RuPaul's Drag Race Season 18, Episode 10
"Drag in a Bag"
Host: RuPaul
Cast: Darlene Mitchell, Discord Addams, Jane Don't, Juicy Love Dion, Kenya Pleaser, Myki Meeks, Nini Coco
I love these girls. No, I really love these girls. I love these girls the way Darlene Mitchell loves ugly shoes, as much as Myki Meeks loves SNL. I love these girls proportionally as much Ciara Myst hates herself today. And what I really love is that these girls seem to love each other. They're all insane in very unique ways. They're a big gay puzzle, and all the pieces remain fitted together even as other pieces are removed. And while I thought I loved the girls after Snatch Game and the Rusical, I actually think this episode is where my love thermometer is so red that it's bursting, squirting mercury everywhere. Because this episode proves that I could watch hours of these seven queens sequestered in the Werk Room, kiki'ing. Because that's mostly what this episode is!
The challenge this week: Design Challenge #3, with a twist — but not the returning-queens kind of twist. After teasing the girls with the potential return of 1 to 7 eliminated queens, the Pit Crew wheels in their Away suitcases, filled with fabric that each queen brought from home specifically for this design challenge. As the winner of the reading challenge — oh! I forgot that the library was opened up this week!
Okay, probably doesn't bode well for the reads that this totally slipped my mind. While no one landed an all-timer zing, Myki and Jane did well enough to keep this from being a disaster. Myki's best: "Jane's on an all-sex diet. She has sex to lose weight. ... She's gained 18 pounds."
As the winner of the reading challenge, Myki gets to pick the first suitcase of materials (she picks Briar Blush's) and she gets to choose who goes next (Kenya Pleaser). Kenya picks Vita VonTesse Starr's suitcase, and chooses Juicy Love Dion to go next — etcetera, etcetera. You watched the episode. The way it shakes out is as follows:
- Myki gets stuck with Briar Blush's ... all navy fabric? Including one sequin fabric made of patchwork shades of blue.
- Kenya is blessed with Vita's bountiful supply of stretch red velvet.
- Juicy gets Mia Starr's black fabric and a metric ton of jewels and stones.
- Jane thinks she's choosing well by going with Ciara's fabric, since Ciara was over-prepared for everything. To be continued ...
- Darlene picks Athena Dion, also assuming that a queen who bought out an entire fabric store to create each previous runway look would surely pack a lot of stuff.
- Nini Coco, next to last, picks first-out queen DD Fuego, who packed a bold print featuring midcentury fashion illustrations.
- And Discord, the Drag Race equivalent of a Charlie in the Box, goes last, and is stuck with Mandy Mango's definitely citrus-colored sequin fabric.
Then sabotage comes into play, because this remains the most strategic season we've seen ... maybe ever. It turns out that Athena packed "twelve yards of non-stretch zebra" print fabric, and some black velvet. This is why Juicy did not pick Athena's suitcase, because she knew that Athena would think ahead and know that the suitcases production told the queens to deliberately pack would be part of some switcheroo scenario.
The real gag, though, comes when Jane digs into Ciara's bag. At first it looks like a fabric store, the kind of bag that Darlene thought Athena would pack. But hold any of the fabrics up to the light and — actually, you don't have to hold a yard of fabric up to the light to tell that there is a massive hole cut into the center of it. And that's every fabric. All of them, scraps. Ciara packed remnants. Remnants of remnants. That's shady, bitch.
This sends Jane into a tailspin — a legitimate tailspin. As Jane says in her walk-through with Ru, she has a bad habit of turning compliments into critiques and wins into disasters. Girl, same. Can Jane figure this out? I mean, yes, she very much can, but kudos to the editors for having me doubt it for a second.
Ru's walk-through yields a few destined-to-be-iconic moments. First is Juicy, the last Miami queen standing, telling RuPaul that she's going to really cut loose. "The juice is loose," she says. RuPaul cackles, ensuring that Juicy is at least making it to top five, if not the finale. And Juicy repeats this. Multiple times. To which a segment producer asks Juicy in her confessional, "Do you know where that comes from?" And Juicy says, with all the confidence in the world:
"Beetlejuice. Two."
