‘Canada’s Drag Race All Stars’ Episode 3 recap: Reset to the mean

Reality TV cannot operate at a 10 all the time. I know, this may come as a shock to those of you who know me as someone who adores the art form. You may think: but Kevin, think of All Stars 6! Think of Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 6! Think of Love Island USA Season 6! (Wow, Season 6 is really the magic number, huh?) But I must break the news to you that even these truly great seasons of television had off episodes—and I use “off” not to indicate poor quality. Think of them as union-mandated breaks; these are the episodes when even the most flawless of seasons have to head out for a smoke, just to recuperate and prepare for what comes next.

To use my All Stars 6 example as a reference point: when that season aired, I wrote about this phenomenon in my recap of Episode—okay, this is getting spooky now—6. “Even the best-produced seasons occasionally have to clear their throat and take care of some unfinished business,” I wrote at the time. “It’s a Drag Race episode meant to move things along.” In other words: sometimes, especially when things have been moving at a high-octane pace, you have to pump the brakes a bit and reset to the mean.

In Canada’s Drag Race All Stars’ case, this involves finally clearing the deck of one of the two early outs in its cast who have been underwhelming so far: Season 1 Porkchop Juice Boxx and Season 5 second-out Tiffany Ann Co. Both of them have received the Golden Beaver in each of the first two episodes explicitly because their competitors—all of whom were finalists in their original season—have considered them less threatening than the queens they’ve sent home. This has resulted in the eliminations of the only RuPaul’s Drag Race queens in the cast: Season 12’s Jackie Cox and Global All Stars’ Pythia. Coming into this season, one might’ve called both of them threats to win it all, particularly Season 2 runner-up Pythia. But both were cut down while Juice and Tiffany stuck around.

This week, there’s no more attractive target in the bottom three to take out instead of one of them. (Yes, Nearah Nuff is also down there, but everyone seems very aware that lip syncing against Nearah is basically a death sentence.) The true contenders for the crown all either score high or are safe, and Juice and Tiffany are left to battle to see which early out will continue onward. It’s not the most exciting final battle we’ve ever seen, but it’s a necessary one: to keep in two early outs who are also underperforming in the current season for too long risks them getting to the very end. To go back to our AS6 comparison: Juice and Tiffany have not been Canada’s answer to Kylie Sonique Love and Ra’Jah O’Hara. They have mostly delivered what you’d expect, while the two American ninth-placers more than rose to the occasion in AS6.

The maxi-challenge this week is an intriguing twist on a design challenge, one that I think is more interesting in concept than in practice. While it’s pitched as a down-the-middle, no-frills design challenge, the gag comes in when Jimbo (in host mode this week, wearing what Sami Landri notes is her signature confessional look) reveals an auction to be held ahead of the challenge. While I initially thought this would mean that the queens would only have access to the materials they bought, the truth was quite a bit tamer: this is for accoutrements, mostly, plus a couple of advantages to be used in the challenge. And an iced coffee for Aurora Matrix. Just an iced coffee. (She spends nearly half her available funds on it thinking there’d be some advantage inside the coffee. Tragic, but hilarious.)

This is one of those challenges that has a ton of potential that ultimately goes untapped. The winning look is praised for its construction, and the win has nothing to do with the materials procured in the auction. Meanwhile, the queen who earns perhaps the most overpowered advantage of all—an exclusive workshop session with Season 2 Miss Congeniality and Drag Race Philippines: Slaysian Royale finalist Suki Doll, designer extraordinaire—still lands in the bottom. By the end of the episode, I’m not sure the auction had much effect at all.

I think the issue here is that the challenge did not commit enough either way. Had all the materials required bidding for them, this would’ve been a really interesting twist on the old Drag on a Dime format. Call it “Beauty on a Beaver Buck” or something, named after the currency they all get $100 of to bid with. (Honestly, not enough when Jimbo is raising prices by increments of $10 each time—and there just aren’t enough items to bid on.)

Alternatively, if leaving materials as a whole up to the auction feels too big, then the show needed to go full Cutthroat Kitchen: use the bidding only as a chance for significant power or sabotage, not materials. There’s a hint of this potential format in Makayla Couture’s time freeze power, which she buys for a relatively cheap $40. Unfortunately, because it’s the only sabotage, it mostly just comes across as a minor annoyance for the queens, and Makayla herself spends a chunk of the 10 minutes yapping instead of getting to work. (She also rips her just-sewn dress right open after the freeze is over, meaning it was basically a useless advantage.)

