‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 18, Episode 8 recap: I came here for Snatch

Let’s flash back to one year ago, when RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17 reached their Snatch Game. At the time, I was about as low on Drag Race’s signature challenge as I’ve ever been. I had just watched Lexi Love get praised for a so-bad-it’s-funny Gilbert Gottfried, while Sam Star got chided for a competent, well-performed Kim Gravel. I argued in that episode’s recap that Snatch Game had become completely unmoored from any real structure, and it was to the challenge’s significant detriment.

“I actually let out a chortle when RuPaul introduced Snatch Game to the queens in this episode, telling them to pick a ‘celebrity’ to ‘impersonate,’” I wrote at the time. “Watching any modern edition of this challenge would tell you that impersonations being important went out the window when historical figures came into play (like Lana Ja’Rae’s Rosa Parks this season), and we’re long past the Snatch Game characters being celebrities only. Hell, this season, we get not just concepts (Arrietty plays Cupid), but gender-flipped concepts (Jewels Sparkles plays ‘Miss Big Feet,’ aka a female Bigfoot). Really the only guideline that matters is making Ru laugh—but that’s gone from simply the way to win to being the only enforced rule in the whole challenge.”

Since then, we’ve seen the greater Drag Race franchise really wrestle with how to implement Snatch Game moving forward. Slaysian Royale did an election ad-based take on Snatch Game. Canada’s Drag Race gave the queens the choice to opt out of Snatch Game entirely. Most recently, on UK vs. The World Season 3, Ru and co. threw a Snatch Pageant. However, these felt less like solutions to the problem of Snatch Game and more like different dressings on the same issue. Case in point, on UK vs. The World, Drag Race Philippines’ Minty Fresh performed as a unicorn. Not any particular unicorn. Just a unicorn. Only Canada’s Drag Race seemed to approach something of a solution to the rot at the core of Snatch Game, as all portrayed real people.

At first glance, it seems like RuPaul’s Drag Race is doing something similar to the other shows in giving Snatch Game a fresh coat of paint and calling it a day. The formerly All Stars-exclusive Snatch Game of Love becomes Snatch Game of Love Island, with the queens, in character, attempting to win the hearts of three island bros. (Those bros include actors and boyfriends Zane Phillips and Froy Gutierrez, plus Chris Renfro, who I saw in the Los Angeles production of Here Lies Love just days before this episode aired!) While it’s nice to see something other than the typical Snatch Game format, and it does throw queens like Kenya Pleaser for a loop to have the rules change, it isn’t really a solution.

But then we get to the judging, and perhaps there’s more than meets the eye here: all three queens in the top portray real people, while the queen going home plays more of a concept (and, more to the point, absolutely bombs). In fact, one queen who just barely misses out on a top placement makes Ru laugh a lot, but is also playing more of a concept than a specific person. It feels like, without explicitly saying it, Drag Race is taking Snatch Game back to its roots by encouraging true impersonations once again. Considering that’s what I asked for in last week’s recap, you’d think I’d be happy, right?

Wrong! Because while in theory this is a good thing, no such change in criteria is made clear, either to the queens or to us! So after nearly a decade of us being told that the only thing that matters about Snatch Game is making Ru laugh, Discord Addams, who is an absolute riot as “The Pope”—not any particular pope, just the concept of the pope—is simply called safe. She is given no explanation for not making the top, which strikes me as borderline cruel. She goes into elimination day so excited, really believing she has a chance to get a top placement for the first time in the whole competition. By the time she’s called safe and heads to Untucked, she just seems deflated, and I can’t blame her one bit.

What I really like about this new Snatch Game of Love Island format, and what makes a performance like Discord’s really work, is how much more runway the queens are given to explore their characters. They don’t have to worry about answering one-word prompts, and they have Ru, the island bros and each other to riff off of. During one question from Froy about favourite yoga poses, Discord actually has Froy get up and do the “Christ Almighty” with her: arms out, held like a crucifixion pose. When she incorrectly says he has to hang like that for a week, Froy replies that it should be just three days. Discord takes and runs with that, saying she was testing Froy, who then does the sign of the cross in response. It’s so funny! Ru’s laughing, Froy’s laughing, I’m laughing—and she’s that funny the whole game. And yet, she’s just safe.

The queen who likely takes Discord’s place at the top, at least from where I’m sitting, is Myki Meeks. Riding the high of her first win in the political ads challenge, Myki impersonates Drew Barrymore, specifically her modern talk show incarnation. She’s quite good! This is a real improvement on Season 14 champion Willow Pill’s effort at the same character. But while she excels in the impersonation department, she’s lacking for clear punchlines. Again, if the goal of Snatch Game really is just to make Ru laugh, then it’s surprising to see Myki in the top three.

That said, Myki’s runway for the ’80s Ladies category, a near-replica of an Olivia Newton-John look that leaves her in some truly tragic shoes, clearly takes her out of contention for the W. Instead, it’s Jane Don’t vs. Nini Coco, as two of our top-performing queens this season compete for their second win. Both portray men you’d hardly expect on Love Island: Jane as Truman Capote and Nini as Sir David Attenborough. Jane is quite good in a character pitched right at Ru’s heart, although I think the choice is almost too cute, considering Drag Race just did a Feud: Capote vs. the Swans parody last season with “Ross Mathews vs. the Ducks.” In fact, Nini actually gets a little jab in at this: when Jane’s Capote mistakes Nini’s David for Cynthia Nixon, Nini replies by mistakenly calling Capote “Ross Mathews.”

Considering Discord is not even in contention for the victory, I do agree with Ru that Nini is the deserving winner of the week. Her concept of the character is excellent: a normally quite staid and proper man who, staring down an imminent climate change apocalypse, has decided to throw caution to the wind and get horny as hell. She’s very funny, repeatedly making Darlene Mitchell break her (sadly not great) Mrs. Claus character in the challenge. And on the runway, her take on Cyndi Lauper is perfect, both in look and in runway presentation. Several weeks after winning the premiere, Nini finally snatches her second win, along with some hefty praise from Ru as he calls her a “powerhouse” in the competition.

Alongside Darlene and Discord, Athena Dion is called safe, which is a great relief to the mother of the House of Dion. Athena comes into this challenge very nervous, as her idea of Charlie Chaplin finally breaking his silence to come out as gay gets shot down by Ru as too “meta.” (Which isn’t really what meta means, but I get your point, Ru.) She instead leans into her Greek characterization by making up a character, “Greta Onassis,” the forgotten first wife of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie Kennedy’s second husband. It’s a savvy choice, but not really a Snatch Game character. Still, it’s enough to keep her safe this week.

The rest of the House of Dion is not so lucky. Juicy Love Dion really struggles this week, abandoning her prepared America Ferrera impersonation due to it being a poor fit for the new format. Her idea was to be an obsessive take on Betty Suarez from Ugly Betty, desperate to be Ru’s assistant—but that’s hard to play when you’re trying to be romancing three island bros. She cycles through various Latina characters she could play, including Sofia Vergara and Becky G, before landing on JoJo Siwa. I actually don’t think this is a terrible idea: Juicy can lean into her dancing skills as JoJo, and there’s a lot of material to play with as her. Unfortunately, Juicy falls far short of the high standards Lemon set as JoJo in Canada’s Drag Race’s first-ever Snatch Game. She ultimately doesn’t have to lip sync for her life again, thanks in large part to a great Celia Cruz runway, but Ru levies some harsh criticism at the young Miami queen: despite her having two wins, Ru says he doesn’t know who she is yet.

Things are even worse for Auntie Mia Starr, who bombs like we’ve rarely seen before as Bloody Mary. Her performance is so absurdly bad that it becomes camp: her slow, halting delivery; her inability to think quickly on her feet; her complete lack of jokes. She even mixes up Louis Vuitton and Louboutin! It’s so bad that the next day, Mia is openly joking about how terrible she was in the challenge. She knows she’s gonna land in the bottom, and I appreciate that she has no delusions about her performance. 

Kenya is also not great, acknowledging that she faltered in her take on Lizzo. Ru notes during deliberations that Kenya’s famous performances as Lizzo are as a lip sync artist, not a comic impersonator. That comes across in the challenge, as while Kenya’s energy is great, she lacks the material to make this performance work. The greater sin, however, is her Chaka Khan runway look, which Michelle Visage accurately describes as a “de-dragged” take on the Queen of Funk. It is increasingly clear each week that Kenya has simply not brought the level of drag needed to excel in this competition, and this does seem like her time to go.