And then the offscreen producer has to break it to Juicy that the phrase comes from ... famous football player turned acquitted I-legally-probably-can't-call-him-a-double-murderer O.J. Simpson. Juicy immediately sinks into her hoodie and pulls the hood up, sealing herself inside. The funniest thing to me is, of course, a producer having to tell Juicy that she's quoting O.J. Simpson lore — and also the fact that Juicy thought the phrase came from the 2024 sequel to Beetlejuice. Not Beetlejuice, but the sequel that we all forgot it had until just now.
Not to be outdone, Discord then gets a runway walk lesson from RuPaul, who's channeling Miss J. Alexander (oh, I cannot wait for Drag Race to get its own tell-all Netflix docuseries). Jane accurately points out that this has never happened before. It's wild. RuPaul, giving actual advice, to a queen??
The insanity hits hard after RuPaul leaves, once all the queens have been sweating over scraps of fabric for an entire workday (if not longer). The girls tape all the suitcase name tags to the wall, I think to assign them superlatives but that gets derailed when Jane says the the most fashionable queen this season has been "Crystal." And while the odds of a Drag Race season having a queen named Crystal on it are in Jane's favor, she is wrong.
And then, in a moment that proves Kenya Pleaser could have done better in Snatch Game, Kenya and Jane riff an entire season-long mythology for Just Crystal, the 15th queen of Season 18. Her entrance line: "Hey, it's me. Crystal." "Athena hit her a lot." "Juicy, you literally sent the bitch home" — to Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." I don't know what production hoped to get out of this 12-hour stretch of Werk Room footage, but I can guarantee: this is not that, and this is 10 times better.
Somehow, that is not the end of the mania! Jane Don't comes out as a staunch supporter of the Black Eyed Peas' 2009 #1 hit single "Boom Boom Pow" (she and Myki riff and come up with the phrase "Four Horsemen of the Boom Boom Pow"). Then Darlene, later, leans over to Jane and reveals that she was a fucking fashion design major in college. Oh, you couldn't tell? Not from the ... bag of Spirit-grade wigs and bobs she has on-hand? This prompts Kenya to pull her "emergency wig" out from under her makeup station??? The queens have lost it, but we're all winning.
This is where I wrote in my notes that this might be the, minute-for-minute, funniest episode in Drag Race herstory.
But not everything was all secret cast members and emergency wigs. One serious plot thread wove its way through all the mayhem: Discord's use of safety pins. The queens had a very specific brief to follow: they could only use materials provided in the suitcase, and then their own hair, shoes, and undergarments. This also extends to embellishments — which, safety pins are legendary for their ability to embellish, first, and pin things together, second. But Discord found a loophole — which I feel okay calling a loophole because Discord talks about it as if it was a loophole. Like, a "No one said a dog couldn't use safety pins on her garment" kind of loophole. Discord's reasoning is, safety pins are allowed if they are there in a functional manner. And since Discord can't sew the metallic mesh fabrics she's using (eschewing all of Mandy's mango flavored fabric), she has to use safety pins. 800 of them. All the other queens consider this sus.
On the runway, category is, simply, "PARTY" — and the show missing such a clear and obvious Adore Delano reference here is actually upsetting. Is Season 6 now so long ago that it doesn't merit an in-joke? Hmm...
The looks, though:
Darlene Mitchell comes out in a skin-tight black mini dress that's bookended by billowy, pillowy rings of zebra-striped fabric. And also a mullet. Volume, silhouette, and a mullet — Darlene's three essentials. It looks very '80s — and not in a nostalgic way, but in a way that reminds you, "Oh, yeah, the '80s were kinda ugly." And Darlene's beat, with the full brows and sharply contoured nose, it makes her look read like a prom dress, but as if the 40-year-old mom squeezed into her daughter's prom dress. I mean this in a good way.
