‘Canada’s Drag Race’ Season 2, Episode 7 recap: Nervous laughter

You know that much-memed moment of Selina Meyer nervously laughing and saying “What the fuck?” on Veep? That was me watching this week’s episode of Canada’s Drag Race. Because really, what the fuck? Why do most of the queens approach the Roast of Brooke Lynn Hytes with such sharp, angry energy? Why does Kimora Amour all but throw in the towel during mini-Untucked, telling the other queens that she feels she’s peaked? What on earth was Kimora doing during the lip sync against Gia Metric? And most importantly: Who is Emma Hunter?

This is, no joke, one of the most intense, strange episodes of Drag Race that I’ve ever seen. And reader? I fucking loved it.

Canada’s Drag Race Season 2 just hits the sweet spot for me. Performance quality from episode to episode genuinely doesn’t deter from how much fun I’m having watching it. Some eliminations have stung, but the remaining cast has been so damn entertaining that I don’t find myself missing them too much. (Except for Eve 6000; I miss Eve every day.) There are just so many little moments I love every week, like Brad Goreski and Brooke Lynn loon-calling when they bring the queens back to the stage. Why are they doing it? Who knows! But it’s a delight!

And the little quirks of the show aren’t keeping it from being an interesting competition, either. We seem to have really settled on a couple of frontrunners, Icesis Couture and Pythia, but the third spot in the finals remains wide open. Everyone else—Gia, Adriana and Kendall Gender—now has one win, thanks to Kendall’s victory in the roast. Adriana hasn’t lip-synced, but she’s scored low several times. Meanwhile, Gia’s lip-synced twice, and Kendall once. It’s a real race to fill that third slot in the top three, and I’m not even accounting for a potential shock boot of Icesis or Pythia. (Though they’re my two favourites, so I’d very much like that not to happen!)

The Roast of Brooke Lynn Hytes is a bizarre, sometimes uncomfortable episode of Drag Race, yet I come out of it loving the season more than ever. And it makes me all the sadder that we only have three episodes with these queens left on the calendar.

Synthia Kiss’ departure last week means the Brat Pack is officially no longer a full trio in the competition. (“They needed to be split up anyway,” Icesis says in confessional.) We don’t have much time to mourn her elimination, though, because we are launched right into one of the most elaborate mini-challenges we’ve ever seen. 

So many of this season’s minis have felt like they could be full challenges, especially this Fashion Puh-leeze improv challenge. Dressed as fashionistas—points to Gia for a killer green look—the dolls must roast each other’s past fashions. Kendall wins, and though I might’ve given it to Kimora or Gia instead, Kendall definitely does well.

But that’s just a warm-up for the feature presentation: the roast challenge. It’s funny, after the very first instalment of this challenge (Season 5’s RuPaul Roast, one of the best Drag Race episodes ever), it took a while for the second in Season 9. But since then, we’ve gotten them with increasing frequency: roasts of Lady Bunny, former Miss Congenialities and even the queens themselves. Results have varied, but as I noted in my recap of the very recent UK Season 3 roast, they do tend to produce underdog winners.

Obviously that happens here, as Kendall wins her first maxi-challenge of the season. Her energy is intense, but she manages some very sharp, funny jokes. She kicks off an absolutely brutal run of jokes about not knowing who (the incredibly game) guest judge Emma Hunter is, saying the mini-challenge was about pretending to recognize her name. My favourite is a particularly barbed jab at Brooke Lynn calling herself “the Queen of the North” despite not actually winning Drag Race. But where Kendall really excels is in her transitions: a joke about Amanda Brugel working on The Handmaid’s Tale, a show only watched by “50-year-old white women,” is used as a springboard for, “Speaking of 50-year-old white women, hi Brad!”

That said, Kendall is not the funniest this week. That honour goes to Icesis, who gets very close to a third win. She just layers joke upon joke upon joke: “A wide lens and a warning would really help out this cast. Could you imagine this pack of bulldog-looking heifers running around loose in the world?” she asks, to the delighted shock of the other queens. “They’re the reason we spay and neuter our pets. But enough about the cast of Snow Dogs, and Kimora as Cuba Gooding Jr.” She also gets a great facial expression gag in, reacting to Brad’s book being called Born to Be Brad. Unfortunately, unlike Sherry Pie once upon a time, Icesis gets cut off by the producers and is unable to finish her set. This disqualifies her for the win, and Kendall takes it instead.

