"Drag Race" Season 10 Episode 9 Review: Breastworld

18 May 2018, 15:33

The queens head to the future in this week's Drag Race.

With The Vixen going home last week, there's a huge hole in the competition. Who will rise to the occasion and fill the gap left by The Vixens energy? Let's find out as we dive into RuPaul's Drag Race Season 10 episode 9 - the recap.

After The Vixen's elimination

The girls return from The Vixen's elimination to decompress and breakdown the tea from last week's episode. With the Chicago firebrand safely back at home, there's a new opening in the werkroom for Chief Instigator and it appears Aquaria has decided to step up to the plate. The young queen has no qualms about gunning for the other girls to go home and denies that she was in the bottom three last week (she was), which rubs the queens up the wrong way. But unlike The Vixen, Aquaria knows when to drop it.

We also discover that Kameron was secretly hoping to win the Cher challenge, which seems like an strange challenge to have your hopes pinned on (hello Snatch Game?). Stranger still is Kameron's belief that he's a good Cher impersonator. Here's the thing: you're either an accurate Cher impersonator, or your a bad one. Kameron may have been the best out of a bad bunch last week, but I'm not convinced that the Cher gig is really her calling in life. Best just to leave it to Chad Michaels, really.

The mini-challenge

Having had nothing but four hotel walls and each other to stare at since filming began, the girls are positively parched with thirst at this point in the competition. Ru decides to capitalise on the sexual frustration with a game of snap; but instead of cards, the queens have to match pairs of undies that are attached to a menagerie of hotties. The queens all too focussed on the array of bulges to play the game successfully, except Aquaria who goes on to match them all in the fastest time and win the mini challenge.

Breastworld

Ever the diplomat, Aquaria uses her new-found power as mini-challenge winner to curry favour from the the girls by letting them choose their own parts in this week's maxi-challenge: a drag spoof of the hit HBO series "Westworld," called "Breastworld." This felt like an unnecessary move in my opinion. Sure, it's not nice to hear that a comeptitor wants you to go home, but the truth is that queens will have to go home at some point. At this stage in the competition, you have to put yourself first, and Aquaria's RuPaul's Best Friend Race move sees her stuck with the smallest part.

So who ends up with which part? Kicking things off is Kameron, who takes on the role of a stuffy, conservative woman who can't think of anything less relaxing than being surrounded by a gaggle of gays and drag queens at a holiday resort, while Monét plays the pal who brought her to her worst nightmare. Miz Cracker's character appears to run Breastworld, while Eureka and Aquaria play robotic staff members at the resort.

Finally, Asia plays a Sarah Palin-esque conservative lady who inexplicably appears towards the end of the skit to rain on everybody's parade for no discernible reason. After winding up in the bottom two last episode, the pressure is on for Asia; will she be able to turn things around before it's too late?

Thankfully, she does. But, like Kameron's success last week, the quality of Asia's performance in Breastworld may have been exaggerated by the relative shoddiness of everyone else's. Eureka, who for some reason had 0 energy to give this week, was particularly disappointing, as was Miz Cracker, whose delivery was offputtingly wooden. Kameron was pretty bad too, but at least she went for it.

Monét gave a pretty good show, but it was definitely Asia and Aquaria who gave the best performances, with the latter finding a way to pour her icy persona into the character - much like her Melania trump. Aquaria might not have the most experience as a drag queen, but she is clearly a student of Drag Race, and knows exactly how to go about succeeding in the competition - which is probably why the other girls were so rattled by her at the start of the episode.

Bring it to the runway, runway!

For this week's runway, the girls have to create themselves in 50 years time. Aquaria, Eureka and Monét all struggle in this category, for different reasons: the first two appear to be afraid to really age themselves up, while Monét arguably goes too far the other end, with Jessica Lange at the end of AHS style hair wisps and even IV drips. But it's the comedy saggy boobs that really lost me. It's the sort of humour that passed on the show in season four, but at this point in the game, doing something as obvious as droopy tits on an old lady feels like grabbing at low-hanging fruit (pun intended).

I also wasn't a huge fan of Miz Cracker's runway, as there wasn't really much about her that was elderly except for the grey wig. Asia's outfit, on the other hand, was incredible regardless of what Michelle Visage things. It was definitely a character that you don't always seen in day to day life, but if you're aware of the aged Caribbean party girl Asia was channeling, it's a winner. Kameron was really the only queen who was able to fully embrace the challenge, going all the way with a hilariously withered prosthetic face.

In the end, Asia wins the Maxi-challenge - it's a deserved and important win for Asia, who will hopefully be able to use this momentum to regain her rightful place at the top of the competition in the weeks to come. Asia has played a clown of a character twice and won both time; what she needs to do now is figure that out and make sure she plays to her strengths for the rest of the competition.

The bottom two

In the end, Kameron and Eureka wind up in the bottom. I don't really think Kameron had any business being there, and would have much preferred to see Miz Cracker lipsync for her life. I also think Miz Cracker needed to lipsync at this point, if for no other reason than to light a fire underneath her frustratingly downbeat ass. But, had Kameron been deemed safe, we may not have got the season's best lipsync so far.

Eureka and Kameron lipsync to "New Attitude" by the impossibly energetic Patti Labelle, and if Miz Cracker was in the bottom two there's no doubt in my mind that this song would have sent her packing. Thankfully for her (and us) she's not, and Eureka and Kameron pull off a pretty special performance. Kameron's old-lady face makes the whole performance extra hilarious, while Eureka's sheer effort would even pull at The Vixens heartstrings. Together, they give us everything we need, including a Leganja and Joslyn Fox-style synchronised splits.

For their efforts, Ru decrees that neither queen will go home. I actually don't think it would have been unfair to send Eureka home at that point, but at least this means we aren't going to have to deal with a returning queen this season. I'm always in two minds about these "shantay you BOTH stay" moments, because while it's lovely to see a fave stay to fight another week, the beauty of Drag Race is as much in its heart-wrenching departures as it is in its emotional reprieves. Either way, it means we have one more episode than expected, and that's no bad thing.