‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 13, Episode 12 recap: Roasters with the most-ers

Drag Race comedy challenges are a hard sell in the age of COVID-19. The absence of a live audience due to safety protocols in both RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s stand-up challenge and in this week’s Season 13 roast episode made telling jokes a more awkward venture than ever before. All you have to rely on is your competition and the judges—and if they’re not feeling you, you have no one else to turn to. If you’re bombing, that means you’re bombing hard.

In contrast with the UK dolls, the Season 13 cast at least gets the benefit of people to play off of. Three previous seasons’ Miss Congenialities—Valentina from Season 9, Nina West from Season 11 and Heidi N Closet from Season 12—are the subjects of the “Nice Girls Roast” this week, making for a funny little hurdle for the contestants to clear. How do you mock queens who are known for their kindness? Especially in a roast, when things can get brutal fast?

The results are mixed. Three queens manage to hit the mark, while three fall far short of comic excellence. And there is very little question throughout the episode as to who belongs to what group; Rosé calls the top and bottom three before the challenge even happens, that’s how obvious it is. In the end, it’s a clever bit of strategy that wins the day—and someone who can’t distinguish the funny from the mean who goes home.

The episode kicks off with a very fun mini-challenge guest-hosted by Norvina, Instant Influencer judge and the woman behind Anastasia Beverly Hills Cosmetics. In pairs, the queens have to do a makeup tutorial—but one acts as the face and voice of the pair, while the other acts as the arms. Hilarity ensues as Kandy Muse, Olivia Lux and Utica positively pound their partners’ faces, with Rosé and Gottmik doing their best to roll with the punches. (In a bit of foreshadowing for later, Symone is not nearly as strong as her competitors.) Rosé and Kandy take the win, and with it, earn the power to choose the performance order for the roast.

If you watched Drag Race UK Season 2, the very mention of performance order may make you anxious. But don’t worry, there’s isn’t a Ellie Diamond vs. Lawrence Chaney-level fight coming this week. Kandy and Rosé actually decide to take the most difficult positions—first and last—and leave the others in the middle. Symone questions the wisdom of this in a confessional, but I completely get the idea: Kandy specifically mentions not wanting to be repeating jokes that others have already told, and thus can be the first to make some of the most obvious observations. 

This pays off because, as you can imagine, there are plenty of punchlines about Ru’s music career, Michelle Visage being a whore and Ross Mathews being super gay. (We’ve heard them every season, why wouldn’t we hear them again this time?) Kandy’s jokes aren’t very original, but she delivers them quite well and gets to set the bar for the other girls. She got the first spot by persuading Rosé to go last, and that turns out to be a challenge-winning move for Kandy. Rosé also does well, but coach and guest judge Loni Love prefers her rehearsal to her actual performance. Kandy takes the win, her first maxi-challenge victory of the season.

In a distant-but-still-strong third is Gottmik, who overcomes a very nervous rehearsal to really nail it. She manages to get over her fixation with reading her cards and just leans into her own flow, earning a comparison to Phyllis Diller from Ru and some high praise across the board. She gets a good Rent Live joke in at Valentina’s expense, although one that plays better in rehearsal when it’s fresh than it does coming off of Kandy’s own Rent Live joke. Again, strategy-wise, Kandy really knocks this one out of the park.

Of the bottom three queens, Symone and Utica are the clear disasters. Olivia isn’t great, either—she’s too worried about being the nice girl and doesn’t find a way to weaponize that in her comedy. But she gets in a couple of solid jokes—one about Ru being old enough to sign the Declaration of Independence “as parent/guardian” absolutely kills—and is able to avoid lip-syncing. Symone is perhaps the biggest disappointment of the episode, once again getting in her own head and failing to deliver at performance time. Her jokes are all too long, and some don’t even have punchlines.

But at least Symone is only boring; Utica is downright offensive. She’s warned in rehearsal that she’s going too far after making fat jokes about both Nina and Loni (to Loni’s face!), and telling a bad “Symone and Pumbaa” joke that Michelle shoots down. But Utica just assumes Michelle hasn’t seen The Lion King—and when Michelle insists that she has (as she’s a parent) Utica makes a nasty dig at Michelle for her age. It’s an absolute train wreck, and it only gets worse as she fails to heed their warnings in the challenge.

A few weeks ago in Untucked, Rosé told a story about Utica pulling out her binder of unused Reading Challenge reads over dinner and just delivering insults about the other queens. It was a surprising revelation, both because we hadn’t seen it ourselves and because Utica’s image so far in the competition had been that of a very kind queen. Here, we see her nasty side come out, seemingly as a mechanism for covering for her bombing. The funniest parts of her set are Loni roasting her for bombing, and Ru responding to her request to stand up with both middle fingers up. When your hecklers are funnier than you are, you know it’s bad news.

Former makeover challenge partners Symone and Utica land in the bottom two: Symone for her second time and Utica for her third. Symone notes that Utica’s sent two queens home by now, and though Symone has actually won three lip syncs, owing to non-elimination episodes, she hasn’t actually sent anyone packing. This makes for an interesting showdown to Ariana Grande’s “No Tears Left to Cry.” Symone can kill a performance, but usually not under the threat of going home. Utica, on the other hand, comes most alive when her back is against the wall.

Symone need not worry, though. She turns “NTLTC” into a full acting performance, emoting like mad throughout the song. Utica does okay, but misses more than a few words and feels less connected to the lyrics. The third time is not the charm for her, and she sashays away.

At least one more elimination to go this season! Who will make it to the finale? Who will win? And will we ever see announced guest judge Cynthia Erivo? We’ll find out next week in the final-five episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13!

Untucking our final thoughts

✨Ru notes that Valentina’s Maskgate moment seems a lot wiser in retrospect now. “‘I’d like to keep it on, please.’ She was right, I was wrong. There. Thank you, Dr. Fauci.”

✨Utica double-talks Olivia again after being blasted for it a few weeks ago, telling her to her face that she’s going to do well, then saying in confessional that she’s most worried about Olivia. Old habits die hard, I guess.

✨Jokes about Ru’s music are old as dirt at this point, but I’ll admit that Gottmik’s delivery of her joke about “all of [Ru’s] hit song” really got me.

✨Have we ever had a guest judge straight-up boo a contestant before? Loni is not happy with Utica! Speaking of Loni, this is my favourite episode of hers so far. She, Nicole Byer and Ts Madison have all been great additions to the panel this season. I’d love to see at least one—if not more—of them return as full-time judges in the future.

✨ No runway this week, which is the first time that’s happened this season. I don’t mind it when we have a comedy challenge; it gives us more time to appreciate the looks the queens wear for the performance. My favourite of the lot is Rosé’s, but Symone’s, Gottmik’s and Kandy’s are all great as well. I’m not as high on Utica’s as the judges are, and Olivia’s is a mess.

✨Two more competitive episodes to go before the reunion and finale, making this the longest season since Season 3. The length of this season has been the topic of much debate all year, but it does feel like we’re finally moving toward the finish line.

What’s on your mind, girl? Join the livestream Kiki with Kevin on Fridays at 4 p.m. EDT to talk about RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Friday, Apr. 2, at 8 p.m. EDT on VH1 in the U.S. and on Crave and OUTtv in Canada.