Drag Race RuCap: “Reunited - LipSync LaLaPaRuZa Smackdown”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are watching and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen. This week, it’s time for episode fifteen…

This week, Megami pulls a Silky and a star is born.

CLÁUDIO: After weeks of complaining about the season’s declining quality, the Drag Race producers shut me right up. This spin on a reunion episode is the best of the year, a super-charged queer Super Bowl of lipsyncing that serves as a respite before next week’s finale. Most of the girls brought their A-game, fighting for their Ru-demption with everything they got, and even the losers seemed to have a good time. Well, most of them. More important, still, was how the hour felt formed around the arc of one particular queen, subverting folks’ expectations both among the audience and the contenders themselves. To paraphrase Mother Jinkx, anyone saying Megami isn’t a star after this episode is so full of shit the toilet’s jealous.

NICK: As far as sports analogies go, I feel more partial to Sapphira calling this the gay Kentucky Derby, though perhaps I was swept up by the fantasy her gigantic hat inspired. But this was a total joy from the first second to the last. Megami’s superstar ascendancy is a Rudemption for the history books, bolstered in every way by how tough the competition was. I loved this episode, and I hope we get this format again in future seasons. . . .

A quick summary, to go along with the momentum of the episode. All of the eliminated queens have returned to the Werkroom under mysterious circumstances - to them. The final three, the crew, RuPaul, all of us at home, know they have been summoned to participate in a LaLaPaRuZa lip sync Smackdown for the title of She Done Already Done Has Herses and a $50,000 cash prize. We don’t even get much time with the queens re-meeting each other before Ru announces the challenge. The most memorable moment for me was Xunami summing up the season thus far to Hershii “Porkchop” Liquor-Jete by going “These bitches? The top three. The rest of these bitches? CHOPPED!” I’m paraphrasing, but the sentiment was great. Miss Muse remains one of the season’s best queens to just hang out with and hear their riffing.

A few narratives are quickly established, namely Mirage’s ambition and the Miami queens tentatively circling each other. Both seem wary of a possible rematch, but they’re ready to face each other off. Do any Werkroom interactions stand out to you, either from the pre-game catch-up or the war paint application ceremony?

CLÁUDIO: I remain mesmerized by Morphine’s makeup skills. The bitch manages to look airbrushed even in the middle of the process. Nymphia’s mug was also a work of art, and part of me wishes we could have seen more of her work sketching out this spin on Chinese opera. But there’s no time to lose, for there are nine lipsyncs ahead. With those limitations in mind, I commend the editors for making the episode feel as smooth as it does, these introductory parts re-establishing the season’s “characters” without it feeling forced.

Some notes before we go to the new stage, borrowed from the Secret Celebrity Drag Race production. Amanda’s return rekindles the flames of Plane’s hatred and Q seems happy to join in and mess with Miss Meating. Mhi’ya’s Kermit-y Cher also comes back and it’s a hoot, by far the most lighthearted moment we’ll get from her this episode. Indeed, it doesn’t take long for Megami and Madame Le’Paige to butt heads, with the New York Eyore insisting she should have won their previous match to the Miami queen’s outrage. But enough preamble, let’s go to the ring and watch murder on the dancefloor.

Mama Ru is in attendance, wearing a frock so short you can almost see her tuck, while her bodice has sprouted a lettuce titty. It’s not the most fabulous lewk she’s served, but this isn’t an episode centered on glamour. Michelle Visage and Ts Madison are also there, glowing like the divas they are, though their presence is more like a formality. There’ll be no peep from the judges beyond Ru’s dictums at the beginning and end of each battle. Soon enough, the queens make their appearance, leaving the top three to take a bow, bask in the applause and promptly return to the Werkroom. The contrast between their looks is tremendous stuff, so radical it gives you whiplash. Nymphia reprises her cultural homages, while Sapphira is ready for the races in the biggest hat this side of the Scary Movie franchise. Finally, Plane Jane is serving concept, no matter how much she might deny it. All eyes on her. 

NICK: Plane’s stupid glasses are my favorite things she’s worn all season, and I suspect I’d look more favorably on this kooky design if I really liked her. Sapphira’s derby scionness is a hoot, and Nymphia’s performance digs are such a treat I wish she’d saved it for the finale proper, where she could really use those sleeves in attack mode. Michelle might look the best she has all season.

The costumes are definitely not the point of the LaLaPaRuZa, but just to throw out a few comments: Dawn probably does the best job of personalizing her battle costume. Q’s is maybe the most personalized, but it’s also ugly as fuck. Bless Morphine for wearing the biggest and best wig she’s had all season. Amanda, Hershii, Megami, Mirage, and Plasma all look pretty good. Mhi’ya and Geneva’s outfits are RuVeal jackets before they are anything else. Xunami has made some very unflattering choices, but it’s a nice wig at least. 

