Review: RuPaul’s Drag Race (Season 12, Episode 6)

Finally, we have reached the infamous Snatch Game episode, which is not only adored by fans, but gives us an insight into who will be the finalist for this years Drag Race (excluding season 12’s disastrous Snatch Game). We see the bitter rivalry between two-sworn dragemies end as they lip-synced for their life and saw Gigi Goode win again. So far, this season Gigi and Sherry Pie are the obvious front-runners for this season as in the last four episodes that have won the challenges and were in the top two for their respective premiere episodes. Now that Sherry is disqualified for the recent allegations of catfishing, it is clear that this season’s winner will be Gigi, she ticks all the boxes, she is the funny queen, the pretty queen, the dancing queen, the fashion queen, she is the queen without her crown and we are loving it. The episode begins with bitter Brita aiming digs at Aiden Zhane and blaming Aiden for her faults in the last episode, bear in mind Aiden performed relatively well compared to the ‘Queen of New York’. Jaida Essence Hall was iconic as she proclaimed, “this is not RuPaul’s excuse race”, this set the tone for this week’s episode as we already got the hint that a showdown between Brita and Aiden will happen at some point.

This week featured guest star Miss Vanessa Vanjie as she told the girls what NOT to do, considering her tremendous flop in her season’s Snatch Game. As always, RuPaul gives her workroom advice to the queens, however her advice in this episode was not listened to and for the better good. RuPaul told Heidi N Closet not to Leslie Jones due to Heidi’s extremely Southern accent despite RuPaul’s advice Heidi does a wonderful impression of Leslie Jones. RuPaul also tried to talk the winner, Gigi out of doing her impression of Maria the Robot, as she was concerned it would be borderline impossible to make a robot funny. RuPaul leant the hard way not to ever doubt Gigi, she did one of the best Snatch Game performances in Herstory, her character was niche, bizarre and brought a new feel to Snatch Game, which over the years has become outdated and predictable. Robots seemed to be the theme for this season’s Snatch Game as Crystal Methyd did popular Youtuber Android Poppy who holds the characteristics of a robot. She mastered the character perfectly, however as Android Poppy is not known it did not come across well and RuPaul and the Mean Girls guest judges, Daniel Franzese and Jonathan Bennett, did not understand the jokes as they felt they were not “introduced” to the character.

The rivals Brita and Aiden did equally as bad this episode, Brita did a very bad one-note impression of the original Dreamgirl Jennifer Holiday which featured Brita doing a face which looked like she needed to sneeze every time she spoke. Aiden did an impression of Patricia Quinn, who played Magenta in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), her performance seemed incredibly dazed and confused as she answered “I don’t know” to everything RuPaul asked. Aiden didn’t learn from previous season’s failures, discussing drugs doesn’t make a performance funny, did Yvie Oddly’s Whoopi Goldberg teach you nothing?

The category for this week’s runway was ‘Frozen Eleganza’ inspired by the Broadway musical Frozen. As always Gigi’s runway was spot on as she took a different take on this week’s runway theme and dressed as an ice cream. Crystal wore a power suit which exuded high fashion model, this outfit saved her from the bottom as she was one of the top’s in terms of runway looks this episode. Jaida and Jackie Cox both had amazing runway looks and their Snatch Game performances were both good, however they just missed out on the top spot as both Sherry and Gigi put on an amazing performance in both categories. Sherry was definitely one of the top queens which makes it increasingly more uncomfortable watching her succeed each episode, however this only shows Gigi is the true front-runner for this year’s crown.

Aiden and Brita were both in the bottom, this was more than a lip-sync for your life, but a battle between two enemies who have not liked each other since the beginning of the season. They lip-synced to ‘Let it Go’ from the Frozen Broadway show, and it was another lacklustre lip-sync, Brita screams she is the top queen in New York but hasn’t shown us this at all. She did a magic trick which made the performance a little more exciting, Aiden performed badly but it was noted in the first episode she doesn’t perform. The bottom was not a shock and it was obvious the bottom two would be the rivals, however though I am not a fan of Aiden it is disheartening to see Brita be saved from the elimination as Aiden sashay’s away when Brita comes across as a bully. It felt like the bully won this episode, but it wraps up an outdated storyline of the showgirl hating the weird girl.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Series 12 is available now on Netflix, with new episodes weekly.