Everyone else either bombs or falls just short of bombing. It’s pretty spectacular! Adriana’s energy is off from the jump, but she does get one of my favourite quiet bits in by calling Brooke Lynn “Trinity the Tuck”; Pythia is nervous throughout, with her goofy “Céline Dion, more like Céline Begone” joke the highlight of her set; Gia spends most of her time talking about herself, which Emma Hunter correctly notes feels like watching Gia warm herself up; and Kimora, who excels in rehearsal with Emma and Brad, falls apart in the challenge itself. She relies too much on saying “fuck” (and variants thereof), and comes across too intensely. At one point, she just straight up yells “you fucking suck!” at Adriana. It’s a lot!

Kimora knows she’s faltered on the challenge she’s meant to win, and so when the possibility of a “who should go home tonight?” question comes up in mini-Untucked, she tells the girls to say her name. Her argument isn’t that she’s giving up, but that she recognizes that she’s not going to win. I think that’s a fair observation—I’ve always wondered how much reality TV competitors are aware of their trajectories while competing—but it’s not one I think she should say out loud. The other contestants are upset with her for throwing in the towel, with Pythia all but telling her to go ahead and pack her bags.

The thing is, Kimora’s actually done quite well. Prior to this, she’s never so much as scored low in a challenge, and she was primed to win this week. But had she stayed, she’d have been the only queen without a win, which would indeed put her in a tough spot. Still, we’ve seen wilder things happen—Ellie Diamond got to the end of UK Season 2 just earlier this year. It’s worth staying in the fight even if the odds feel against you.

But Kimora’s lip sync performance does not seem like that of someone who’s given up. I actually don’t know how to describe it exactly. She stalks behind Gia for almost the entire performance, getting very much in Gia’s personal space. It’s odd, and it becomes increasingly uncomfortable as it goes on. The other queens are perplexed: Adriana asks “is it done yet?” in a confessional while shielding her eyes. Pythia says “what the fuck?” while watching from the back.

The reaction after the performance, though, is where this episode really shifts into another gear. The applause is very light, and Gia looks irritated as she returns to her position. “That was confusing!” Brooke Lynn says to her fellow judges. Then, before Brad announces the result, he takes a pause and says, “I have to ask: What was happening there?” 

Gia glares across the stage at Kimora, who says she was just doing what came to her, and that she wasn’t present. “We just wanted you to know that it was weird as shit,” Amanda tells her. And Kimora, much like me throughout this whole spectacle, nervously laughs in response. She then, of course, sashays away.

Even sitting here having just rewatched it to write this recap, I can’t quite comprehend what happened. This feels like Canada’s own “Drag is not a contact sport” moment. It’s uncomfortable, and the show makes it clear that it’s an uncomfortable situation. I have a feeling it will inspire plenty of conversations, but as a single moment of television? It’s iconic.

With just three episodes left, including the finale, we’re in the home stretch of the season. We’ve got a prom-themed makeover coming up next, with teenage clients for the queens. How will this crew do with a makeover challenge? I can’t wait to find out.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨We get one absolutely iconic flashback moment from last week’s episode, in which Synthia tells Kendall to “make some good TV” before their lip sync battle. Love that energy. Miss Synthia already.

✨Gia ends the cold open by asking the other girls, “Who wants to have a slumber party?” and cackling madly. The other queens don’t react. “No one? Okay.” Smash cut to the theme song. It’s these moments that make me love this show.

✨Here’s your weekly dose of me raving about how good the Canada’s Drag Race mirror moments are relative to the rest of the franchise: the queens talk about who they are in drag versus out of drag, and whether or not they’re able to access their “power” out of drag in the same way. It’s a fascinating, quick conversation, and actually teaches you something about the way in which these dolls approach their drag identity. Love it!

✨I’ll talk more about the runways in tomorrow’s power ranking, but for now: Pythia revealing into a centaur puppet outfit? Genius. She’s a mad genius.

✨So great to have an audience back for a stand-up comedy challenge. You really do need people in the room to play off of.

✨Brooke Lynn makes a really interesting critique of Adriana wearing a Mugler recreation, saying she’d rather see Adriana’s own drag. Amanda ultimately disagrees based on how well Adriana models it. It’s a conversation worth having, I think, about how much dipping into the fashion pool is too much. For my money, Adriana looks great—it’s a bit The Shape of Water goes gay, which I like—and it fits her overall brand. But your mileage may vary!

✨“Brooke don’t smile! She can’t smile no more!” At least Kimora got off one more iconic confessional moment before she left us.

✨Thanks for bearing with our little content shuffle this week as we adjusted for the UK finale. We’re back to Friday/Saturday publish dates for the rest of the Canada’s Drag Race season, which should be the final Drag Race season of 2021! We’ve been all over the world (and all over the map quality-wise), but it is nice that we’re ending with what feels like a real gem of a season.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Canada will be available to stream Thursday, Dec. 2, at 9 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada.