‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 4, Episode 4 recap: Catfight

Bossy Rossy, like many of the elements of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10, was much more warmly received at the time than it is in memory. Part of that is because the improv challenge, styled after a trashy daytime talk show like Maury or Jerry Springer, came when Ross Mathews was at his most popular on the panel. This was before his critiques got formulaic and he became best known memetically as “The Hilarious Ross Mathews.” A whole comedy challenge hosted by Ross was a welcome development.

Moreover, the format gave queens a lot more room to do their best than in other improv challenges. Getting to come up with their own takes on existing storylines allowed for a great deal of creativity, and the queens who thrived (particularly Eureka! and Mo Heart) really impressed the audience and judges alike.

Fast-forward to the Bossy Rossy Ru-boot in Season 13, and much of the magic had vanished. The lack of live audience really hurt the format, and jokes about this being a low-budget streaming reboot of the show didn’t help. And Ross’s reception from the fandom was much less favourable than it once had been, so the news of a Bossy Rossy revival mostly inspired groans from viewers. The memories of a once-well-liked challenge were firmly in the rear-view mirror, and as a result, the Ru-boot was, like much of Season 13, largely panned.

I mention all this because Drag Race UK gets a spiritual sister to Bossy Rossy for this week’s improv challenge: Catty Man. It’s a riff on judge Alan Carr’s former talk show Chatty Man, and follows the format of a chat show, but with a bunch of cat puns wedged in. If this does not sound like a recipe for success to you … well, you’d be right! One group of three manages to do solid work, but the efforts otherwise range from the funny-for-the-wrong-reasons (Black Peppa, Dakota Schiffer) to the utter flops (Le Fil, Sminty Drop). It’s a challenge format that I hope the show does not return to again—though I love Alan, there are definitely better ways than this to use his talents.

Three teams of three take on the various improv scenarios for Catty Man, with Danny Beard, Cheddar Gorgeous and Pixie Polite tackling the first. “Curiosity Killed the Katrina” is an odd scenario that, as Alan later explains, is distinctly British in its approach: a random psychic (Danny) is brought in to reveal that, while Cheddar’s character believes she killed Pixie’s Katrina, in fact, she’s still alive! This team leans into the absurdity, and are rewarded with the top three spots in the judges’ pecking order.

Cheddar is a bit too serious at first, but gets more comfortable as the sketch continues. I imagine this is setting up an arc for Cheddar: the veteran who must relax and learn to go with the flow. We’ve seen it plenty of times, but I give Cheddar good odds of making it work for her—she strikes me as a very savvy player. Pixie’s a lot of fun in the sketch, but it’s obvious in critiques who’s getting the win here. Danny takes the kooky psychic character and runs with it, telling a story about how she’s inhabited by a cat’s spirit and reacts accordingly, like jumping at a red dot produced by Alan’s laser pen. Ru is breathless in his praise of Danny, and she earns her second RuPeter Badge.

Interestingly, despite all three succeeding, we get the start of a Danny and Pixie rivalry storyline here. Starting in Mini-Untucked, Pixie grows increasingly insecure with the amount of praise Danny receives relative to herself. This only worsens when Danny wins the challenge, as we get a great deal of envious looks shot Danny’s way from Pixie. I’m a little disappointed to see Pixie focus on this instead of the immense praise she gets from the judges—they’re right to call out just how gorgeous her makeup looks this week—but again, this is a familiar storyline. She may not face-crack like Jan did in Season 12’s Madonna Rusical, but it’s the same kind of treatment by the edit.

It’s pretty early to get this edit, too, considering this is Danny’s first solo win. That makes me wonder, however, if we might not see a subversion of the expected storyline. Usually in cases where one queen is edited as envious of the other’s success, it’s the other who continues to thrive, while the one left desiring more praise is undone by her focus on that. What if, instead, we this time see Pixie rise above this and thrive? That would be a more fulfilling story arc in my eyes, and I’m crossing my fingers Drag Race UK doesn’t rely on playing the hits.

The other two groups just can’t compare to Danny, Cheddar and Pixie, and turn in a variety of safe and low-scoring performances. In “Kat’s Got My Tongue,” an overly elaborate scenario about one pop star losing her tongue to another, Dakota tries on a deep bass voice that is funny, but makes her break character repeatedly. Meanwhile, Le Fil is lost in the sauce as a doctor character, unable to make even one joke land, and Baby’s dedication to her character doesn’t lead to many funny moments.

I should note here that something is definitely happening with Baby’s edit, and I’m not sure I like where it’s going. Michelle Visage actually tries to give Baby credit for committing to the bit, but Ru is remarkably harsh in response. His focus on her is reminiscent of how harsh he was on Tia Kofi in Season 2, although instead of getting funny banter back like he did with Tia, he gets an answer about Baby’s objective that thoroughly displeases him. Baby says she wants to learn everything she can from this experience, and Ru shoots back that “this is not really a school.” It’s a remarkably blunt exchange, and considering that Le Fil receives worse critiques than Baby from everyone else, it seems to be the chief reason why Baby lands in the bottom two.

