity biographies and way too many Vanity Fair “I was there when..” articles.

The first part involves the choreography they learned as a threesome with each one of them taking a turn front and center. I have to say that my eyes keep going to Bebe and Nina and I barely notice that Caca is there at all. I catch her messing up out of the corner of my eye, rewind, and she dances like Anna Nicole Smith on a platter of pills washed down with some leftover Absolut Citron. I am cringing for her in a moment of misguided empathy. Excruciatingly bad.

Mike Ruiz is directing the video. You’ll remember him from the first water soaked photo shoot where we lived vicariously through the queens as they got to experience being hosed down by the Pit Crew. Sigh, memeories. It seems like such a long time ago! This was way back when Akashia was annoying the crap out of me and Caca barely registered a blip on my radar. A lifetime ago.

He remarks that Bebe is giving great energy, Nina has the choreography down perfectly and Caca is the “realest” of them all but can’t dance for shit. Okay, he didn’t say that last part but you totally know he was thinking it.

It’s time for them to do their individual takes and I love Nina in the blonde dreads.

She also has the best makeup skills outside of Shannel and I want her to teach me how to do my eyes only I don’t want to scare the neighbor’s kids, so she’d probably have to dial it down a few notches, and then what’s the point so just forget it. I have to hand it to her, she loves the camera, as does Bebe. Oh, Bebe. She takes me back to the Pyramid Club days when you had your drag queens and you had your CRAZY drag queens. I didn’t mind the lip synchers but I lived for the truly nutty ones that would go over the top. Divine inspiration, if you will, and Bebe seems to be carrying that torch here. Mike directs her to be happier but not CRAZY happy and to smile but not too CRAZY and the girl just can’t help it. I’m loving it and laughing out loud, to be honest, and how in holy hell is that wig staying on? She whips her head around like a bobble-head in an earthquake only CRAZIER.

Cameroon, loony loon loon!!

By the way, how awesome would it be if Ru came out with a line of Drag Race bobble-heads? There would be a little bald Baby Ong in black tulle, you could play with your Shannel bobble doll with the added feature of a bobble-ass and Caca’s would bobble all on its own whenever the Ru bobble-head was around. Hours of fun, I’d buy the whole set!

Back to reality and Mike is wandering around the set wondering where Caca is. Damn, girl! She is the last to go solo in front of the camera and she’s still not ready. Maybe she took a detour on her way back to the workroom. Where is Ru’s dressing room, anyway?

Eerie music plays as she finally makes her way on to the set, wig askew. Her hairline is clearly visible under a curly wig I swear I saw on a hooker that was walking on Euclid Avenue last week and Mike does the stand-up thing and lets her go fix it. Why bother? That wig is as busted as her personality and ain’t nothin’ gonna fix that.

It’s not just your hairline that’s showing, honey.

The good news is that this just allows the other two girls extra time to film some goofy stuff like a fake cat fight between Nina and Bebe.

Why is Diana Ross beating up Barbara Eden, mommy?

They seem to be genuine friends which makes me think that this would have been so much better if it was between Shannel and Caca or a buzzsaw and Caca. I’m cool with either one.

Meanwhile in the bathroom, Caca is adjusting her wig. Let’s play ‘I Spy’ for a moment, shall we? I spy with my big blue eye something clear that can lube up your rear……..

She gets her wig under control and walks out onto the set where Nina and Bebe are already dancing and cuts in between them. Flipit needs to tell me how to gif because Bebe’s facial expressions convey exactly how I feel about Caca in one second flat. This should give you some idea:

It’s Caca’s turn to dance on her own and she has a little problem with an errant hair. Mike tells her to pull it off of her lips. She has some trouble removing it.

Semen is like glue, you know.

Mike has to over-direct her like a cheerleading coach for the squad at the special olympics (too soon?). He claps when they are finally done with Bebe and Nina scowling in the background. I think that he just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Bebe- “I don’t want to say she’s a bitch but….” Um hmmm. Caca pulls that vulnerable act too much. I too wonder about all the praise for her beauty. Is it because there is nothing else there? Well, let’s not get too deep here, it’s drag and it’s supposed to be fun and I’m not going to let hooker Barbie ruin it for me. Plus, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t too many depths to be explored in her case.

It’s the last day and as the girls are getting ready Nina observes that they don’t even know each other’s everyday names. They just call each other by their respective drag names. Caca is Javier, Nina is Jorge (Hor-Hay) and Bebe’s is too unpronouncable for me and I would probably screw up the spelling, so we’ll just stick with Bebe. It was pretty funny when she asked Nina to say her name over and over. I think the “Hor” part had her a little confused. She probably thought that she had it backwards since that’s how they address Caca behind her back.

Hey, Whore!

Doesn’t she look a tiny bit like Tammie Brown in that picture? It must be the caterpiller eyebrows.

Nina and Bebe are making plans for the future of their friendship, how they want to perform together and stay in touch. It reminds me of all those people (guys) I met on vacation that I promised to (booty) call back in the States that I subsequently ignored (gave them the wrong phone number). Unlike me, I think that they really mean it and they’ll be doing press for the show in the coming weeks so they’ll no doubt follow through.

Caca is having none of that friendly bull and when Nina asks her if she’ll stay in touch she calmly replies, “nope,” because she’s ambitious and she’s not going to let a little thing like friendship stand in the way of her goals.

