Well, it finally happened: a queen opened a gold bar and …it wasn’t chocolate. Bosco, this week’s chosen eliminee, pulls the gold bar, thus putting an end to one of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s most absurd twists ever.
I’ve grown somewhat fond of this season’s chocolate bar twist , as it’s mostly stayed out of the fray except for queens’ declaration of “it’s chocolate” upon unwrapping it, accompanied by sad horns. It began to feel like the gold bar might never be unveiled—or at least, that was one’s hope after multiple non-elimination weeks. But like any good Chehkov’s gun, the gold bar must be unwrapped by the season’s final act. And so it is by a delighted Bosco, who survives despite losing yet another lip sync.
Look, I know I’m beating a dead horse here, and Bosco’s overall popularity makes me believe this development will be well received. But can Drag Race really call them Lip Syncs for Your Life anymore? While Rosé lost three lip syncs last season, at least none of them were in an actual elimination situation. (One was the Porkchop, one was her Lip Sync for the Win against Denali in their premiere and one was a Lip Sync for the Crown.) Jasmine Kennedie lost three lip syncs, but she also won three—and went home on the third! Bosco is the first queen to lose three Lip Syncs for Your Life and still move on in the competition. It’s hard to buy Ru saying “this is your last chance” upon introducing a lip sync when there are all kinds of non-elimination procedures flying around.
Ah well. If lip syncs aren’t going to matter as much and the race to the finish is going to slow to a stroll, at least we’re having a lot of fun along the way. This week’s Rusical challenge, “Moulin Ru!” (inspired by the stage musical version of Moulin Rouge!), is an absolute blast, and one of my favourite Rusicals ever. Yes, it’s another instance of Ru songs being remixed. But unlike in other cases, it makes sense here: Moulin Rouge! is all about mashing up and covering classic pop songs. Of course the Rusical version would have to feature Ru songs. And the rest of the episode is just as good as the performance itself, with casting drama, a heroic arc for our winner, another wildly misinterpreted runway and, yes, a payoff to the gold bar twist that has even Ru gagging.
Credit: Courtesy VH1
Lady Camden comes into this challenge noting that Rusicals are her favourite challenges to watch (I’ll try not to hold that against her) and with her sights set on the lead role of Saltine. But Bosco, fresh off just surviving the LaLaPaRuZa, is holding firm on Saltine as well. She gets remarkably shady as it happens, knocking Camden down a couple of pegs verbally in the process. Camden proposes a coin flip; Bosco instead calls for a vote. Angeria Paris VanMicheals throws her support behind Bosco, while Jorgeous, offended at how Bosco treated Camden, votes for Camden. DeJa Skye does the same, sending the vote to Willow Pill.
This is where things get juicy: Willow isn’t sure how to vote, so Daya Betty acts like she’ll make the decision for her. But then Daya actually votes for Bosco, tying things up and sending it back to Willow to break the tie. (It’s a delightful bit of chaos from Daya, who smirks with glee as she pulls this off.) We get a full commercial break cliffhanger before Willow makes her decision: though they could both do Saltine, Willow thinks Camden would also play the emcee role of Mama Zee well. Willow admits in confessional that she ultimately only votes the way she does because she thinks Bosco will take it harder if she loses.
Camden, on the other hand, takes it plenty hard. “Fuck you all,” she says, telling Bosco she’ll be pissed if she doesn’t do well as Saltine. (Which, oops!) Camden doesn’t just let bygones be bygones, to which I say: good for her! It’s a normal reaction to be upset, and Bosco does indeed now have the pressure of living up to how hard she fought for the part. After some time apart from each other and a pep talk from Angeria, Camden calms down, and instead of focusing on the part she didn’t get, she instead embraces the one she does.
And hoo boy, does she embrace it! Camden is phenomenal as Mama Zee, putting her ballet skills to good use as she prances across the stage. The gag is that Mama Zee is easily the best role in the show, getting plenty to do throughout and even being centre stage for the final bow. The peak of her performance is in an “El Tango de Roxanne”-inspired take on “Cover Girl,” complete with a charged dance with Bosco. For her efforts, Camden wins her second maxi-challenge of the season, tying her with Angeria and Bosco.
