Share your comments on the show (and Untucked) tonight, and Montavilla will be back with the full recap tomorrow! The dolls comedy skills are put on the spot as they must roast RuPaul and the celebrity judges in front of a live audience.With guest judges The Help’s Leslie Jordan and Absolut Image Czar Jeffrey Moran.
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Roast-Pocalypse
We get Jeffrey Moran today! He’s the Absolute Vodka guy and the challenge he shows up for is always extra fun. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves….
Coco sighs as she she wipes away Jade’s last message. It’s dirty work, but eliminating your friends is part of the competition. Meanwhile, Jinkx congratulates Ivy on her win. Jinkx admits hoping to get two wins in a row, but realizes that Ivy outdid her (by far) on the runway. In a confessional, Roxxxy rolls her eyes and vows to call Jinkx out for her self-deprecating act. Don’t you dare self-deprecate around Roxxxy Andrews!
Alaska and Coco commiserate on being the only two left without a win. Alaska realizes (after a scolding by Michelle Visage on the runway), that she needs to separate herself from Rolaskatox. Consequently, when the queens arrive the next morning and Detox and Roxxxy sing out their usual “Rolaskatox!” cheer, Alaska is silent. Then she calls out, “Alaska!”
There is much clucking and eye-rolling about this radical move on Alaska’s part. Me, I’m glad she separated herself. It’s hard enough for her to be always in Sharon’s shadow. She doesn’t need to be tied to two other queens as well.
The She-Mail heralds what is probably the most popular mini-challenge of the season (it’s always done at about this point). It’s the reading challenge! Each of the boys takes a turn to “read” the others (delivering scathing, witty insults). Alaska wins the challenge, but everyone this year is pretty good at throwing shade, and –unlike some years — equally good at taking it.
RuPaul then announces the main challenge: The queens will deliver a roast directed at RuPaul, judges Michelle Visage and Santino Rice, and each other. Jeffrey Moran comes in to talk up Absolute Vodka cocktails and be generally handsome and charming — which is his job as corporate liaison to the show.
As winner of the reading challenge, Alaska gets to determine the order of roasters. In Season 3, Shangela used this to her advantage with an elaborate scheme to psyche out her enemies. Alaska simply asks everyone what they want, and takes the spot no one else wants (speaking first).
We watch super-exciting (not) scenes of people writing quietly in their notebooks. Well, it’s not completely quiet because Alyssa is talking to herself in a nervous, southern lady way as she completes each joke, reads it, and then shakes her head and mutters, “Oh no. Oh Gosh. Oh, I cannot say that!”
Michelle Visage takes over the mentor role this week, since she knows the funny. Since it’s not the runway, her hair is straight and long. It’s really gorgeous that way. Michelle’s way of mentoring is to challenge, so she laughs at none of the jokes, but she does deliver some good, interesting advice. With Alyssa, she draws a distinction between a read (a witty insult) and a joke. The queens need to deliver jokes at the roast, not reads. Alyssa says she understands, but her face shows that it Michelle’s advice is going straight over her head.
Michelle then delivers the the news that the roast will have a live audience, making the queens even more nervous. Ivy rewrites her script with panicky eyes. Jinkx begins to fade into a narcoleptic coma from the stress, while Detox and Roxxxy quietly laugh at him.
Jinkx wakes up in time for another coaching session, this time with Deven Green, Bruce Vilanch, and Nadya Ginsburg. Again, the queens get great advice, but are edited to appear awkward and unprepared for the task. Roxxxy gets completely thrown by the criticism and breaks down afterward.
There’s some shade-throwing as the queens put on their faces. Jinkx seems to get the brunt of it, as Coco and Roxxxy call her out for “acting” worried about the runway each week. It comes off as sour grapes, because Jinks is doing really well in the challenges and has the best chance of winning this one.
RuPaul has dressed for the roast in an emerald green gown that looks painted on. She asks Jeffrey Moran what kind of cocktail her dress is and he replies, “Absolute Pears in the Garden of Good and Evil.” It sounds delicious and RuPaul looks delicious, so it fits. Like that dress.
Alaska, in the first spot, slays it. The audience loves her. Roxxxy comes next and tanks. Badly. Coco created a character to deliver her jokes. That was a good idea, and it works like a charm. Jinkx looks incredible — like a 1950s movie actress playing a society lady. Ivy has disturbing hair and a nervous delivery. Alyssa takes a death grip on the microphone and gets weird feedback noises from it — along with dead silence from the audience. Half of Detox’s words are bleeped out, but she makes people laugh and ends the roast on a high note.
