When I’m writing and thinking about Survivor (as I am wont to do), something that comes up a lot is “win conditions.” Basically, the goal of the show is twofold: Step one is to maximize the amount of situations moving forward in which you are the winner of the season, and step two is to make one of those situations happen. It’s a pretty basic explanation of “strategy,” and it applies to lots of situations, including RuPaul’s Drag Race. The difference is that Survivor is primarily played among the players, with the storylines crafted through editing. On Drag Race, the strategy is not just to win the show by winning challenges, but to craft a winning storyline for yourself while competing. This week, one contestant takes a massive stride forward in creating her win condition, and all the other girls she’s competing against should be kicking themselves for letting her do it.
I’m talking, of course, about Suzie Toot, who in Untucked gets to turn herself into a full-on lovable loser. Suzie Toot’s win condition, as a quirky queen with an occasionally hideous mug and performing chops that put her far ahead of most of the competition, is that she has to be a believable underdog. Sound familiar? Baby, play it right and that’s a recipe for the most dominant Drag Race edit of all time: The Jinkx Monsoon. Jinkx Monsoon on season five, if you’ll remember, was not just defined by being perhaps the best comedian and musical theater performer ever on the show, but by the fact that the other queens in the Werk Room didn’t understand her. It made the audience root for her much, much harder. Suzie, meanwhile, has been playing the underdog all season long, but until now, it’s been a little ineffective. When she said “They finally see that I am a real threat,” after winning the first challenge, I was like “girl…” This week in Untucked, however, the girls give Suzie a primo opportunity to go full “pluck,” and she gives both an in-the-moment speech and a confessional about how she’s not going to listen to these other queens and keep being her quirky self. And I was kind of like, You guys! This is how Suzie wins! Don’t let her say that shit and have it make sense!
But truthfully, part of the fun this season is that the girls are surprisingly un-savvy. Drag Race has, especially in its teen years, been accused of becoming a bit too Best Friends Race-y. Girls, the story goes, are so worried about being perceived negatively by the show’s famously temperamental fandom that they refuse to be interesting on TV. There are seasons where this rings true to me (season 14) and seasons where I think the girls were actually just kind of happy (season 12), but either way it’s been on the decline recently, with queens like Mistress, Luxx, and Plane Jane representing a new wave of queens who are both TV-savvy and willing to play the villain anyway. Interestingly, this season doesn’t read that way to me. Most of the girls who are annoyed at Suzie aren’t playing the TV game, they’re annoyed because they’re not doing well in the competition. It feels, to be blunt, reminiscent of the earlier seasons, where the girls acted like drag queens and the storylines flowed freely. Only this season, it might flow straight toward a Suzie win.
It’s interesting that Untucked has quickly become such a vital part of this season’s storytelling. It’s where the queens show the most personality, where the drama begins, and where everybody feels raw. Look, I’m as shocked as you are, but the main show doesn’t have Arrietty walking around and pointing to all the queens who should have been in the bottom over her. The main show doesn’t have Suzie Toot vs. the World. The main show doesn’t have Hormona Lisa revealing that her mother lost all her fingers and quilted her outfit with just one hand. That’s all Untucked. Good work, show.
But let’s go back to the beginning, because while Untucked may be the most fun storytelling, the whole thing matters. We begin with the fallout of Joella going home (nobody’s crying this week) and with Crystal half-pissed about not winning. When people talk about the queens being too inoffensive for the show’s good, it’s stuff like this that they’re talking about. Arrietty, meanwhile, is pissed she was in the bottom last week.
The challenge this week is RDR: Live!, the SNL parody that’s become a late-stage standard on the show. The benefits are that it gives every queen a chance to do at least something in the challenge without it feeling too repetitive, and it does the work of explaining to the audience which queens have at least basic comedic and presentational abilities. On the other hand, the sketches are universally bad and usually a slog to sit through.
This year, the casting is largely straightforward: Nobody except Onya wants the part that destroyed Mirage last season because they’re all scared; Hormona and Lydia both want a character named “Gert;” Lana and Crystal argue over who gets to be the dumb blonde, and Lana wins. Notably, Onya and Suzie have no issues taking the parts that will most obviously impress the judges. When it comes to performing, those two are so far out in front of the competition that it’s not even funny.
On that note: I think a comedy/performance challenge where the queens are directed is more than overdue. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the two of the top three last week are two of the top three this week when you’re not helping any of the others learn. The vast majority of the girls are not getting critiqued by the judges and are not getting directed in the challenges. With that lack of attention, how, exactly, are they supposed to get any better?
During challenge preparation, Lexi (playing the Weekend Update anchor) gets annoyed that Suzie (who’s playing her guest) shoots down all of her ideas. I am of two minds about this. Suzie is definitely being annoying. On the other hand, Lexi’s ideas are mostly bad and Suzie clearly has an understanding of the “rules” of sketch comedy. The judges don’t want the girls playing newscasters to “break” or throttle each other. They want competent readings of jokes, and if you wanted a showier part then, well, you should have picked one.
Onto the challenge! The first sketch in the bunch is about some Neanderthals who are concerned when a homo(sapien) moves into their neighborhood. Onya plays the mayor and: Wow. She is just really really good at this stuff. She creates a fully realized character that is not even gestured to in the writing of the sketch, she’s fully present in the scene, and she’s totally in control of the stage. It’s hard to look at anyone else. But that doesn’t stop Arrietty from pulling focus. As the Neanderthal, she’s doing a distractingly awful voice, she makes basic comedic choices like saying “living” in a gay voice, and she displays no comedic taste. On a positive note, she makes a choice and commits to it, which is more than you can say for Kori, who is entirely forgettable. Lana, as a bimbo homosapien, delivers a great sight gag when she walks out with gloriously bouncing titties, but then she speaks and it becomes altogether clear that she has no idea how to deliver dialogue.
