Are you looking for drama, jokes that land but mostly ones that don’t, and some notorious villains? I highly recommend episode 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17. The episode kicked off with Lydia B Kollins mourning the loss of her partner in crime, Kori King. Don’t worry, friends. These two are still together in real life, but their time on the race officially came to an end in the most tragic way – a lip sync against each other.
Jewels Sparkles celebrated her first win, while Lydia shared that she thought she shouldn’t have been in the bottom two but Sam Star should have. They ended up laughing it off, but it is clear that Lydia and Lana Ja’Rae are itching for their first wins.
Instead of being greeted by RuPaul, the queens got to see Michelle Visage, who introduced a wild mini-challenge. The queens would be taking on the Badonka Dunk Tank. They would be asked questions and if they got the answer wrong, they would be dunked. Turns out every answer was wrong and Michelle got her revenge!
After the queens dried off, she shared that the queens would be roasting some previous, villainous contestants. Mistress Isabelle Brooks, Kandy Muse, and Plane Jane would be the targets, and the queens would get help from Michelle and guest judge Whitney Cummings on their jokes. Since Jewels won last week, she got to pick the order of the show. Jewels acted like she was going to make this order fair, but she set a few of the queens up for failure. However, that is the name of the game!
It was time for the queens to meet up with Whitney and Michelle to run their jokes. Instead of running through their jokes individually, they did a table read. This would lead to some drama after the fact, but it was a cool concept. Onya Nurve called out Suzie Toot for under-selling herself in the joke writing department.
Here is where the drama came into play. Arrietty felt slighted by Jewels, so she decided to steal some of her jokes. As the queens were preparing for the roast, the tension was high. In Jewels’ words, the tension was tensioning. Arrietty and Lexi Love both felt that they were set up by Jewels, and were upset. Things blew up between Arrietty and Jewels before they hit the main stage.
Joining Ru, Michelle, and Whitney on the panel this week was the queen of my heart, Ts Madison. Onya opened up the roast, and of course she was hilarious. She is a total force in this competition. Arrietty was next and that was tough to watch. It was clear she was going to be in the bottom. Her only decent jokes were the ones she stole from Jewels, which threw Jewels off. She went next and struggled. Lana was next, and she was hilarious! I was so proud of her! Sam followed her and was also funny. Lydia was amazing, too. Again, SO PROUD! Suzie also had some great jokes. The show closed with Lexi, who was thrown off by Suzie saying she had no friends. She fumbled a bit.
On the runway, the category was Who Wears Short Shorts. My favorite looks were Arrietty, Suzie, and Lexi. Onya and Suzie were safe, while Lana, Lydia, and Sam were in the top, and Arrietty, Jewels, and Lexi were in the bottom. Lydia won the challenge, which was SO exciting! Plus, Lana landed in the top? I am so proud of those two! On the other side of the coin, Arrietty and Jewels fell into the bottom two.
The friends turned enemies faced off to Ya Ya by Beyoncé. It was such a fun performance, but Jewels was the clear winner!
Next week, the queens will be doing yet another acting challenge! We’ll see how that goes together.
