‘RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under’ S2E4 Recap: Demon In The Dark

Well! I could think of no better tribute to one of Gaga’s most overlooked songs than a lip-sync as disorientating as that K-hole where I saw through the illusion of reality and was forced to meld with the ever-flowing to nowhere metallic nothingness of no time, no space, no self. Only a drag legend like Minnie Cooper could take me back.

Possibly only rivalled by Elektra Fence’s breakdancing or Kimora Amour’s decision to do …this... on Canada’s Drag Race, Minnie decided that, since she was dressed as a clown with wheelies already, she should perform Gaga’s moody, dark synth-pop track ‘Dance In The Dark’ as a clown wheeling around. Given how small the Down Under stage is, this meant she whizzed back and forth on her wheelies quicker than a bored tween in the Woolies aisles as their mum grocery shops.

Just astonishing work, and emblematic of how Minnie didn’t quite understand how to present herself on the show. Here’s the thing: this would have fucking KILLED at a club. Yes, it was bizarre, unsettling, confusing, and somewhat upsetting, but 90% of people squeezed into a club would go crazy watching it! And it’d become a legendary number in their minds, a story they try to break out in convo before realising you just had to be there? But what would work in a club doesn’t work on Drag Race, just as Minnie’s approach to conflict and being ‘truthful’ (AKA snitching Bev out to Ru for no reason) turned off a lot of viewers, too.

Not me! I truly loved Minnie on the show, arrogance and all. Sure, she acted a little above the rest of the cast and the show, but there’s something distinctly Australian about that ‘nah stuff ya, I’m better than this anyway’ attitude. Because she kind of is: Minnie made a successful career out of drag long before it was fashionable to do so, and doesn’t need Drag Race to boost it, either. Maybe that’s something she only realised that when she got there and wasn’t treated as well as she would have liked from the other queens or the show. Who knows! I’m just happy we got to spend four episodes with her, get a truly demonic lip-sync and a horrendous Ellen impersonation on a perfectly fine Snatch Game.

If Ru Asked Me If My Friends Considered Me Funny, I’d Simply Tear My Nail Skin Off Like In Black Swan

Before we jump into Snatch Game, Hannah shares that she and Molly are finding the competition really, really exhausting and mentally straining. All the others agree: just a reminder that filming this would be an enormous pressure and of course queens will slip up with a dud joke, snide comment or bad runway!

But of the group, Kween seems possibly the most stressed this week, judging from her werkroom chat with Ru. She’s quite timid and tense, and the conversation about why does free her up a little bit — Kween explains she’s feeling the pressure of doing it for everyone back home, later elaborating that her younger sister dropped out of high school at 14 to help the family with bills, while Kween was told to focus on her art. That burden must be immense, and I’m sensing a bit of a last-minute rise arc for Kween: the show literally has Hannah say ‘Kween is opening up’ and then tries to gaslight (so toxic!!!) us into thinking her Nene Leakes was anything other than bare bones, so the momentum is already there. (I think Nene was a smart move to be safe though, even if I wish Housewives were banned. It’s too easy, even if I would die to see a Lisa Barlow.)

Despite Ru asking if anyone in the world considers her to be funny, Bev keeps it cool, calm and collected around choosing to do Val Garland, host of The Glow Up, which is objectively a bad choice. Bev seemingly realises it during Snatch Game, as she gets more and more desperate with her jokes, getting lewder and also choosing to sniff markers and black out a tooth because Val is British. It’s not S4 levels of romper-room fuckery, but it’s just missing any through-line.

Molly makes the other bad character choice by picking Orville Peck. There’s a way to make him funny (maybe by slowly revealing his identity as Cher? Madonna? Or by playing him as a straight singer who is pretending to be gay for attention?), but it needs a game-plan which Molly does not have. All she knows is that he’s gay and a cowboy, and while there’s some potential in yee-haw puns and innuendos, she doesn’t take these beyond saying “cock-sucking cowboy”, which itself isn’t a joke. I will give credit to the mask though, as I’ve made an Orville costume before and it’s both difficult to create and uncomfortable to wear.

All the other choices are solid in theory. We’ve seen an Ellen on Snatch Game before but Blair went in a weird, Pollyana direction; Minnie’s is perhaps even weirder. Why would you not play with Ellen being an alleged monster on set? With her video crying in her mansion? With her weird marriage? Her altercation with Dakota Johnson? Her tendency to scare guests with pop-up monsters? I get why Minnie might want to pay tribute and not be mean to Ellen, but it felt like she had no real idea besides saying “thanks, I’m Ellen!” after every other line. Ru also said he “dreaded” getting to her each round of questions, which is… not good.

Spankie is the only queen to do an antipodean personality, picking Barry Humphries/Dame Edna. She nails the look and the character works well for Snatch Game even if there are one too many flaps jokes, but like a Housewife or picking a RuGirl, it feels like a bit of a safe choice. Then again, she makes impersonating one of the world’s most famous drag queens look easy, so maybe this would have been a disaster in other hands.

Hannah wins as soon as she sings ‘Sissy That Walk’ as Liza Minelli, but my favourite of the night was Yuri as Courtney Love. A smart, original choice in the vein of Adore’s Anna Nicole: that kind of messy caricature works well for Snatch Game, and was clearly, like Adore’s, done with a lot of love. Yuri’s the dark horse of the competition, and while winning two weeks back-to-back wouldn’t have felt right, she deserved it this week. But Hannah deserves a win by now, and her Liza is pretty solid: I think, at this point, she’s my pick for the S2 winner.

Visit Pagliacci? But Doctor, I’m Gay

This week’s runway is Cirque do SoGay, and SPANKIE JACKZON has the best look of the night. Is she the Bimini of the season, becoming a front-runner after nearly going home in episode one? Our fashion queen of the season!

Hannah’s tightrope walker and Yuri’s tattooed burlesque performer looks are my next favourites, followed by Beverly who breaks out her whip from her entrance look since the judges didn’t get to see it. I wish that mermaid tail at the bottom of the dress was attached with a straight line, as it looks like it’s constantly in mid-slip. Still, she looks beautiful, and it’s a perfect look for the lip-sync.

Molly deserves jail for saying “clussy”, Kween’s bearded look is fine, and Minnie shows she doesn’t watch Drag Race by saying she’s the first queen to skate down the runway when S8 had a rollerskate runway.

Bev and Minnie are the bottom two, with Molly just missing out on lipsyncing. Unfortunately, it’s Minnie’s time to go, but not before a perfect exit line about filming Bev’s exit. Next week, the queens are split into two girl groups to record a song, ‘Bosom Buddies’. Can we please bring Minnie back? I need to hear her verse.

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RuPaul’s Drag Race: Down Under streams on Stan in Australia, with new episodes each Saturday at 4pm AEST.

Jared Richards is Junkee‘s Drag Race recapper, and a freelancer who writes for NME, The Big Issue, The Guardian and more. He’s across the internet as @jrdjms