Here’s where I confess that I’m a bit of a quote-aholic. I used to post daily ones on my blog but gave it up when I realized that boring people to death was not going to make my daily hits go up. Anyway, I’ve got one tailor made for her;

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

-Muhammed Ali

Suits her nicely, don’t you think? One more thing, and it’s a rant so move on to the next paragraph if you can’t be bothered. I am so sick of reality show contestants that play the ‘not here to make friends’ card. It is so over-used and everyone knows that it’s a pathetic attempt to excuse the person’s crappy people repelling personality. I’d like to state here and now that VH1, Bravo, etc, need to implement a moratorium on that bullshit line along with, “she threw me under the bus” and “we haven’t really made a connection yet.” They should be replaced with “she’s a back stabbing bitch” and ” the chick wouldn’t blow me in the back of the tour bus.” Feel free to add your own. I’m sure that I’ve overlooked a lot of annoying phrases.

It’s runway time and Ru is wearing her huge wavy blonde wig and her dress is an explosion of red tulle.

I have to give a shout out to the fabulous designer of all her gowns this season, the multi talented Zaldy. I met him a few times during my years in New York and not only is he gorgeous and brilliant, but he is one of the sweetest people you could ever have the pleasure of meeting. He is truly one of a kind.

Nina is up first and she’s wearing another severe pantsuit only this one has the added touch of a train that is attatched to the side seams of her pants. Fabulous, as usual.

Caca is wearing the same pink ten dollar hooker dress that she wore for the video shoot but this time she jazzed it up with some granny shoes. Seriously? This is your final outfit? On the final day which is your very last chance to impress the judges? Epic fail. My heart flutters with joy.

Bebe makes her entrance in a sparkling red and blue sheath with a slight train. Her hair is a Kabuki dream and she looks like a winner, folks.

As much as I love Nina, Bebe has knocked out the competition this time. Did you notice the sleeves? They go over the middle finger and are held in place with a huge cocktail ring. She really truly saved the best for last.

Ru tells them that they all will appear in the Video for “Cover Girl” and that the winner will have her rap featured on the single. The winner also receives loads of sunglasses, MAC makeup and $2,500 worth of diamonds. Yes, please.

The judges for the finale are just Ru, Santino and Merle. No guest judge this time and there really doesn’t need to be. They go through the videos that the girls did with Bebe getting the most praise and Nina getting called out for her simplistic ‘Cat in the Hat’ rap style by Santino. Yeah, it was dated but Nina’s language skills aren’t the best. You really can’t fault her for that.

Caca is up last and dives right into the excuses. When Ru asks her how the video experience was for her, she says that she was having a bad day. It’s at times like this that Caca exposes herself as the inexperienced, unprofessional beeotch that she is. Ru is not having it, especially when it comes to the lateness. The subject of not getting along with the other girls comes up and Caca calls them old. Cue up Bebe’s bitch face #209:

She is leaning forward like it is taking all her strength not to lurch down the catwalk, tear Caca’s heart out and eat it. Oh, Lion Queen, how I wish you would, how I wish you would.

The judges have their convo, calling Bebe a superstar, harping on Nina’s difficulties with the English language and Santino fills my heart with sunbeams and cheesecake (Yenta, you promised) when he says that Caca isn’t even part of the conversation anymore. I am literally choking up over this. Little do I know how much happier I am about to be.

When Ru calls them back out she wastes no time fulfilling my heart’s desire and sends Caca back to her life in Florida bursting with non-friends and a heap of unpaid bills from Sally’s Beauty Supply. She goes from full-on fake smile to ‘I blew you for nothing’ face in a nanosecond. Priceless. I am giggling with glee. God, please don’t strike me dead, but I am so happy.

She walks off the stage without saying goodbye to the other girls (there’s that class again) and we are left with our last lip synch to the death. It’s to “Cover Girl” again and it’s really cute when they say that they love each other and it is even nicer to see a genuine friendship come out of this show. I want to personally thank Ru and the producers for not succombing to that worn out cliche of milking the last drop of drama by keeping the unpopular nemesis up to the bitter end. Good riddance to bad trash, as my grandma would say.

“I love you.” “I love you too.” “The bitch is gone!…….Can I have my shiv back now?”

The lip synch goes well for both of them but once again Bebe pulls the crazy face out and overwhelms the competition. It doesn’t hurt that she is a full foot taller than Nina, either. She drags her ass across the stage, literally, and then drags it back across under Nina’s train.

And your new queen is born.

After a pregnant pause, Ru declares Bebe the winner and Nina accepts defeat with poise and dignity. I wanted Nina to win but I’m sooo glad that Bebe is the winner instead of the dreaded Caca that I’m cool with it. Ru puts a gigantic crown on her gigantic head and it is time to worship your new queen, Gasmii.

The Power of Cameroon Commands You!

I don’t know about you but no one compares to RuPaul. I’ll give it time, though. I’m just used to winners of reality shows succeeding in one thing only; being cast in other reality shows. I hope I’m wrong. I really want her to achieve what she wants to achieve with her homeland and her career.

And I want to thank all of you for reading my recaps faithfully and throwing your two cents in, I love reading your comments. I also want to inform you that my next project here at the Gasm will be Daisy of Love. Pray for me, please.

And I have one last question for you. Can you get herpes from watching VH1?

Love and Kisses, Twunty McSlore