The lip sync this week is to the Go-Gos’ “Head Over Heels,” and the major question that even Mia hints at in her pre-performance confessional is: will Kenya know the words? From what we can tell in the edit: yes! This is her best lip sync yet, and she’s actually quite a bit more dynamic in the performance than Mia is. We know Mia can be a great lip syncer from the “Pretty Ugly” battle with Juicy, but she’s a bit limited here. I’m not sure if her Prince runway (which: Prince? for ’80s Ladies?) is just too restrictive, or if the song is too far out of her wheelhouse, but she’s a bit static. Still, the lip sync is hardly a blowout, and Mia has a challenge win, while this is Kenya’s second lip sync. This should be an obvious result.

… But it is not, as Kenya is saved and Mia is sent home. I’m not shocked by this, per se, since Mia did bomb the challenge so terribly. But I do think it’s a short-sighted decision by Ru. Mia clearly has more to show, while Kenya, despite how entertaining she is as a TV character, is not delivering at the level the judges expect. Losing Mia seems more about finally breaking up the House of Dion than anything else. And that’s a real shame, because Mia deserves to be judged on her own merits. She’s been a star this season, and I’m really going to miss her.

I give Ru and the show credit for taking a swing with Snatch Game of Love Island, and I do think this is a very entertaining episode. But I have to hold back my praise a bit simply because Discord not even being in the conversation for a win is just too egregious. If you want to change the criteria for the challenge, be clear about it. Keep the queens and us as viewers in the loop. Otherwise, the show is just going to draw audience ire for being inconsistent.

Next week’s the Rusical, which seems promising for theatre queens like Jane and Myki, plus a dancer like Juicy. Might this finally mark Kenya’s time to go? We’ll find out next week—until then, you can find me waging a #JusticeForDiscord campaign.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Juicy starts the episode feeling a lot of guilt for sending Vita VonTesse Starr home, which the other queens reassure her she doesn’t need to feel. Man, if we’re all right that an Athena vs. Juicy lip sync is inevitable, I don’t even wanna think how she’d react to sending her drag (grand)mother home.

✨ Darlene is our Black Widow of the season! Both times she’s been in a scene with someone in an acting/comedy challenge—Mandy Mango in RDR Live, Vita last week—they’ve gone home. And now this week, she’s in the same group as Mia for Snatch Game of Love Island! Forget Bloody Mary—it’s Darlene’s curse the queens should fear!

✨ No Ru Rule this week! Are we free of them? Is God that good?

✨ Brooke Shields is our guest judge this week, and she’s a trip! You can tell Ru and the judges are really gagged to be in the presence of such a legend. She compliments Jane as someone who actually knew Capote, calling her performance “an homage” to him, and makes her runway debut by walking the main stage. It’s a super fun guest judge stint, and I’d love to see her back on the show again someday.

✨ We all know that the queens don’t know who the guest judges are sometimes, but play it up for the cameras. (Remember Yara Sofia’s enthusiasm for Rita Rudner in Season 3?) But in an incredible editing choice, right after Ru tells the queens about Brooke and they break, we smash cut into Juicy asking: “Who is Brooke Shields?” Jane is positively horrified by this, especially when Juicy asks what she’s been in. “I’m trying to think, did she do a voice for any Pixar movie?” Jane sarcastically asks back. “She’s Brooke Shields! We literally named eyebrows after her!”

✨ I never thought in my life I would hear the voice of Planet Earth say the words, “Listen here, you skanky whore, slut bitch.” Thank you for that, Nini.

✨ The other queens can’t help but laugh at poor Mia’s expense in the werk room. Myki gets my favourite line in: “If I say your name three times in the mirror, will a joke appear?”

✨ “Kenya Pleaser: Your Lizzo was only 50 percent that bitch.” This is such a good Ru line, even Kenya can’t help but giggle.

✨ We’re now at the final eight, which means we’re losing four before the finale. I feel best about Jane and Nini making it there based on their current track records, and Myki’s certainly on the rise—Ru calls her “a brilliant queen” in deliberations. I guess Juicy’s still penciled in for that fourth slot based on her two challenge wins, but that feels really shaky considering Ru’s critiques this week. Maybe I’ve been reading the tea leaves wrong on the Dion duel and  Athena’s actually going to go the distance? Discord and Darlene do both seem to be having issues building momentum, so I’m not sure either of them can do it barring some major switch-up in these next few weeks. As for Kenya, even if she doesn’t go next week, I’m afraid she’s just marking time before an inevitable departure.

✨ I’m about to start a change.org petition to get mini-challenges back.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race will air Friday, February 27, 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.