RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 10, Episode 2
"Murder On the Dance Floor"
Director: Nick Murray
Cast: Aja, Bosco, DeJa Skye, Irene the Alien, Olivia Lux, Phoenix
The new All Stars format means that even though we're in Episode 2, the dust from the first challenge hasn't settled just yet. The four bottom queens — Bosco, DeJa, Olivia, and Phoenix — each have one MVQ (Most Valuable Queen) point to give away. The four of them run through some options, with Olivia floating the truly wild idea of giving hers to Aja, who's already in the lead with three. Her strategy does track, though; if she gives her point to the frontrunner, her ally, she's not helping any of her competition. In the end, though, the girls play nicely and all swap points: Bosco and Phoenix, and Olivia and DeJa. As Bosco puts it: "We're world-peacing so fiercely right now."
The Werk Room
It's a new day in the Werk Room and Aja is dressed like Velma. Straight-up, just, Hanna-Barbera realness. We get our first Mini Challenge of the season — a "game" called Front Roll wherein a queen has to roll a ball from the navel to the lips of a Pit Crew member. The catch: no hands allowed! This amounts to nothing beyond some slapstick nonsense (Bosco continuing to play even after Phoenix wins her heat) and $2,500 for the winner, Irene. This is not a complaint! I'm here for any moment that brings Drag Race back to its goofy roots, and also men in tiny bikinis.
This week's challenge is "Murder on the Dance Floor," a murder mystery improv challenge — I'm assuming built around RuPaul going through a big fake mustache phase while filming All Stars 10. What I love about every Drag Race improv challenge, though, is how they ricochet from "without a script" to "here's a big stack of paperwork detailing every character complete with in-depth biography."
Also, just ... the verb is "improvise," not "improv."
The queens all choose parts without incident, which leads to the six of them staging a knock-down, drag-out brawl for the role of "Ashley Brashley." This is the kind of self-awareness that I like to see in All Stars — which is why it's funny to see the show present another clearly staged fight as sincere later in the act.
Come on: there is no way that Olivia actually took some playful banter from Bosco seriously enough to justify multiple confessionals, a "standing up for myself" moment, and the emergence of "competition Olivia." Nor did it deserve a heartfelt apology later in the episode. The girls were obviously doing their job here: producing a reality TV show.
Still, this "heated exchange" gave us the hilarious visual of DeJa eavesdropping by styling a wig stand sans wig.
And before I forget: I forgot just how hilarious Aja is in the Werk Room. I think in the feeling-one's-oats department, Aja is second only to Alyssa Edwards. Having her don a fedora and put on a one-woman show, unprovoked? Gold.
The Maxi Challenge
I wonder if there's any correlation between RuPaul's Letterboxd and Drag Race Maxi Challenges, because here we are with a Poirot parody in the year of our lord 2025. I mean, I'm here for it, as this is a reference that I actually get.
To paraphrase Bosco, as far as improv challenges go, this was by far the most recent. On the one hand, I like that this style of improv challenge pairs the queens up with RuPaul — a.k.a. literally the only person they truly need to impress. On the other hand, I kinda prefer the chaos of them dropping the queens in scenes with each other. The latter leads to something closer to actual improvisation, as the queens have no idea what the other's going to do. The former, what we get here, can feel more like the queens just reciting the biographies they committed to memory, just in a southern accent.
The standouts were clearly Bosco and Irene, both of whom performed exceptionally well. Bosco's Kitty Laveau was Barb and Star by way of Death on the Nile. Her surreal riff on having one glass eye and losing the other to glaucoma was perfect and caused Ru to break character. And Irene felt like she was performing from a script — a well-written script, performed to scenery-chewing perfection.
Of the rest, DeJa was the most successful. For all her pre-challenge nerves re: seducing Ru's character, she played it well. And I think that compared to her previous improv challenges, Aja actually did well. What read in the moment like Aja not knowing her character was actually Aja being confused in-character. Why do these improv challenges focus so much on plot? We don't actually care who murdered Ashley Brashley!
The Runway
While prepping for the runway, Aja makes a third alliance with Irene, reasoning that the other girls aren't likely to give them MVQ points should they end up in the bottom. However, the creation of Melanation Station (Aja, Olivia, DeJa) made me realize that Bracket 1 — the orange bracket — is literally Melanation Station vs. three redheads. Come on, girls, where is the Wendy's alliance???
By far the biggest reveal of the show: Colman Domingo was on Logo's Big Gay Sketch Show??? Wow.
On the runway, category is COMING AND GOING. The clear winner this week, once again, has to be Bosco, who hits the stage in a cinched coffin (coming) and a Lydia Deetz/Elvira/Amanda Lepore look (going).
The way Bosco's brain works, it's haunting and hilarious.
You can see how Irene's brain works, as she cracks open her updo to reveal a teeny alien nestled in her pink matter, puppeting her Sarah Palin-esque body — and she turns around to reveal a robotic back side.
It's now clear what's wrong with this new format: We're only going to get 3-5 runways from Bosco and Irene each, and that is a shame.
The Critiques
Another week in a row where the critiques all made sense! So instead of judging the judging, I want to zero in on some RuPaul advice. When DeJa talks about how in-her-head she was, how she'd convinced herself she did poorly, RuPaul says: "Usually when that happens, it's because there's a part of you that really gets off on that process. For most of us, it feels like home, you know? It's like, leave home."
Girl. I did not expect, a combined 27 seasons into just the American contingent of the franchise, for Ru to bust out some new advice that hit me that hard.
Anyway, Irene and Bosco earn their much deserved points, and DeJa gets some advice she can hopefully put into practice (I know I'm still trying).
The Lip Sync
Of course, it's "Murder on the Dance Floor" by Sophie Ellis-Bexter (which I just learned was co-written by Gregg Alexander, a.k.a. New Radicals, a.k.a. the guy who gave us "You Get What You Give" — lip sync song when?). Irene hasn't won a lip sync yet, but she has at the very least proven that she can turn a performance out. She's just been bested by two absolute assassins: Aja (duh), and now Bosco.
Now, Bosco famously was "in the bottom three times in one episode" (thanks, Jorgeous) on her original season, but she's come back to All Stars with a not-so-secret weapon: her boobs. And then her body. And then the way she knows how to hide and reveal her body for maximum impact. This was pretty perfect.
I also want to commend the new format for fixing the All Stars lip sync problem. In previous seasons, there were always reasons for a queen to throw a lip sync (at least to the conspi-ru-cy minded). Previously, winning a lip sync meant having to send a sister home, which could inspire all sorts of backlash on the show or in the fandom. Then with the assassins, they never had an incentive to stunt outside of their own pride; why would you want to come in for an episode and then rob a sister of $10,000? You don't get the money! Now, queens are actually lip syncing to advance in the competition, and they don't have the burden of sending a queen home. Also, money.
And that closes out the two-episode premiere. It's a damn shame we only have one more episode with some of these girls.
Here's the score going into the Bracket 1 finale:
Next: RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10×03 Recap: Girl, It’s Messy Points
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