Disclaimer: This post discusses spoilers from RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season 2 episode 4. If you haven’t seen today’s episode yet, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Haven’t seen it yet? watch the latest episode on OUTtvGo here.
Last week on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, we said goodbye to our queen Asttina Mandella, who lost her lip sync to the “Baroness Basic,” Tia Kofi. If you ask me, I think Tia Kofi should have gone home. And while ultimately RuPaul is the one who makes the final decision, Asttina’s drag is more polished than Tia’s, and Tia’s runways this season (so far) have been.. questionable.
9 queens remain.
The next day in the werkroom, there’s clear tension between the queens on who should’ve gone home last week. Tayce and A’Whora think it wasn’t Asttina’s time and Tayce calls Tia basic, while Veronica Green thinks she stepped up in the lip sync and deserves to still be in the competition. Do you think Tia Kofi should’ve won in the lip sync against Asttina?
For this week’s mini challenge, the queens need to sell baked goods in the “Great British Fake Off.” But what’s fake about it? Are the baked goods fake? Is their enthusiasm fake? Are they supposed to fake an orgasm because they love baked goods so much? I’m not sure, and we may never know. But we do know one thing — the Brit Crew is there, and I don’t know if I’m drooling over the body or the desserts on the table.
As usual in a comedy challenge, some of the queens did good, and some of the queens did.. not so good. The winner of the mini challenge is Bimini Bon-boulash, who turned her Belgian Bun into a Brexit Bun — “It’s 52 percent deceit, 48 percent despair, and 100 percent not going to positively affect anyone other than Steve Dave and Paul down the pub.”
For this week’s maxi challenge, the queens must work in pairs as daytime talk show hosts in RuPaul’s Morning Glory. If you don’t know what Morning Glory is (skip reading if you really don’t want to know), it’s British slang for the erection a man gets while still hitting the snooze button. Some also say that the erection comes from a full bladder.
Anyway.. that’s enough history lesson for today.
Since Bimini won the mini challenge, she gets first dibs. She chooses to team up with Tayce, who was once in a TJ Maxx ad, to be the hosts of the show. Ellie and Lawrence are the advice columnists, Ginny Lemon is our hippie weather girl, and Tia and A’Whora, despite A’Whora initially not being very fond of Tia, take on the roles of Essex Girls (the “money saving experts”), while Veronica Green and Sister Sister choose to be goth party planners. Assuming the queens are going to be judged in pairs, things don’t seem to be looking up for Veronica Green and Sister Sister, as both of them aren’t necessarily “goths” or “comedy queens.”
As Ru makes her way around the werkroom, there is a tense moment when she approaches Lawrence Chaney and Ellie Diamond, the two Scottish queens of the season, and says, “Lawrence Chaney” in her fake brogue (if you’ve been watching the episodes, you know what I mean), but says “Ellie Diamond” just like she might say “hot dog.” Ellie asks Ru why she doesn’t say her name like Lawrence’s, since they’re both Scottish. The queens in the werkroom are gagged, because typically queens don’t throw shade to Ru (we all remember what happened with Pearl in season 7).
However, I don’t think Ellie’s being shady here — it doesn’t seem like her brand to do so. In my opinion, she seemed genuinely confused as to why Ru wouldn’t treat the Scottish queens the same. It didn’t come off as curiosity though, because Ru’s a little bit taken aback — and we all know Mama Ru doesn’t like being confronted or told what to do.
During taping, the queens are coached by Lorraine Kelly, the “Beyoncé of morning talk shows” (according to Tayce), a Scottish TV presenter who has been the host of various shows in the United Kingdom such as Good Morning Britain, This Morning, Daybreak, and Lorraine (like the Ellen DeGeneres show, but the U.K. version)
Tayce and Bimini do very well as the hosts, who are club kids trying to read the news off the teleprompter. Lawrence and Ellie Diamond, to no surprise at all, also do well playing the “agony aunts,” a British slang term for advice columnists. Lawrence hilariously leaves the set on a mini tricycle, breaking it in the process. I don’t know about you, but I am absolutely living for Lawrence’s comedy. It sends me through the roof every time.
Tia and A’Whora, playing the money-saving Essex Girls, shine as their obnoxious characters (“One-hundred per cent, Essex!”). To give a little background on the characters, Essex is a county outside London, and its women are known for their big hair, messy makeup, flashy and revealing outfits, and most of all, trashy (yet hilarious) accents. Basically, think New Jersey, but the United Kingdom version. As the money-saving experts, they show us how to save money by doing a “gravazzle” — a vajazzle (glitter pubes) using gravel. It was so stupid, but so funny at the same time, and they completely embodied the stereotypical personalities of Essex women.
