‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars’ Episode 5 recap: Hi, Boobie!

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This is all starting to feel a bit pointless, no? RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars began with tremendous hype, and a caliber of cast that we haven’t seen on an All Stars series in a very long time. But if the online discourse is any indication, fans are basically over it—and I can’t blame them.

The main critique of the first four episodes is that, in stark contrast with the two UK vs. The World seasons we’ve seen, Ru is seemingly heavily prioritizing the queens he’s previously judged over the others. Alyssa Edwards, Kitty Scott-Claus and Kween Kong have all scored wins in the first four episodes, and Alyssa and Kween have additionally scored high in other challenges. Meanwhile, only two queens Ru was not previously familiar with have won (Vanity Vain and Pythia), and only one has even scored a clear high placement in the non-premiere episodes: Nehellenia. (All the queens were critiqued positively in the premieres, while Tessa Testicle got mixed notes for the ball.)

This has frustrated fans who have been excited to watch queens from non-Ru-hosted seasons on an international stage. Even the editing of the show seems to favour the RuGirls. So it is immensely frustrating to see them not only all put on the same team for this week’s Barbie-inspired “Boobie” acting challenge, but that they win—without any critiques given to justify the decision. At one point on-stage after the runway, the queens stand in such a way that all the non-RuGirls are bunched together, and Alyssa, Kitty and Kween are all by themselves. It is actually too on-the-nose of an image.

If the trio of RuGirls were simply so dominant that this would be the only reasonable result, that would be one thing. But the show actually presents the challenge as incredibly close this week through the queens’ confessionals. Hell, even Ru says they all did well before announcing the bottom two! So how does that square with announcing the RuGirl group as the clear winners, and shuffling them off without critiques? The whole thing just stinks, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time considering the conversation around the show. I can’t fault those bailing on the whole season, because we’re about halfway through and at this point I can’t imagine the tides changing.

This week, each team is given a film concept mash-up, with everyone’s “favourite” doll, Boobie, included in each plot. Team RuGirl gets “Jurassic Boobie,” while Tessa, Vanity, Gala Varo and Eva Le Queen get “Frankenboobie,” and Soa de Muse, Pythia and Nehellenia get “Boobies of the Caribbean: The Search for Buried Booty.”

All of them are, to be blunt, quite bad. I don’t think I laughed once watching “Frankenboobie,” and “Jurassic Boobie” isn’t much better. Kitty gets some dry jokes off, Alyssa adopts a bizarre English accent and Kween gets to go big (literally) as a dinosaur-sized “Boobie.” Only the “Caribbean” team gets a decent script, and to their credit, they really make the most of it! All three turn in what could be acting challenge winning performances in other seasons, but Soa is the standout for me among the three.

Of all the victims of this season’s focus on the RuGirls, it’s Soa fading into the background that bums me out most. I find her to be a compelling presence both in and out of the challenges, she’s delivering some really cool looks on the runway (hers is my favourite this week) and she’s giving me a really good sense of who she is as a drag artist. It’s a shame to see her perform so beautifully in French (twice!), or really nail the humour of an acting challenge, and be completely ignored. On my personal scorecard, she’d have two wins by this point, but she doesn’t have so much as a high placement to her name so far.

Despite the truly tragic scripts, the queens actually do really give this challenge their all. Beyond the quite good “Caribbean” group, I do really enjoy Kitty’s approach to her character, and Vanity gets some standout moments in “Frankenboobie.” They do their best to elevate bad material, and while it doesn’t all work, I admire the effort. The only queen who really underwhelms is Eva; despite clear instruction from Michelle Visage on set, she just never taps into what the character should be.

So yes, after the runway segment, Team RuGirl are announced as the winners without critiques, and Kween gets the solo win. My first question: why? Kween’s not bad in the sketch, and I do like her runway this week, but I would’ve given the victory to Soa, Nehellenia, Pythia and even Kitty before her. Maybe even Vanity, honestly! It’s a bummer, because I really do like Kween, and I love that she’s continuing the good work Hannah Conda did on UK vs. The World Season 2 by really making the case for Down Under Season 2 as a whole. But she’s now the first to two challenge wins this season, and I just don’t think the actual performances justify that.

Ru decides that everyone who’s not a RuGirl is not safe from elimination, despite giving them mostly good critiques. Gala comes under fire for her runway, which is what seemingly lands her in the bottom two. But otherwise, Ru’s splitting hairs here: Nehellenia being “up for elimination” is silly when both her runway and performance are universally praised. There was really no sensical way to justify judging this challenge in this format—unless you were trying to avoid judging the RuGirls at all. As Soa herself notes, the queens in the winning team literally seem surprised to have won.

