‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 18, Episode 5 recap: Survival of the draggiest

We’ve talked many times in these recaps about RuPaul’s Drag Race and the greater franchise’s efforts to inject strategic play into the regular flow of the show. The debut of this was the introduction of the Lip Sync for Your Legacy twist in All Stars 2—which, as of this August, will somehow be a decade old (!)—which put the winning queens each week in charge of deciding who would be sent home. This evolved with the introduction of the Lip Sync Assassin twist in All Stars 5, which further empowered the queens by giving even those who did not win a vote.

The franchise has introduced Legendary Legend Stars, Platinum Plungers, Ruby Snippers, Golden Baluts, Heart Successors and more to try and shake up the format. To date, the only twist I think has worked to its full impact is Canada’s Drag Race’s Golden Beaver. But no twist has shown more promise—and so far been more unfulfilled— than Rate-a-Queen has. The twist, in which the queens rate each other’s talent show performances and determine a “ranking” of how everyone does in the challenge, has a lot of strategic upside, but so far hasn’t been fully tapped into.

First introduced in Season 16’s premiere, Rate-a-Queen has been used in three seasons: once in a split premiere with the queens rating each other (its initial incarnation), once in a split premiere with the non-competing queens rating those in competition (Season 17) and once to determine the bracket for the LaLaPaRuZa finale (All Stars 10). The less said about AS10’s lip sync ability rating, the better—rumours abound that the final ranking didn’t properly reflect how the queens rated, and might’ve just been theatre. But in Season 16 and especially 17, the queens dipped their toes into the idea of strategically rating each other. Still, the queens had just met, so there was only so far they were willing to go.

But this season, the producers made the very wise choice to move the Rate-a-Queen Talent Show to Episodes 5 and 6, opening the season instead with a design challenge. The consequence of this change is that the queens have relationships with each other—both positive and negative. Some have wins already. Some came in with pre-existing connections. There are a lot of factors in play, and all the ingredients in the broth promise a compelling Rate-a-Queen concoction. The result is a strategic scramble of an episode that I quite enjoy, and still rewards the top performers in the episode despite all the shenanigans.

From the jump, after Ru announces the challenge—which is split up across two weeks, with the cast getting to choose which week they’d like to perform in—queens are quick to shore up allies. Athena Dion has a plan involving her drag sister, Mia Starr, and her drag (grand)daughter, Juicy Love Dion: If they split up who goes in which week, they can rate each other highly and boost themselves in the overall ranking. Kenya Pleaser throws her lot in with this crew, thus giving them two queens in each group. (Juicy and Mia go this week.) To anyone who balks at this kind of strategic talk, Kenya says it’s not about “beating the best”—it’s about playing “the fucking game.” And I agree! If Drag Race is gonna throw a twist at the queens, they should take full advantage.

Ciara Myst, meanwhile, has her eyes on Kenya and Mia for her own reason. The three of them, alongside Myki Meeks and Nini Coco, are the five members of the Q-pop group GLAM! from Episode 2. They are the only still-intact girl group, and thus Ciara wants them all to support each other. Everyone is generally down for the plan, but Kenya is nervous about trying to honour both her deals. There’s a very cute segment of Kenya confessing to Nini that she has another alliance, and Nini eagerly-but-desperately asking if Kenya is going to stay loyal. While there are definite machinations at play, the queens ultimately take it all in good fun, and it adds dimension and depth to an episode that has very little in the way of actual performance time.

That said, the latter point is my one quibble: If you’re going to delay the talent show to when there are fewer queens, why not give them more time to execute their actual talent? They still only get one minute, and while you could say this works as a creative constraint, it ultimately just makes the queens rush what could otherwise be longer, more textured performances. Even just two minutes would be better! The result is that the maxi-challenge of this episode takes, minus transitions and commentary, six whole minutes. That’s 10 percent of the episode!