Discord Addams comes out in, admittedly, a striking garment of shimmering scraps of metallic fabric, clinging together via 800 (or 1000) safety pins. The safety pins are the look. This does not bode well for Discord, and I start to wonder if we're about to get the disqualification that was heavily rumored before the season premiered.
Juicy Love Dion struts in a flowy jumpsuit with full-length slits in both legs and arms, with a jewel-encrusted bustier peaking out from the scoop neckline. It's solid, especially from a queen who doesn't sew and also does not have a secret degree in fashion.
Jane Don't hits the runway in a look that becomes more and more of a showstopper the closer you look at it. It's horizontal stripes of different sequin fabrics, with a hip-high slit, a sculptural embellishment on one shoulder, and sequin appliques so precisely placed that they look like part of the garment. The entire thing looks as if it was one bolt of fabric. It's immaculate.
Nini Coco comes out in an orange sequin bodysuit with that sky blue fashionista print fashioned into a skirt and a billowy croptop. She looks like Big Bird's cunty little sister who dyed her feathers blue. It's not a good look, and we've seen the fabric-on-a-bodysuit look from her already.
Myki Meeks presents another riff on the outfit-over-a-bodysuit motif, but with more success. The navy bodysuit is topped off with the sparkly boots, top, and (since she's going to a ski party) matching earmuffs, scarf, and muff. She even gives us a shimmy shush (Okay, so, we're fine with Season 10 references!).
Lastly, Kenya Pleaser's disco dreams come true in a red sequin velvet jumpsuit, with bellbottoms and billowy sleeves. It's tailored to an inch of perfection, all the hems and trims checked off the to-do list. Michelle even has to ask, "Who helped you?" This is, of course, all Kenya.
Then things become very All Stars 7, as the judges have nothing but positive critiques (which I guess are what you'd call "compliments"). The only negatives they come up with involve shoe choices. All the garments, perfect. And I can't disagree! This is a stunning lineup of bold and unique and well-made looks. How are they going to pick a bottom two? Why not let the queens choose by asking them the question they all knew was coming:
"Who should go home tonight and why?"
You know the girls were eager for this, because the judges loved everything about Discord's look — especially the safety pins. They all say Discord (Discord says Darlene, figuring that Darlene also does not have a win). But they all say Discord in different ways at first. Darlene picks Discord because of track record, maybe not wanting to blow up Discord's spot, re: pins. Juicy has no qualms. She does not squabble the opportunity. Jane concurs, and adds, "... and not every single one of those safety pins is holding the garment together," completely piercing the argument that Discord was making.
After all the confusion about who is and isn't in the bottom, it's ruvealed that we have an episode full of tops — with Jane and Kenya being the tippiest of tops. I would love to know the tea behind decisions like these, like if Drag Race now builds one mid-season non-elimination episode into planning ahead of time. Because while it absolutely makes sense for there to be no bottoms in a week this sickening, you know they absolutely could have put Discord and either Darlene or Juicy in the bottom, Discord for breaking the rules, Darlene or Juicy just for making subjectively poor footwear decisions.
Still, love to see a top two lip sync. And when it is revealed that it's Patti LaBelle's "Feels Like Another One," well, this seems right up Kenya's alley. Like they are setting her up for a win. But, while Kenya absolutely crushes it, Jane comes out of nowhere to deliver a top-tier lip sync performance where every syllable of every word is punctuated with what is the absolute right performance choice. It's a fantastic lip sync all around ... and Jane clinches the win. Two weeks in a row, which is something the season has been aggressively reluctant to do this season. resulting in what's felt like a win rotation. And honestly, giving Kenya a win now would have been some great storytelling! I am, frankly, stunned by her late-season turnaround. Two high placements back to back at this point in the season? That's miraculous.
Next week is the roast of Alyssa Edwards and, oh wow, I really hope someone just does her Season 5 roast back at her. "From your cracked out beginnings in Mesquite, Texas ..."
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