For a series with “versus” in the title, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Versus The World appropriately feels like two shows locked in battle. On one side, you have maybe the most cutthroat, strategic version of the traditional All Stars season format that we’ve ever seen. On the other, you have a show about queens who are so honoured to be competing among legends—and so overjoyed to just be in RuPaul’s presence.
On their own, each of these shows is interesting. The cold open this week sees the queens reading each other for their game decisions: Holland’s Janey Jacké questions why Canada’s Jimbo would’ve saved Lemon over her, ascribing her motives to be purely about alliances. Northern Ireland’s Blu Hydrangea, on the other hand, thinks that Jimbo threw her lip sync last week against Thailand’s Pangina Heals to avoid making an elimination decision. (Blu helpfully refers to Jimbo’s lip sync as “a little hokey-pokey at times.”) This has some of the other girls in stitches—Pangina and the U.K.’s Baga Chipz cackle, while the United States’ Monique Heart practically sinks into the ground—giving the season a truly competitive, shady air.
But once that cold open is over after one more bit of shade from Monique to Janey (describing her look from the talent show as “drag brunch… not even drag brunch, like, ‘my first time in drag’”), Janey says she respects Monique for being honest. And that kicks off a whole other show, in which these queens are ultimately professionals who respect each other. There are emotional connections over shared experiences, and one queen devotes much of her workroom time to helping another just so she won’t look bad on the runway.
Theoretically, these two shows could mesh. But in practice, they feel discordant; story beats developed in the workroom don’t pay off when we get into mini-Untucked for deliberations. If Jimbo loves American Drag Race legend Jujubee, why must Jimbo suddenly seem neutral when weighing her fate against Essex queen Cheryl Hole? (Is this related to what Jimbo and her Canadian sister Lemon discussed at a viewing party last week—that the producers insisted Jimbo sound more neutral than she wanted to about her Janey versus Lemon decision?)
Whatever the reason, the result is a show that doesn’t connect the dots, and thus neither half of the series can feel whole.
Credit: Courtesy BBC 3
As has become customary on Drag Race, we get a very early ball challenge this season: the RuPaul Ball. Cutely, each category is named after one of Ru’s songs. We’ve got “Kitty Girl,” a cat look runway that should be very familiar to Monique from All Stars 4. Then there’s “Butch Queen,” inspired by a frequent ballroom category. And finally, for the create-your-own-look category, there’s “U Wear It Well”—and there’s an interesting wrinkle this time. The queens must create looks that Ru himself would wear.
Instantly, you can tell who’s not going to be well-suited for this challenge. (And I’m not just talking about Cheryl slicing her finger open with a pair of scissors not a minute into the task.) Baga repeatedly declares herself above the task of designing and creating her own garment, noting that she’s far too famous for that now. I gotta say, I assumed that Baga was doing a running bit about being a wildly famous Brit this season but this episode makes it pretty clear she’s not joking! In a particularly egregious moment, while Ru is in the workroom, Baga lays back with sunglasses on, as if to take a nap.
Frustratingly, Baga is not made to face any consequences for this because Pangina helps her create a garment. The edit is somewhat dubious about what happens here: Pangina never out-and-out says she’s doing it all, but she jokes in a confessional, “I feel like today we’re producing the spring collection of the Pangina Heals line.” She doesn’t want anyone to look bad on the runway, which is a noble gesture, and feels like a bit of her host side coming out. But it’s maddening to hear Baga repeatedly declare how hard she worked on her dress when every bit of footage points to Pangina doing an incredible amount of work on it. The other queens refer to Pangina as Baga’s “seamstress,” underlining that they’re pretty sure Pangina’s doing all the work, too.
Someone who does her own sewing is Blu, who alongside Baga is called safe this week. Blu gets perhaps my favourite bit of this week’s episode, opening up in a conversation with Cheryl and Jujubee about her struggle with feeling like enough as her own identity, not just as Blu. In fact, she notes, she’s experienced gender dysphoria over feeling much more confident in drag than out of it, to the point of thinking she was transgender in the past. It’s a remarkably frank, emotional conversation, and it makes me happy to see Blu connecting with her sisters in such a real way.
