‘Canada’s Drag Race All Stars’ Episode 5 recap: Gauntlet, revisited

The C.U.N.T. Test in Canada’s Drag Race Season 6 was a challenge I was quite excited about in theory, but disappointed in in practice. What was pitched as a gauntlet of challenges of similar difficulty, all rewarding a win to one queen each, felt instead too much like a regular Drag Race episode: a slightly beefed-up mini-challenge, a design maxi-challenge (the third of the season, which led to eventual champion Van Goth’s inflated track record) and a frustratingly edited monologue task that was akin to final speeches we’ve seen in other semifinal and finale episodes.

Because the challenge gauntlet followed such a similar structure to all other episodes, it didn’t feel like a dramatic final test, and the multiple wins given out in the episode felt like a bit of padding to the finalists’ report cards. At the time, I wrote that “I will always admire CDR for trying something new,” and that “with a bit of retooling, the C.U.N.T. Test could become a regular part of any Canadian season.”

I am thrilled to say that not only has CDR retooled the C.U.N.T. Test for the Canada’s Drag Race All Stars semifinals, they’ve fully transformed it. By inserting a signature challenge in Snatch Game, a new challenge in a self-directed photo shoot and even a whole verse-writing challenge (!), they restructured the episode to feel more evenly divided between each task. More than that, each one has real heft, so the challenge wins feel more earned. It’s a remarkable reinvention, and instantly puts the challenge into the pantheon of some of CDR’s best inventions.

It also gives what feels like an inevitable conclusion to this episode—Tiffany Ann Co.’s elimination—more tension than you’d expect. As we saw in the last C.U.N.T. Test, one of the two most likely eliminees, PM, actually won the first leg. This led to a genuinely tense final round, as it felt like suddenly losing either Eboni La’Belle or Sami Landri was possible. If Tiffany suddenly pulls out a win in one of these rounds, we might see a strong competitor miss out on the finale, which would be very much in line with how eliminations have gone this season. Is Aurora Matrix truly out of the woods after her scrape with danger last week? Might Jada Shada Hudson’s high-placement streak be snapped? Is Nearah Nuff strong e-nuff to secure her spot in the finale?

And then there’s Sami. She and Jada both open this episode talking about feeling edged, consistently doing well but never scoring a win. I’ve been very into Sami’s whole approach to All Stars; despite being the queen with the quickest turnaround from her original season, she’s also leveled up her drag significantly in that time, and has brought a competitive fire that was mostly missing her first go-around. Though she’s yet to secure a win, I would call her one of the only real threats to Aurora’s likely crown, particularly if she can have one standout moment before the finale.

She, of course, has a slight advantage going into the C.U.N.T. Test, since she’s the only queen to do this gauntlet before. Of course, it’s quite different this go-around, but since Sami actually had to do the whole thing—she was in the bottom two that episode with Karamilk—she has an idea of the endurance required. But she also gets what will likely be her best challenge served first in the Charisma round: the Snatch Game!

This is, in my opinion, a terrific deployment of Snatch Game. There seems to be a concerted effort on CDR’s part to keep Snatch Game as part of the show, and bring it back to its roots as an actual celebrity impersonation challenge, but not automatically penalize queens for being unable to do it well. We saw this first with the pick-your-poison episode in Season 6, in which queens could opt for Snatch Game or a design challenge. Having Snatch Game as part of the gauntlet works even better in my book, giving queens the chance to thrive if they can in Snatch Game but, as Brooke Lynn Hytes notes, no one will be sent home for a bad Snatch. They just move onto the next round.

This is a pretty solid Snatch Game all-told. Nearah plays Connor McDavid, an Edmonton Oiler nicknamed “McDaddy,” and it’s actually pretty fun for such a strange choice. (“First off, who the fuck is that?” Sami says of Nearah’s pick in confessional.) She plays Connor as a raging homosexual masked by a bro-y dude exterior, and in the age of Heated Rivalry, it’s a solid idea. Jada does Ts Madison, a character Silky Nutmeg Ganache won Snatch Game with in Brooke Lynn’s original RuPaul’s Drag Race season, while Tiffany does Bretman Rock and Sami does Celine Dion. Notably, both of these characters have had disastrous performances before—Aura Mayari’s Bretman Rock in Season 15 was a nothing, while Brooke Lynn herself fucked up Celine in Season 11—which could be a sign that there’s room for improvement or that they’re dead-end characters.

Aurora is in a bit of a pickle here. Her Snatch Game in her original season was her lowest point, and more than that, she just got knocked last week for being too stiff in a challenge that required acting. Another slip-up here won’t put her in the bottom two, but it might further weaken her case for the crown at the worst possible time. She chooses to play Toronto mayor Olivia Chow, which I think is a very smart pick on her part. There’s an easy schtick to the character as a fervent gay ally, and the character isn’t so well-known to audiences that the precision of the impersonation will matter. She surprises the judges and gets the boost she needs after last week.

Honestly, everyone but Tiffany does well here; Priyanka immediately welcomes the queen into her and Brooke Lynn’s club of Snatch Game flops during judging. But there’s no beating Sami in this challenge. The idea of playing 2010–11 Celine Dion specifically, and following up that revelation with “Time is a social construct, don’t you forget,” is so funny. This performance definitely owes a bit to Marla Mindelle’s Tony-nominated turn in Titanique, but like Katya borrowed from Kristen Wiig for her Björk before, it actually is smart to iterate on a base impersonation for Snatch Game. While it may not be the most original choice, it gives you something to riff on versus flying without a safety net.