Anyway, joining Nini, Juicy, Mia and Ciara in competing this week are Vita VonTesse Starr and Darlene Mitchell. The latter chooses to perform in a different week than her two closest allies, Athena and Jane Don’t, thinking that they’ll appreciate her act more. (This feels like code for “will rate me higher as my friends,” which is kinda funny, since Athena is happy to tell anyone and everyone she’ll be rating Juicy #1 just because she’s from her drag family.) The queen in seemingly the most danger is Vita, who has no deal with anyone.

After a “Not Today, Satin!” runway category, in which everyone walks (including those queens not competing this week: Athena, Jane, Kenya, Myki and Discord Addams), we get to the talent show. Ciara opens the show, and already that’s a mistake. Ciara reads a poem, and it’s just way too low-energy and unusual to be the opener. The judges later note that it’s not the start they wanted, and I can’t disagree with them. What I can disagree with is the general sentiment that Ciara’s performance is bad. Yes, it’s sincere, but it’s draggy! She’s talking about feeling ripped apart, and there’s a super cool reveal that reflects that physically. It feels very Sasha Velour, and while she wouldn’t make the top half of my own rating, I would have her in a solidly safe spot.

Juicy wouldn’t get a safe spot from me, though—she’d get #1 with a bullet. She does a video game-themed original song lip sync, and while we’ve seen plenty of those, Juicy’s might be my favourite since Anetra’s in Season 15. Her physical control is incredible, and the number is just perfectly executed. Five stars from me. Also great is Nini, who reprises her viral praying mantis number with a new, original accompanying track. The queens themselves seem gagged to see this live, and it really does live up to the hype. High concept, catchy as hell (the judges immediately start quoting it to each other!) and wildly entertaining. And she does a roundoff back handspring to boot! She’s a force to be reckoned with, I’m telling you.

The next two queens would make up my personal bottom two, with Vita occupying the very last slot on my scorecard. While I clutch my pearls less over queens in flats than the judges do, I do think the idea of performing an aerobics routine—so overdone!—in sneakers is almost a death knell for her. She also drops the words in her lip sync (to her own song!) multiple times, and does a bad job covering it. It’s another pretty poor performance from Vita, continuing her rollercoaster arc of highs and lows in the competition so far. Darlene’s isn’t as bad: It’s a “mounting” tutorial full of innuendos. The number itself is cute, but it’s frustrating to see a stage full of props that she makes nearly no use out of. Why are they even there?

Mia is last, and she is a superstar. She does a lip sync number about being a big back queen, sticking with her branding from the premiere, and she performs the absolute fuck out of it. Seriously, she is showing all the experience from her years as a professional dancer, all the while infusing the steps with her natural charm. She kills this dead, and she’s in great position going into the Rate-a-Queen segment. (Worth noting that there are no judges’ public critiques this week because of the twist, but we do get deliberations. Juicy, Mia and Nini all get great notes, while Vita gets the worst and Ciara and Darlene get mixed-to-negative notes.)

Time for Rate-a-Queen! As usual, we only see a few ratings from each queen to keep us in suspense, much like we see on the twist’s inspiration show, The Circle. We’ll likely get the full rankings in two weeks, but for now, I did some speculative math based on the rankings we see and where the queens would’ve likely placed each other. Based on this, I imagine Juicy is pretty firmly in first place, with Mia and Nini finishing close together. I think both are ranked first by one other queen—we know Kenya ranks Mia first, and I imagine Myki ranks her bestie Nini the same—but Mia likely has more second- and third-place rankings. Still, I do think it’s close, to the point where Athena’s ultimate placement of Nini in the bottom half of her ratings might’ve been the deciding factor.

The situation is similar on the bottom half of the list: Ciara is a distant sixth, while Vita and Darlene likely rate about the same. Though the judges’ deliberations would have you think Vita is the one in more danger, I actually think Darlene is the one who comes closer to the bottom. Kenya and Miki both rate her last, and Discord fifth. Two choice third-place spots, from Athena and Jane, ultimately keep her safe—making her plan to go Week 1 while they go Week 2 a very savvy one.

