‘Canada’s Drag Race’ Season 5, Episode 3 recap: The team that slays together stays together

For better or worse, Canada’s Drag Race has successfully branded itself the most innovative in the franchise. While other shows are content to produce small variations on the same challenge types, the creative team behind CDR constantly pushes the format to try new things. Sometimes, this is incredibly effective: the Reading Battles from Canada vs. The World Season 2 made the reading challenge the freshest it’s been in years. In others, it feels like too much experimentation: I’ve yet to find someone who liked “Snatch Game: The Rusical.”

Alongside the Golden Beaver—a tremendously successful twist—Canada Season 4’s biggest innovation was the creation of the Lip Sync Slay-Offs. Unlike the LaLaPaRuZas that had come before it on the American series, the Slay-Offs were presented as a proper maxi-challenge with one winner, and a tournament format that advanced the winners of each round, not the losers. This instantly made it a better challenge than we saw in Seasons 14 and 15, and likely inspired the uber-successful format we saw in the eliminated queens’ battle royale in Season 16.

CDR could’ve kept this format for this season, and I don’t think a soul would’ve complained. It was still fairly new, and it would be interesting to see a cast approach the challenge strategically now that they could plan in advance for it. But true to their reputation as innovators, the producers have come up with a new spin on the challenge this season. Instead of competing as individuals, the queens compete as teams, with each lip sync win earning the victorious queen’s squad a point. The team with the most points at the end wins and are all safe, while queens on the losing team that won their lip syncs would also be safe. Only those queens on the losing team who lost their lip syncs would be up for elimination.

While this format does allow for some fun strategy—divvying up the songs in the most effective fashion among the team, while trying to guess who on the other team they’ll each be facing off against—it raises more questions than it answers. The challenge ultimately comes down to a 2–2 tie in the final lip sync, but what if one group had won in just four lip syncs? Or even three? Would the rest have had to still lip sync knowing their team had already lost? Considering the Golden Beaver can only save one queen, could we have seen a three-way—or even a four-way—Lip Sync for Your Life at episode’s end? I have the utmost respect for CDR’s creative team, so I have to imagine they had plans for all potential outcomes. But still, there’s something a bit too cute about this challenge structure, when last season’s Slay-Off format was so effective. Just because you can always innovate doesn’t mean you should.

As our first two maxi-challenge winners, The Virgo Queen and Perla are made team captains. (Side note: remember when we used to decide captains with mini-challenges? Bring those back!) Perla picks Makayla Couture, while Virgo goes with Sanjina Dabish Queen. Then, in a twist, Makayla is asked to pick next—each last-chosen queen is the one who gets to choose. That said, the queens are allowed to confer with their teammates, so the impact of this is lessened. Anyway, Makayla picks Tiffany Ann Co., Sanjina picks Xana, Tiffany picks Uma Gahd, Xana picks Helena Poison and Uma picks Jaylene Tyme. This leaves Minhi Wang as the disappointed last pick, on Virgo’s team by default.

There’s not much time spent in the werk room this week, what with six lip syncs to get to, but we do get segments of the queens deciding who will take on which song. There’s a pretty great selection of tracks here: “Too Hot” by Alanis Morrissette offers the chance for rocker chick sex appeal, while “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a drag classic. “Bad Bitches Don’t Cry” by Priyanka and Ralph marks the second time a Priyanka song has been featured—good for her!—while “San Francisco” by Rufus Wainwright features a spoken word intro that a few of the queens want to make a meal of. Finally, there’s “exes” by Tate McRae, which both Tiffany and Xana note is a Tiffany special back home.

A few points of interest here: there’s a battle over “Heads Will Roll” on Perla’s team, but Uma ultimately gets it. That’s because she gives up “San Francisco” to Jaylene, realizing too late that picking her is a bad move since they both go for the same “old lady” songs as performers. Meanwhile, on Virgo’s team, Xana practically demands “Heads Will Roll,” confident she’ll be able to turn it out—much to Helena’s annoyance.