Credit: Courtesy VH1
Most of the other queens either excel in the Rusical or in the Mirror Mirror runway category, which again seems to have been sold as something entirely different during show prep. (Reflective? Holographic?) Willow is terrific as the Green Fairy of absinthe, performing an increasingly frenzied mashup of songs like “The Beginning” and “If I Dream,” but whiffs on the runway in a cheap-looking Fourth of July ensemble. DeJa rocks her Lil Kim-inspired verse as Nerve during the “Lady Marmalade”-inspired group number, but gets knocked for a truly underwhelming runway. Angeria looks gorgeous on the runway, but fades into the background a bit during the Rusical. Other than our winner and near-eliminee, only Daya and Jorgeous get uniform critiques: Daya’s all positive, and Jorgeous’ largely negative.
No one gets worse critiques than Bosco, though, who Michelle Visage knocks both for painting Bosco brows for the Rusical (a real mistake, in my opinion) and wearing yet another bra-and-panties look on the runway. Something I’ve thought about more and more in recent seasons is how badly runway selection order can fuck with a queen: if you bring similar outfits for just four categories, but then those categories come almost back to back, you’ll likely get much more harshly critiqued than if they were spread apart. (Although I’d note that Bosco could’ve worn, like, anything else for the lip sync smackdown last week.)
Then comes the infamous “Who should go home tonight and why?” question on the runway. Everyone says Bosco except for Bosco herself, who instead says Jorgeous, citing her track record. This lights a fire under Jorgeous, who proceeds to expose that Bosco was shady to Camden during their fight for the Saltine role. (The edit cuts to a hilariously too-cheery nod from DeJa at this moment.) Then, responding to the track record comment, Jorgeous fires back that if you wanna go by track record, she was in the bottom three times in one episode.” Michelle all but becomes the blinking blonde man meme in response, and Bosco looks thoroughly chagrined.
After deliberations, the Bosco versus Jorgeous battle continues, as the two are made to lip sync. Bosco is thoroughly displeased by this development, citing Ru’s obsession with Jorgeous. And while that’s a fair point, there are some signs that Ru might be getting over Jorgeous in this episode. (At one point during deliberations, it seems like Ru is actually leading the charge when it comes to critiques of the Nashville-based queen.) So I’d argue things are pretty wide open heading into the showdown.
Credit: Courtesy VH1
The lip sync is to a(nother) Hex Hector remix, this time of Whitney Houston’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” Jorgeous, despite flagrantly ignoring my edict last week to not point at a fake watch on the word “time,” does really well here. Something particularly impressive about Jorgeous as a lip-syncer is how she uses her arms: yes, she punches the ghost, but she also manages to make her arms look fluid and graceful. Her popping and locking this week is the latest example of that. Meanwhile, Bosco once again proves if a song isn’t sexy, she can’t get into the mood of it. This really does not bode well for a Lip Sync for the Crown for Bosco; with her loss this week, she is one for four, and joins Rosé and Jasmine Kennedie as the only queens to lose three lip syncs in one season.
Seventh would’ve been a remarkably low placement for Bosco, so on that level, I am glad that she sticks around. But the gold bar reveal just can’t help but feel anticlimactic, despite all the flashing lights and Ru screaming. Of course the first time a true frontrunner lands in the bottom, she’s saved with the bar. And no, I don’t believe it’s the “drag gods” who gave it to her: this is a production decision, and you’ll never convince me otherwise. The fact that this comes right after she almost went home in the LaLaPaRuZa is a bad combination for Bosco; at a time when a couple of her competitors are soaring, it feels like she’s struggling to cross the finish line. But if she can recover quickly, she may be able to head into the finale with both an underdog arc and the most wins of the season.
