‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 7, Episode 5: Out of Her Shell
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The comedy challenge has always been a difficult one for RuPaul’s Drag Race. At the end of the day, it’s stand-up comedy. How many different ways can you go with that? The show did it as a straight-up stand-up challenge in seasons 3, 6, and All Stars 1 and 2. It did roasts in seasons 5, 9, and All Stars 4, the latter framed as a funeral. Several seasons, they skipped it entirely.
And in three cases, Drag Race has tried something entirely different for the comedy challenge. In season 4, a political take flopped hard, as RuPaul and guest judge Dan Savage blurred the line on whether the task was comedic or serious. Season 11 saw a magic show-themed challenge, one which half the queens killed and the rest fumbled. And season 7 presented perhaps the oddest take of all: an awards show, filled with host and presenter banter.
Great awards show comedy is pretty rare. There’s a reason we all still talk about Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig’s iconic Golden Globes bit: it was a bright light in a dark medium. So asking these queens to produce good comedy in this format feels like setting them up for failure. I’d argue only one team actually gets it right — and they’re not even the team that wins.
The big story of this episode is Pearl’s battle to come out of her shell. Only, Pearl doesn’t seem particularly invested in that battle? From her perspective, everyone back home thinks she’s sickening, and if the judges don’t see that, what can she do? At the start of the episode, she’s all but given up, much to the annoyance of Katya and Mrs. Kasha Davis.
Then, during his workroom walk-around, Ru gets testy with a resistant Pearl, who is clearly still bruised after her off-camera altercation with the host. Pearl takes everything Ru says as an insult — which, to her credit, most are pretty pointed — while Ru seems to think tough love is the way to go with the young queen. He even says his goal is to “light a fire under [her] ass,” and insists that he sees something special in Pearl, and “that’s why I brought [her] ass here.” To say this bit plays a lot shallower after “Nothing you say matters unless that camera is rolling” is the understatement of the decade.
Honestly, I think Ru recognizes everything he generalizes and hates about Millennials in Pearl, and thinks he’s here to save her from her laziness and entitlement. Pearl, on the other hand, is remarkably unwilling to play the game, which gives us the infamous “Do I have something on my face?” bit. (For my money, Pearl’s partner Max gets away with the funnier line: “I feel very uncomfortable right now.”)
Is RuPaul a dick in this episode, and generally in this arc with Pearl? Absolutely. But at the same time, nothing was obligating him to keep Pearl around. It’s clear they’re trying to replicate the Adore Delano arc from season 6 with Pearl, who just so happened to be a cute white boy for the younger female and mid-twenties gay male fanbases to fawn over as well. So instead of letting her go, we’re stuck with her.
And I’ll admit it: If she’s gonna stick around, I’d rather see Pearl recognize the value of this opportunity and play the game than be sour. It may be unfair, but I do hold Pearl somewhat accountable for how unpleasant she is to watch this season.
Ru throws Pearl a major lifeline and gives she and Max the win this week, for a routine that I’d consider decent at best. But Pearl finally gets the memo and plays the game, “thanking” Ru for kicking her ass into shape. That’s all Ru wants: to be acknowledged as savior for these younger queens. (If you think that’s … a lot, trust that I agree with you!)
Pearl and Max’s scripted win comes at the cost of Kennedy Davenport and Jaidynn Diore Fierce, who absolutely smash this challenge. They turn a tired “we look like the number 10” joke into a gag about an hourglass and a wall clock that mixes both Jaidynn’s physical humor with Kennedy’s aces comic timing, and it kills. They’re the presenters who seem to be having the most fun, and basically every bit lands. Most impressively, they don’t just turn the challenge into a roast, as most of the other queens do. Their banter actually sounds like awards show banter. And their little bits of roasting are quite funny; I quote Jaidynn’s “Since when did the dollar store become a brand?!” re: Miss Fame all too frequently.
I truly can’t believe I’m sitting here arguing to you all that Jaidynn Diore Fierce deserved to win two challenges on season 7, but: JAIDYNN DIORE FIERCE DESERVED TO WIN TWO CHALLENGES. That’s insane, and speaks to both the undervaluing of Jaidynn and the mismatch of cast to challenges.
Speaking of: Basically everyone else manages just OK on this task. Ginger Minj is actually great, but is significantly hampered by Kandy Ho’s terrible line deliveries. Meanwhile, Katya and Mrs. Kasha Davis go for an Amy Poehler and Tina Fey bit as hosts, and are hampered by the edit. I don’t think they were great, necessarily, but the show feels decidedly against them.