The first round is very straightforward: Makayla cleans Minhi’s clock on “Too Hot.” Minhi tries a comedic take that could work against a lesser opponent, but Makayla is just locked in from the word go. She understands how to fully embrace the song’s sex appeal, and her movements are captivating. She scores an easy first win, leaving Minhi in potential danger if her team loses. That’s the tantalizing thing about this format: especially for the queens who go early, so much is out of their control after they’ve performed.

Jaylene faces off against Helena to “San Francisco,” in a matchup that should work in Jaylene’s favour. However, it’s worth remembering that the Slay-Offs is where we lost last season’s elder queen, Kitten Kaboodle, after she had been dominating the competition for weeks. This format is difficult for queens who can’t move at the same pace as their younger counterparts. Theoretically a song with spoken word intro and interludes should work for Jaylene, but she seems just a bit off for her whole performance. Helena, meanwhile, grabs hold of the song and makes it her own in impressive fashion. As she proudly declares afterward, she makes Rufus Wainwright sexy! She wins, giving Team Virgo its first point and tying things up.

Next is Uma vs. Xana, and this is a battle with a bit of prelude. In this week’s episode, Xana comes for Uma a bit, claiming that she set her up with lame dialogue in last week’s challenge. Uma counters that not only did she write more material for Xana so that she could be more prominently featured, she also took Xana’s requests directly for specific lines. The whole thing annoys Uma, and it gives her a fire going into their “Heads Will Roll” face-off. Xana pulls out all kinds of tricks and gags, but she does so in a way that often feels random. Uma, meanwhile, nails every beat of the song, moving with precision and elegance. She wins, in a shocker, with Xana clearly pressed that things went down this way.

We now get the battle of the “exes,” so to speak, with Tiffany and Virgo. Tiffany comes into this matchup with all the expectations on her shoulders, as she’s known for doing this song back home. Virgo, meanwhile, is confident she’ll be winning this one: “Bottoming’s not for me. I eat too many burritos.” From the jump, Virgo crushes this. Tiffany is fine, although I am surprised this is supposedly a song she’s known for performing. She performs it like I can imagine she performs basically every pop song, while Virgo has a real command over it. The slow split Virgo ends on is incredibly impressive—Morphine Love Dion-esque—and the bit with her jokingly asking for help back up at the end just seals what a delightful performance it is. She easily wins this one.

So it’s 2–2 in the final round, which features Perla facing off against Sanjina. The first part of the battle is Sanjina just dominating, using the whole stage and performing ferociously. But Perla builds well, doing an impressive dip mid-song and only killing it further from there. It’s a really close decision, and a fitting end to the Slay-Offs. Ultimately, the judges go for Sanjina, leaving Perla with Tiffany and Jaylene in the bottom three. For her impressive efforts on “exes,” Virgo is named the maxi-challenge winner, reaching two wins in just three episodes.

The deliberation segment this week is one of the most interesting we’ve seen since the introduction of the Golden Beaver. Jaylene fights hard to stay, with an impassioned plea about her place in the competition and in the drag world more broadly. It seemingly lands with Virgo, who seems torn on saving her or Perla when her team comes together to discuss. Helena can clearly sense this, making the point at the start that while no one could blame her for voting with her heart (aka saving Jaylene), not saving the queen with the better track record (Perla) will change the Beaver game for the rest of the season.

Xana, meanwhile, wishes she could make the argument that Tiffany deserves it, but knows that’s not realistic. She instead argues for the queen who just used the Beaver on her the week prior, Perla. Sanjina, meanwhile, admits in confessional that Perla’s plea didn’t work for her, and makes the case for Virgo to save Jaylene. The winner seems genuinely split as the deliberations wrap up, but at the end of the day, she only has one Beaver to give.

