RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: Milan, Darling!

This week’s Drag Race felt like eating the frosting off the cake as a kid: just the sweetest part. Typically, episodes have to spend the first 30 minutes or so doing setup that pays off on the runway, a structure that’s basically carryover from Project Runway, which Drag Race was originally created as a parody of alongside Top Model. We need to know who struggled, who was confident, who was scared of the challenge, etc., so that the actually exciting part of the episode is fun. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I watch an episode of spinoffs like Canada starting from the runway, so that I get the important parts, and it’s typically unfulfilling. This week, though, the vast majority of the setup was done last week, so by the 20-minute mark, we’re on the runway. Even the setup we do get is basically all “day of performance” stuff, which is more fun anyway. There’s no trauma, there’s no Ru explaining the challenge, there’s no teamwork, and only one “another day in the Werk Room” segment. It’s just pedal-to-the-metal, capital-D Drag Race. 

What also makes the episode fun is that it appears the vast majority of the queens who are TV-savvy chose to perform the second week. While Suzie, Jewels, and Lucky rather easily dominated last week’s screen time, this week is a competition. Everybody is camping it up, and in the talent show, the numbers have a much higher chance of being at least interesting. They’re not all better than the first group, but there were two or three over there that I simply didn’t have much to say about. Largely, this group does not have that issue. If I had to guess, I’d say that when we look back on this season, the majority of the queens who will come to define it will be from this group. They’re a chatty, competitive, interesting bunch! All in all, the combination of good TV personalities and a hyper-focus on the performance parts of drag made this a super-fun episode — not the kind that would work every week, mind you, but a fully enjoyable hour the entire time.

So let’s jump in. The episode starts with the fallout from episode one. Everybody congratulates Suzie (yay Suzie!) and Jewels, before the show retrains its gaze on the one girl from week one relevant to week two: Acacia Forgot. Acacia has a big week this week, by necessity, but I can’t say it did much to convince me that she’s a queen I need to pay a lot of attention to moving forward. The other queens are all more eye-catching, even as she’s doing her detective work. When she zeroes in on Hormona Lisa, it doesn’t feel like a predator stalking her prey, because Hormona Lisa (who we’ll talk about much more later, don’t worry) invokes RuPaul’s will, and then maybe bribes Acacia with the prospect of meeting Dolly Parton? Insane behavior that is simply more fun to watch!

The rest of the Werk Room stuff is breezy but fun: Lawrence Cheney shows up to do a bit based on The Traitors (which Bob is currently dominating) and a bunch of the girls get really horny for each other. Sure! To me this seems like a textbook way to get yourself thrown into the bottom with someone you wanna bone, but they can do as they please.

Then, we’re on the runway. I told you this episode goes by quickly! Category is “Is It Cake?” which calls for an ass-focused outfit. Let’s get going.

Starting with the girls who are performing this week: Sam Star, as I expect will always be the case, is wearing a pretty, polished, and unexciting outfit. Front is wedding cake, back is ass. One thing that this episode made clear: Not all tights are made equal, and there’s very little that’s less sexy than an ass that is clearly just foam and tights. Onya wears a peach-themed outfit. Her head looks great, and the corset is lovely, but the crack-less ass is eerie — it’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be noticeable on stage at a club, but when a TV camera is zooming in, it comes off strange. Crystal Envy does a sunscreen-baby themed look with a giant muscle bodysuit. It would come off better if she added a necklace so you couldn’t see the break between her real skin and the bodysuit, and I still have no concept of what a “Crystal Envy look” would include. This one leans on her Jersey roots, which to me seems like the smartest option for her drag moving forward. Kori King wears a recreation of Monet’s Werk the World outfit and it’s the first time that I’ve seen a noticeable weakness in Kori’s package: This look is not good. It’s fine for performance, which is how Monet uses it, but as a runway look, it’s just not enough. And the button down? Yuck! Plus, I don’t really come to a drag show to watch a drag queen recreate the outfit of … another drag queen. If you’re going to do reference-based drag, it should show a sense of curation. Lexi’s look is a bodysuit with a TV on her head, but it still works for me. As the judges later note, the earrings on the side of the TV are hilarious. Hormona Lisa does a Marie Antoinette-based outfit, which the show is determined to make sure nobody does on season 18. I get it, it’s played out, and Hormona’s version doesn’t add much to the catalogue. Lana wears a fun little slinky number, with a column front and a lace-up back. It’s not for everybody, but I do think it adds something to the look that it’s her real skin.