There’s also a bit involving voting on different categories and acceptance speeches from the winners, but it mostly just annoys me. Why should the award winners get an extra chance to impress that the others don’t? It feels tacked-on and arbitrary. But the two members of our last team do win, and what they do with their speeches indicates the wide gulf in quality between them. (Though no speech is better than Katya’s for Meatiest Tuck, in which she fake-quotes painter Bob Ross on swollen vaginas. Iconic.)
Miss Fame takes the Sexy, Sexy Drag Queen award home, and makes a great joke about a tapeworm she got in Mexico giving her her body. She sounds warm and fun throughout the speech, in stark contrast to her partner Violet Chachki. Her “You really don’t like me!” Sally Field riff is fun, but her performance feels over-the-top in a bad way. There’s an iciness about Violet that comes through in these performance challenges — a remove from actually getting into character that’s off-putting to watch. Both are rough in their awards show banter, but Fame is just more beguiling.
The bottom three is mostly correct, with Violet, Kasha, and Kandy all scoring low. I’d personally have put Violet in the bottom two over Kasha, though, and I can’t believe I’m saying that. I adore Violet, but this episode is easily her worst performance of the season to me. When you’re getting outshined in a comedy challenge by MISS FAME, something’s gone wrong.
But this is not the episode for Violet to fall into the bottom, narratively. Fame insists while they’re working together that she’s seeing a different side of Violet, which is the start of a new edit for the future winner. Meanwhile, despite being better this week, this is actually the beginning of the end for Fame; she misses Ru’s “How’s your head?” joke, in what will become a running gag for the mid-season. (Unrelated, but this is also the episode where Fame talks about loving chickens, and it is fucking adorable.)
Violet and Fame represent two sides of the same coin in many ways. They are the two fashion girls of the season, but one was just a bit more cutthroat. In a competition like this, that’s actually valuable. But the fact that both have been hugely successful off the show is yet another indication that Drag Race is not real life.
Anyway, Kasha and Kandy lip sync, it’s mediocre, and Kasha goes home. It’s bullshit, sure, but I can’t really get that passionate about it. Trixie’s elimination was far more unfair, and I don’t think Kasha really had the ability to go all the way in this competition.
What does annoy me is how heavy-handed the production manipulation is this season. I came into this rewatch ready to reevaluate my feelings on this season, but based on the story editing, I’d have to say it’s actually worse than I remember. At least the excellent Snatch Game is only … two episodes away?! Geez. Well, see y’all next week for another damn acting challenge.
Since when did Final Thoughts become a brand?
- The mini-challenge is a fun idea, tasking the queens with making paper versions of iconic red carpet looks. Katya and Kasha win for their take on Björk — a foreshadowing of All Stars 2’s Snatch Game! But what really sells it is Kasha’s Joan Rivers impersonation to hype the look up.
- Kathy Griffin returns after her premiere guest judging spot to workshop the queens’ jokes with them. She’s pretty impressive, too, aggressively throwing out what doesn’t work and challenging the girls to do something more innovative. Quickly but pointedly calling out Kandy for using a Roseanne Cash joke is my favorite part.
- I want to take a second to talk about Katya’s confessionals, which have not yet settled into their iconic groove. A lot of them sound like the producers feeding her lines, and her deliveries are off. “This is a fucking travesty!” is not something Katya would yell about Trixie Mattel being eliminated. She’d make a weird joke or come up with some conspiracy theory about why. I think the crew didn’t know what they had with Katya until later in the game.
- “I’m not actually that young, I’m just ignorant.” See? Katya is so much funnier when you just let her be Katya.
- Nothing annoys me more on Drag Race than anticlimactic cliffhangers like Pearl leaving the workroom. Of course she wasn’t going to quit, don’t be melodramatic.
- Had never caught this before, but I thought it interesting that Pearl says she’s willing to “bow out gracefully” if she and Max don’t do well in the challenge. Sounds like she was willing to fall on the sword for her partner. I’m sure Trixie would’ve appreciated the same!
- Did a guest judge cancel? I can’t imagine Isaac Mizrahi demanded to be the only one on the panel or something. As for him, I find him as obnoxious and incorrect as I did every time I watched Project Runway All Stars, which is to say very.
- This is one of Ru’s funniest episodes as a host, from cackling at the idea of him doing a death drop to “Bring back my … GEHLS?” Ru didn’t win the Emmy for Best Reality Host for this season, but he deserved it for this installment alone.
The next Drag Race Rewind recap, covering season 7, episode 5, will be available to Patreon subscribers next Thursday, July 18. If you’re jonesing for more from this episode, watch the corresponding Untucked below!