The host monologue is next and Onya absolutely destroys. She’s sooooo charming and her presence is off-the-charts. It’s just fantastic. The script, for what it’s worth, does her no favors. None of the jokes are funny. But it doesn’t matter because Onya delivers them like a superstar.
Sam, Hormona, and Jewels do a parody of Schweddy Balls next. Hormona ends up in the top, Jewels ends up safe, and Sam ends up in the bottom for reasons that are largely unclear to me. Hormona and Sam seemed, to me, at almost exactly the same level of performance, and, if anything, I thought Sam’s voice made more sense as someone playing a podcaster. Did they just throw her in the bottom so they could ensure she’d never play a non-Southern character again? If there’s anyone in this group I thought should be in the top it’s Jewels, who plays her beaver expert as Australian solely so she can say beav-uh. I was entertained! I don’t understand why the judges haven’t warmed up to Jewels yet, when she is so clearly one of the top contenders to me. Could have been in the top last week, could have been in the top this week.
The Weekend Update crew is up next. Lexi is much better than Crystal at reading her jokes. Suzie delivers a high-level sketch performance. Not much I can say about it other than that it was pretty much pitch perfect. Also: Her ugly drag face at the start of the competition has apparently freed her up to do character paints in the challenges that the other girls aren’t touching. Great stuff! The other girls should be very, very scared of Suzie Toot.
Finally, there’s an interminably long Golden Girls sketch with Acacia (who is fine but not actually funny) and Lydia (who is awful). Paul W. Downs appears, but he does not save the sketch. It is terrible. It is so long. Lydia… well to be blunt, I haven’t figured out what she was cast for, since she hasn’t turned in a good challenge performance yet.
In the Werk Room the next day, the most notable moment to me is Lexi christening Hormona, Acacia, Lydia, and, most of all, Suzie the “Kumbaya Committee,” because they can’t take a joke. Notably, these are all white girls. Also notable is the narrative that Suzie can’t hang, which does make her seem lame. If I’m a queen moving forward in this competition, I’m pushing “Suzie can’t hang” much more than I’m pushing “I don’t understand why the judges like Suzie’s drag.” Much more damaging!
On the runway, the category is Pretty in Pink. Onya’s sneaker look is cute, but the judges are right that her proportions are way off without hair. Kori’s drag is insanely basic. Coming for Suzie while wearing your 80th cocktail dress? I don’t think… Arrietty’s dilophosaurus-y look is completely stunning, and her makeup looks great with it. Lana wears an outfit inspired by Dior’s New Look, with a headscarf, and looks gorgeous. Her face card is killer. Hormona wears another prom dress. Hope they call that out soon. Sam does a showgirl look that is perfectly made but that I’ve seen a billion times. Jewels looks great, per the uzh. I gasped when I realized she was in pants. Crystal Envy’s bubblegum-inspired look is predictably polished, but am I problematic for thinking that this kind of girly-girl drag needed a more-intense cinch? Lexi’s cheetah-print look is stunning. This girl’s outfits are step above: They look like actual fashion, while still being a fully realized, bitchy character. Suzie Toot’s clown look is good to me. I like it! Sue me! She’s chic! Lydia is a penis, but the fact that she has to hold up the shaft the whole time is a little disqualifying. Acacia, don’t be shocked, is dressed like it’s the ’80s. Gasp!
Ultimately, Suzie wins the challenge, as she should (although I wouldn’t have been mad at another Onya win, honestly). Arrietty and Lydia quite rightly end up in the bottom and lip sync to “Boogie Wonderland.” I’d accepted that Lydia was going home from basically the moment she picked a Golden Girls-inspired character without knowing the show, so imagine my surprise when she ate the lip sync. Seriously, she’s great! It’s not really her song, but she is consistently interesting, expressive, and funny. Arrietty, meanwhile, is a mess. So I watched in shock and awe as yet another potential top contender was sent home… Until she wasn’t. No, Arrietty gets the second Badonkadunk save. Dropping the pretense that this is random (maybe it was! In which case we have nothing to talk about!), I am shocked that this season’s marquee twist is gone so soon. Maybe Arrietty earned her spot with that Untucked performance, but it’s just too early in the season to have this kind of stagnation. Plus, Lydia deserved a win to herself. Send! Girls! Home!
• Something else I loved in Untucked was Onya laughing at all the drama. These girls aren’t threatened enough by her yet, but maybe this third top performance will do it.
• Kori King can act like she’s above Suzie Toot’s outfit all she wants, but girl, you’re still in a cocktail dress. She may have been safe this week, but it was by the skin of her teeth.
• I love Jewels but I am unconvinced that “piggy of the week” is going to catch on.
• Truly cannot believe that those Neanderthal girls thought Arrietty was in the top. Shows a concerning lack of… taste.
• Trauma Makeup Corner: Nothing this week, but we did learn that Lexi is not out as a woman in her day job, which is in finance. Honestly, this was a much better segment than the trauma ones, since I was endeared to Lexi and felt for her, but still was able to laugh and have a good time.
• Gay thoughts from gay people: Asked my roommate Jake, who does sketch comedy professionally, to give some rules for drag queens attempting sketch for the first time, and here’s what he came up with:
1) This is the only context where you should embrace being the straight man
2) Give us a character that has funny voice, not funny voice that has a character
3) You might be funnier than the material and that’s okay
Thank you, Jake!
• Predicted top four: One random bottom placement for Sam won’t scare me off! My top four is Suzie, Onya, Sam, and Lexi!
