After a poorly conceived improv challenge, all hell breaks loose and the season gets flipped on its head.
Photo: MTV
Be careful what you wish for. A bouquet of roses can prick you. Sniff the magic poppers and fall down a rabbit hole. “Poison apple, take a bite.” This is the theme of the episode, and the groundwork is laid early with the mini-challenge. “Everybody Loves Puppets” was a RuPaul’s Drag Race mainstay in the show’s golden age, and for years I longed for its return. It’s the epitome of what a mini-challenge should be: quick, silly, creative, and shady. And then one day it went away. Based on the diminishing returns of the Reading Challenge over the years (at this point, the Library needs to be shut down and defunded. Where is Ron DeSantis when you need him?), I shouldn’t have had my hopes up, but I did not expect the season-18 puppet show to be such a catastrophe. To quote Juicy Love Dion, “I’m glad we’re all bombing.” The girls were tongue-tied, and while the edit did them no favors, it was necessary to leave in all that dead air to justify who ends up winning the mini-challenge prize money. Ru awards it to the crew for having to watch the entirety of what must have been the most cursed puppet show since Being John Malkovich.
But we live, we learn, and after Discord Addams tragically does one final long signature walk off the plank of the Good Ship Drag Race, we are down to a top five. The maxi-challenge this week is one-on-one improv with Mother. Ru will do scenes with the girls playing different Karens inspired by Ru’s addiction to Karen-meltdown videos on TikTok. I don’t love improv challenges, particularly not this late in the game, but I guess I appreciate Ru getting the opportunity to slap on a fake mustache and freak it. The girls have to decide among themselves which one will get to play which preset Karen, but there are no arguments, auditions, meltdowns, or any other casting-couch drama as they sort themselves out in a matter of seconds. Nini Coco makes a joke about changing her mind, and Jane Don’t notes the irony of how well behaved everyone’s acting about a Karen challenge, but this season’s top five are very much students of RuPaul’s Finishing School for Polite Young Ladies.
They have pages of sides and start to work on their respective Karens’ backstories and motivations, which, for an improv challenge, is funny in an Emma Stone–in–“The Actress” way (Nini has written “gay husband” in her notes). Perfectionists Nini and Jane are feeling a bit neurotic, while Darlene Mitchell helpfully steers Juicy to develop a Karen that will lean into her strengths and make Ru laugh. Ru gives everyone some quick coaching in the Werk Room about how to tap into their inner Karen, then it’s on to the challenge.
Each Karen scenario is filmed either in the generic office space attached to the studio or in the parking lot just outside. I always appreciate when the show lets contestants out of the high-security testing facility where they toil under fluorescents all season long to have a little field trip to the parking lot, and that is the best thing I can say about this challenge. We saw in the Werk Room that they were given some kind of notes about beats they had to hit, and in the challenges you really see the commonalities: They pretend to get hit by Ru at one point and roll around on the floor, they pull out their phones and start filming Ru, and they’re armed with a couple of props (receipts, plane tickets) for their respective characters. The challenge is frustrating in action because each of these scenes is the exact opposite of “yes, and” as each Ru character is an unmoveable wall of “no” the girls just sort of have to butt up against. I’ll explain:
Juicy plays Parking-Stop Karen, who mouths off at Ru for taking her spot. She makes an admirable attempt at physical comedy while Ru sits in a car dressed in a look that can be described only as Disco Dahmer.
Darlene is Shoplifting Karen, butting up at the self-checkout against security-guard Ru. This being Darlene, the “confrontation” quickly dissolves into a total ki. She cracks Ru up and does a great job tossing the proverbial improv ball back at him and “yes, and”-ing. I appreciate the way she said, in character, “You’re tryna bait me … I’m here at the mall, and I’m getting baited.” Ultimately, even when she’s supposed to play the most antagonistic female archetype, Darlene is simply too much of a mood and a vibe, and her fundamentally anti-Karen nature is good for TV but bad for the judging criteria in this challenge.
Myki Meeks is Traffic-Stop Karen. Myki puts that B.F.A. to good use as a fully embodied, frankly understated Karen getting pulled over by traffic-cop Ru. I appreciate that she is maybe the only queen who didn’t rely on an exaggerated accent for the challenge, but this could have been a lot draggier.
Jane is Late-for-Her-Flight Karen, and she came armed with a wholly fleshed-out backstory about being on her way to a girls’ trip in Palm Springs. She has some good lines ready to go (her character is bringing knives onboard to make ceviche), but there’s no sign of a playful spark between her and gate-attendant Ru.
Nini is HOA Karen, who comes in hot on neighbor Ru’s Ring camera demanding he take down his Christmas decorations. Nini makes an admirable attempt here, but again Ru’s character is playing against rather than with her to such a degree that, as in all these segments, things just devolve into screaming overtop each other.
Runway is Wholesome to Folsom, and it’s one of the best categories of the season as each look has a vanilla-to-kink reveal. Juicy is an Alice in Wonderland who holds a Costco-creatine-size poppers bottle reading “Smell Me,” and one whiff reveals a Cheshire Cat suit and cat-o’-nine-tails. It is conceptual and comic book–y.
