‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 14, Episode 3 recap: Two! Two! Two balls in one!

In just its third episode, RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 has become a battle between the utter charm of this cast and the foolishness of production.

Immediately after merging into one full cast, the queens of Season 14 proved themselves to be much stronger as a whole than in two parts. They’re funny, eminently watchable, and perhaps most enjoyably, they immediately love each other. Drag Race long ago shifted away from being a series that ran on an engine of drama to one about chosen queer family, and this cast fits that new thesis to a T. We get so many wonderful, small moments of friendship budding in the workroom, from Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté understanding exactly what Willow Pill needs to Angeria Paris VanMicheals and Lady Camden playfully bantering about their accents.

If that were the whole show, Drag Race Season 14 would be an unqualified success so far. But having seemingly learned nothing from the largely hands-off production of All Stars 6, the RPDR machine has stocked this season full of twists. Each is more frustrating than the last, with one that feels like it goes against the whole spirit of the show. And the fact that it all feels like a way to arbitrarily elongate the season—gotta fill that episode order!—only makes it more frustrating.

The challenge this week is a double ball; each group of queens from the split premiere gets a different ball, using different fabrics to fulfill roughly the same categories: resort, eleganza, and bridal. The first premiere’s queens get animal prints for the Hide and Chic Ball, while the second crew gets the colour-oriented Red, White and Blue Ball. (For some reason, these balls are still edited together, instead of being presented separately as two segments of the episode.) I’ll get into the individual looks during tomorrow’s power ranking, because there are a lot of them (42 looks in total! The most ever in a single ball!). 

But wait: three looks per queen at 12 queens would be only 36 looks. That can only mean….

Yes, of course Orion Story and Daya Betty are back. I mentioned in last week’s recap that the lack of Whatcha Packin’? episode release for Orion indicated something was afoot. Still, I figured the show would give some kind of excuse for why the queens were brought back. But nope! Besides something muttered about second chances, this is just a handwave to bring the cast back up to full. The fact that the queens themselves don’t even seem surprised by it should speak volumes: the standard created by Seasons 12 and 13 is that the first two episodes are not truly competitive.

This alone would be a frustrating twist to start the season, but not terrible. My big issue with it is that it sets a nearly impossible-to-overcome anchor around Orion and Daya’s necks: How is anyone going to seriously consider you for the win when you’ve already been eliminated once? These weren’t Porkchop Loading Dock eliminations, which were based on one lip sync and ultimately never designed to stick. These were full-out episodes that these queens lost; those eliminations, as they were sold to us, were real. Orion and Daya deserve to compete on Drag Race without the label of being a “second chance queen” right out of the gate.

But that and the double ball is hardly all this episode has to offer. In this instalment, we are finally introduced to the twist that was teased in pre-season promos: 14 RuPaul chocolate bars. But it turns out one isn’t chocolate at all. Instead, it’s a gold bar, and with that gold bar comes elimination immunity. However, this isn’t like an immunity idol on Survivor where there’s strategy involved in terms of when to play it and skill involved in finding it; this is completely random, as the queens just choose a bar and sign it, hoping it will be the one carrying a ticket to stay in the competition. Of course, production knows exactly who has the gold bar, meaning a frontrunner might be more safely called the loser of a lip sync when Ru knows they’ll ultimately be safe. (A less generous recapper might even say that, by just signing the wrapper, production has made it easy to swap the bars in each wrapper if a favoured queen finds herself in danger.)

There are elements to this twist I like, particularly the absolutely absurd reveal of the bar on the main stage after a lip sync (as this week’s eliminated queen sadly says, “It’s chocolate”), and how they hide them on their person (DeJa Skye put hers in her hat!). But the actual function of the twist is contrary to the spirit of Drag Race. This is not a show where you might just be outplayed one week and immunity can help you stay in the game to redeem yourself. If you’re eliminated on Drag Race, it’s because you failed to impress Ru and the judges during a challenge, and you lost a face-off against a competitor in a Lip Sync for Your Life. To suddenly say, “Surprise! You get to stay!”—what purpose does that serve? If that queen disappoints again, they’ll just be sent right back out the door. And as we’ve seen countless times on this show, if you lose the judges once, it’s hard to get them back in your corner.

More to the point, I would argue that this on top of Orion and Daya’s return have now significantly diminished the do-or-die nature of a Lip Sync for Your Life. It’s now a Lip Sync for Your Life (But Don’t Worry, It May Not Be Real). We’ve seen some other past examples of Ru outright negating a lip sync result: BenDeLaCreme losing her first to Darienne Lake in Season 6, and Ru bringing Kandy Muse back from the brink of departure in Season 13. But those felt like one-off decisions Ru made for his favourites. This season, it seems, is taking steps to lessen the impact of lip syncs, making the show increasingly a work of production than a work of drag.

I hate to fixate on this, particularly in a recap of an episode that has some really good stuff to offer. For a mega-ball, we get a lot of time in the workroom, and yet the runway doesn’t feel too rushed. Some of my favourite bits include multiple first-premiere queens learning that Maddy Morphosis is straight, Kerri Colby and Kornbread opening up about their difficulties growing up (all the more powerful for being a shared moment between two trans women, who have rarely gotten the same platform in past seasons) and the general hijinx of a cast that is clearly gelling beautifully.

But that’s all the more reason for production to get out of the way! Drag Race is a magical TV show not because of its many twists and turns, but in spite of them. We get to see drag queens do amazing things week in and week out no matter what shenanigans the show wants to throw at them. Case in point: despite a queen-eliminate-queen twist that could see major threats take each other out, All Stars has consistently crowned successful, deserving and groundbreaking winners. Similarly, the ultra-divisive Porkchop Loading Dock twist in Season 13 could’ve torn that cast asunder with complaints about who’s deserving, but other than a couple of squabbles, it ultimately failed to disrupt a warm, loving cast from growing together.