The episode opts for a soft middle between these two options, and the results just aren’t that interesting—either dramatically or on the runway. Again: this is a throat-clearing episode, getting us to the next phase of the season more so than entertaining us in its own right.

There are two really notable things to come out of the auction that feel more about the queens who received them than about the items themselves. First, Sami realizes that she fucked up by spending all $100 of her Beaver Bucks on metals. Not metallics: metals. As she points out in confessional, she spent her money giving herself a harder challenge. It’s remarkable that Sami is able to turn out as solid a look as she is considering this; she’d probably have been in my personal top two this week.

Meanwhile, Nearah has a much tougher time with this challenge, and poor Suki has to spend a good bit of their time together comforting her after her design challenge demons from Season 4 come to haunt her. On the one hand, I’m kind of annoyed with Nearah for not having her head in the game—you only have 30 minutes with Suki, and you want to use this time to have a breakdown? But I understand she’s human, and it really is sweet to see Suki do everything she can to motivate her. Unfortunately, considering she ultimately lands in the bottom three, I do think Nearah would’ve been better served getting less emotional support and more design support from Suki.

Before we hit the runway, we get some last flashes of strategy: Aurora and Juice have clearly firmed up a final two deal, and are actively targeting Sami and Jada Shada Hudson. In their conversation, they mostly chalk this up to just having other alliances they prioritize over Sami and Jada, including their Kitty Katz alliance and Makayla. But Aurora gives up the ghost in confessional: this is explicitly about Jada and Sami voting in the minority the last two weeks, branding them as wild cards.

I’m a bit shocked by this from Aurora; while I know she prefers making alliances with her surviving girl groups team members, as seen in Season 4 with the Love Bugs (all of whom besides Luna DuBois made the final four), I’m not used to seeing her play against queens in particular. This is particularly notable because, after presenting a sharp runway look that Brooke Lynn Hytes calls the lesbian love child of Miranda Priestly and Cruella De Vil, Aurora wins her second maxi-challenge in a row. She is the clear frontrunner so far, and instead of going after weaker competitors, she is aiming directly at two of the bigger remaining threats to her victory. It’s subtly stone-cold gameplay, and I’m impressed.

Aurora is joined in the top two once again by Jada, to which I must say: come now, Canada’s Drag Race judges. Granted, Aurora was a pretty clear number one this week, but Jada’s look—made of animal print and denim—is stiff and a bit unflattering. I’d have accepted Sami in the top two with Aurora over Jada; it wasn’t the most impressive design, but her futuristic supermodel look had real style and flair to it. It’s a pretty rough showing across the board, so Sami’s stands out. The same cannot be said for her fellow safe queen Makayla, in what I would describe as a draped purple rug, but she sells it enough to avoid the bottom three.

Of the bottom three, Nearah already feels the safest to me come critiques. While they’re confused by her general point of view in the look, the judges seem mostly fixated on her visible panty, which is a construction issue over a problem with the full design. Juice’s Italian widow/fortune teller/“Dark Lady”/??? look has some style … I guess? I’m reaching for compliments here, because the garment is so formless and ugly. Tiffany’s rhinestoned bodysuit is also pretty ugly, but I give her credit for stoning the tights as well. The overall presentation is still better than what we get from Juice, who admits in confessional that she fully forgot the “Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous” prompt.

The entire bottom three being filed with Kitty Katz makes the alliance’s claims to have the numbers all episode long feel hilarious in hindsight. Numbers don’t matter if you’re all in the bottom! Moreover, Nearah is not going to take being thrown into the bottom two again: just because she can win the lip sync, she argues, doesn’t mean she should be made to. And I think it’s a good argument! Plus, as she notes, both Juice and Tiffany have received the Golden Beaver once this season.

This doesn’t stop the vote from getting spicy, though! While Jada votes to save Nearah to honour Nearah sticking up for her with Makayla—more on that mess in the final thoughts—Makayla herself decides to stick with her Season 5 sister and save Tiffany, while Aurora honours this new final two deal with Juice and votes for her. This means it all comes down to Sami, who seems particularly invested in not voting in the minority again. When Aurora reveals the group vote after winning the challenge, it turns out that Sami voted for Nearah. This means, ironically, that Jada and Sami, the only two queens who voted in the minority the last two weeks, are now the queens who controlled the vote. Impressive, honestly!

