Día del Escándalo!
We start with the usual post-elimination scene. Everyone is sad to see Ivy Winters depart, but Jinkx is particularly upset. In an interview he cries a little over losing a good friend in the competition. Back in the Werk Room, Jinkx calls Coco out for dismissing him (and Alaska) as “comedy queens.”
The mini-challenge next day requires the queens to cry “on cue.” To accomplish this, Ru has them sit in a circle wearing lots of mascara and sharing. It’s a bit confusing. They are telling stories, but they mostly seem fictional (and comically dramatic) until Detox’s turn. Detox admits being very uncomfortable with the exercise and then speaks about losing his boyfriend two years earlier. It’s a strange moment, both real and not, as RuPaul responds in the same comi-tragic fashion that he responded to the obviously fictional sob stories told by the other queens. In any case, Detox and Alyssa win the mini-challenge. The prize is to lead one of two teams in the main challenge.
The main challenge is to perform a telenovela scene. “Son of a bitch,” Alyssa sighs. “It’s another acting challenge.” He chooses Jinkx and Coco as team mates, meaning that Jinkx and Coco are forced to work together after their “fight” the day before.
Meanwhile, Detox eagerly picked Roxxxy and Alaska, reuniting Rolaskatox. Alaska is less than thrilled. In his opinion, Detox and Roxxxy are wasting time by joking around instead of working on the scene. Nevertheless, they do have fun playing with masks and making big gestures.
Alyssa makes her dramatic faces and tries to tune out Coco’s negativity. She casts Coco as the “ugly, stupid maid” in the scene. RuPaul wonders about the Cocolyssa feud and refers them to Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacClaine in The Turning Point. This has very little to do with the challenge and seems out of place… now. (¡Espoiler Alert!)
Check in with Rolaskatox, RuPaul wonders whether the huge latex mask Detox is wearing is too much Afterwards, Alaska and Roxxxy advise her to lose it, even though they’ve been working with it all day.
On the set, María Conchita Alonzo is there to help direct. As a surprise, Wilmer Valderrama is playing the leading man — currently a corpse on the floor. Rolaskatox runs through the scene. They are very together and rehearsed, but RuPaul is making a lot of impatient faces. As a note, I love Roxxxy’s look. It’s very young Latina.
When Alyssa’s team films their scene, Jinkx gets a lot of laughs from María and Rupaul. “I am serving up some Sophia Vergarararara realness,” Jinkx comments. RuPaul tries to get Alyssa to match Jinkx’s energy during a bout of magically induced orgasms, but Alyssa’s orgasms are lackluster. “Have you ever had one?” Jinkx asks her finally. Wilmer shows up for the ending of the scene, at which point Coco completely forgets her lines.
The next day, there’s some nervous shade-throwing before the runway. (Alyssa notes that they are all worried since they don’t have a clue what the finished videos look like.) The queens laugh at Alyssa for borrowing one of Jinkx’s dresses during the challenge. Jinkx wants to wear a Día de Muertos outfit, which involves wearing death mask make-up. Roxxxy warns her that it’s a huge risk.
There is a touching moment at the mirrors as Roxxxy asks about Detox’s dead ex-boyfriend. It’s a scary, sad story. Detox broke up with him, but he turned obsessive, stalked her, and threatened her life. Then, two weeks later, she went to his house and saw his dead body. She confesses that she thinks about him every day. Roxxxy listens sympathetically.
The outfits on the runway are more spectacular than usual. It must be the Latin theme. Roxxxy looks absolutely gorgeous in a red gown with a black leather corset. Coco has on a mango-colored pantsuit that would be terrible on any other day, but works amazingly well for this runway. Jinkx has stuck to her guns and wears a ghoulish white skull face. It’s the sort of thing that normally would get read for filth, but the judges love it. Even Santino.
The only outfit that displeases Santino is Alyssa’s. He calls it the worst dress ever on five seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Which it’s not. I think he’s forgotten some of the horrors Shangela wore.