The most successful twist I can recall RuPaul’s Drag Race ever producing is the RuDemption Lip Sync tournament from All Stars 6, and that’s because it was an entirely fair one. Yes, someone could come back into the competition, but they had to fight for it. And ultimately, that tournament gave almost every queen a chance to show just why they’re so great, and why they’re All Stars. This season’s twist, in comparison, may offer the queens more time, but it doesn’t involve them having to prove why they deserve to stay. It’s just random, and arguably unfair.

I hope, if and when the chocolate bar twist comes into play, it’s to this season’s benefit not its detriment. Based on the fashion we see in this ball, as well as the camaraderie between the queens, I do believe this has the potential to be a top-tier season. Willow Pill’s victory this week is a great example of that: serving three entirely different animal print looks in premiere group one’s Hide and Chic Ball, Willow demonstrates an eye for detail and presentation that instantly makes her a huge threat to win this whole competition. Woe to her if she finds herself screwed out of a spot at the top because someone arbitrarily brought back sends her home.

The chocolate bar twist does not come into play in this episode (though imagine the comedy if it did) which means we must say goodbye to June Jambalaya. This is a real bummer to watch play out, as June agitates a bit over Orion coming back to the competition. She fairly eliminated Orion in the first lip sync, but here Orion is once again. And though she scores low, Orion is ultimately safe from having to lip sync, while June’s three Hide and Chic Ball looks fail to impress the judges. They’re particularly put off by her final look, which she hides the top of with a leaf. Never a good idea when you want to project confidence!

June has to lip sync against Maddy, who turns out the worst looks in the Red, White and Blue Ball: a too-simple red jumpsuit, an uninspiring white cape look with gold stars on it and a wedding dress that Willow quite succinctly and brutally reads as “Colonel Sanders.” Maddy surprised on the runway last episode with her beheaded look, but it seems we can’t expect that level from her every week. This is a major step down, and her place in the bottom two is entirely fair.

The lip sync is to Kylie Minogue’s “I Love It,” off her (excellent!) Disco album. I’d have chosen a few other tracks before “I Love It”—“Where Does the DJ Go?” for instance, or “Real Groove”—but considering this is just the second-ever Kylie song to appear on the flagship Drag Race series, we’ll take what we can get. Unfortunately, as has been much-memed over the weekend, gay pride in Kylie Minogue cannot keep the gay man in the competition. June loses her shoes and much of her outfit during the lip sync, and reveals into an unimpressive wig. I still think she out-performs Maddy, who truly just shuffles about while keeping the same facial expression, but Ru disagrees. June sashays away after revealing that, indeed, her bar is just chocolate.

I could say much more about this episode, including about the looks (and trust that I will in the power ranking) and Ru’s supposedly caffeine-induced antics on the runway. (Telling the queens to “just copy” other looks… what?) But I think I’ll end this recap on a hopeful note: in the battle between production and this cast, I’m placing my chips on the cast. They are an incredibly likable group, and simply getting to watch them show off their drag every week is going to make for a fun few months of 2022. Things may get unnecessarily twisty, but something tells me that with personalities like these, we’ll always have something charming and fun on TV every Friday night. What more can you ask for, really?

Untucking our final thoughts

✨The meeting of the two groups at the start of the episode is not quite as spicy as we’ve seen in previous split-premiere seasons. (Remember Tina Burner’s boastful “If it isn’t the B-Squad!” from last season?) Nothing could ever beat Gia Gunn’s hostile welcoming of group two back in Season 6, though. “You girls look… good” remains an all-time Drag Race line for a reason.

✨VH1 aired another All Stars 6 episode after Untucked this week—they really want more eyes on that season. (And for good reason!)

✨Kerri referring to Sharon Stone as “some famous white lady,” followed by Angeria asking if that’s a friend of Kerri’s, is bar none the funniest moment of this episode.

✨RuPaul’s Drag Race doesn’t have the best track record of keeping insects alive on their sets, do they? RIP to the dead dragonfly Daya eats. I hope it was worth the $1,000 from Kornbread! (Though I do love her explanation: “I eat ass, you guys; I can eat a bug.”)

✨Kornbread thinking Daya’s name is “Daya Bettica,” Alyssa thinking Willow is “Willow Pillow”—we need to get these girls some name tags!

✨Christine Chiu of Bling Empire fame is basically a non-entity as a guest judge this week. She just gets drowned out by the other judges, not to mention Ru’s “coffee enema” antics. I’ll say this: if Drag Race is going to stick to just one extra judge a week (which I previously hailed as a good move), they need to make sure they’re casting really strong guests.

✨My watch party group this week was very Team Angeria for the victory, but they all like Willow so were ultimately happy for her to have a win. In one funny recurring bit, they kept referring to different leopard print looks as very “Halle Berry in The Flintstones.” Not wrong when it comes to Bosco, I’ll say!

✨A favourite exercise of mine during Season 12 was to guess who would walk out on the runway to the exact moment that the key changed in the remix to Ru’s “Superstar.” It makes a return for the white eleganza category during the Red, White and Blue Ball—and Maddy gets the key change!

✨During the American broadcast, there was a short tribute message to the late, great André Leon Talley, the fashion world legend who passed away last week. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend Tre’vell Anderson’s piece on André for Xtra.

✨I may hate the chocolate bar twist, but let me tell you this: the trombone noise used when the queens reveal they don’t have the golden bar is going to send me into a fit of laughter every single week.
The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, Jan. 28, 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.