Look, I’m not conspiracy-minded when it comes to this show, and the ways in which fans will often look into every possible perceived slight to drag production often feels laborious to me. But this is a challenge in which I actually need to hear from Ru why Kween is winning. I need to have Kitty get critiques on her too-basic runway looks—especially when other queens get those critiques in this episode, for much better garments. Judging in teams gives Ru the chance to avoid these questions, even as he opines that everyone put in great effort this week. I don’t think it’s even a conspiracy to see a trend here, it’s just pointing out obviously bad TV production.

Anyway, Eva and Gala face off to A-ha’s “Take on Me,” a song we last heard in Season 12 for Gigi Goode’s finale solo lip sync. It’s a fun song for a Lip Sync for Your Life, and Eva initially seems better prepared. She’s got reveals, and unlike most, she actually pulls them out gradually, timed well with the song. But her actual interpretation of the lyrics feels a bit flat—while Gala’s wide-smiling take is so magnetic. She pulls out some stunts near the end of the song, but honestly, she wins this on the actual lip sync alone.

I can’t believe Eva is already going home. I had odds on her making it very far after her talent show performance, and she’s delivered some of the most impressive runways of the season so far. Yes, she did the worst this week, and yes, she lost the lip sync. So there’s no riggory here, at least. But she still feels, to me, like a victim of the format. If a star like Eva can’t properly shine, what are we doing?

I’ve seen some calls for Global All Stars to only have one season thanks to what’s happening this go-around. Honestly, I can’t agree with that. If All Stars never came back after its disappointing first season, we’d never have gotten Tatianna’s “Same Parts,” Tatianna and Alyssa’s “Shut Up and Drive” lip sync, Alaska and Katya’s “Read U Wrote U” verses, Aja’s jump from there, BenDeLaCreme’s iconic exit, Valentina’s “Into You” lip sync, Naomi Smalls eliminating Manila Luzon, Jujubee’s Eartha Kitt impression, Kylie Sonique Love as a Drag Race champion, Shea Couleé and Monét X Change’s “Old MacDonald” lip sync, Jinkx Monsoon as our first two-time winner, Jessica Wild’s “Taco Tuesday” monologue … there are literally too many iconic things All Stars has brought us to list.

There’s potential in this format, and global superstars deserve a platform. Just because this first season is proving disappointing doesn’t mean it’s time to throw the whole concept in the bin. I’ll be honest and say I don’t have a lot of faith in how the rest of this season is going to go, but I do strongly believe that, as Drag Race continues to grow, its stars from across the world deserve an international stage. It just should feel like a fair one for all involved.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ We get a bit of resolution after last week’s Mini-Untucked conflict, as Kween apologizes to Nehellenia while admitting she was indeed quite angry about what happened. I still think the conflict got too big relative to what it was about, but I’m glad to see the parties resolve things.

✨ We get Reading Is Fundamental this week, and it is pretty much a disaster. Few are funny, and Kitty ultimately wins for a repeated “full stop” bit that would’ve been a simply safe performance in any other season. She alludes to this in her confessional: “Judging by these girls, this was not hard.” Still, she wins $2,500 for her efforts.

✨ Hinting that perhaps the storyline from last week isn’t entirely over, Gala throws a read Nehellenia’s way about playing the victim. Nehellenia doesn’t look thrilled.

✨ Soa is very appreciative to get a Caribbean-set scene for her group. “Thank you, storyline!” she says in her talking head.

✨ The “Brown Town” runway category produces wildly mixed results, which always happens when the prompt is simply a colour. I think Gala’s post-apocalyptic look is better than the judges say, but I do think it looked a lot better with the mask off. I admire Vanity doing a tribute to Admira Thunderpussy, the winner of her season, but I’m not sure what the homage was in the actual outfit. Hair and makeup aces though! Tops of the week for me were Soa and Nehellenia—making it all the more frustrating they weren’t judged in the top.

✨ You can tell Ru is slowly falling for “Tessa T.” She gets a little extra time in conversation with the host during critiques, saying she’s been doing drag for seven years and credits Ru for why she started. Ru banters back about not blaming her, and it’s cute. Ru may have found his less polished but super charming queen to invest in this season—a trope we’re well-familiar with from over the years. Think Adore Delano, Vanessa Vanjie, Jorgeous, etc.

✨ Carson Kressley is our guest judge this week, and while I already complained about the line of American judges last week, I have a new issue this week: the order of the judges has made no sense! Why did Matt Rogers not do the acting challenge? Why did Carson not do the ball? Why did Danna not do the girl group challenge? Why did Ross not do … anything else? It’s just a strange order, and while I get that availability gets in the way, more thoughtful planning of who will judge when really does go a long way in terms of the quality of the critiques.

✨ If I’ve ever groaned louder at a Drag Race episode title than “Boobies: The Shequel,” I can’t remember it. Truly a dark harbinger for what was to come.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars will be available to stream next Friday at 3 a.m. EST on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. We’ll be publishing recaps all season long, exclusively here first in our drag newsletter Wig!, and then on Xtra every week.