And the non-performers: Acacia’s look is terrible — the screen-printing reminds me of fast fashion. Arrietty’s look suits her signature paint well. Jewels’s flag-based chaps number is cute. Joella also does Marie Antoinette, but hers has an ugly red wig in the back. The skin-colored bodysuit looks weird ending at her ankles. Lucky Starzzz’s sponge look is really fun. Her paint is great. Lydia B. Kollins wears her best look thus far in the competition — I love the porcupine quills in her ass. Suzie Toot enters as a maiden, drinks a potion, and gets transformed into a literal ass. It’s a fully realized storyline, for sure, which is honestly all I can ask for in a week where someone isn’t competing.

On to the performances:

Sam Star: Sam kicks off the night with a number that she at one point, hilariously, calls more authentically country than Acacia’s guitar-based song last week. Sam’s number is fine, but she’s stiffer than I expected her to be. A number like this, kind of boring and blandly performed, just serves to exemplify Jewels’s success last week — watch “La Leche” again and note how often that track gives Jewels something new to play. Sam only hits one note, then ends it on a stunt that we’ve seen before (jumping from a height to a dip) that isn’t as well-performed as when Aja did it. It’s all of a piece with my general issue with what Sam’s presented thus far: It’s supremely competent but not yet exciting. The funniest part is her plastered-on Barbie smile as she jumps off the hay bale, and I don’t think it’s funny in the way she intended.

Onya Nerve: Onya Nerve is next and she and Sam couldn’t be further apart. Sam is all high production value but lacks the kind of charisma that would make her fun to watch. Meanwhile, Onya’s number lacks any set dressing, her look doesn’t really have anything to do with her number (and I’d go as far as to say the shoulder ruffles actively get in her way), but her scrappy energy makes her way more exciting. Also: The song is way better. “Right foot in, out” is a legit earworm, and guest judge Doechii notes that Onya’s hook was solid. I think I can confidently call Onya the dark horse of the season. She’s got oodles of charm.

Crystal Envy: Okay so. I’m going to start by complimenting Crystal, and all of these are real compliments and I think that it makes sense that she ends up in the top, even if I wouldn’t put her there. For one: She has the best song of the night by a mile. It’s a great performance track, both upbeat and poppy, plus it’s well-produced and her voice is really solid. Good stuff. I also think it’s really impressive that she managed to pack two separate outfit reveals into a minute of stage time but never look like she was overwhelmed by them. It’s clear that she’s really polished. Now the complaints: Part of the reason she never looks overwhelmed by the reveals is that her face never moves. She’s entirely dead behind the eyes and almost never makes any expressions otherwise. Also, there may be three outfits, but that’s less exciting when all three of them are hideous. And most importantly: I still don’t really have a sense of Crystal’s brand or personality. She’s clearly an accomplished performer, but after multiple looks and a full performance, I couldn’t tell you one thing about her that wouldn’t apply to a boatload of other queens. She’s missing the U.

Hormona Lisa: Oof. Hormona does standup, and she’s not very funny. The fact that she is not funny is made worse by the fact that she regularly intersperses real takes on trans rights in the South. It’s like if the phrase “But seriously guys…” extended for what felt like 20 minutes but was actually one. You know how part of the joke of Vanessa Bayer’s Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy’s character on SNL going “But seriously [insert family member here] …” is that it’s incredibly cliché? Well, that character was written over a decade ago and the phrasing hasn’t gotten less cliché since then.

Kori King: Kori mostly redeems herself from her runway look with her coffee-themed number. It’s very Boston of her to do a number about iced coffee — somebody get her a Dunkin’ sponsorship, stat. Kori has a kind of no-frills approach to drag costuming that I appreciate, even if a leotard with a belt isn’t going to impress Michelle much. Last week, I saw her as the most polished in the bunch, but this week pretty clearly disproves that, with a messy runway and a costume that falls apart when she does a dip. I’ll be interested to see how far pure charisma can take her this season. Last week, I pegged her as a nigh-guaranteed top four contender. This week, I’m not so sure.

