Drag Race Recaps: Week 2
By Matty Slick-Haxx
With ever-present questions about the future continually running through everyone’s head, it was cute when RuPaul decided to take a futuristic approach to this week’s episode of Drag Race. The episode started off with the queens all entering the “sweatshop” to discover Venus D-Lite’s departing words scrawled on a mirror in lipstick: “Don’t be shady, be a lady.” This is probably one of the most crucial pieces of advice these queens could get.
The mini-competition of the week tested the girly-boys’ “psychic abilities.” They all failed miserably. Phoenix and Mariah managed to scrape by better than the rest and were allowed to pick the teams for the next challenge.
Now, queens may be talented in many different areas, but acting usually isn’t one of them. That is exactly what was thrust upon them this week; make a trailer for the faux-film Drag Queen in Outer Space: Earth to Uranus and the sequel Back to Uranus. It was beautifully tragic, with many a Gag-worthy and Frowny-friendly moment.
Gag-Worthy
This episode was chock-full of fake tits! For those of you who aren’t familiar with a breast plate, it’s a contraption made of silicon that ends up looking like Goliath shaved his balls and draped them around a queen’s shoulders.
Raja rocked a 3-D plexi-glass “WORK” ball cap the first ten minutes of the show.
Delta Work showed us another side of herself this episode. She wouldn’t play into sympathy games and really showed how serious she was about this competition.
The set of From Earth to Uranus was very well constructed and looked even better when adorned with these divas, especially Phoenix’s team.
The twins were adorable, in both casts.
When presented with the runway, most of the ladies really pulled it off. My personal favorites were Phoenix, Shangela (I know, I was shocked too!) and, of course, Miss Raja.
Ru’s dress was made of “pussy willows.” Enough said.
LILY TOMLIN!
Contest judges told Mimi to take it down a notch. How did she reply? She screamed, in attempted vibrato, her next lines.
Frowny Face
Delta Work’s tits for the movie trailer were just padding and looked almost clownish. I am pretty sure I saw a suit buy a pair just like them at Duane Reade last Halloween.
For the futuristic contest, Mimi looked like she had sock puppets on her face meshed with the midnight showing of Rocky Horror.
There were quite a few tragic runway moments this episode: Yara’s terrible attempt at Gaga’s “Bad Romance”/Alexander McQueen get up; Stacey Lane Matthew looked like the Michelin Man meets Studio 54; Delta was just sloppy; Manila, Grace Jones did it first, it was revamped by Gaga and guess what, they did it better; Phoenix had part of her dress connected around her calves, making her look like she was squatting and forgot to pull up her tights.
Lily Tomlin didn’t really speak. I mean I know she is old, but can we get a complete sentence next time?
When it came down to it Mimi was safe, India is oddly giving me Logan Hardcore, all while Shangela and Alexis ran home with fake boobies. Good job, ladies. The two bottoms this week were Phoenix and Delta Work, who were forced to lip-synch for their lives! Now, Phoenix had all the right cards in her hand. She was dressed like a tranny-borg from Star Trek, and her cheap Gaga knock-offs would have helped kill the song “Bad Romance” if she hadn’t taken them off before the song even began. Delta gave a very nervous but also very passionate performance. It wasn’t really hard to guess the final verdict: Phoenix just didn’t bring her all in any of this episode’s competitions. Delta really fought to stay, while Phoenix seemed to give up halfway through.
Phoenix bid her bitter farewell and Delta made it through to next week’s show. I’m okay with this. I think the only thing that could make this better is if someone got punched. Tranny fight. Win. Until then!