The videos are shown, and they’re… okay. Overacted, of course, but that’s the telenovela style. Both scenes seem to get a little worse when Wilmer starts speaking lines. Compared to the queens, he’s just very low energy. Neither scene is noticeably better or worse than the other.
During the judging, the two worst seem to be Alyssa and Detox, but we can’t let Alyssa go home without a lip-synch showdown between her and Coco. So, Jinkx wins a pair of faux fur coats from Fabulous Furs, and Coco falls into the bottom two along with her arch-nemesis, Alyssa.
They perform to “Cold Hearted” (Paul Abdul). For all the ridiculously hyped “drama” of the Cocolyssa feud that plagued the show this season, this lip-synch almost makes it worthwhile. It is one for the history books. Alyssa pulls out all her moves, including a spin that goes into front splits and a stunning death drop. But Coco’s got her own moves, an outfit with huge sleeves that look like some kind of rhythmic gymnastics apparatus, and her killer lips. At one point, she just stands still, points at her mouth, and demonstrates why you DO NOT WANT TO GO AGAINST COCO in the lip-synch.
It’s actually thrilling and suspenseful waiting to see RuPaul deliver the final judgment on these two. She gives the win to Coco, and Alyssa sashays away. She’s not upset. She feels proud of have ended up in the top six of this competition.
It’s sad to see Alyssa go, because she turned out to be genuinely charming. The best way to sum her up might be RuPaul words: “She has the whole package, but she doesn’t know how to connect all the pieces.”
Untucked
Once again, the queens were asked to name the weak contestant and everyone said Alyssa. Not even Alyssa cares to argue about that. Instead, they laugh about Santino calling Alyssa’s dress the worst ever in five seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Jinkx says Alyssa should have played her part to the grandness that Alaska hit, but Alyssa seems over it. She’s pretty much over everything in this contest — not in a negative way. It’s just like she realizes that her number is up and she’s not that bothered by the thought.
Coco then reads Alyssa for being both too competitive and not hungry enough. And, as in the challenge telenovelas, there are mucho reaction shots.
After the commercial, Alyssa explains that she doesn’t mind having to lip-synch for her life because she loves performing. Coco starts in about how this is more important to her. “This is my life!” she says. Her problem with Alyssa is that Alyssa just sees it as competition. Sigh. Really not your business, Coco.
On a more positive note, Roxxxy is grateful to finally get a good critique. Jinkx has been named by four of the girls as the one to beat. She feels ambivalent about it. Proud that the others see her as competition, but worried that they’re going to come after her. Roxxxy warns Jinkx that upcoming challenges will probably not fall so much into her wheelhouse and Jinkx agrees, adding that with each week, they all have a higher pedestal from which to fall.
The Big Furry Pink Box yields a video from Jessica Wild (a former contestant) with tips on how to do telenovela acting. That’s something they could have used yesterday.
The queens discuss the difference between an 18-year-old orgasm and a 47-year-old orgasm. Coco demonstrates the perfect orgasm. “I’ll have what she’s having,” Alaska quotes.
The time for comedy is over and the time for shade has begun! The queens are split into two groups in order to facilitate back-biting and gossip. In the Gold Lounge, Jinkx, Roxxxy, and Detox decide that Alyssa should be leaving tonight. Detox vows to take her out if she has to lip-synch. But they all secretly hope that Coco and Alyssa go up against each other. “I think America’s waiting for it,” Roxxy says.
Meanwhile, Coco, Alyssa, and Alaska attempt to trash talk. Unfortunately, the only way Coco knows how to do that is to start randomly insulting Alyssa. That’s not even fun any more. It’s old. It’s beyond old. It’s muerto.
Coco then tries to throw some shade on Jinkx, calling her “America’s Next Comedy Drag Star.” That leads nowhere, but with all the queens together, Roxxxy tells Jinks to watch out. The next challenges will not be so easy for her and Roxxy is going to give her a run for the money. “I’ve got tricks!” Roxxxy claims.
Bonus videos!