We then get the first roll of the golden bingo cage, and Dawn is selected as our first victim. She decides it’s time for Amanda Tori Meating, selecting her bestie in the hope she’ll pick the right song and because she just wants to have fun with her sister. Amanda is clearly gagged by this choice, but she’s ready to win.

CLÁUDIO: Since Dawn picked her opponent, Amanda gets to choose the lipsync song from a pool of available tunes. She goes with “Damaged” by Danity Kane, a girl group moment to start the night’s festivities.

Although I wouldn’t categorize what happens next as an assassination, it comes pretty close. Whether because she’s against her bestie or because her heart simply wasn’t in it, Dawn puts up a fight but doesn’t stand a chance, spending much of the song involved in some kind of languid floor work. Amanda, on the other hand, tears the dance floor like a lightning bolt, taking every opportunity to impress, whether with a daring move or some outlandish facial expressions. At times, she looks possessed, but there’s a sense she’s in full control. Sure, it’s on the verge of frenetic for a couple of beats there, but it’s a sensational performance, and the Rudemption Amanda deserved. You know what she didn’t deserve? More shade from Tweedle Q and Tweedle Jane. I can’t even see the alleged ass lumpiness, and she showed off her rear a whole damn lot in the number. 

NICK: I appreciate Amanda going on Twitter to request an edit from her fans without the apparently prerequisite shade from that peanut gallery of sore winners. Lord knows she deserves to bask in this victory. Amanda served it, kicking off the show with a great performance, and Dawn is truly hyped to watch her bestie progress in the Smackdown while she sits and enjoys some alcohol with the peanut gallery.

Q is the next victim selected by Bruno’s golden cage and golden bod, and she quickly picks Megami as her opponent. Dawn and the top three are unanimous in agreeing Megami is a smart choice, which is both rude on its face and, as it turns out, catastrophically incorrect. Megami picks Janet Jackson’s “What About”, an emotionally devastating number Q’s getup is completely unsuited to. Q inevitably flops it with her little two-steps, but in a surprising twist, Megami wins this outright. She performs the number, channeling the raw emotion in Jackson’s voice and lyrics to actually interpret the song rather than just dancing to it. It’s so impactful to watch.

Second Rudemption of the night, this one even better than the first.

CLÁUDIO: As we discussed off-record, Megami spent this episode delivering a masterclass on why engaging with the song is an integral part of lipsyncing as a subsection of drag. While Q floundered, looking like a transmuted passion fruit, New York City’s cosplay queen embodied the heartbreak and resilience of the lyrics, her expressiveness augmented by her sad-eyed mug and itty bitty eyebrows. It was a decisive win, and Q is out of the running. The bitches saying Megami was the weakest lipsyncer in the bunch were quickly proven wrong.

The next ball in Bruno’s hand has Morphine’s name in it, and rather than pick one of the girls that didn’t win a single lipsync on the season, the Miami queen goes for her Latin sister, Geneva. For her part, Miss Karr selects “Million Dollar Baby” by Ava Max, setting the stage for a fierce smackdown. Indeed, after lipsyncing in every single one of her episodes, Geneva might be out of tricks, but she still turns it out, a premature Ruveal notwithstanding. Sadly for her, nothing could stop the Morphine train this episode. The BBL queen pisses all over that stage, makes it her bitch, and then some. From the pussy slamming on beat to the outfit change, everything was on point and pitch-perfect. Another decisive win in my view. 

NICK: Morphine serves womanly realness too beautifully for you to describe that performance like some Jackass fetish skit. Have some class, faggot. Geneva still feels like an odd choice of opponent to me, but Morphine managed to pick someone who could rightly call themselves competition without quite being an actual threat. Geneva starts strong, and that full-body jacket is so perfect for the staging I wish she hadn’t taken it off. But Morphine cinches it completely. I love the moment where she out-windmills Geneva while checking her nails, one-upping her Latina sister while communicating an effortlessness to her victory.

Mirage is selected next, and after some real deliberation, picks Hershii LiQuor-Jete as her opponent. Hershii chooses “Alone 2.0” by Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj as the lip sync song, hoping the rap section will trip up Mirage. Or as she puts it,  “[Mirage] doesn’t seem like a lyric girl.” Mirage gets over Nicki’s bridge serviceably, throwing out so many tricks with the right poppy kineticism for the song. Hershii starts well enough, and has a great moment of comedically stepping in front of Mirage during one of her nine-point gymnastic maneuvers, but Miss Porkchop gives what I’d call the one truly disappointing performance of the night. You can practically see her lose steam as the number progresses without any fuck-ups from Mirage. It’s a bummer, and she knows it. 