The audience disappears judges (including Jeffrey Moran and teeny tiny Leslie Jordan) critique all the queens. Michelle fakes Jinkx out by pretending that she’s going to slam her — but then calls her cocktail look great! Jinkx almost faints from shock. Leslie Jordan is very astute about the comedy, but loves how beautiful all the queens are.
Jeffrey Moran doesn’t say much, but at least he doesn’t dislike anyone. Since he represents the main sponsor of the show (and after-show tour), his approval is important.
There are four contenders for the win this week: Alaska, Jinkx, Coco, and Detox. Coco’s character pushes her to victory and she ;gets a custom gown from Sequin Queen. Now the only queen not to win a challenge is Alaska and I’m sure we’ll be hearing about that next week.
Alyssa and Roxxxy are obvious locks on the bottom two. They lip-synch to “Whip My Hair” (Willow Smith) And they turn it out! Roxxxy pulls off her wig… to reveal a second wig underneath. Then she whips that hair around like she’s in a twister. Alyssa is less wild, but pulls out every dance move in her repertoire. The judges are loving every second of it.
As RuPaul starts her elimination speech, Roxxxy suddenly breaks down into hysterical sobbing. I can’t help wonder if this strategic crying, but it goes on too long to be fake. Roxxxy nearly goes into hiccups trying to control herself, then admits that this challenge brought up these feelings of rejection. When she was three years old, her mother left Roxxxy and her sister at a bus stop and never came back.
RuPaul can barely keep from bursting into tears as she delivers the final judgment. Both queens showed the passion necessary for America’s Next Drag Superstar. They both stay!
The other queens rush to hug Alyssa and Roxxxy. For all the shade thrown this week, they are genuinely happy that no one was eliminated. Jinkx confesses that they are all now sisters. She calls them the “seven sisters.”
Untucked
Prepare for tears this week. It’s bound to happen.
We start with Coco complaining because Alyssa joked about her being a runner-up. “I thought we weren’t going to bring up pageants at the roast,” she whines.
Everyone sighs uncomfortably. Alyssa tries to explain that it wasn’t personal, but Coco continues to be upset. “She never knows when to stop. Ever!” Coco declares in boy form and her demonic blue contact lenses.
The drama finally comes to a head. At least, the other queens finally demand that Coco and Alyssa stop boring them with the The Neverending Story. Jinkx tells them that they have a choice: either never, ever bring it up again, or decide not to be friends. Cocolyssa jointly agree to never bring it up. The other queens support that decision by saying they’ll remind the two if they slip (well, as Detox puts it, they’ll tell them to shut the fuck up.) All the queens drink to that.
Roxxxy is upset about her performance and complains that it wasn’t a fair challenge. It favors comedy queens, like Jinkx. Alyssa wonders if something happened to the mic when she was performing. Jinkx laughs and tells her that the sound tech turned it off on her!
The Big Furry Pink Box leads into a video montage of baby pictures. “Isn’t it crazy to think we were all born little boys?” Jinkx muses. Then she starts talking about how odd it is to see her boy self smiling, because her childhood was fairly hellish. Her mother was an alcoholic and Jinkx had to be rescued by her aunt and grandmother. Unfortunately, Jinkx’s younger brother is still with the mother. “I feel so selfish,” Jinkx cries, saying that she wants to be able to eventually protect her brother.
Roxxxy share her story about being abandoned at the bus stop. “I remember the colors of the bus stop.” She and her sister were left at the stop, with the mother saying she was going to go buy cigarettes. They stayed there until the sun set and it turned dark. Finally, someone realized they were alone and called the authorities. After a year in a boy’s home, Roxxxy and her sister were adopted by their grandmother. But Roxxxy has never gotten over the rejection.
Somehow, the queens are split into smaller groups. In the Interior Illusions Lounge, Jinkx reassures Ivy that she’ll be safe. She doesn’t want Ivy to go home. Detox comments that there’s something sneaky and calculating about Jinkx.
In the Gold Lounge, Alyssa, Coco, and Roxxxy are assuming that Jinkx has won the challenge. Coco imitates Jinkx’s self-deprecating manner and they all decide it’s an act. I guess throwing shade at Jinkx is the new big storyline for the season. Let’s hope it plays better than Pageant Gate.
What did you think of this week’s episode? Is Alaska still a frontrunner in the competition? Can Jinkx survive the inevitable sewing challenges coming up? Share your thoughts in the comments.
