My three favorite words on any season of Drag Race are “It’s Snatch Game!†It is a little weird in England, though, where Match Game, the game show that the challenge is based on, is called Blankety Blank, but whatever. I have come to hate the Rusical, but I feel the opposite about Snatch Game. It is the show’s signature challenge, one that is exactly the same every time it happens, and one that everyone knows they better be prepared for. It really separates the gender-nonconforming young people from the gender-nonconforming adults, since we don’t say the “men from the boys†anymore because we are not reductive.
However, the thing I hate about Snatch Game, particularly on Drag Race U.K., is when Ru meets with the queens in the work room to talk about their characters. This time she is joined by Snatch Game pro Baga Chipz to give the girls some advice. Wait, they’re supposed to take advice from Baga Chipz, who looks like she grabbed the first blazer she found on the floor next to her bed, plopped a wig on while she ran to the tube in the rain and then slapped her face on while riding the train? Did she forget this was going to be on television? Did she forget that she has world-tour money now?
But Baga’s less-than-stellar looks are not the reason I hate the workroom auditions. These girls have come with multiple costumes, multiple characters. They are prepared. Then Ru comes around and is like, “Naw, don’t do that. Do something else!†And if the girls don’t do something else then they are sunk and there is no way to battle back. I find this especially true in the U.K., ’cause if Ru doesn’t know the reference, she’s just like, “Do something else!†So when Danny Beard wants to do Louis Walsh (which is sort of like a U.S. queen wanting to do American Idol–era Paula Abdul) Ru is like “… Um, maybe not.â€
At least in the workroom and during the critiques Ru finally articulated to the queens what she’s been getting at all of these years: the characters need to have perspective. She tells the girls that if they give the character something they want it will give them a better narrative arc to play with.
Basically, what Ru is saying is just do a character, don’t try to be the exact replica of a character. You can see this in the two who were most successful at the challenge. We have no idea how Queen Elizabeth I sounded or acted. We sure know her looks, but based on how many different times we’ve seen her in the movies, she could be anything. Cheddar Gorgeous gave her that silly laugh, her lust for power, and her outrageous sluttiness. It’s funnier that it’s coming out of the (rotted) mouth of QE Original Recipe, but it could have been from anyone.
Ru convinces JB to not do Enya (which I think would have been hilarious) and instead do St. Patty, St. Patrick’s younger sister. JB just makes her this crazy, confused mashup of Irish stereotypes. St. Patty isn’t even a thing, but JB created a brand-new character and it really delivered. Look at Gigi Goode doing “Maria the Robotâ€. There is no preexisting IP but we didn’t need that to know that it was an amazing character that had a perspective and vehicles for comedy.
You can tell the people who were going to be bad at this based on who they selected. Peppa chose Lil Nas X, who just isn’t funny. Well, he could be if Peppa had decided to do something with him. But she looked like him, talked like him, tried to do him justice, but didn’t make up a personality for him. He was just a limp noodle when he should have been a nice, hard panini.
Same with Le Fil. Her Marie Kondo could have been anything — super-anal, super-sloppy, a giant bitch — and it could have been funny. It’s not just enough to be the character, you have to do something with it. Pixie didn’t do anything with her Shirley Bassey, who just sort of repeated some of her famous catchphrases, but wasn’t the sort of insane diva that would be funny. He needed to go there with it.
That’s why I was impressed with Dakota, who I thought was going to bomb this challenge like she was giving Manhattan Project realness. She took her Pete Burns (who Ru actually knew, which makes it a double danger) and just made the character this sort of crazy caricature. That is what needs to happen. Also, my apologies to Dakota, who I count out every time there is an acting, comedy, or improv challenge, and every time she does better than I think she will. I can see Dakota sneaking her way right into the final if these bitches don’t catch on.
When it comes to the runway, the category is “Tickled Pink,†and once again Dakota is giving us pretty girl rather than drag. She just looks like a CoverGirl fashion shoot from an old Top Model episode in a Jem and the Holograms cast-off pink dress with an enormous cape. She is safe, but I wish she was on top to get a little bit more praise for her acting skills. But Danny Beard, who was also safe, needed someone to talk to backstage. Danny looked amazing with a pink catfish mustache and a silhouette that I like to call the Joan Crawford and is one of his favorites. It’s big shoulders, big tits, big hips, and a tiny, tiny little waist. All in pink and velvet with some Housewives reunion feathered sleeves and she could slay.
Cheddar turns the corner in an outfit inspired by the pink triangle, which was used to denote homosexuals during the Holocaust and which ACT-UP repurposed for their Silence=Death protests. It’s so profoundly moving even the judges don’t make any jokes about it while she walks the runway. When I saw it I thought, This is a really good dress to win in, and, of course, she did.
The only other top for the week was JB, who came out with her skirt held high like there was going to be some giant reveal and she let it down and it was just … some feathers? The way she was grasping at that reveal, as guest judge Mel B says, you thought that the prime minister himself was going to roll out of there. Wait a minute. Do we even know who the PM is right now? Are we sure?
The bottoms were quite predictable, and I didn’t love any of their outfits either. Pixie Polite wore the pink Drag Race outfit that we’ve been seeing for years and Scary Spice was like, “I know that look! It’s Baby Spice from the Olympics.†She’s so certain she says it twice but like, um, no, sis. Get your references straight. RuPaul is so lovely she doesn’t even correct Mel B on her own show.
Peppa had a giant pink Marge Simpson wig that had candy floss (English-to-American translation: cotton candy) inside of it and that was really the only cool thing about this outfit that I really didn’t understand. The red-and-pink checkered top with the bulbous shoulders was a cool look, but read more red to me. The pants were like a laser-cut pink something but also didn’t read pink. The library was closed for Peppa.
I also didn’t care for Le Fil’s outfit, which was made out of a giant tent, and it showed. It’s like something you’d see in a design challenge where they had to make lewks out of the cast-offs of the producers’ Glastonbury campsites. The only thing that was working for me was the umbrella on her head. She should have come out in that while wearing a bikini and it would have been more exciting.
I got my wish when Le Fil stripped off her tent during the lip sync and we saw underneath she was wearing a bubble-gum-colored latex leotard with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider utility pockets lining her legs. She even pulled an impossibly long scarf out of there and at one point took her shoes off. Were there leaves inside her shoes? Was there money inside her shoes? Was there newspaper inside her shoes? Were there crazy smell-monsters created from her sweaty feet standing on that runway listening to blistering critiques for two hours? We’ll never know, but there was something.
Both Le Fil and Peppa gave amazing performances. As Le Fil was stripping, Peppa was giving us theatrics and dance moves all over the stage. In the end, we all knew it was Le Fil’s time. Peppa is going to wow us once more, but let’s hope that surviving Snatch Game gives her a little bit more confidence in her performance abilities.