Ultimately, Virgo chooses to save Jaylene, which feels like the right call for everyone’s spirit. Well, maybe not Perla’s spirit, considering she now is in the bottom two despite delivering one of the best lip syncs of the episode. This is a big reason why this format doesn’t ultimately work for me: queens like Minhi, Jaylene and Xana who actually gave worse performances aren’t in the bottom, but Perla is. It’s fun from a game perspective, but now Perla’s track record looks worse for no good reason. And while queens like Sanjina may not use report cards to make Beaver decisions, clearly some queens will in the future. That puts Perla in a precarious position.

The final lip sync song is “Hot” by Avril Lavigne—appropriate that we opened with “Too Hot” and are now ending with just “Hot.” Both Perla and Tiffany go the sex kitten route, but there’s a kind of winking flirtatiousness in Perla’s performance that is superior. There’s a great double dip moment between the two, but Tiffany just can’t keep up. Perla shantays back to safety, while Tiffany sashays away.

Any all-lip-sync episode these days is pretty much guaranteed to be an entertaining time. We get a sense of how all these queens will fare when their life’s on the line, and seeing some strategy come into play is always appreciated. But I think this episode is an argument that, now that it has fully come into its own, Canada’s Drag Race could stand to curb the experimentation just a bit. Innovation is great when it addresses stagnant and boring elements of the show. Otherwise, however, the cliché is proven true: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Interested to hear others’ thoughts on Xana’s approach to being a villain. I know mileage may vary on this, but I tend to bristle when a queen starts drama just for the sake of starting drama. It’s why I’ve never warmed to Miss Fiercalicious the way most of the fanbase has, or why I didn’t really begin to enjoy Plane Jane until after Amanda Tori Meating was gone and her brazen, unprompted attacks on her came to an end. Conflict on Drag Race is a good thing—I’ve been very vocal in the past that seasons without it aren’t my favourite—but conflict for conflict’s sake becomes tiresome quickly.

✨ Traci Melchor returns to the werk room this week, complete with her signature speaking style that feels more entertainment news host than Drag Race host. Luckily, owing to the quick turnaround to the challenge, she’s just in there for one short segment. Still, I renew my call for Brooke Lynn Hytes to take the full mantle as host. With queens like Nicky Doll and Rita Baga now doing the same in their own countries, it makes little sense for the most experienced Drag Race alumna hostess to still have to split duties.

✨ Shea Couleé is our guest judge this week, and the girls are properly gagged by this. Makayla practically collapses with excitement when Traci announces her appearance in the werk room, while Virgo compares being able to lip sync in front of her to Shea walking for Naomi Campbell in All Stars 7. She’s also a perfect guest judge for this episode because of her extensive experience lip syncing on Drag Race. The note she gives Xana about being aware of where the camera is when you perform tricks and stunts for full impact? Genius. I’ll be thinking about it when watching every lip sync from here on out.

✨ BROOKE: “How do lip syncs make you feel?”

SHEA: “So emotional.”

✨ Minhi suggests her group throw the “exes” lip sync to Tiffany. Her team does not appreciate the suggestion. (And it’s even funnier in retrospect, considering Virgo beating Tiffany is what wins her the whole challenge.)

✨ For her victory, Virgo gets $5,000 for herself, and an additional $5,000 donation to LGBT Youthline courtesy of Neutrogena. I like that Canada’s Drag Race finds a way to include a donation as part of a prize every season. Charity shouldn’t just be reserved for All Stars 9.

✨ “This is just an unfortunate blip, for the third time.” Tiffany my dear, if there have been three blips in three episodes, I’m not sure we can call them blips.

✨ Sanjina argues in the group deliberation that Beaver decisions shouldn’t always come down to report card, “sorry to say [as] a girl who failed in school all the fucking time.”

✨ Like the queens, I adore “Lip Sync for Your Squad.” More plays on LSFYL, please!

The next episode of Canada’s Drag Race will be available to stream on Thursday, Dec. 12, 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.