This week’s episode of Drag Race was a big one: the Snatch Game. Yes, every RuPaul fan’s favorite tradition returned and the results were… shockingly less than stellar. Luckily, the strongest lip sync of the season and a smart twist in the final moments helped redeem what ended up being the most disappointing installment of All Stars 3 so far.
For the uninitiated: Snatch Game is a recurring challenge on Drag Race in which the queens play any real person – living or dead – and answer questions posed by Ru in character. This gives the queens the opportunity to show their comedic abilities and impersonation skills, while also lightly mocking gay icons or other notable celebrities.
This season’s Snatch Game, however, comprised of mainly weak impersonations. Trixie made the strange decision to play Ru during the game, a choice that failed spectacularly. Meanwhile, Chi-Chi stumbled for the fourth consecutive week, as she chose to play Maya Angelou and struggled to land a single punchline. She couldn’t even spell the legendary poet’s name correctly. The sole bright spot in the competition was Shangela. Now, admittedly, this critic stans for Shangela. But her Jennifer Lewis was impeccable, and she had the best one-liners of the week.
This episode also marked the first of the season to be an hour in length – the others were, of course, 90 minutes each. And while it’s nice to have All Stars better fit into a normal TV schedule, this episode felt awkwardly edited and rushed. The runway challenge, for example, flew by, without any real time to admire or critique the looks. There was however, a lot of attention drawn to some drama between Shangela and Trixie, which made the episode’s final moments stronger, but still felt a tiny bit forced. Don’t get me wrong – I am under no impression that the drama in RuPaul is genuine. Their fight was, of course, manipulated by producers and milked for all the television its worth. But this particular fight felt a little too obviously forced.
In the final moments, however, RuPaul redeemed itself with a legendary lip sync from the Top 2. Set to “I Kissed a Girl,” both queens gave energetic performances, rocked stunning looks, and eventually decided to play off one another to deliver an all around fabulous performance. Even better, their lip sync carried genuine stakes, especially when Ru announced a surprising new twist to accompany their battle. This is what All Stars is all about.
Even better, the competition on Ru has been made even stiffer. By the end of the episode, the remaining queens are all fierce contenders. Ben and Shangela feel like the obvious victors – both have consistently killed it, and are obviously strategizing to win. But anything could happen, and the other queens are certainly not going down without a fight. Let’s just hope we don’t have any major screw-ups with the last few challenges. A disappointing Snatch Game is always a bummer, no matter how great the resulting lip sync is.
Overall rating: 6 out of 10