The lip sync song for our early-out faceoff is Gloria Estefan’s “Conga,” and honestly, I thought this would be more fun than it is. They’re not bad in the lip sync, but both are giving exactly what you’d expect them to. I particularly find it funny that, two episodes after Nearah read Juice down for only flipping her hair in her lip syncs, Juice spends most of her time doing exactly that. Ultimately, Tiffany wins, and Juice sashays away. I like Juice well enough, but I’m not sure she came into this season in quite the right mental space—or, if she did, she was knocked quickly off-course by Priyanka and Jimbo joining the judges’ panel.

So we’re down to the top six, and Tiffany’s presence in the cast is sticking out more and more like a sore thumb. Will Canada’s Drag Race All Stars continue clearing the deck next week with her elimination, or will we get back to shock boots? I’m intrigued to find out, but ultimately glad we took a break this week to take care of business. While I will always respect an early out who can prove herself a threat, if you’re not going to demonstrate why you should be there, it’s not worth it to see you make a deep run. This All Stars cast is simply too stacked to have two underperforming early outs in the final six.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Let’s talk about the first act of this episode. Makayla is really feeling herself after winning the lip sync against Pythia, and you can tell she expects a lot more good vibes in the werk room as she basks in the glow of her victory. Instead, Jada expresses hurt over what happened once again, and Nearah really holds her feet to the fire for treating her sister poorly. (I do admire Nearah for standing up for Jada here, but to hear her talk about how Makayla is immature is an all-time incredible example of wrong messenger.) After Sami also sticks up for Jada, Makayla admits in conversation with Aurora and Tiffany that her reaction was more about her than about Jada. In the werk room the next time they gather, she apologizes, and Jada says she knew that Makayla’s reaction wasn’t really her. It’s a nice moment, but it speaks to the fact that Makayla may not be quite as far from her Season 5 self as she has presented in previous episodes.

✨ We get a cute lie detector “mini-challenge,” and I’m putting that in quotes because what the fuck is the challenge here? Is it to be most truthful? To be most entertaining? It’s deeply unclear, and when Tiffany wins it at the end, earning $2,500, I can only ask: how? At least we get a Melinda Verga guest appearance as the administrator of the lie detector test. Miss you, queen!

✨ The full span of purchases in the auction, since I think it’s interesting: Juice gets sequins for $50, while Makayla gets tulle for $60 and Nearah gets a mystery box for $60. (This is the design assistance from Suki, which turns out to be one of the better deals of the whole auction.) Jada gets animal prints, not clear for how much, while Makayla gets the 10-minute time freeze for $40 and Sami gets metals for spending her whole $100. Aurora gets the aforementioned iced coffee for $40, Tiffany gets rhinestones for an unclear sum, Aurora gets feathers for $40 and Nearah and Jada get beads and denim, respectively, also for unclear amounts.

✨ Aurora’s Van Goth impression kills me. Need her to do the Season 6 winner for Snatch Game.

✨ Not the show making Juice vacuum the werk room for the sponsorship segment!

✨ The guest judge this week is Christian Allaire from Vogue. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Christian guest-judged a Season 4 design challenge! Man, no wonder Nearah was feeling triggered.

✨ One last exciting announcement: earlier this week, I launched Ruvisiting, a new site and Instagram presence for all my Drag Race content. As of next month, I will have been covering Drag Race for 10 years—a whole decade!—and this project is a celebration of that. All the Drag Race content I’ve ever produced can be found indexed and linked on the Ruvisiting website, and you can follow @ruvisiting on Instagram for posts of all my coverage, plus hopefully some fun new content coming soon. Don’t worry, though: all my recaps for U.S. and Canadian seasons will still be published here at Xtra. And Wig! will continue to be sent to your inboxes the second Tuesday of every month! Ruvisiting is just a bonus new space. Hope to see you over there, and thanks so much for supporting my coverage of this franchise for the past 10 years!

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race All Stars will be available to stream on Thursday, July 30, at 9 p.m. EST 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 month.