‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 4, Episode 2 recap: Rocker chicks

When it was first introduced in Season 1, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s girl groups challenge was an unexpected smash. The Frock Destroyers’ “Break Up (Bye Bye)” performance was such a phenomenal success—achieving off-show success as well!—that declaring just one winner among the three members seemed impossible. So, for the first time in Drag Race herstory, three queens got a win for one performance: Baga Chipz, Blu Hydrangea and Divina de Campo.

The next girl groups challenge would come in UK Season 2’s fifth episode, the first filmed after COVID-19 forced production into a hiatus. Everyone was eager to get back into things, and a bit on edge (this is the episode that features RuPaul’s “fucking H&M” rant), which makes what the United Kingdolls pulled off with “UK Hun?” all the more impressive. Yes, perhaps Tayce and Bimini deserved the wins most, but everyone was so good, why not give Lawrence Chaney and A’Whora wins as well? And so the RuPeter Badge inflation continued, with four queens winning one together. This continued with UK Season 3, despite “B.D.E.” falling far short of the high standards set in the two prior seasons.

This season, the RuPeter Badge arms race hits a fever pitch, with a potential six wins in play thanks to the super-size girl groups. And, spoiler alert, there are indeed six badges given out this week. Excessive? Unquestionably! Do the performances deserve the windfall of badges? Not particularly! But this is the reality of the Drag Race UK girl groups challenge: this is how it has been, and how it forever will be.

Beyond the threat of inflation in the RuPeter Badge economy, however, this episode is interesting for how it upends some expected story arcs set up in the premiere, and how it leans on the format to produce unusual results. I’m not sure I’d call it a great episode, but it’s a fascinating one—and it leaves me somewhat puzzled about where this season is heading.

“Yass-tonbury Festival” is the imagined setting of this year’s girl groups challenge, with the queens splitting up into teams to record the rock song “Come Alive.” As winner and surviving lip syncer from last week’s challenge, Black Peppa and Dakota Schiffer get to captain their teams. The team selections go very much as you’d expect: Peppa chooses strong dancer and songwriter Baby and early high-scorer Sminty Drop, while Dakota goes with early frontrunners like Danny Beard and Cheddar Gorgeous. Interestingly, Le Fil is fourth pick, despite him literally marketing himself as a pop artist.

The last picked, after Jonbers Blonde, Pixie Polite and Starlet have all been chosen, is Copper Topp. Copper barely avoided elimination last week, and since Dakota is one of the team leaders, it makes sense that the red-headed queen would be left to choose among the two teams for herself. She ultimately goes with Dakota’s team, in a pick that will prove quite profitable to her in the long run.

Peppa’s team, the Triple Threats, seem to have a major advantage with Baby in their numbers. She is the type who is born to win a girl group challenge, having the expertise in songwriting and the performance chops to pull off a verse. That said, we need only flash back a year to remember Kitty Scott-Claus falling into the wrong group for “B.D.E.” and missing out on that team win. Even back in the very first installment, Cheryl Hole got praise for her “Break Up (Bye Bye)” performance, but found herself on the wrong team to be considered for a win.

Team selection is half the battle on this one, as Baby can’t write everyone’s verses. So while she may be a stronger single performer than anyone on Dakota’s team, the Queens of the Bone Age, she needs her group to come through for her to be in contention for a RuPeter Badge.

Unfortunately for Baby, all that starts to come crashing down during the recording session with Leland and Freddy Scott. While all the Queens of the Bone Age get good edits while laying down their verses, the Triple Threats encounter some major issues. Specifically, Starlet struggles while recording, and Sminty prepares herself a mouthful with a too-wordy verse. No one is worse, however, than Jonbers, whom Leland helpfully describes as recording a verse in which “time does not exist.” She is utterly without rhythm, and it takes the team a ton of time just to get her words matched to the song.

All of this carries through to the performance, which follows a lovely mirror moment about Dakota’s twin sibling. I’ll give it to this cast: they are already vastly superior in organically approaching mirror moment talk, vis-à-vis the UK Season 3 cast. (Never forget Vanity Milan’s all-time wildest transition: “Do you know what’s funny about the Snatch Game is, you had to play a character. It takes me back to being young in school, and having to play a straight person.”) This discussion with Dakota tells us a lot about her and her motivations—she cares a lot about making her twin, Harry, with whom she first came out as queer at 15 before later having to come out on her own as a trans woman at 19. She cares deeply about making Harry proud, and that’s what keeps her going in the competition. 

