Last week on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ciara Myst was eliminated in the long, drawn-out saga of titillation and Survivor-esque plotting against each other that Rate-A-Queen had brought to the show once more. Ciara tried her best to rally the troops against Discord Addams, whom she thought she’d be able to take on in the lipsync.
However, in a surprise development, it was instead Myki Meeks who found herself facing off against Ciara to “Toxic” by Britney Spears. Did the Dions, Athena, Mia, and Juicy, really have that much effect in rigging the rankings, sending Myki to the bottom unfairly? Tonight, we’ll find out when the Rate-A-Queen receipts are inevitably delivered to the Werk Room by RuPaul herself.
These are our speculative rankings on each contestant’s current position in the competition, and, as always, if we turn out to be wrong, well … sue us.
10. Kenya Pleaser
Damn, Kenya got called the fuck out on not knowing the words to her lipsyncs by Michelle last week. Directly, to her face, in front of all the other queens. Then she proceeded to not remember the words to her own song from home for the talent show. And her color guard routine was pitiful, to boot.
We do not understand why the other queens saved Kenya from certain death in their Rate-A-Queen rankings, or why she overall seems to be treated as an equal to the other girls in terms of talent. I mean, this seems like a perfect opportunity for a red-headed stepchild or “except for Serena” situation to play out here, but no one, other than Michelle Visage, read Kenya for filth over her “watermelon tuna.” We’ll see how much longer we can “pleaser” for, I guess.
9. Vita VonTesse Starr
Vita’s talent was quite abysmal, enough so that we remember its awfulness over some of the more recent performances. Those should be more fresh in our minds than Vita’s, but hers stuck out in a bad way. That doesn’t bode well for Vita or for the queens of last week’s Rate-A-Queen part two, most of whom had mind-numbingly boring talents. Vita is also a rotted soul for telling Discord she had her back, then turning around and voting her fourth in the rankings.
8. Jane Don’t
What was Jane’s talent last week? We already forgot, and this was ostensibly one of the more promising acts going into the talent show. Is Jane talented? What has she done this season that has been exciting, except wear horrible outfits with clashing color palettes that resemble grandma’s hand-me-down doilies?
We’re not being shady just to be shady. We literally don’t remember the talent she showed last week. Apparently it was enough to squeak by, since Jane Don’t is still here in the running. If this is supposed to be one of our front-runners, though, we aren’t so sure this season is as jam-packed with C.U.N.T. as we’d like it to be.
7. Athena Dion
Stop trying to make Mykonos happen, Athena. That talent show was tired; we’ve seen that kind of performance a hundred times over on Drag Race. Making it Greek-themed didn’t add anything exciting. It felt very cheap and shallow, didn’t really tell us anything about Athena we didn’t already know, and is mostly a blur in our memories only a week later. This is supposed to be one of the most elevated front-runner status queens on Season 18, but we’re finding Athena to be quite lacking in the star-power department as of late.
6. Mia Starr
Did somebody say rotted soul? Mia, darling, you’ll get your comeuppance soon enough. Not every Florida girlie is gonna make it to the final stage of the competition, and some tough cuts are sure to be coming down the line as the cast moves into the single-digit phase by the end of tonight’s episode.
Athena is already being sold as an underdog in the edit, and Juicy is the dark horse of the competition. Mia might just have to juggle flaming chainsaws, Swiffer the floor with her taint, or shoot ping pong balls out of her ass if she wants to overshadow her attention-snatching Floridian drag sisters as these next few weeks go by.
5. Discord Addams
We are still trying to get to the bottom of the walk, but more lore on it was dropped last week. “I’m stiff,” Discord explained in a confessional. This queen is definitely down with the stiffness, and last week on the runway, her fabulous capitalist outfit looked like it weighed fifty pounds.
Michelle and Ru have been giving Discord conflicting feedback on the walk; Michelle thinks it could be loosened up a lot, but Ru loves it and continues to encourage Discord to be herself. It’s not unlike Jasmine Kennedie of Season 14 and her “Southern accent,” which Ru loved. Discord’s talent show performance was also a standout, and to her credit for being such a stiff queen, she executed a decent cartwheel in her number. Things are looking up for Discord going into tonight, so long as she can keep loosening up.
4. Myki Meeks
It knocked the wind out of us when Myki was placed in the bottom two last week. We shrieked, cried, jumped out of our chairs, and threw ourselves to the floor. We were left gasping for air due to the severity of her makeup look alone. Her mug was beaten within an inch of its life. She looked like a Yassified Annabelle doll.
The burlesque performance was a little low-key, sure, but it still stood out against the others. Almost everyone else lipsynced to their own mediocre tracks from home. Several performances melded together and went by in a flash throughout both parts one and two. Not to mention, there was almost certainly some romper room fuckery going on in the Werk Room, what with Rate-A-Queen voting being integral to this two-parter challenge. There was strategy going on… calculated moved being made. Rigga morris, girl. Let’s just hope and pray that Myki gets things back on track (record) tonight.
3. Darlene Mitchell
Darlene’s runway look last week was extremely fierce. It was the number-one most memorable thing from last week, honestly. It was outrageous, fabulous, and unique. We really need more queens like Darlene to get cast on Drag Race. She’s expertly showing, not telling us, what a wonderful entertainer she is. Her subtle magnetism is only growing with each challenge that goes by.
She’s not the loudest or most frequent voice in the room, but we have been hanging on every last word when Darlene makes a funny quip or shows off the best of her idiosyncratic fashions on the runway. We don’t want to jinx anything by putting it in writing, but we are definitely looking forward to seeing what else Darlene brings to the competition. This is crucial during the mid-season lull, when the herd is still being thinned out. It becomes a little more apparent which queens will start to get a little too big for their britches. We don’t think Darlene will be one of them.
2. Nini Coco
In the nuclear fallout of drama stemming from Rate-A-Queen, Nini Coco seems to be coming out of the brawl relatively unscathed. She didn’t quite parlay her hand as well as she may have liked to, though. If she had switched to joining part two of the talent show, she very well could have snagged a top two spot. Her praying mantis performance was sizzling hot and made all of us rooting for Nini from here in the Mile High City thirsty for more Coco. Should she make it to the finale, Nini could be one of the most formidable competitors in the running for the crown, potentially earning Denver its very own hat trick of Drag Superstars.
1. Juicy Love Dion
Yet another rotted soul. Juicy must be on top of the world right now, in terms of the competition. She’s a talented whore and she knows it, plus she and her Floridian drag family have a chokehold on Season 18 as of now. We don’t think they’ll be letting up anytime soon.
But it feels just a little too fitting that a corrupt drag family who enriches themselves on Drag Race is from Florida, to be honest. These queens are giving Mean Girls down! Juicy will no doubt be scissor-kicking and death-dropping her way through whatever comes her way tonight, and RuPaul’s boomer ass sure will be living for it. We’re so happy that’s happening for her … anyway.
Photos courtesy of MTV