CLÁUDIO: I won’t dwell on Hershii’s disappointing performance since there’s so much to love about Mirage’s showstopping antics. Like Amanda, I feel she walked to the edge of too much but kept herself in control, and with the song’s spirit. I’ll admit that the fandom’s gone crazy for the Vegas queen in a way that feels disproportionate to her Drag Race output, and a tad annoying to me. However, Mirage deserves her flowers in this episode. There’s no denying she won this with no space for discussion or arguments against her. It was over the moment she executed one of those slinky twirls. After that shocking elimination, I’m glad she got to show what she can do when the lyrics don’t slip away into the void.

With three bitches remaining, Ru announces a three-way lipsync between Mhi’ya, Plasma, and Xunami. Bruno’s balls give the Miami queen an advantage by letting her pick the song, but it hardly feels like she could lose against the other two. But then “Milkshake” by Kelis starts playing and all those certainties fly out the window. Against all odds, the resident Broadway Baby fights tooth and nail to stay in the Smackdown, surrendering to the tune’s bawdiness with such verve I almost wanted to throw tips at the screen. Reader, I was flabbergasted. So was Xunami, who sometimes stops lipsyncing altogether to laugh at the antics of her competition - relatable queen.

When Mhi’ya pulled an Anetra and dived over Plasma, it was game over for Miss BFA, but this was much closer than I could have predicted.

NICK: Plasma was throwing everything she had at that song. Judging by online comments, hers was probably the most divisive performance of the night, but I was fucking thrilled watching her on that stage. She was so goddamn silly, with her Bea Arthur wig reveal and her white girl twerking. It would have been more novel to see her progress over Mhi’ya, in who gave a very good performance on that stage without quite giving a fun performance, or showing us any new tricks. Still, her arsenal is extensive as hell, and she deserves credit for finding the space to even deploy those flips and jumps while taking the movements of two whole bitches into account. Give Xunami a good sport award along with her likely Miss Congeniality prize. Also, did that outfit really not have a RuVeal under it? What the fuck.

Mhi’ya’s victory means she gets to skip the next Smackdown round (that bracket was so annoyingly structured), and the next two fights are between Amanda, Megami, Mirage, and Morphine. Amanda’s ball is chosen, and she picks Megami to face her in the ring. Megami selects Cher’s “The Schoop Schoop Song”, and once again, she performs the hell out of the number to a decisive victory. She gives great Cher face in her lip synching, and a thirty-second interlude of her . . . . licking an ice cream cone . . . . is just hysterical. Amanda turns it, as she always does, but it’s the difference between dancing to the song and really inhabiting it. Amanda moves beautifully, but Megami adds so much to the song. 

CLÁUDIO: Maybe I have a dirty mind, but her lick-fest made me think of much less innocent activities than eating ice cream. In any case, it was a brilliant bit of Cher-ness, campy and entertaining to no end. It’s such an expertly calibrated performance that Amanda’s energy can’t help but feel a bit frazzled in direct comparison. She puts up a good fight, but, once again, Megami secures herself a decisive victory without having to sweat through choreo or rely on gymnastics. That some of the queens in the werkroom - watching an intermittent video feed - still underestimate her is madness. Only Nymphia seems immune, fully living for Megami’s nonsense from her first match against the alphabet fruit.

By default, Mirage must face off against Morphine, who picks Donna Summer’s “This Time I Know It’s For Real” as their song. I’ve seen some online talk that the Vegas showgirl won this particular battle, but I couldn’t disagree more. Her body’s working like nobody’s business, cavalcading through beautiful poses and fluid switcheroos, heel-clacking galore. However, I seldom felt like her face was connecting to the vocals in the same way Morphine was. The Miami queen is as impressive when it comes to dancing as her opponent while better selling the fantasy that she’s actually singing - a fundamental part of lipsyncing some folks are quick to forget or intentionally overlook. That connection is what secures Morphine a second well-earned win.

Another video game boss down, one more to go. 

NICK: I found Mirage’s movements incredibly captivating, and it instinctively bugged how it felt like the camera was more focused on Morphine for most of the number. But I agree that Morphine did a better job of serving face and actually interpreting the song as it progressed. I would have been happy with either one winning, or perhaps a double shantay to make the bracket structure more logical. Still, props to Mirage and Amanda, both of whom made a strong impression with minimal screen time and lots of room to flourish.

Megami, Mhi’ya, and Morphine then take the stage. Ru declares that whoever’s ball is picked will have to lip sync for their life and must pick their opponent, allowing the unselected queen to automatically progress to the finale. Megami’s ball is selected, and she is furious, but she turns that road rage into cold, calculated road RuVenge. In the second and final rematch of the night, she decides a rematch with Mhi’ya is in order, to the tune of “We Got the Beat” by The Go-Go’s.

