‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 10, Episode 5: Man! I Feel Bossy Rossy
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Improv challenges not called “Snatch Game” (and sometimes even the Snatch Games!) have a sketchy track record on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Asking queens to be witty and clever off the cuff isn’t an absurd ask on the part of the show; RuPaul has always valued that spirit of putting on your game face and rolling with the punches. It’s the reason why Snatch Game has endured as the marquee challenge of the series, despite celebrity impersonation not being a common drag skill.
But the semi-scripted improv challenges, in which queens are given a framework and expected to make it work in teams, have ranged from the incredibly successful (The Bitchelor) to the mediocre (World’s Worst) to the all over the place (Jersey Justice). Bossy Rossy sits on the higher end of the spectrum, largely thanks to its premise: what if Ross Mathews hosted a Maury-style daytime TV show? It’s absurd, it’s insane, but on the whole, it actually works.
The return of the challenge, Rossy Ruboot, in season 13 didn’t quite go as far, but it was enjoyable enough. There was a magic missing from it, though, largely thanks to the lack of live audience. The queens in this challenge really feed off the audience’s energy as they scream, laugh, and gasp along to the many developments in their skits’ storylines. The best among them give intense, committed performances, and one queen pulls off a major comeback.
The episode starts with Asia O’Hara still smarting from her main stage critiques in the previous episode. Despite her sisters backing her up on the runway that she helped all of them, she’s upset that none of them helped her. Miz Cracker in particular balks at this, saying Asia’s help was a gift she should’ve given without expecting anything in return.
Indeed, it’s clear Asia instead sees it as an act of sisterhood, one she wants all the other queens to engage in. But this is a competition, and the idea that these queens are going to sacrifice of themselves to help each other is just Pollyanna-ish. “Asia’s saying the competition shouldn’t outweigh sisterhood,” The Vixen says in a confessional. “Girl, do you know there’s $100,000 on the line?”
The Vixen has to work with her sister in pretty short order, though, as she chooses Asia as her partner for the maxi-challenge after winning the mini. (If you think it’s strange that she went from questioning Asia’s game plan to working with her, remember that as an odd-numbered episode, this likely shot on a Monday — after having a full weekend to process things from the last installment.) They choose to loosely impersonate Aquaria and Miz Cracker in a skit about one girl being obsessed with the other, but their lack of communication and rehearsal drags the whole thing down.
In confessional, The Vixen insists that Asia is missing all kinds of cues, a claim she repeats on the runway. Unfortunately, Vix has problems other than some dropped jokes, like breaking character to laugh at something Ross says almost immediately. In a presage of their Snatch Game performances, Vix and Asia drop the ball here, with Vix scoring low for the challenge.
Joining her in the low group is Mayhem Miller, who struggles once again to stand out in a performance challenge. Her and Cracker’s skit is about a woman who is terrified of pickles (Mayhem), and the doctor attempting to break her of her aversion (Cracker). The big reveal is that Cracker, aka Dr. Dill, actually is a pickle, and despite a slow start, Cracker really pulls it off. Not sure if I’d have personally put her in the top three, but the judges do, while Mayhem’s lack of pizazz in the challenge puts her in the lip sync once again.
Joining Cracker in the top is Monique Heart, who really stands out in her and Blair St. Clair’s performance. She’s the other woman to Blair’s cactus husband, and she has so many small bits of comedy that enhance her performance. Even turning their comedic “safe word,” “Vanjie,” into a joke works for them. Theirs is the most high-octane skit, and I think Monique deserves the win for it.
But despite Vixen trying to set Aquaria and Eureka up as a team to fail, the future top two (or two of the top three, apologies Kameron Michaels — who does well this challenge!) are the big winners, with Eureka taking the win. They both play sexy babies, which is high-key upsetting, but they commit to the bit admirably. Eureka once again leans into her Eureka-isms, which delight the judges. It’s a good performance, but it’s a bit less intentionally funny than Monique’s. Eureka is a charismatic, funny person, but Monique, who is also those things, also really builds a character.
This win is a pretty clear sign of the arc the show is building for Eureka: in her head Week 2, and haunted by what happened last season, she has to learn to embrace what makes her unique and special. It’s no coincidence she wins on Week 5, when she was sent home on Week 5 the previous season. We’ll get more into it as the season presses on, but I do believe, at least on set (if not in the edit), there was some hope that Eureka might be able to be the winner of this season.
After fully flopping in her skit with Kameron, Monét X Change is the other member of the bottom two. Michelle Visage actually calls out that Monét is hitting a wall, and it reminds me of Raven in season 2 in a way. Like Rave, Monét is clearly a main character and a strong queen, but she just falters on early challenges and has to rely on her lip-syncing ability.
There are a lot of parallels to season 2 in this season, including between Mayhem and her sister Morgan McMichaels. Both win the first challenge of the season, but then go out Week 5 after their second lip sync. Because indeed, to a closer-than-I-remembered lip sync to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” Monét does beat Mayhem, sending the queen of the party out in 10th place.
Again, not the best improv challenge ever, but Bossy Rossy is a solid installment of Drag Race, and keeps season 10’s hot streak alive. We’re still very much in the good half of the season at this point, but things will soon enough be taking a decidedly different direction…
Final Thoughts are cheating on you with a cactus:
- There’s an army drag mini-challenge in here that mostly mocks the military in execution, but seems weirdly reverent in concept. The Vixen deservedly wins for a very funny take, and promptly uses the power to pick the teams to give everyone a solid partner except Aquaria and Eureka. Unfortunately, that backfires on her!
- Carrie Preston and Shania Twain are your guest judges this week, and while Carrie is game and invested, Shania is a big disappointment. I recall there being a lot of excitement about her in the lead-up to this, and so it’s a bummer to see her so uninterested. (Her response to Kameron’s heartfelt tribute to her is… respectful, at best.) Shortly after this, an interview came out in which Shania said she would have voted for Donald Trump, which only made the response to her on Drag Race even worse. Not a great era for Shania!
- The queens all gasp when RuPaul introduces Carrie as “from Claws.” A lot of TNT watchers in this group!
- The mirror moments between Eureka and Vixen are actually great, as they both open up about the experiences that made them the people they are, and Mayhem helps facilitate a temporary truce. “My damage next to Eureka’s damage doesn’t mix well,” Vixen says, which feels brutally honest in a way these kinds of moments rarely are. Unfortunately, Eureka trying to get some kind of physical confirmation of them being good and Vix rejecting it is a sign that this story isn’t over, but in this one moment, it feels like some kind of progress.
- Carson Kressley being the rotating judge when Ross is on set for Bossy Rossy strikes me as odd!
- “Brown cow! Stunning!” A meme is born.
The next Drag Race Rewind recap, covering season 10, episode 6, will be available to Patreon subscribers next Tuesday, June 22.
