‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ S14E4 Recap: The Hunter Becomes The Hunted
A funny acting challenge? It's more likely than you might think.
Let’s get LOUD, but not too loud: after this week’s acting-cum-writing challenge, the judges put Alyssa and Kerri in the bottom for respectively being too shrill and not shrill enough. If Drag Race can teach us one thing, it’s that life is about balance.
This week’s challenge is easily among one of the show’s best new ideas in recent years. By letting the queens write their own parody trailers for S14, we get to see their comedy chops without worrying about non-sensical punchlines or wordy dialogue written purely to trip queens up. Instead, they had the low barrier of playing exaggerated versions of themselves, which meant they could focus on jokes! Being funny! Making a jaded recapper actually laugh! Multiple times!!!
S14, so far, is slick. After an exhausting, not-great S13, it seems like Drag Race has taken the feedback on-board. Sure, Alyssa’s elimination was a little suspect, but the show is shaking up its challenges without reinventing the wheel (taking All Stars‘ talent show, splitting the ball in half) — and like Ru said last ep, the wheel is perfectly fine. I’m optimistic this is going to be a fun season.
Can’t Believe Ru Doesn’t Have A New Song Called ‘Super-Tease’
We start the ep off with Kornbread calling in Jasmine’s non-stop mouth, explaining there’s a difference between a conversation and a rant. She gets the message, especially when Kerri chimes in too, but the damage is done: Kornbread spends most of the episode irrationally angered by anything Jasmine says or does.
Jasmine gets the message and tries her hardest this episode to not be annoying, which, as we all know, only makes people more annoying.
I see people are calling Kornbread out for bullying, which seems a bit much — she’s definitely being rude, but who among us hasn’t been annoyed by every part of a person for little to no reason? I’ve left multiple sharehouses for far smaller offences (a housemate eating/breathing ‘too loudly’, drinking Metamucil ‘grossly’, too much kale in the fridge, a car crashed into our house).
Me, after my housemate changed their behaviour as I asked,,, but the void within my soul remains???
For the ‘super-tease’ challenge, we get two groups manned by Willow, last week’s winner, and Maddy, last week’s lipsync survivor. That’s a lot of pressure on Maddy, but she has a much better week — this kind of challenge works for her theatre-kid energy. Orion is picked last, leaving Jasmine to choose her own group: she goes with Kornbread’s to prove how she’s growing and changing. The logic makes sense, but also proves a lack of self-awareness: give her some space!
During rehearsal and filming, it’s clear that Jorgeous and Kerri are struggling a little: Jorgeous is nervous, and Kerri proves she doesn’t quite get the challenge when she says her only demand re; roles is that she gets to “be pretty”. Later, her lipsync is low-energy due to fears of ruining her on-loan outfit, the literal Versace dress J-Lo wore in 2019 — considering a tear would throw Kerri into mass debt, I don’t blame her, but prioritising pretty above performance is the exact reason she’s in the bottom.
Willow, on the other hand, REVELS in the chance to be ugly.
Alyssa is also having a hard time, as her group shoots back her ideas, and the ‘shrill loud Puerto Rican’ persona she lands on just falls a little flat — probably because the show’s spent the last 13 seasons pushing PR queens into that character. It’s a bit sad: Alyssa clearly thinks there’s an obvious role for her to play, only for the show to decide they no longer want stereotypes (see also: Kornbread being called out for eating jokes). Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a great performance, but I see why she ends up stuck there.
Drag Race has a tendency to treat Puerto Rican (and Asain, for that matter) queens as filler, and it’s a shame that history repeats. I’m not saying Alyssa was going to win, but she had more to show. But, as Angeria reminded us, this is not RuPaul’s Best Southern Hospitality Race.
