‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 8’ Episode 9 recap: Queer Eye for the Roast Guy

Way back in the first-ever RuPaul’s Drag Race roast—Season 5’s “RuPaul Roast,” one of the best Drag Race episodes of all time—plenty of queens delivered good-to-great sets. Eventual Drag Race champions Jinkx Monsoon and Alaska were polished, professional and hilarious. Even Detox, though she relied too much on profanity, more than proved her mettle in this challenge format. But it’s notable to remember that, for all their perfect punchlines and delightful delivery, none of them won that week. 

Coco Montrese did, and she did so in character as “Ru’s good cousin from the Brewster Projects.” Donning a fiery red wig and an exaggerated voice, Coco leaned into a persona to help her succeed in a comedy challenge, after failing to impress in previous acting and improv tasks. Her jokes, as written, may not have been the funniest of the day. But what Coco did was arguably more impressive than simply having the best jokes: she delivered her set perfectly in character, and found a creative solution to the problem facing her. It was very drag in its spirit of creativity, and she was justly rewarded for it.

Since then, though, there have been surprisingly few who have done roast challenges in character. That’s likely because, as seen in the very next rendition of the task, characters saw mixed results. Nina Bo’Nina Brown did her Season 9 set as her own great-aunt, which gave us some good lines (“What’s your name, baby?” to Fortune Feimster still makes me laugh), but ultimately landed her in the safe scoring zone. Trinity the Tuck (then Trinity Taylor) was lucky to be just safe for her performance as a countrified character, as she turned in what was arguably her worst effort of the whole season.

While there have been some characters since (Mo Heart in All Stars 4 and The Vivienne in All Stars 7 come to mind), none has broken through like Coco’s did—until now. In choosing to revive her Joan Rivers impersonation from Snatch Game on Canada’s Drag Race, Jimbo aims to become the first character-based roaster to win since Coco a decade ago. The show sets it up like she might fall short, but come on. It’s Jimbo on All Stars 8. If you’re expecting a failure, you haven’t been paying attention.

The roast subject this season is Carson Kressley, who is the last of the Season 7–14 panel of judges to be the guest of honour. (Ts Madison joined as a rotating judge in Season 15, and I look forward to her roast in the coming seasons.) There’s a lot of love in how Ru introduces the challenge, noting that as part of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy cast, Carson’s work genuinely opened doors that RuPaul’s Drag Race itself would later walk through. But, of course, that kind tone takes a turn as Ru introduces the challenge: “I want you to read him to mother-tucking filth.”

Alexis Michelle, as last week’s maxi-challenge winner, gets to decide the roast order, and Lawrence Chaney vs. Ellie Diamond this is not. Jimbo does bristle slightly at being put last, as it creates more expectation for her, but Alexis says her only strategy is in putting herself first. (An odd strategy, at that.) Michelle Visage and Alec Mapa help the queens with their sets, and like Kylie Sonique Love before her, Jessica Wild remembers when Alec competed on Season 2’s first-ever Snatch Game. I hope Alec remembers Jessica’s RuPaul as fondly as I do.

During the workshopping, we see the narratives for this episode form: Jessica might be too nice, Alexis is haunted by her bottom-two-worthy roast performance in Season 9, Kandy Muse might speak too quickly and lose her jokes in the shuffle, and Jimbo’s choice to do Joan Rivers is risky. (Again: in theory.) The one actual issue Jimbo runs into is that her jokes are a bit too conceptual, especially for a Joan Rivers impersonation. She needs to be more direct.

Alexis starts things off, and while she’s better than she was in Season 9, that’s about all I can say. When she’s sharp, her jokes are actually quite good (“Then you hosted How to Look Good Naked, which … you don’t”), but her delivery is too laboured overall. Her final joke about Carson’s “flat ass” doesn’t land either, and it’s a rough last impression going into Jessica’s set. Jessica is surprisingly terrific in this, starting us with a simple “Hello, beautiful people … and Michelle Visage” and not taking her foot off the brake from there.

It’s not necessarily that Jessica has the funniest jokes, but her delivery is so distinctly her that every punchline lands. Ru laughs his ass off during this set, and it’s easy to understand why. Jessica is just such a confident performer—as Ru notes in his later critiques, she never lets herself become the butt of the joke, but stays in command. Jessica’s rise has truly been the story of the season for me, and it’s great to see her get such a big moment in this challenge. “I love you so much, Carson!” she says as she ends her set. “I’ve never watched any of your stuff, but as soon as I get out of here, I’m still not watching it!”

Conversely, while Kandy is good in her set, she performs a bit under expectations after her winning Season 13 roast. She starts with a barb that is admittedly well delivered—“Thank you, Jessica! We understood every single word you said!”—but a little rich coming from a queen who just got notes to enunciate better. Her enunciation is okay in her set, but she still delivers the jokes too quickly, letting several setups get lost in the process. My favourite joke of hers is her explaining how much she and Carson have in common: “I love ketamine! You’re an equestrian!” Still, I actually think a couple of her jokes are a bit too harsh—though she wisely reminds the audience that it’s a roast when they don’t laugh at one particular punchline.

I’ve been biding my time talking about the other queens, but once Jimbo comes onstage, it’s over. Her performance is like if Joan Rivers herself came back to life. There are great punchlines (“Jessica Wild’s pussy is so hairy, every time she shaves it, PETA gets a complaint!”), some incredibly funny asides and a Folsom joke about Alexis Michelle that made me scream in my empty room. Jimbo delivers what I would argue is her best performance from across her Drag Race career this week, and she earns her fourth win of the season.