Veronica and Sister Sister, on the other hand, are very, very bad. However, I don’t blame them — how can you make goth characters bigger, or funnier?
Ginny Lemon takes an interesting approach to her role as the hippie weather girl. I don’t even know what to say about it. I’m just as confused as the other queens are.
On the main stage, RuPaul is joined by Michelle Visage, Alan Carr, and this week’s extra-special guest judge, Lorraine Kelly.
This week on the runway, category is “Monster Mashup,” which is two monsters in one look. I don’t know about you, but that runway seems pretty clear, right? Well, to some of the queens, they definitely didn’t get the memo.
Veronica Green absolutely kills it, combining Medusa, a prosthetic pig face, snakes on her head, and a snakeskin one-shoulder dress. Sister Sister combines a mummy and a werewolf with blue fur, Bimini Bon-boulash combines a playboy bunny and the Devil, saying “this is what Pamela Anderson would look like in hell.” Tayce is serving us high fashion as a vampire bride of Frankenstein, but the only thing that screams “vampire” about her look is her vampire teeth. When her mouth is closed, she just looks like a normal bride. Ginny Lemon is giving us a play on “toxic lemon,” wearing a neon green dress covered in radioactive symbols. Lawrence Chaney is taking a spin on four characters: Sweeney Todd, Buffalo Bill, Bride of Frankenstein, and Leatherface. While her outfit (and mask of her own face!) are gag-worthy, the category is a two-in-one, not 14-in-one. Ellie Diamond has a goblin face on a werewolf’s body with green skin, Tia Kofi is some sort of death demon with snakes coming out of her headdress, A’Whora looks stunning in her interpretation of a Bob Mackie Cher Barbie doll, and takes her wig off at the end of the runway to reveal her brains. She says she’s looking, “very Halloween,” but that was not the brief. The brief was “monster mash up.”
So, technically speaking, the only queens who did the runway correctly were Veronica Green, Ellie Diamond, and Lawrence Chaney (kind of). Yikes.
The “top and bottom” queens of the week are Veronica Green, Sister Sister, Bimini Bon-boulash, Ginny Lemon, Lawrence Chaney, and A’Whora.
Meaning that Tayce, Ellie Diamond, and Tia Kofi are declared the “safe” queens of the week, and leave the stage while the judges critique the top and bottom queens.
The judges critiques this week are as follows:
Veronica Green received praise for her creative look, but was clocked for being too in her head. She takes the blame, and says it wasn’t Ellie’s fault for doing poorly, but her own, and that she didn’t mean to drag her down with her. Ellie’s look reminded them of Sonic the Hedgehog bursting through a bunch of bandages instead of a werewolf, while Bimini received praise for never breaking character and flawlessly reading off the teleprompter. However, on the runway, she was clocked for missing small details like fixing up her messy hair, and not wearing any lashes. Ginny Lemon’s weather girl was “one note” the whole time, and she went too far away from the character. They ask her why her heels are often not “high” heels, and she mentions that before coming to the show, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Lawrence Chaney receives positive critiques left and right (not surprising), and A’Whora’s authentic take on an Essex girl came across very well. However, they mentioned if she hadn’t removed her wig, her runway would have been a complete miss.
The rankings this week are as follows:
Lawrence Chaney: WINNER
A’Whora: HIGH
Bimini Bon-boulash: HIGH
Veronica Green: LOW
Ginny Lemon: BOTTOM 2
Sister Sister: BOTTOM 2
Ultimately, Ginny and Sister face off in a lip sync for your life to “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by Kim Wilde. But the gag here is, Ginny didn’t lip sync. What she did do was, right when the song started, walk off the stage. She left the building. Gone. And according to Tayce, she “BenDeLaCreme’d herself.” So, Sister Sister is left to lip sync by herself on stage in a solo performance, and she is absolutely killing it — she isn’t even phased by the fact that Ginny Lemon simply gave up.
Obviously, Sister Sister is the winner of this week’s lip sync, and Ginny Lemon is weirdly enthusiastic about going home.
What did you think of this week’s episode? And what did you think of Ginny Lemon walking off stage instead of lip syncing?
Ta-ta for now!
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THE GAY BIBLE 