Me, A Journalist: For Balance, We Really Need A ‘Night Of 1000 Ana De Armases’
This week’s runway is a tribute to J-Lo, and true to the notoriously cold star, we get a pre-recorded message rather than an in-person appearance or even an Annie Hathaway Zoom chat. The queens aren’t allowed to do movie looks, which explains why we don’t get a Maid In Manhattan or Hustlers-coat moment: and while she doesn’t exactly have a Gaga or Cher-level of looks to pull from, it’s a nice tribute to an iconic artist.
Willow Pill might be my favourite, if only because she nails the intersection of her and J-Lo’s fashion: elevated ’90s mall girl.
Increasingly impressed.
The runway belonged to Kerri though, who comes out in J-Lo’s actual Versace dress. It’s an impressive if not somewhat controversial feat — online, I see people question whether having the connections to make this happen is worth praising when it doesn’t exactly show the same creativity or ingenuity of the other queens to replicate glamour on a budget.
The look that needs no comparison photo.
I don’t disagree, but also think there’s something in having a trans woman of colour wear one of recent history’s most iconic high-fashion dresses. I wish the show let her change fits for the lip-sync, though.
Replicating a 2019 Met Gala look is not an invitation to discuss what is and isn’t camp, thank you! That conversation is dead, forever!
The other stand-out was Angeria, who nabs her 2nd win this week. (In my mind, Angeria won the ball and Willow won this week, so it all comes out in the wash). Everyone else looked perfectly good, if not terribly exciting.
Between Alyssa and Kerri, two of the week’s best runways end up in the bottom.
Bosco isn’t getting a heap of screen time, but is killing the moments she gets. Think she’ll come to the centre as more queens leave.
Definitely no Crystal Methyd comparisons this week.
Little surprised the judges loved this. Don’t think these looks should be a 1:1 replication, but this lacks a lot of detail, even with the stone-free tights.
This image doesn’t convey it, but Jasmine looked amazing.
Jorgeous has won J-Lo impersonation contests before, so this was a little too low-key for my expectations.
Kornbread replicated J-Lo’s slicked-back hair, but this is an instance where it’s probably better to do the ‘draggier’ version.
Lady Camden continues to do well with little screentime.
There were two objectively* (*meaning subjective to me) bad looks: Maddy’s inauguration pantsuit and Orion’s varicose vein dress. Just odd/unflattering references to pull from, though in Maddy’s defence, this wasn’t her first choice. As she posted on Insta, she was originally going to pay tribute to J-Lo’s The Cell character, which would have killed.
RuPaul: I need you to be more sensual. Maddy: like this?
This looks good on J-Lo because she’s J-Lo, no other person should try to replicate it.
As for the actual challenge, it was filled with lots of excellent one-liners. Plenty was cut from the final product (including lots of Maddy’s best moments), but we did still see them in the rehearsal, so the show wanted us to know people who got 1-2 lines in the end actually performed pretty well.
Nobody besides Alyssa was ‘bad’, but I probably would have swapped out Kerri for Jorgeous, whose nerves got the best of her. Kornbread rounds out the bottom three for being at 100 constantly, but she was playing a version of Silky in S11’s Untucked: she kind of shot herself in the foot there.
The win goes to Angeria, but DeJa gets high praise and arguably deserves the win for showing a lot of range in the challenge, between deadpan lines and an impeccably acted tearful mirror chat about being born at a young age. It’s probably a sign the show didn’t want to ‘waste’ a win on her.
In the lip-sync, Kerri is terrified of tearing her dress and instantly going into debt, but gives a solid if not subdued performance. Lots of conversation online over Alyssa winning, but she didn’t really know the words. We get the humiliating scene of her trying to rip open a chocolate bar to reveal no golden ticket, and she sashays away.
Next week, the queens make commercials for first outs Kahmora Hall, Jaymes Mansfield and Tempest DuJour. Another challenge that straddles the line between referential and original? We love to see it.
We’ll also get the debut of UK vs. The World AKA International All Stars, a tight six-episode series. I’ll be recapping that too.
RuPaul’s Drag Race S14 is available to stream in Australia on Stan, with episodes dropped each Saturday 3pm AEDT.
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