Next to Baby in the lip sync is Sminty Drop, who is the one out-and-out disaster of the week. She just doesn’t do anything in the third sketch, “The Catfish Is Out of the Bag,” as the catfisher in question. That leaves it to Peppa and Jonbers Blonde to do all the heavy lifting, which they do to modest success. (Peppa’s incomprehensible character is hilarious, but more for her characterization than any particular jokes.) 

On the runway, in a hair-focused category called “The Mane Event,” Sminty does look gorgeous as a moth. But Sminty is always going to look gorgeous. Drag Race, and Drag Race UK in particular, really requires the ability to perform. Krystal Versace may have been a look queen, but she showed from the very first Lip Sync for the Win that she could keep up with the rest of her cast when the music came on and she needed to put on a show. Sminty, fun as she is, has not demonstrated that she can do that.

So it’s Baby vs. Sminty to stay, and when “Respectable” by Mel & Kim comes on, there’s no real doubt as to who’s going to win. Baby promptly removes the Grace Jones-inspired runway look that Ru didn’t like, and moves around the stage nearly naked. She shakes her ass with ferocious energy, and she dances the hell out of the song. Sminty doesn’t embarrass herself, but there’s just not a debate here. Baby stays, and Sminty sashays away.

Still, I don’t have a lot of hope for Baby’s longevity in the competition. Ru seems uninterested, and, as he reminds us every week, the final decisions are his to make. Tia managed to stay around despite disappointing Ru week in and week out because of sterling runway banter—Ru saw something he wanted to get more of from her. The fact that he so quickly shut down Baby makes me concerned that it’ll take just one not-so-great lip sync for him to send her home.

I think that’d be a tremendous bummer; this is a great cast, but Baby is one of the few (alongside Dakota and Peppa) who has demonstrated something new this season versus what we’ve gotten in the past three. I find myself more excited by Baby than I am by queens whose style of drag we’ve seen a lot on Drag Race UK. I do think, for this franchise to continue to be successful, it needs to find ways to reward other styles of British drag. More Choriza Mays, more Asttina Mandellas, more Babys. If UK Season 4 ends looking much like the first three did, I think it’ll be to the detriment of the series. 

This is a diverse, compelling, interesting cast. Let’s see results that reflect how multiple kinds of drag are worthy of reward.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ “I’m really gonna miss Ginger,” Peppa says about Copper Topp. The other queens have appropriately hilarious reactions.

✨ Jonbers is getting some shades of a Valentina-esque delusional edit, what with her declaring that her look that nearly landed her in the bottom last week “is fashion.” Okay!

✨ Alison Hammond is our guest judge this week. She’s an actress and TV presenter in the UK, but was first known for being an early boot on an early season of Big Brother. Imagine if the early boots on our North American Big Brother seasons went on to become famous! (Well, there is Nick Uhas from Big Brother 15, who now hosts Blown Away. But he’s the exception!) Anyway, Alison is sweet and energetic, but she’s yet another guest judge who just doesn’t give the queens negative feedback during critiques. I miss the days of Kristen Johnston and Padma Lakshmi!

✨ The mini-challenge this week is a Musical Chairs-style task called “Line of Booty Duty,” which is really just a way to get the queens to play Musical Chairs while wearing overly padded butts. Danny, Cheddar and Dakota all go out early, while Pixie and Sminty are the ones who make it to the end. Pixie ultimately edges Sminty out, and gets to pick her team for the challenge in the process—perhaps unintentionally sealing her chance at a win away by choosing to work with Danny.

✨ Multiple comments in the workroom indicate this group is tired of group tasks. “We have to work in teams again,” Sminty says in confessional. “It’s starting to feel like All Stars 1 up in here.” 

✨ I’ve given this group a lot of props for more natural workroom conversations than we saw in UK Season 3, but we’re starting to get a lot of them per episode. Like in this one, while discussing the big hair runway, we get three separate conversations about the importance of hair to each queen. They’re great discussions! Hearing Peppa open up about the ways in which she sees her hair as a core part of her identity is particularly insightful. But I do wonder if there’s a better way to pace them so the value of them isn’t lost by hearing them back-to-back-to-back.

✨ Le Fil gives us an all-time great gasp upon being declared safe. He’s not getting much storyline focus, but I really do find myself most interested in what he’s doing every week—despite the hiccup in the challenge this week.

✨ Kinda surprising we’re not getting Snatch Game next week, yeah? Usually eight is as low as a Snatch Game panel will go in a regular season. Almost makes me wonder if a double shantay or returning queen twist might be on the horizon. There is time in the schedule for one, after all.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will be available to stream on Thursday, Oct. 20, at 4 p.m. EDT on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.