Sami wins the first leg, earning her first maxi-challenge win of the season and a spot in the finale. It’s a dramatic reversal from her last C.U.N.T. Test, in which she had to fight until the very end, and must come as a huge relief for her. The others immediately move onto the Uniqueness round, in which they must serve as both model and creative director of a “high-fashion photoshoot” (shot by photographer Aleksandar Antonijevic). Most crucially, they get to choose their own best shot to present to the judges—love this amount of creative control for the queens at such a significant juncture in the competition.

The episode almost loses me here, as after a werk room segment, we suddenly shift to a runway presentation of Dollhouse looks. While the queens all look great, it’s somewhat confusing as to how this factors into the challenge. But I shouldn’t have been so hasty: it turns out these are the looks the queens wear for the photo shoot, and we then go into footage of the shoot process. This is a perfect way to handle what could otherwise be an awkward segment of the episode. If the first time we saw these looks was as they were walking onto the shoot set, it would be underwhelming. Letting the runway be where they debut the looks, then getting the BTS footage, then seeing the photos is a perfect order.

How each queen approaches a prompt as simple as “doll” really tells you something about each of their drag styles. Jada goes for a voodoo doll that is pretty intense, but still gorgeous. It’s fitting for a queen who brands herself as the “Turn-Up Queen,” but as we’ve seen in her two seasons, is a lot deeper than just a party girl. Sami, of course, goes for a take on Weird Barbie, while Aurora delivers high fashion in a Little Bo-Peep look. All three are performing on another level, and both Aurora and Jada’s photos are strong.

This is the portion of the episode in which I get nervous for Nearah. While any reader of these recaps knows how much I love her, I appreciate her more as a performer and a TV presence than I do as a distinctive drag artist. A lot of her drag tends to fall into a fairly generic lane, and while her Alice in Wonderland look for this challenge is cute, it’s pretty simple. It actually looks better in the photo than it does on the runway. Tiffany, on the other hand, brings a very specific POV to her Labubu look. While Tiffany’s drag may not sit in my wheelhouse, I appreciate that she has a clear idea of who she is. Honestly, had she picked a better photo, I could’ve actually seen her winning this portion. Unfortunately, she chooses the absolute worst of the lot.

Aurora wins, leaving Jada pretty devastated going into the Nerve round. She feels like she’s just never quite good enough, and it takes encouraging words from Nearah, Tiffany and guest judge Lemon to pick up her spirits. Huge credit to Nearah and Tiffany: while they both, particularly Nearah, have played a cutthroat game this season, when Jada threatens to quit, they insist she stay. Even after she makes it explicit that her quitting will advance them to the finale, they make clear that they don’t want to win that way. It’s a nice note for this final stage of the competition: they may be willing to play the game hard, but they do still believe in a fair fight.

Reinvigorated, Jada joins the two for a main stage performance of an original song, “Spotlight.” This is probably the weakest part of the episode, mostly because the verses are all a little lacklustre, but it’s still a solid task—much better than the monologues in the last C.U.N.T. Test. Jada ultimately wins, which I think is more fair for the competition as a whole than this individual round—I’d have given it to Nearah.

Regardless, Nearah is left to lip sync against her fellow Kitty Katz alliance member Tiffany for the last spot in the finale. For the Talent round, they lip sync to Ariana Grande’s “Into You,” in the song’s first appearance since Valentina’s redemption in All Stars 4. Honestly, there’s not much tension here: Nearah is simply one of the best lip syncers we’ve ever seen on Drag Race. Not just CDR; franchise-wide, she is in rarefied company. She tears this song up, as she has so many before, and has a blast. She secures the last spot in the finale, and Tiffany sashays away.

And so, we arrive at our final four! I’m not sure if I could’ve ever predicted exactly this four; they are all strong competitors, but I certainly imagined Pythia in there at the start of the season, maybe Jackie Cox or Makayla Couture, too. I’m thrilled that Nearah made it to the end—in my heart, she might be my pick for the win? But I love everything Sami has brought to this season, and I appreciate Jada so much (though I don’t love that she thought of quitting at such a late juncture). Still, I do think the crown is Aurora’s to lose. We’ll find out who enters the Canadian Hall of Fame next week—until then!

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ I really appreciate Aurora’s attitude in the cold open about her bottom two appearance last week. Not only does she have no hard feelings, saying she would have done the same thing, she also embraces that it was an opportunity to remind the judges what a tremendous performer she is. And I think she’s right on with that! If an Aurora win was beginning to feel at all too predictable, last week gave us the spike of intrigue that we needed.

✨ God, I feel for Tiffany. She’s had to make the case for weeks that it’s better to keep her around because she can’t win, then she tries to hype herself up this week by saying the other queens don’t know what she’s capable of … only for them to basically laugh in her face. I gasped at Aurora saying “Maybe your all just isn’t good enough”—so cutting! So brutal! So drag. I love it.

✨ The contestants for Snatch Game are Jimbo as Joan Rivers and Priyanka as Priyanka (because god knows we don’t need her impersonating a celebrity again). It’s great to see Jimbo back in Joan form, because while Jimbo has by and large settled into a sweeter mode, Joan gives her the space to bring bitchery back. I lived for every drag of Priyanka during the judging segment.

✨ Love the idea of a live audience for the Snatch Game. Honestly, this might be what the format needs internationally? You can feel the queens settle into their characters as the game goes on, and I think getting the feedback from the audience in real time helps a lot.

✨ I mentioned in the recap that Lemon is our guest judge this week, and she’s a great presence on the panel! It’s fun to have all of our Season 1 crowned queens on the panel together—and all the funnier that Brooke Lynn, a queen without a crown, is the one leading them.

The finale of Canada’s Drag Race All Stars will be available to stream on Thursday, August 13, at 9 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every month.