‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ S6E8 Recap: Divine Intervention …Of Love!

Sure, this week was the Snatch Game, but first, it’s integral to point out that during this episode, Kylie Sonique Love clearly had no idea how to say Cheyenne Jackson’s name out loud, and paused for multiple seconds mid-sentence in the werkroom before calling him “the one”.

Kylie’s representing not just trans excellence, but also providing ‘debilitating fear of mispronouncing or potentially just completely forgetting someone’s name’ representation. Now that’s what I call talent.

Not even that important work and her excellent Dolly Parton could beat Ginger though, who is fast gaining traction in the end half of All Stars 6. On second watch, it was clear she stream-rolled everyone this week: her wit is as fast as the likes of Bianca, Jinkx and Bob, and her Phyllis Diller had a retort for every possible thing that happened.

It was a tight snatch (of love), as really only Trinity and Pandora struggled: it was obvious who was in the bottom, as much as it pained me to see it. But Pandora’s Kim Cattrall was such a missed opportunity — why wouldn’t you spend half of it badmouthing Sarah Jessica Parker? Scatting ‘sara saray!‘? Joking about how you “don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself”?

The Samantha Jones ‘smutty’ innuendo isn’t a bad joke format, but it’s been done to death. Done to death? Honey, I haven’t been done to death since I got fingered by Freddy Krueger. See! Not hard!

But Pandora’s jokes were limp — none of them were shocking enough to even match S&TC‘s lines, let alone a Drag Race standard. In Untucked, she talked a little of her fear around ‘not knowing what’s okay to joke about anymore’, and it’s understandable: S2 Drag Race was a completely different time from where we are now, but there’s truly nothing worse than a drag queen who is afraid to be offensive.

Pandora complained about not knowing how to bounce off Eureka’s intense Divine, but there’s no reason Kim Cattrall wouldn’t be up for the challenge — you’re playing one of our cultural touchstones for a bold, confident white woman.

I really love Pandora: she’s one of the first Drag Race queens I fell head-over-heels for. All Stars 6 showed off some of her talents with a few great moments, but ultimately her confidence retreated as the competition went on. Trinity gave her great advice at this episode’s opening to be loud and present, yet nothing really changes.

Again, it all makes sense. Drag Race hasn’t really been that kind to Pandora in the past, and there’s a lot of pressure in coming back to impress a whole new audience and, if you do well, catapult your career and life into a new direction. But Pandora spent a lot of her time on AS6 overly concerned about what newer fans might think of her, and so became quiet and inoffensive — she performed well in challenges, but failed to make much of a mark in the larger Drag Race game. She’s complained about not getting much screen-time this season, but it might just be a fact that she didn’t give the producers a lot to work with.

Diller? I Hardly Even Know Her! No Seriously Who Was That?

Mini challenges have been all but scrapped from All Stars 6, so we’re straight into Snatch Game. There’s a lot of hate for the ‘Of Love’ variant, but I don’t mind it: splitting the queens into groups doesn’t let anyone hide.

In the walk-throughs, it’s clear that Trinity is the most likely to struggle. In S6, her Nicki Minaj was middle of the road, and she’s self-admittedly not an improviser. The choice of Whitney Houston is ill-advised too: sure, she’s impersonated her before and has the look ready, but her life is probably too dark to make light of. Even in Monet’s hands in AS4, Whitney didn’t shine. There’s just too much baggage there.

Despite — really, because of — her success in the first-ever Snatch Game, Pandora’s extra nervous in the lead-up. Where Trinity could have thought a little more about her choice, Pandora probably needed to think less.

The first group is Ginger as comedian Phyllis Diller, Trinity as Whitney, and Kylie as Dolly, vying for Cheyenne’s heart. Dolly is a perfect Snatch Game character, and it’s bizarre that she’s only been done once before: Kylie has the privilege of getting to nab all the obvious jokes Karen Fron Finance missed, and has a natural back-and-forth with Ginger that really elevates her. If Ginger didn’t have a retort for every bloody thing, Kylie could’ve nabbed the win.

In the middle of the two, TKB is a little lost, and ends up resorting to a domestic abuse joke after she completely blanks. It’s no Jenny Bui, and she’s charming enough to get a few laughs, but with just five other queens competing, it’s clear she’s in the bottom.

Next up is Eureka as Divine, Pandora as Kim and Ra’Jah as RuPaul’s squirrel friend and enemy of the Race Chaser pod LaToya Jackson, competing for Fortune Feimster’s love. Ra’Jah is a smart competitor: she structures most of her jokes around a LaToya anecdote Ru gives in the werkroom, and it has him barrelled over laughing. Have no idea what she had planned otherwise, but the end result is perfect — again, if she wasn’t competing against Ginger (and had a better runway), she could’ve won.

Eureka goes big with Divine. It’s not always funny, but it is always Divine, and it’s one of those performances that’s so fun to watch it almost doesn’t matter when the punchlines flop. It’s not the easiest character to banter with, but it’s unfair to compare this to Eureka’s show-boating on S9/10: her jokes and comments always set up Ra’Jah or Pandora for a retort. Like in AS1, Pandora partially blames her bad showing on someone else.

Pop Art? I’m More Of A Cheek To Cheek Girl, Myself

This week’s runway theme is pop art, and each queen comes out as a soup can. Just kidding, who would ever think that’d be a good idea?

It was still a night of 1000 Warhols, with a touch of Lichtenstein for good measure. All the looks were beautiful and on-theme (bar Ra’Jah, who phoned it in a little), but it’s a shame no-one looked towards Yayoi Kusuma, Hockney or Haring. I apologise for listing off equally art-basic names, but it’s a shame — maybe if most of the queens didn’t go for the most obvious Warhol reference, it wouldn’t matter

Having said that, they all look beautiful. Is Ginger the secret fashion queen of All Stars 6? No, but she’s had some really amazing looks recently, this week especially. It’s my favourite of the three Warhol face portrait-looks, though shout out to Pandora: this is one of her best all season.

Kylie’s been working with designer BCALLA all season, and it’s a match made in heaven. There’s this wonderful mixture of sensuality and camp to every outfit.

But my favourite of the night is TKB: I’m a sucker for that pop-art/cartoon style make-up (Jojo Zaho does a similar thing in her Down Under promo look), and the incorporation of a BLM and Trans Lives Matter message remains necessary. As she says, you can still be sickening and be political.

It can’t save her from the bottom two though, and she faces being eliminated in front of Tina Knowles. Untucked reveals that everyone voted for Pandora, but this scare could be the extra push that TKB needs to take the crown.

After a lipsync against Heidi ‘N’ Closet, Ginger wins, taking her total prize money earned so far to $62,500 (though she’s given 5k away to her Pink Table Talk teammates). She’s still gunning for that crown and $100,000 though — and even with Eureka at zero maxi wins, I could see any of this top five taking it out.

Next week, the queens pretend to be Drag Tots, referencing World of Wonder’s drag-themed animated Superhero show for children that went for one season. Cool! Meanwhile, Serena ChaCha dies after remaining sequestered in a hotel room for several years. At this point, the chance to return is beyond unfair, but life, famously, isn’t either.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6 streams on Stan, with episodes arriving each Thursday 7 pm 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.