We head into next week’s Roast of Ross Mathews with seven queens remaining once more! Who will secure what is likely the last competitive win of the season before heading into the Rumix? For a roast, my money is on either Daya for her brutal reads or DeJa for her smooth hosting skills. If Bosco wins, that’ll potentially give her a key leg up in the track record race. Or perhaps Angeria can surprise and gain another victory late in the game, solidifying her run? It’s going to be a battle, and it’ll set the stage for what promises to be an incredibly competitive finale.
Untucking our final thoughts
✨So, yes, exactly one queen has gone home in the entire month of March: Jasmine. Only two queens total have gone home in the last six (six!) episodes: Jasmine and Kerri Colby. I know it’s a well-worn trope at this point to note just how elongated this season has been, but I’d argue it can’t be noted enough. If VH1 is going to continue to order 16-episode seasons, a new format is required to avoid these kinds of comically stretched out competitions. (And, as I’ve previously noted, this means there must be a double sashay in the next two weeks to make for a top four finale.)
✨Daya is offended—though as she notes, not as offended as she could be—that Jasmine didn’t write her name as someone to go all the way in her lipstick mirror message. Listen, I love the fun turn toward chaotic villainy that Daya takes in this episode (“I’ll keep tally”), but her treatment of Jasmine will forever rub me the wrong way.
✨Bosco and DeJa say that Jasmine is the queen who’s had to lip sync the most times in Drag Race herstory with six—but actually no, that’s not the truth, Ellen. Symone and Kandy Muse lip-synced seven times each in Season 13 between their Porkchop lip syncs, Symone’s Lip Sync for the Win in their split premiere, a bunch of Lip Syncs for Your Life, the final four lip sync to Whitney Houston’s “I Learned From the Best” and their two Lip Syncs for the Crown. (Trinity the Tuck has actually lip-synced the most of any queen, doing so nine times across two seasons.)
✨Leslie Jordan is a goddamn delight in this episode, both as director of “Moulin Ru!” (alongside songwriter Leland and choreographer Miguel Zarate) and as the Duke in the performance itself. He shares that he did drag even before Ru did in Atlanta, as “Miss Baby Wipes.” Adorable! It would’ve been fun to see how Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté would’ve reacted to Leslie, considering he was her planned Snatch Game character.
✨All sorts of fun references (Ruferences?) in the Rusical. You’ve got a couple “ra-ka-ta-ti-ti-ta-ta” inclusions, a “bing, bang, bong” chorus during the “Cover Girl” tango (a rare UK to U.S. reference!) and an absolutely amazing call-out to Mariah Paris Balenciaga’s Jason Momoa verse in All Stars 5’s “I’m in Love!” I love when Drag Race gets granular with these kinds of callbacks.
✨Jorgeous finds musical theatre annoying. As a former musical theatre kid: fair play, Jorgeous.
✨Ru’s look this week is a pretty stunning fembot look, as previously seen on the cover of her Mamaru album. For all the talk season after season of how Ru actually seems more into the show this time (a false narrative; Ru finds things to enjoy and not enjoy every season), the one area where you can really notice a change in investment is on the runway. His looks may not always hit the bullseye, but he’s much more ambitious in his styling than he was during the ‘same blonde wig, same long dress’ middle era of Drag Race.
✨Academy Award nominee Andra Day makes for a strong guest judge. Like Dove Cameron before her, her notes are specific and technical, although she’s on the whole more positive than Dove was. Her note about Jorgeous’ height making it hard for her to stand out is a smart one. A friend pointed out that in most shots of her, you can see her with a pen in her hand—the mark of a judge who’s really paying attention. Would love to have her back in another season.
✨Cannot believe we get yet another Hex Hector remix of a ballad as a lip sync song this week. Did Ru get a good price on bulk rights from Hex? (And if we’re going to get more, can we get a reprise performance of his absolutely perfect “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” remix?)
✨“I’m pretty sure that RuPaul has put herself down as an organ donor for Jorgeous.” Bosco, queen of the quotable, and now queen of the gold bar.
The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, April 1, at 8 p.m. EST on VH1 in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday and Tuesday after new episodes for our recaps and power rankings, and subscribe to our drag newsletter Wig! for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.
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