Along with pushing the boundaries of what good Drag Race can be, the all-winners season of Drag Race All Stars has been pushing the boundaries of a lip-sync. Remember the first episode, when Shea and Monét lip-synched to freakin’ “Old MacDonaldâ€? Well, that’s got nothing on this week’s. (If you somehow missed the headline, the spoilers start here — go watch the episode, gurl!) After getting a chance to show off their moves during this week’s TikTok dance choreography challenge, top-two queens Jinkx Monsoon and Monét X Change get a different sort of challenge in their Lip Sync For Your Legacy: a monologue. RuPaul brought the drama, literally, by having the queens do a spoken-word performance of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,†a speech by Dixie Carter’s Julia Sugarbaker from beloved late ‘80s sitcom Designing Women. Move over, “Same Parts.â€
Fourteen years in, it’s a rare first still left in Drag Race herstory. (Though surely not in drag history.) And if there were any two queens ready for this job, they were resident funny gals Jinkx and Monét. Jinkx performs like she had this monologue memorized long before the show, deftly removing a pair of sunglasses early in to show us how crazy her eyes can get. But it’s Monét, in her best yellow executive realness, who makes the monologue her own. Between gesturing to herself on the word “congeniality,†fanning her pussy when she lip-synched “on fire,†and moving her arms so damn much she was nearly voguing to 1986 TV scene, she had it in the bag. The look back for the last line? A cherry on top. Monét got her first lip-sync win of the season, savoring the moment before blocking Raja. (Schwah schwah schwah.)
But that lip-sync — innovative, hilarious, never seen anything like it! The queens were gagged, RuPaul was living, and surely all your sisters have an opinion about it. Let’s get a Real Housewives speech in the final Lip-Sync Smackdown, okurr?