‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ S6E4 Recap: Swish Swish, (Scarlet Envy Really Is That) Bitch

Let’s play ball: this week’s SuperBowl halftime-show-inspired challenge was excellent. A fresh twist on celebrity impersonations that works? What’s next, Pandora getting more than two lines per episode?

Four episodes in, All Stars 6 isn’t letting up. This is a strong season, unpredictable without being frustrating or rule-less, even if the bottom two this week was the first time you could see the producers’ sleight of hand. Did A’Keria deserve to be in the bottom two weeks in a row? No!

Pardon my French, but her not-so petit Prince was ‘capital D’ drag. Jamal criticises her for not refining it in and focusing on the nuances more instead of showing hole, but when was the name of the game spot-on impersonation? Still, it’s been clear for a few weeks now that the show isn’t too keen on A’Keria, which is a shame. She shone on a season most people overlook, and while doesn’t really need to ‘redeem’ herself, she could stand to get her dues.

Judging issues aside, the right queen went home. As much as I love Yara Sofia, she has a difficult relationship with Drag Race. On S3, the gluttony of design challenges sent her to breaking point, seeing her eliminated after crying uncontrollably during a lip-sync; on AS1, her and Alexis were given a harsh edit for being ‘crazy Latinas’, and she seemed pretty pissed off throughout.

The show itself doesn’t seem to take her seriously, though, at the same time, she is from the Tammie Brown school: her frustrations at the show only accentuate her ‘kookiness’, which only leads to harsher critiques. Yara’s zaniness was rewarded in E1, then has been a disadvantage since. Maybe it was for the best she left now — I think if she stuck around for much longer, she would’ve been painted as bitter and rude.

Some stars simply shine too bright, but we’ll always have ‘Jiggle’ available to stream — apologies to my housemates, who are forced to hear it at least 1x a day during Sydney’s lockdown. At least this week’s mega-mix of Ru songs has given me some new bullshit to stream. In the meantime, may I recommend ‘365’ by Katy Perry, featuring Zedd?

‘Can I Get A Witness?’ – Katy Perry/Me, Talking About Scarlet Envy

No mini-challenge this week, though we do see via an ‘Untucked Exclusive’ that the queens did dress up for some sort of cheerleading/sports/something drag moment and then enjoy a cook-out group sit down with Ru. I’m okay with it getting cut to spend some extra time with Jamal Sims, who pops up in a baby blue tracksuit to teach some choreography for these queens.

There are no arguments over who gets which part, as each queen has nominated a past SuperBowl performer they’ll embody — the show then tailored the challenge to who remains. It’s a nice change, and while some parts of the song are clearly better than others, it’s a much more level playing field than equivalent challenges, like in AS2, where Ginger was told to play the show-snoring role of Catherine the Great.

Of the parts, the queens cite Pandora’s verse for Carol Channing as a potential show-stealer, but it’s more or less anyone’s game if they do well — bar Ginger, who has made the baffling choice to portray Fergie. And if you’re not going to piss yourself on-stage, sing while cartwheeling or butcher the national anthem, what can you do with Fergie?

But the worst choice is that with Jiggly gone, there’s no Janet moment (as of writing, Silky and Serena haven’t posted who they’ve done). It’s also a shame no-one did M.I.A. earning a $16.6 million dollar fine for putting up the rude finger in 2012.

The other risky choices are Kylie as Steven Tyler of Aerosmith (had to look this up) and A’Keria as Prince, just because playing ‘boy’ can be judged a little tougher. Kylie gets away with it, but they nitpick with A’Keria.

Each queen gets about a minute on-stage, which makes this 10-queen medley of Ru songs a real headspin on first watch. I recommend re-watching, as pretty much every performance improved ten-fold, once I understood what the challenge was trying to do. A lot of the queens didn’t have much choreography at all — it suddenly made sense why we didn’t see Eureka!, Kylie, Scarlet or Ra’Jah rehearse, for example.

No-one did a bad job — it’s more a case of who excelled the least.  That’s where things get a little weird: by my count, Jan, Scarlet and TKB were the best of the bunch as Gaga, Katy and Beyoncé, respectively. Ru co labs disagreed, swapping out Scarlet for Eureka, who I would’ve put in the bottom for her perfectly fine Madonna, next to Ginger and Yara.

But Scarlet as Left Shark and Katy Perry was, as Katy would say, ‘wig!’. A gentle read and love-letter to Katy’s ditzy saccharine pop persona, Scarlet’s performance was a killer. As with every week so far, I’m surprised she was safe, but it’s a crowded field, and it narratively makes sense for Jan to win — even if TKB’s Beyoncé exuded a star presence that can’t be merely copied. I’m not too sure about thing ending the Beyoncé ‘curse’ on Drag Race though, as it’s less a curse than a repeated terrible choice of  Snatch Game character.

The critiques do sense for Yara, though, as much as I wish they didn’t. The moves were there, but the energy wasn’t: maybe she was over it. I was a little surprised they didn’t read her fringe-light fringe runway.

The other queens got the memo. This was an amazing runway, with special props to Ginger overcoming her troubled relationship with purple, and Eureka redeeming Ginger’s own frilled pants rudemption look from last week, while also paying tribute to Kacey Musgraves.

A’keria should have been safe for her runway alone, a massive flowering pink rose. Theatrical, beautiful, planned out for the runway — it’s excellence!

The judges disagree, placing her in the bottom two against Yara while Jan nabs her first-ever win. It’s deserved, as her OTT theatre-kid energy is perfect for playing Gaga, though I can’t help but wonder where to from here. What motivates Jan if not winning a challenge? Winning another?

Her redemption arc is now the least compelling of the cast’s as it’s essentially been completed, and I’m not sure what drives her drag other than a need to showcase how talented she is. Maybe that drive will take her far, but as with Rosé, it’s hard to root for her — even if I do enjoy her performances.

A’Keria really pleads her case this week, promising to eat a book, while Yara refuses to play her role and grovel. On one level, I respect it; on another, I wish she’d ‘fight’, because I wanted her to go to the end.

Out on the runway, Jan lip-syncs against another one of my dream All Stars queens, Jessica Wild. Yara is equally excited and bobs up and down in her chair like a panting pomeranian.

Jan’s robot lip-sync to Britney’s ‘Womanizer’ would probably kill in a bar, but Jessica just drops every move in her wheelhouse. It is Britney, bitch: she understood the assignment. I lub this drink, and hope Jessica returns to an AS sometime soon.

We see that everyone voted for Yara bar herself and, possibly, Jan, who naturally would pick A’Keria as her biggest competition. But it’s Yara’s time to go — hopefully when she comes back for this twist, they explain what she meant by ‘Jessica Wild will hand out books when I die’.

Next week, the queens take on a Red Table Talk spoof, which judging by the preview, seems to be a vulnerability challenge. Eureka’s got this one in the bag.

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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.