Harry should be quite proud based on what Dakota and her group do this week. Armed with strong choreography from Le Fil, who is an absolute star in this episode, the Queens of the Bone Age are the clear winners of the week. From costuming to how their verses flow together, they feel like a cohesive group. Le Fil, Cheddar and Danny are the tops among the group, while I would say Copper is the biggest beneficiary of the correct group selection. The whole team takes the win, and it’s not a close contest.

If there was any doubt that the Queens of the Bone Age were the best, the Triple Threats’ reaction is enough to solidify it. They actually go first in the challenge, and there are enough obvious screw-ups that Baby is upset backstage after. Sminty actually cries over her failure to lip sync properly, knowing how much the challenge means to her teammate. This at least demonstrates a sense of awareness from Sminty, while Starlet says, entirely seriously, that she felt she was confident during their performance. Reader, if you haven’t already, I implore you to go watch the Triple Threats’ rendition of “Come Alive” and see the absolute deer-in-the-headlights look Starlet is insisting is her showing confidence.

The team-win structure does indeed screw Baby out of a victory, although she and Peppa get the most positive critiques among the losing group. Sminty avoids having to lip sync, which is something of a surprise: not only does she garble lyrics in the performance, but her runway is a very similar silhouette to the ones she showed last week. This catches the judges’ eyes, and the how much they talk about it in critiques and deliberations has me thinking Sminty is heading for the bottom two, alongside Jonbers.

But no, despite Ru’s high praise of Starlet in the previous episode, she lands in the bottom two instead. She seems genuinely thrown off by this, and I can’t blame her. While she may have a deluded sense of her own self-confidence in the challenge, she just got Krystal Versace-level praise from Ru in the last episode. That Ru is so willing to sacrifice her this early is surprising to me. That said, both Krystal and fellow Ru favourite Jorgeous could lip sync their way out of just about anything; perhaps Ru wanted to see if his chosen baby bird could fly.

Spoiler: she cannot fly. While neither Jonbers nor Starlet is any great guns in the lip sync to Sugababes’ “About You Now,” Jonbers is much more dynamic. She stays, and Starlet makes a very surprising early exit. I almost feel like this is a signal from the show: they know how previous seasons have gone, and this time around, things are going to be different. Who knows how long that sticks, but for the time being, colour me intrigued.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Pixie starts this episode by celebrating breaking the Brighton curse—a sense after Joe Black and Anubis Finch’s first outs last year that being from Brighton ascertained an early exit. Pixie’s made it all the way to Episode 3 now!

✨ FKA twigs is our guest judge this week, and she is both insightful and unafraid of actually giving critique. Just how we like our guest judges! I’m a little sad we didn’t get a twigs lip sync song, though—I’d love to see an intense “cellophane” showdown.

✨ A huge part of Baby’s storyline this episode is about twigs: she cites the singer-songwriter as her personal inspiration, only for Ru to surprise her with the news that she’s the guest judge. And later, during critiques, Ru gives Baby a very cute introduction, and she and twigs positively gush over each other. It’s so lovely!

✨ Listen, if you’re going to give your group a nonsensical name in this challenge, like a team of five calling themselves “the Triple Threats,” at least poke fun at how dumb it is. Good on the Triple Threat girls for hanging that particular lampshade.

✨ There’s some lampooning on the Queens of the Bone Age’s side of the workroom of the very typical lyrics you hear in Rumixes and girl group chats: a lot of “snatched waists” and “taking the crown” to be found. Now that we’ve acknowledged this in the text of the show, I hope queens steer far away from these clichés.

✨ Cathy Dennis, the iconic songwriter behind such bops as “I Kissed a Girl,” “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” and “Toxic,” is the coach in the workroom for the girls. She gives great notes on the verses, particularly pointing out which are too generic. Later, there’s another tie-in with Cathy when it comes to the lip sync song: “About You Now” was written in part by her! (Unfortunately, it was also written in part by Dr. Luke.)

✨ Ru has seemingly decided he only has it in him to say the full name “Jonbers Blonde” once or so per episode. He otherwise sticks to “J. Blonde” (Jonbers herself even suggests “JB”). Look for this to potentially become a storyline, à la Ru trying to get Heidi N Closet to change her drag name, to no avail.

✨ Hey, where’s Alan Carr? Usually he and Graham Norton rotate, but Graham’s taken both of the first two judging slots. Hope Alan’s back soon!

✨ RUPAUL: “This is my first time seeing you out of drag!”

CHEDDAR: “Do you like what you see?”

RUPAUL: “No, l, actually, I don’t! Please leave!”

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will be available to stream on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 4 p.m. EDT on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.