Credit: Courtesy BBC 3
That conversation starts when Cheryl and Blu gush over Juju, as Blu notes the first season of Drag Race she ever watched was Season 2, Juju’s original season. I like this mode of Jujubee as the confident veteran: it’s a side we saw a bit of in All Stars 5 as well, but a lot of those queens were her contemporaries. She is the legend of this crop, having appeared on Drag Race many years before any of them did. You get the sense that a queen like Blu is truly starstruck to be competing next to Juju.
Unfortunately, Juju is not performing at the expected level this season, and both Ru and Michelle Visage call her out for not having truly “shown up” yet. A great number of fans think she should’ve gone home last week, and while I don’t ultimately agree, I do think a low-scoring placement would’ve been fair. This week, however, there’s really no argument: Jujubee bombs this challenge, and she does so in lazy fashion. She describes her Butch Queen category look as exploring “the idea that masculinity could be beautiful and delicate,” which is a very flowery way of saying “it does not match the category.” Same goes for her Kitty Girl look, which is egregiously simple for someone whose brand was largely built around her cats in All Stars 5.
Her final look is something Ru himself would wear, as the host admits, but the construction is poor. That gives her a leg up over Cheryl, whose look is a mess both in concept and execution, but only in that category. Cheryl doesn’t set the world on fire in her others, but there’s more thought behind her Aristocats-inspired Kitty Girl look and a motorbike rider jumpsuit rendered in a Tina Burner-esque flame colour palette. They’re the definite bottom two, but I think there’s a substantial gulf between them.
On the other side of the coin are Jimbo and Janey, who are the top two of the week. Jimbo is the clear standout for me, as she turns out a colourful liger look for the Kitty Girl category and biker “realness” (which isn’t real, but is still fabulous) for her Butch Queen look. Where she really shines is in the U Wear It Well category, where she takes a lesson from her Canada’s Drag Race critiques and keeps it simple. She nails RuPaul in her look, but filters her through a decidedly Jimbo lens. Janey’s Ru look is a bit more flattering, I’ll say, and is the one I could most easily see Ru wearing. (Her other looks, a Queen Bastet outfit for Kitty Girl and a prisoner look for Butch Queen, are less impressive, but still solid.) But both ultimately get the final category right in their own ways, and Ru declares them the victors.
Pangina and Monique both get compliments on their looks, and like guest judge Daisy May Cooper, I absolutely love Pangina rendering Butch Queen as a hunting Queen Elizabeth. But both of their final looks are read for being somewhat incomplete, and so both ultimately score safe. So it’s up to Jimbo and Janey to Lip Sync for the World—but only after deliberations.
Credit: Courtesy BBC 3
Things get very strategic during deliberations, which feels like the show changing its tone once again. Monique accuses Jujubee of strategically underplaying these first couple of episodes, which Juju brushes off (but, notably, does not outright deny). Jimbo gets promises of safety from both Cheryl and Juju in an effort to maintain her spot in the game moving forward. And Janey, who was on the other side of this same conversation a week ago, seems to want to hear the bottom two dolls fight for their place to stay.
Jujubee pulls out Valentina’s “beat the best” speech from All Stars 4, and I’m as weary of it now as I was back then. Listen, it’s like Heidi N Closet said on The Pit Stop during All Stars 6: if you are sending the best home, you are beating the best! That’s literally the definition of it! And more to the point, I would argue Jujubee’s performance so far does not register as “the best.” I think the more compelling argument to keep Jujubee is to weaken any potential U.K. alliance by eliminating Cheryl. Much as I love the self-described queen of being mediocre, considering Jimbo just tried to vote along national alliance lines, having three queens from the same country—much less season—is a dangerous gambit.