These bitches are pissed as hell, and that energizes the hell out of their lip syncs, but this is still a decisive win for Megami. She matches the PG bounciness of the song with plenty of comedy, including the best burn any queen has inflicted on their lip-sync competition by doing a gag about the predictability of Mhi’ya’s splits. Mhi’ya frankly seems a bit defeated before the number even starts - her face is utterly inexpressive despite how kinetic she is. Her impressive bag of tricks looks even staler next to the fresh, song-specific notes of Megami’s comedy.

CLÁUDIO: Judging by the werkroom’s commentary and Megami’s social media insight, it seems Mhi’ya hated the song choice, so picking her when that was the default tune was a piece of strategic masterminding. Good for Megami, who, despite her Eeyore-y reputation, taps into the song’s essential joy. It’s like a reverse of their last duel when Mhi’ya acts the euphoria of “Flowers” while her competition stuck to monotonal anguish. That shady-ass move predicting the splits is bound to be imitated but never reproduced, a note of genius that’s the best possible testament to Megami’s wit and whip-smart. It alone should guarantee her an All-Stars gig in the coming years, whether as a competitor or a lipsync assassin. 

We don’t get to see Mhi’ya commiserating with her sisters, because it’s time for the grand finale. The top three and the defeated girls return to the main stage, standing to the side so they can appreciate the match to end them all. It’s time for the clash of the titans, Megami vs Morphine. The song is “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory, an energetic choice that should benefit Morphine, who’s a better dancer and better rested than Megami. That bitch must feel exhausted as she walks into her fourth lipsync of the night, the final boss standing before her with a few tricks still up her sleeve.

But wait, Megami has tricks too! For the rap verses, the New York queen stops lipsyncing with her mouth and uses her hand like a puppet. She even has a couple of peepers on her glove to complete the fantasy. It’s devastatingly dumb and delightful to no end, making for a comedy routine so strange it draws everyone’s eyes away from Morphine. That’s not the end of our Miami goddess, however, for she picks up energy as the song unravels, weaponizing those surgically augmented cheeks as no one has done before. You can practically feel their seismic shimmy as Megami twirls her ponytail in the back. Since the queens’ approaches are so damn distinct, there’s no clear winner to me. But Mama Ru has made her decision, and I can’t argue with that, even if the other option would have landed the episode’s narrative in a blaze of glory. Do you agree with the hostess with the mostess? 

NICK: I would have likely given it to Megami. The narrative is just incredible, and her hand puppet gag is the best moment in the whole episode. On the other, non-puppeted and dangerously thicc hand, Morphine Love Dion has proven herself as one of the most charismatic lip sync performers in the show’s history. Both would be deserving winners, which is why I would advocate strenuously for a tie. But what’s most important is that this gave the queens a fantastic opportunity to showcase their talents, arguably a more direct view into what actually seeing any of them at a drag show would be like than most of the challenges.

You’re right that this episode probably secured Megami an All-Stars slot, as did Morphine. I’ve been reading our RuCaps for last season and realized how often we finished by hoping the eliminated queen would get an All-Stars run to compensate for inexplicably cut-down episode runtimes or wackadoo judging, all in the shadow of a domineering frontrunner. We haven’t really done that for this cast - which partially speaks to us having different priorities when writing about this season - but also to how strong this cast is, and how well they’ve established themselves as artists with unique perspectives compared to the abridged impressions we got of most of the season 15 cast.

More than an All-Stars run, I wish I could have seen how these queens would have performed if they’d made it longer in the competition. Let’s see Hershii do RDR, Mirage create a choreo routine for the girl groups, Amanda do a verse for "POWER," Megami and Plasma create a ridiculous bit for Bathroom Hunties, Dawn talk about her life for Matt Rogers. Not everyone made the same impression or suggested as much potential, but it feels like all of these queens have had at least one moment to strut their stuff for the camera and prove why they were cast.

I loved meeting these queens. I can’t wait to see them at the finale next week. Whether or not we ever see them on TV again, they made this season memorable, and I’m so glad we got to see them.

Previous RuCaps:

• Episode 01: “Rate-a-Queen”
• Episode 02: "Queen Choice Awards"
• Episode 03: "The Mother of All Balls"
• Episode 04: "RDR Live!"
• Episode 05: "Girl Groups"
• Episode 06: "Welcome to the DollHouse"
• Episode 07: "The Sound of Rusic"
• Episode 08: "Snatch Game"
• Episode 09: "See You Next Wednesday"
• Episode 10: "Werq the World"
• Episode 11: "Corporate Queens"
• Episode 12: "Bathroom Hunties"
• Episode 13: “Drag Race Vegas LIVE! Makeovers”
• Episode 14: "Booked & Blessed"

Comments

[Julian]

Are we getting a recap of the finale?!?