Review: RuPaul’s Drag Race (Season 12, Episode 7)

The past few years the Rusical has not been up to speed, especially compared to the best Rusical of all time ‘Shade: The Rusical’, however Madonna: The Unauthorised Rusical is up there with the top rusicals of all time. It was just perfect, it was like watching a Madonna documentary but gayer, so no complaints. The episode started in excellent form, we already see Widow Von’Du angry at the fakeness in the room, Widow’s commentary alone in the first five minutes of the show deserves an award. Brita had just been saved from the bottom against her drag-enemy Aiden Zhane, she made it clear she loved Aiden despite criticising Aiden with each breath she took on the show. Widow did not take any of this and transferred this same energy towards Jackie Cox and Sherry Pie, as she disliked their critiques on Snatch Game. The best part of this disagreement came from the confessionals when Widow came up with a new phrase – Apolo-lies – the word meaning a ‘fake apology’. This wasn’t the only drama we were greeted within the opening of the episode, Gigi Goode and Heidi N Closet had a disagreement as Gigi criticised Heidi’s make-up skills. Gigi apologised to Heidi, but Heidi felt it was unnecessary for Gigi to comment on her make-up.

The queens quickly recorded the track for the Madonna Rusical, Jaida gave us seduction realness as she whispered into the mic in a ‘sexy’ way, it was everything you would expect from a drag queen selling sex – amazing. Jan showed off her musical theatre skills with her lovely singing voice which was a standout compared to the other queens. Brita also noted she went to musical theatre school and sadly after her singing and dancing I would kindly ask for a refund on those lessons. However, my favourite was definitely Crystal Methyd who though couldn’t sing just had fun with the singing and didn’t try to be Beyoncé and instead sold humour. In the dancing rehearsal we finally see Gigi not be perfect at everything, she seemed nervous as she didn’t pick up the routine straight away, in reality tv style the camera panned to the other queens who were over moon that Gigi had a “weakness”.

Guest judges for this week included the stunning Winnie Harlow and American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they were both the perfect addition to the judging panel. After much anticipation we finally get to see Madonna: The Unauthorised Musical, Jan starts off the performance and she did amazingly well. Jackie was straight after and sadly did not perform to the same high standard that Jan had set for the other girls. Gigi, who in the rehearsals was having issues, absolutely slayed this challenge she further proved that she has no weakness and is talented in every single skill you put on the table. Brita performs and you can tell she put her all into the performance, however the camera pans to the judges and Winnie looks bored whilst Carson looks confused, like we all do. Brita is trying her best but maybe the issue is she is trying too hard whilst criticising everyone else. One of my favourites from this challenge, Crystal, absolutely slayed she was giving us hippie 2000s queen realness. Watching Crystal showed she is much more than the one-dimensional queen we have seen so far; she is absolutely amazing and incredibly funny, and I am slowly gaining a girl crush on her. Heidi finished the show, she was incredibly good however there was no Madonna in her performance. Even the worst in the Madonna Rusical were still extremely good, this year’s drag race features some extremely talented queens and it makes for great television.

Category for this week’s runway was ‘Night of Michelle Visages’ and boy was it good. We were greeted with iconic Michelle looks for example Jaida wearing the outfit Michelle wore for the ‘What Happened to Merle Ginsburg?’ challenge. Jaida wore the giant ‘ICON’ necklace with a giant breast plate in true Michelle Visage style. Jackie also gave a similar look doing Michelle Visage All Stars season one look and it was tacky and leopard, all things that make up an iconic Michelle Visage look. The queens also shocked us with lesser known looks i.e. Jan did Michelle’s Glamazon Airways look (HUGE breast plate), Gigi did sole sister Michelle and was a throwback to Michelle with blonde hair. Whilst Crystal gave us a standout look as Michelle from 1996 in red. Everyone was amazing in the runway and showed different variations of the legend of Visage.

It was a tight top three for this challenge, it could have really gone either way, but Gigi did it again and won this challenge. This makes Gigi the fastest queen to ever hit three wins in a season and trust me this is not her last win. Gigi is unstoppable and much to the pain of the other queens. Jan looks visibly disappointed with the result, Widow even compared Jan’s face to a serial killer who has just been discovered. And we agree. Jan was broken but much to the Drag Race community her heartbreak makes for a perfect meme which is now plastered all over twitter. The bottom for this week wasn’t shocking Heidi, Jackie and Brita, it was a tough call who would join Brita in the bottom but thankfully for Jackie her runway looked saved her from a lip-sync against the ‘queen of New York’. Heidi and Brita lip-synced to Burnin Up and this was finally a good lip-sync compared to the multiple tragic lip-syncs we have seen this season. Heidi gave us seduction mixed with energy whilst Brita attempted humour, Brita did well but sadly this was her third lip-sync and statistically no queen survives three lip-syncs. Heidi heard the “Shantay you stay” which marked the end of a drama fuelled high energy episode.

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