Janey and Jimbo lip sync to what is perhaps the worst remix of “Supermodel (You Better Work)” ever recorded, and honestly, flip a coin on which is better. Jimbo goes campier, and I probably enjoy her performance more, but Janey’s is the more technically proficient. In the end, Ru goes with Janey, who ultimately decides to send Cheryl home. For what reason, we do not yet know, but I have to assume it’ll ruffle some feathers to have sent someone still trying to prove herself home over a veteran who seems, at best, resigned to being on the show once again.
And here’s the rub: if the show had threaded the needle between how these queens think about Jujubee as a role model and their unwillingness to eliminate her, that would be compelling TV! That would link the two halves of the show together! But as soon as deliberations begin, Juju’s history on Drag Race is no longer impressive. Now she’s the one who’s been on Drag Race too many times. And if you gave us a Cheryl confessional explaining that she changed the narrative for strategic reasons, that’d be great. Unfortunately, without something linking them, it just feels like the people we see in the workroom have no relation to the queens fighting to stay.
UK Versus The World still has potential, and I enjoyed watching this week’s instalment more than the last. But I think it’s got a long way to go to living up to what the first-ever international All Stars season should be—and that starts with deciding what kind of show it wants to be.
Untucking our final thoughts:
✨Up and Down: Jimbo’s feeling like a strong frontrunner, no? You do have to wonder if another queen will take a chance to cut someone if they’ve previously done too well, but judging by Cheryl’s explanation, I don’t believe we’ve got any Naomi Smalls-eliminating-Manila Luzon decisions coming up. (Although I would be absolutely delighted to see a queen shake the table like that.) Otherwise, everyone seems mostly in the same lane, with Jujubee perhaps a bit behind the pack.
✨One note about challenge placements this season: I pretty clearly read Baga as having placed “low” last week, but the show’s fan wiki places her as “high.” The same goes for this week, as Monique is rated “high” despite some mixed critiques. (You can understand why Wikipedia proper ultimately abandoned these placements on their charts.) I’ll avoid referring to anyone as “high” or “low” this season, since the critiques seem to be inconsistent. (It’s been much clearer on Season 14, so I’ll continue to refer to them in those recaps and rankings.)
✨Kudos must be paid to Monique for an absolutely stunning Butch Queen look. She nails the prompt, totally transforms her look, and gets breathless praise from the judges. The lavender handkerchief alone is such a perfect detail. If her final look weren’t so messy, I could’ve easily seen Monique in the top this week.
✨I’m pretty astonished Baga just gets waved to safety this week, and I almost wonder if Ru did so knowing there was no way he could’ve justified keeping her out of the bottom if given full critiques. Her final look, despite Pangina’s best efforts, is still really weak, and while I like her Kitty Girl look, her “GI Hoe” Butch Queen entry is among my least favourites in that category. The judging seems pretty kid-gloves to Baga so far, but the edit is much less kind. I wonder if we could really be heading toward a Baga win this season based on what we’ve seen so far.
✨I admit, I wasn’t familiar with Daisy May Cooper before this episode, but I cannot wait to seek out more of the actress’ work. She’s an absolute laugh riot as a guest judge, and delightfully raunchy. Her own shock at some of her wildest lines (“I have kids!”) is perfect.
✨If there’s any doubt that Jimbo is playing this season perfectly, let it be known that her literally crying over getting to talk with RuPaul is a stroke of genius. It may entirely be her genuine emotional reaction, but it can never hurt to fawn over RuPaul on RuPaul’s Drag Race. (Remember Shea Couleé’s All Stars 5 speech?)
✨Just based on the workroom conversations, I feel like Ru’s personal favourites this season are Baga, Jimbo and Jujubee. That doesn’t mean others can’t charm her—see Janey’s particularly funny interaction with Ru below—but I do think those three have a natural leg up.
✨ JANEY: “Would you mind letting me win today?”
RU: “I’ll think about it.”
JANEY: “Just remember I asked first.”
The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Versus The World will be available to stream Tuesday, Feb. 15, at 4 p.m. EST on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and Crave in Canada, as well as on BBC Three in the United Kingdom. For other countries, check World of Wonder’s streaming guide.
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