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Drag Race says shock goodbye to frontrunner in ‘snoozefest’ episode

(Credit: VH1)

This has to go down as one of the dullest episodes in Drag Race herstory, right?

At the top of the episode, entitled “Save A Queen”, we watch as the queens receive a video message from their good Judy, Kornbread, announcing that her season 14 journey has come to a premature end as she has had to pull out due to an ankle injury.

After declaring that the bakery is well and truly closed, and sending her well wishes to Willow Pill, Kerri Kolby and her one-time rival Jasmine Kennedie, she’s on her merry way. It’s a shame as she was, thus far, one of the bigger characters in a generally pretty forgettable Drag Race cast.

Moving swiftly on, the remaining competing queens are tasked with popping balloons using only the Pit Crew’s derrieres in order to establish the three teams for this week’s maxi-challenge. The challenge will see all queens write and act a public service announcement infomercial highlighting the plight of queens who were eliminated first in their season. We welcome back three first eliminated queens of Drag Race past to serve as the subject matter – Tempest DuJour, Kahmora Hall and Jaymes Mansfield, who all do a great job of reminding us why they were the first to go in their respective seasons by essentially adding nothing to the episode.

The girls get to work and soon find themselves in front of Michelle to film their PSAs. The bar was truly on the floor for humour here – it was actually a little depressing watching Michelle knee-slapping in hysterics to Angeria simply speaking in her natural southern drawl. There really were no big standouts as the performances ranged from bad to adequate. To quote Tempest Dujour – “you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make a horse good at acting and comedy”. We’ll say.

It’s a testament to how uneventful this snoozefest episode was that even the ‘Coming up…’ teaser was just a clip of Jorgeous explaining that everyone felt they did well in the challenge – but perhaps somebody did not!

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Next up, the seasons have changed on the catwalk and each queen was asked to serve a springtime-inspired look. In-keeping with the rest of the episode, the results are very so-so. Not to go the full Miranda Priestly but we mean really, florals? For Spring? Groundbreaking. At a push, highlights could arguably include Kerri Kolby looking divine in a Jean Paul Gaultier-reminiscent number and Lady Camden quite literally spilling the tea in an afternoon tea-inspired get up, complete with a tea cup-shaped fascinator.

The PSAs play and, as anticipated, they are… literally not funny whatsoever. An utterly bizarre two second Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan concludes proceedings and we’re straight into judge’s remarks, this week with the help of guest judge and champion of lopsided haircuts Ava Max who speaks with all of the charm and charisma of someone recording a message to their family while held at gunpoint and told not to arouse suspicion by their captor. The closest we got to a laugh this episode was hearing Max have the audacity to tell Bosco to be more bubbly.

The judges do their best to find something to love from the week’s performances and looks, with Ross Matthews even going as far as to describe Bosco’s bog standard performance as “thrilling”. Are we watching the same show here? 

Jorgeous and Orion Story find themselves in the bottom two, left with no choice but to battle it out in this week’s lip sync battle set to Ava Max’s “My Head And My Heart” – a certified banger we would like to point out. Jorgeous truly wipes the floor with Orion and more than proves she deserves to retain her spot in this competition in one of the strongest lip sync performances in recent memory. 

Sadly, Orion’s fate is sealed and not even RuPaul’s chocolate bar can save her from her second elimination of the season. Strangely, we are enjoying the chocolate bar twist, if for no other reason it provides a mild chuckle every time the dramatic music abruptly stops to allow the eliminated queen to announce: “It’s just chocolate” with a frown.

Here’s hoping next week might have more to offer because at present, there’s really not that much to enjoy this season.

Drag Race streams on WOW Presents Plus.

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