‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ S6E3 Recap: I Feel Very Attacked (By This Season’s Excellence)
Well, the competition's over, Laganja just won 'All Stars 6'.
Put your lighter’s up, because Ganja is in the house — the hall of fame, specifically, because she just won All Stars 6.
Laganja is an eternal fixture on ‘dream All Stars cast’ YouTube lists, but has repeatedly turned down the offer, given how long it took her to recover from the mental anguish that S6 very clearly put her under. Appearing as the lip-sync assassin, though, is easy: it’s what she does best.
Seeing her pure joy as she performed this episode was infectious, and I’m so glad she got this moment to show her growth — and while that’s always the goal of an All Stars, this season seems to carry a real emotional weight to it. It’s hitting different from hearing, say, Blair St. Clair declair she has something to prove.
It’s not just the cast themselves, but the way the show’s framing everyone. No-one is a villain (yet), they all seem to support each other, and we’re learning, week-by-week, how much being on Drag Race has affected these queens, for better and worse, wrapped up in one.
Fame is a disease (see Vox Lux for more details), but Drag Race is the most obvious way forward for queens to achieve more in their career/art. It’s a real gamble going on the show, and I really appreciate that AS6‘s showing what happens when the bet doesn’t really pay off.
Which is why these eliminations are proving so sad, as these early outs are getting their redemption arcs cut short. It hurt to see Silky’s (suspiciously premature, if you ask me) exit, after an episode where we saw her recede into herself in fear of being labelled a show-boater or bossy by the fans, as in S11. She walked on eggshells throughout not just the challenge (letting her team over-whelm their commercial with scenes despite disagreeing) but in Untucked too, continously apologising for nothing.
Drag Race is at its worst when the queens self-censor or edit in fear of the fan reaction, and Silky’s felt particularly sad. On the plus side, her elimination really stressed her drive to stay: it bodes well for the game-within-a-game, whenever and whatever that is.
Between the emotional highs and lows was a spectacular episode, as the queens were put in teams to write a script for commercials for their side-hustles.
Gig Economy? I Hardly Even Work
No mini-challenge this week, as Ru tells the queens to line up shortest-to-tallest before splitting them into groups by size. Each group is given a prompt for their business, but given free rein with the commercial script, thank H.I.M..
The short kings are Ginger, A’Keria, Silky and Jan, overflowing with ideas for their drag queen escort service. The edit suggests there’s a little too much going on and Silky is aware of it, but takes a back seat. When it comes to recording, it’s A’Keria who struggles the most of the group, as she repeatedly fumbles her lines.
For once, the director (Michelle, in this instance) does the job right and offers a line edit to make it work. Maybe this more positive coaching always happens off-camera, but its inclusion in the show speaks to the generally more forgiving tone AS6 has so far. It’s nice.
Shout out to Jan playing Lance Bass trying to be straight at a funeral.
They end up being the bottom team of the week, which kind of makes sense: it wasn’t bad, but the other groups were more entertaining, even if Kylie, Eureka! and Scarlet’s commercial was more of a sketch. These tall queens promoted an exercise-based exorcism service, featuring Eureka!’s best Linda Blair impersonation.
It’s easy to forget how good she is in these acting challenges, but this season, she’s really reeled in the show-boating: she lets Kylie and Scarlet have their own moments. In another world, Kylie, who hasn’t really acted before, fades into the background as her two confident teammates run wild, but instead, they lift her up.
“Your mother’s frocks don’t fit so well” is such a meta-joke about Vivacious mispronouncing her lines in S6. Genius.
But it’s neither tall nor short queens who are given the top toot this week, in what can be only described as an act of radical defiance of the gay community’s obsession with men over six feet tall. Trinity, Yara, Ra’Jah and Pandora work really well together, though it’s pretty clear from the script that Pandora took the charge here.