So yes, Ciara is our bottom one, and she’ll have to compete in the Lip Sync for Your Life next week. She laments that her GLAM! sisters did not save her, but really, there was only so much that could be done. Myki and Kenya’s ratings are likely among the highest she received. Juicy and Mia are named the top two, and they lip sync to guest judge Zara Larsson’s “Pretty Ugly.” This is a battle of the Florida baddies, and it’s an absolute banger. What I love is that they both have such distinct styles that they do so well in, and those styles feel complementary to each other. The bit where they walk together is so fun, and such a great capper on a terrific lip sync.

We get a double win this week, meaning Juicy is the first queen to two wins—not what I expected when she landed in the bottom three in the premiere! She’s surprising us, and this whole cast remains a joy. The fact that they brought so much strategy to Rate-a-Queen, only for the correct performers to still wind up on top, is a sign of how they’re entertaining us without throwing out the integrity of the competition. This episode represents what is likely the best merger of strategy and pure drag we’ll see from Rate-a-Queen. Among the Rate-a-Queen episodes we’ve seen, it gets my first-place position.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Discord gets painted as being a little pressed and delusional in the cold open for finding the judges’ comments contradictory, but I completely agree with her! Michelle Visage and Law Roach can have their own thoughts on her walk, but if Ru is gonna rave about it in the werk room, he needs to be willing to defend it to his fellow judges’ faces on the panel. Stand behind your beloved walk, Ru!

✨ I was bemused by the amount of discourse that erupted after last week’s episode over decisions that truly did not matter in the “Who wore it best?” contest. Love that you think Myki’s look was better than Nini’s, or that Darlene’s was better than Athena’s. None of them placed in the top or bottom! It’s the definition of a mid-off. But hilariously, the queens replicate the same discourse this week, with lots of quibbling over whether Athena or Darlene should’ve won their face-off. Girls, girls! You’re both pretty! Pretty safe, that is.

✨ “Ru Rule #17: If you can’t judge yourself, how in the hell you gonna judge somebody else?” Cute, but basic.

✨ Vita VonTesse Starr’s advantage for winning last week’s maxi-challenge is the ability to choose which week to go … but basically everyone gets to do that? To the point that Nini fully waffles between which she wants to pick? Maybe she would’ve gotten priority if there was a dispute, but as it stands, it’s kind of a lame advantage.

✨ Nini and Myki take a minute to catch up to all the strategy talk that the other queens are several steps ahead with. “We thought this game was checkers; baby, this is chess. 3D chess,” Myki says to Mia and Kenya. “Most of y’all are dumbass hoes who don’t know how to play chess,” Mia replies. I love Mia.

✨ When Ciara says she’s doing something serious and real, Myki draws the comparison to Megami’s “Protect Queer Art” talent show from Season 16. “She had an unsteamed flag and not an original lyric in sight!” Ciara responds. (True, but only one of Ciara and Megami will face potential elimination for their act.)

✨ Jane has residual trauma around doing something unusual for the talent show from Irene the Alien. Fair!

✨ Ross Mathews makes his first appearance of the season over a month in, and I’ll say this: He seems to be in finer form than we’ve seen in quite some time. His deliberation critiques are direct and smart. I love his note about the dresses he made his G.I. Joes as a kid being roughly the same quality as Darlene’s runway. I’ll be interested to see if he can keep this energy up in front of the queens themselves.

✨ Our guest judge this week is indeed Zara Larsson! Zara’s been in music for years now, but she’s having a major moment with a bunch of her songs charting. Maybe “Pretty Ugly” will be next, boosted by this lip sync? It certainly deserves it!

✨ Kenya gets the same name yodel that Tia Kofi did once upon a time on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 2: “The question remains …” Good fortune to be blessed by the same introduction as an eventual champion!

✨ I honestly don’t think Briar Blush is ever going to live down “squabble.”

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, February 6, at 8 p.m. EST on MTV in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. Check back every Monday 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 month.