But of course, Jimbo’s problem this season has not been her challenge performances. She is on a losing streak of six lip syncs: one in Canada’s Drag Race against Rita Baga, two in UK vs The World against Pangina Heals and Janey Jacké and three this season against Pangina once again, Shannel and Jasmine Kennedie. She has admitted that her losses have frustrated her, and she wants to figure out a way to break out of her pattern.

The second the camera reveals her outfit for the lip sync, though, it’s clear Jimbo has figured out a solution. She’s in her talent show outfit from UK vs The World, which she wore the first time she truly impressed RuPaul. Not only is it a strategically savvy choice for that reason, but it’s also clearly a look and persona that Jimbo is comfortable in. Like Coco all those seasons ago, Jimbo is leaning into a character as a creative solution to a problem—in her case, her lip syncing.

Jimbo won’t have an easy time of it, though, as this week’s Lip Sync Assassin is the Lip Sync Guru herself, Silky Nutmeg Ganache. (Upon seeing Silky’s distinctive silhouette, Jimbo simply says, “Oh, Christ.”) Silky is effectively the final boss of LSAs. She’s usually prepared with great stunts, moves swiftly as she performs, and is about as beloved by Ru as Jimbo is. It’s to Jimbo’s immense credit, then, that she pulls out an entirely fair and valid win here. She finally finds a way to be as much of a character in a lip sync as she is in the challenges, and she’s captivatingly strange. Her awkward style of movement is no longer a flaw, but part of the presentation. And she actually throws Silky off her game by being more prepared, bringing back her beloved bologna bit from the talent show.

Jimbo wins, bringing a literal season-spanning arc to a dramatically satisfying conclusion. If Jimbo’s ultimate victory this season was already undeniable, this turned it into a certainty. This season has been frustratingly short on any kind of great, long-term storytelling, but this is perfect. Apologies to Alexis, but it’s basically an afterthought when Jimbo announces that she’s going home. This week is the centrepiece of Jimbo’s entire Drag Race career, and it makes for one of the best episodes of this season.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ The Other Half of the Story, Deliberations Edition: Incredible that Alexis literally says the words “I can’t pick your lipstick” to Jessica, and then immediately picks her lipstick. Messy until the end! The final vote is 2-1 between Alexis and Jessica, with Kandy and Jessica voting Alexis out.

✨ The Other Half of the Story, Fame Games Edition: Overall, the looks are quite good this week! Having some new faces in the mix helps, but even the earlier-eliminated queens show up and out. Personal favourites are Darienne Lake’s Michelle Pfeiffer-inspired look and Kahanna Montrese’s snowflake fantasy.

✨ The Other Half of the Story, Jan Edition: The queens all get messages from home, and Alexis’s message is from her drag sister Jan! That’s fun! Jimbo’s is from her brother, mom and partner; Kandy’s is from her mom and Jessica’s is from her best friend and parents. They’re all lovely messages, while Jessica’s (entirely in Spanish) is particularly beautiful.

✨ We open this week with Jimbo pressing Alexis on her decision to send LaLa Ri home, despite seemingly promising to keep her (which Alexis has been pushing back on on Twitter, to little success). “I didn’t promise, I just told her that I would never forget what she did for me—and I never will!” Alexis says in the cold open. “And you know, I hope and pray she will be a sister forever. And maybe even more!” Look, I’ve enjoyed Alexis’s shenanigans and dramatics this season as much as anyone, but I wish she’d just own that she broke her promise. She can intimate to Kandy about their supposed deal all she wants, but if her word means nothing (and she can’t even admit it!), why should Kandy honour their alliance? I fully stand by Kandy for voting for Alexis this week. You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

✨ Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Thom Filicia is announced as this week’s guest judge, which makes it strange when he’s not on the judging dais. I figured he might come out to deliver a roast set in his friend Carson’s honour … but I did not expect him to do it as his Secret Celebrity Drag Race character Jackie Would! What a delight. (Although I’d have had Jackie lead the set, so as not to diminish the effect of Jimbo’s terrific roast-wrapping set.)

✨ Katya comes into the workroom this week, ostensibly to give advice, but she really just stirs shit up. (“Kandy, I think you should fight someone,” she says in one highlight.) It’s good to see her, if a little random. She does draw out the revelation that Alexis is now also crushing on Kandy—good luck with that one, Alexis!

✨ Speaking of Alexis, Horny Drag Queen Extraordinaire, we get this line from her near episode’s end: “So there’s one top and three bottoms, which ordinarily would be a good time.”

✨ We get the rare pleasure of seeing all the queens’ votes in the episode (which is a bit of foreshadowing that Jimbo is going to win her lip sync—keep some dramatic tension!). As mentioned above, Jessica and Kandy vote Alexis and Alexis votes Jessica. So the result could only be Alexis going home this week. Therefore, much like the rest of this season, there was no split decision. After All Stars 6, that’s a pretty disappointing regression in the trend. Variety in potential elimination results is a good thing!

✨ I wonder if there was a longer-than-usual break between episodes, because Jessica and Alexis have some pretty significant stubble (even Kandy has a little mustache). These are the things you notice when you’ve been recapping this show for *checks notes* approximately 200 years.

✨ Jimbo gets a good dig in at Kandy’s tendency to repeat things (which she presumably does to give the show more options of what to air) when she says, long after the challenge’s announcement, “So, a little roast moment?” Jimbo deadpans in response: “Yeah, are you just catching up?”

✨ Silky sums up just how perfectly absurd this result is: “Bitch, this is going down in history. I lost to Jimbo!”

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars will stream Friday, July 7, at 3 a.m. EST on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every weekend after new episodes for our recaps and power rankings, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.