Me watching the queens uplift and support each other :)
I get why TKB nabs the win, but I wish Pandora got a little more credit in the episode, as she’s the only queen who hasn’t really had a moment yet. It’s episode three, but it doesn’t bode well — either does her frustration on Twitter/Instagram about her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it screen-time.
Pandora describing how much screen-time she’s had.
The queens are judged as groups this week, rather than individually, which is bad news for Ginger and Eureka!, who easily would have been in the top otherwise. But first, runways.
When I Say I’m Wearing The Gaga, No Metaphor Punchline I’m Really Wearing The Gaga
This week’s runway is a rudemption of a previous Drag Race flop, which by the way Yara described it on Instagram seemed to be dictated by the show. Leading the pack is Kylie, who recreates her Lady Gaga Snatch Game by wearing the exact garment Gaga wore in the Paper Magazine x Club Quarantine Chromatica performance. And yes, I did scream this at my housemates, who didn’t think the look was ‘very Gaga’.
All Stars 6, aka Kindness Punks.
Hands down the best look is Scarlet Envy’s, a re-do of her Bottecelli Angels corset she wore for her S11 entrance. She is stunning.
Art, and hold the pop!
My friends when I order ‘art, but hold the pop’, because they haven’t seen Scarlet’s look.
The rest are perfectly nice, but ultimately a lot of these queens actually don’t have that many looks to redeem. Silky’s re-do on her so-so disco look is fun and A’Keria now understands what a kaftan is, but it’s not show-stopping stuff. Everyone looks beautiful, though I think Pandora’s simple take on her All Stars dress stood in the way of a potential win.
Was CONVINCED this was A’keria’s week to go. Glad it wasn’t!
Silky’s painted face makes me smile. She is so so cute.
The only real miss was Ginger, who made up for an All Stars look with a worse version of the look.
Looking camp right in the eye…
The queens go backstage to deliberate, as the entire escort group is up for elimination. Everyone mostly agrees it’s down to A’Keria and Silky, but as all four make their case, Trinity interrupts to ask if they could please congratulate her on her win, since they haven’t yet.
Scarlet Johannson on-set of Black Widow when she learned Marvel rejected her idea of creating a trans man tree as a new superhero for her.
Ra’Jah does the duty, and while it’s a bit late, it’s a sign of progress that TKB stood up and expressed how she felt — back in S6, she’d let it bubble till it burst. TKB is a self-identified sensitive girl, but as she says in her confessionals, ‘that’s not a bad thing’.
What’s slightly weirder is that she appears to reassure every bottom queen that she won’t pick them, bar Ginger. But in Untucked, we see she picked Silky.
When people try to pretend Ra’Jah’s original hessian bag pant look was bad.
Speaking of Untucked, there’s a really touching conversation between Ra’Jah and Scarlet this week, as the two discuss how they’ve had to work on their relationship since S11. It’s clear the two have chatted a lot privately, and it’s really sweet to see their friendship, given they were ‘enemies’ on TV.
Just a really human moment.
Meanwhile, Jan flat out refuses to admit she’s in the bottom, which honestly you have to respect. She shouldn’t be, and it’s pretty clear after this week’s incredibly nit-picky comments that the show wants her to have another meltdown.
The queens return to be gagged by Laganja’s absurd split-jump entrance, and while TKB’s lip-sync to Dua Lipa’s ‘Physical’ is excellent (and Eureka! shouting out “you better walk!” to her is possibly the best part of the entire episode), it’s Laganja’s stage okurrr house down queen yes god,,,
The song’s perfect for her high-octane stuntery, and she wins to reveal that the group also picked Silky. Hopefully we see both her and the Reverend back soon. Ultimately, the important thing is that Yara Sofia remains to offer demonic grins. I leave you with one such moment:
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6 streams on Stan, with episodes arriving each Thursday 8pm AEST. España episodes arrive each Monday at 8am AEST.
Jared Richards is Junkee’s Drag Race recapper, and a freelance writer for The Guardian, NME, The Big Issue and more. Follow him on Twitter @jrdjms.