Darlene is a housewife in sunny yellow that tears away to reveal a white beater covered in a “fully stoned, bedazzled, crystallized pee stain” and a yellow hanky tucked into the back pocket of the “nastiest little Daisy Dukes you’ve ever seen.” I am completely and utterly biased toward adoring Darlene because I am a human with eyes and a heart, and one thing I love about her is how she rocks the kinds of low-budget, simple, funny looks that hark back to the early years of RPDR, before you needed basically an endowment to assemble a package.
Myki is festooned in flamenco-red ruffled petals that she sheds to reveal her “thorny and horny” spiky leather corset and rose-vine whip. Her red-rose wig is a highlight of the episode. Jane appears in a big Victorian whitegown holding a candle as a “dowager widow wandering through her husband’s manse.” Under the giant bedsheet of a dress is a ruby-red fully encrusted lingerie set. The Folsom angle here is wax play as she drips the candle over her Z-cup bosom.
Finally, Nini is a “circa 1886” copper Statue of Liberty who sheds her tunic to reveal risqué lingerie in oxidation-maxxed verdigris and a Sasha Velour–esque spiky-crown face-kini thing with “wax” from her torch dotting her chest and shoulders. It is utterly delightful and kooky and represents the best of Nini’s drag, which can often feel as if it’s missing one specific identity but is always polished and slay nevertheless. During the judging, this look inspires what is unintentionally the funniest line of the episode as guest judge Julianne Nicholson, a.k.a Janet Planet herself, muses seriously that it is “nostalgic to see Lady Liberty, especially in this moment with all that’s going on around us.” We need Ellie the New York Liberty mascot to weigh in on this.
The judging is vexing and perplexing. After last week’s hard-line family-resemblance death panel overseen by Bobchelle Visage, this is entirely too subjective and wishy-washy. The judges say Jane needed to be more foolish but praise Myki’s subdued, realistic performance for being the “most Karen.” Darlene, despite being a totally adept improviser, is dinged for not being “Karen enough,” even though Ru’s highest bar in comedy challenges is having fun and laughter. Juicy shows growth and improvement and places high, but Myki takes a win that is much needed for her résumé entering the finale. She gets $5,000 and tickets to Ru’s movie Stop That Train, out this summer. You have to laugh.
And then, unlike in those improv scenes, the stakes for the show at large suddenly become very, very high. The bottom two of the week are Nini and Jane, lip-syncing for their lives and, crucially, for the top four. But Jane has been the front-runner all season by a long shot; she has never even been in the bottom two. She didn’t even have a low placement until just last week. She had a top placement nine weeks in a row. Certainly, she couldn’t get sent home before the finale, right?
Right? WRONG! “Garden of Eden” starts playing, all hell breaks loose, and “all hell” is Nini Coco with something to prove. For all the in-her-head, overthinking behavior we’ve seen this season, Nini is a queen who turns it out when the time comes, so we get a Folsom Street Lady Liberty doing aerial gymnastics to a Gaga song. Jane performs admirably, but when she whips out the one stunt she has — a cartwheel — Nini bests it with a cartwheel into a back tuck. She ends the performance with a twist into a split. Jane’s an emotive performer, but Nini is all that and a tornado.
And so, in a twist that uproots the entire season, front-runner Jane Don’t gets sent home with only like one episode to go before the finale. I had been bemoaning a lack of drama this season with Jane so clearly and tidily leading the pack. I wanted stakes, I wanted a horse race. Careful what you wish for.
• As Juicy Love Dion put it, “This Untucked is definitely not the kiki that we’re used to.” And as Myki Meeks put it, “The mood in Untucked is somber.”
• Myki notes the season has been so “straightforward” with no built-in twists like golden-ticket chocolate bars or a dunk tank. Little does she know what’s about to happen.
• Seeing Darlene Mitchell cry was heartbreaking.
• Gay thoughts from a recapper in Morocco: Holy shit! Jane doesn’t make the finale! In retrospect, it seems like the only way this season could go, right? It has been largely devoid of gags, but it turns out they had one big one up their sleeve that is so shocking it will likely define the entire season. I felt momentarily sad for Jane, especially while watching Untucked, but I can’t imagine anything would make her career zoom quite like getting so shockingly eliminated. The fandom will (hopefully for her) be an utter mess in the coming days. Anyway, Myki for the crown, and I’m actually hoping Juicy ekes into the top three over Nini. —Jason P. Frank
• Top-four prediction: Well, we’re here. Last week, Jason said this was a season with a top three: Myki, Jane, and Darlene. It sounded so reasonable at the time, but we’re looking at the very reasonable possibility of a Myki, Juicy, Nini three. Even before this elimination, I was #TeamMyki for the win. Just watch her Lea Michele lip sync.
• Thanks for bearing with a substitute teacher this week! That was a stressful ep! Time to calm down with my favorite relaxing video.
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