Lana Ja’Rae: Lana’s number begins with a large cardboard cutout of Luxx Noir London, which is not such a good idea. Lana’s constant references to Luxx makes it very hard not to compare them, and, unfortunately, Lana just doesn’t have the energy on stage that Luxx does. Luxx is all nerve! Lana is all chill! More than anything, the dynamic here reminds me of Xunami’s relationship with her mother Kandy, where Xunami would often reference Kandy, but never seemed to have her fire. I’m all for these mother-daughter New York duos storming Drag Race, but I do think that the chiller daughters might want to avoid inviting comparisons. One thing in Lana’s performance I did like: When she jumps into a dip, her limbs are so long that it’s legit kind of scary.

Lexi Love: Lexi gives the best talent-show performance of the season on roller skates. Part of it is the stunts: She does a cartwheel in skates! She does a series of splits in skates! But a lot of it is also how she performs. Lexi’s onstage persona turns out to be a daffy and bratty bundle of joy. Later, RuPaul will attribute Lexi’s comparative depth as a queen to her age (which is … 33), and that is fair. Any of the queens counting out “Auntie Grandma,” as Jewels calls her at one point, are making a mistake. For now, she’s the front-runner.

The queens then vote in their little Rate-a-Queen thing and end up making approximately the right decisions. Lexi was definitely the best, and she winds up in the top, and Hormona was definitely the worst, and she winds up in the bottom. The other top spot goes to Crystal, which, as I said, I understand. I would have given it to Onya (or even Kori if the runway look wasn’t … what it was).

The top two face off first, to Doechii and JT’s “Alter Ego.” This lip sync kicks ass. It’s so fun. Lexi starts it quite clearly a little nervous, but then gets more comfortable and by the end is perfectly embodying the silly, bratty nature of the song. She’s great. Crystal is no slouch, though. Her face is much more engaged in this performance, and she takes on a kind of Regina George-y persona that works surprisingly well. I watched this lip sync like ten times and had a good time every time. I love the way that Lexi just hurls around her limbs like she’s a rag doll, it’s amazing. Lexi wins and has a minor breakdown over it, which is lovely.

Then, the bottom two queens of the whole pack lip-sync to Ariana Grande’s “Yes, And.” It’s honestly mean to make them lip-sync after that electrifying number, but it must be conceded that they just do a straight-up bad job. Acacia nominally wins because she packs a makeup brush in her asshole, but neither Acacia nor Hormona really prove why they should stay.

And then … they both do! Acacia wins the lip sync, and the show introduces the “Badonkadunk Tank,” which is basically the chocolate bar twist but instead you get to dunk Michelle Visage with a lever. This is, quite clearly, entirely controlled by production. At first I was confused by the fact that there were two opportunities to stay in the competition, until it became apparent that this was just an excuse to not send anybody home in the first week. Still, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Hormona pisses off the rest of the queens, so I get why they kept her. Should be fun to see her continue to annoy everybody.

And also on Untucked …

• It’s the best Untucked in a long time this week, with Joella deciding out of nowhere to be a huge bitch and everybody making fun of her wig behind her back in response. No guest judge visit!

• Kori calling the first lip sync the “Battle of the White Girls” takes the Confessional of the Week prize.

• I love that Lydia just absolutely hated Sam Star’s number.

• At the end of 2024, I went on the music podcast Pop Pantheon for a discussion about the best songs of the year, and “Alter Ego” was on my top-ten list. What I’m saying is either I’m biased or I have great taste. Seriously though, the sample of Edna Mode from The Incredibles saying “Milan, darling” is the best two seconds of pop music of all last year.

• When I say that the second group of performances is most “interesting,” I would like to clarify that I don’t mean “overall better.” The two groups probably average out to the same quality. What I mean is that their strengths and weaknesses are more fun to discuss than the strengths and weaknesses of Joella, Acacia, and Arrietty’s numbers were.

Trauma Makeup Corner: Technically, Onya talks about not having a ton of drag queen friends, but that segment is more related to Rate-a-Queen than it is a traumatic backstory.

Gay thoughts from gay people: On Thursday, I went to the drag show “Mall Drag,” hosted by beloved Brooklyn queen Miss Ma’amShe (amazing show). One thing she said that struck me: “Why does everybody want to be on the TV now? What happened to being on Instagram?”

Predicted top four: Honestly, this is a hard round because we haven’t seen Ru give critiques directly to the girls yet. I’m going to go: Lexi, Suzie, Lucky, and Jewels. I still think the second group is the more interesting one, but I’m not sure it has the majority of the finale-placers.