Drag Race S5 E07 - Runway Recap

Calling this post a runway recap is a bit of a misnomer, and it’s very difficult to talk about it without talking about the challenge itself. That’s because this week there was NO runway! =’( This week was the RuPaul Roast, where the challenge was to roast RuPaul (including the judges and other contestants) in front of a live audience. Put simply, the ones who did well did extremely well and were funny as hell. The ones who did not do well… completely bombed.

So the runway this week was replaced by the roast itself, and since they did not do a costume change for the judging, I’m going to count their roast attire as their runway look. There was no explicit theme for this week, but everyone is dressed to go to a roast (i.e. they look nice). This was also a challenge for me by taking the screenshots. For the first picture I wanted to get their name graphic, and for the second pic I wanted it to be closer up. But since they’re talking the whole time it made it very difficult to get a pic of them that didn’t look really weird.

COMMENCE… SHAKE… DOWN.

Alaska kicked off the roast, and she was one of the knockout funny ones.

I’d say this is my second favorite outfit of Alaska’s so far. Clearly this is also Alaska’s second favorite wig, because she’s worn this one a lot through the show so far. Alaska looks simple but elegant this week, rocking the LBD with minimal jewelry and a cute little hat. Hair is right, makeup on point, overall a very inoffensive and beautiful look.

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Roxxxy followed, and according to Alaska’s closing joke, ‘That’s Roxxxy with 3 Xs, just like her dress size.”

Roxxxy, as always, just looks eh. I do like the hair and I like the simplicity of the dress, but again there’s those overdone dark eye pools that just suck any personality she had right away. Oh and her act? A giant bomb. This was a very bad week for Ms Andrews, seriously the only decent thing she pulled off at all this week was that wig.

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Coco Montrese decided to take it in a different direction and be a long-lost childhood friend of RuPaul’s when he lived in the Detroit projects. What could have been disastrous was instead hysterically effective.

Everything was perfect this week. The visible roots in the hair, the overdone jewelry, and the voice! The ironic thing was the Coco didn’t think she would do that well because she doesn’t consider herself a funny person. I don’t think you could fake funny as well as she did.

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Third time’s the charm for Jinkx trying to bring glamour to the runway, bringing her best look yet.

Jinkx looks absolutely wonderful this week. My favorite part? That one blonde curl in her auburn hair. It completely brings this look from the 1910s to the 2010s. And the comedy was of course, spot-on. No complaints here.

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Ivy Winters followed, looking like a carrot cake.

All of her colors coordinate really well, and I really don’t mean my carrot cake comment as an insult. She just looks good, if not a tad plain. Actually, her look and her comedy were about the same, good but plain. And that’s about it.

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Alyssa was the penultimate performer, and possibly surpassed Roxxxy as the hardest one to watch. It was just so bad.

As for Alyssa’s look it was fine but nothing we haven’t seen before. But the roast itself… I’m very disappointed. For someone with such dominating stage presence she had horrific posture and she hovered over the mic so badly it kept giving off feedback. If that was intentional, it was a bad move. In one of the outtakes it revealed that the producers turned off the mic at times just to keep the feedback from deafening everyone. Her jokes also just bounced off the wall and hit her back in the face. Not good.

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Detox apologized for Alyssa’s performance, coyly saying she tried her hardest. An example of how good timing can make a good joke even better.

Look-wise, Detox is decent this week. She’s combining a few different age groups in this look, with the youthful earrings, middle-aged makeup and old-person hair. Her jokes were good but there was way too much dead space between them. Overall if Ivy was safe-to-bad, Detox was safe-to-good.

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And just because she looked so bad this week, I’m putting RuPaul last in the line. For an event honoring her, I’m surprised she thought this was the best look to bring:

Just… no.

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Ranking Based On Runway?: No
Winner: Coco Montrese
High-Ranking: Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska
Low-Ranking: Ivy Winters, Alyssa Edwards, Roxxxy Andrews
Bottom Two: Alyssa Edwards, Roxxxy Andrews
Eliminated: No one!

Shocking! Not only does this season have a double-elimination episode, but there is also a zero-elimination episode. I’m fully convinced these special episodes were worked in production beforehand, but Ru gets the choice on what episode to use them on. So basically he used up his special elimination allowance and I’m assuming the rest of the season will proceed normally. Well, I am waiting for the bring-back-an-eliminated-contestant twist to rear its head, unless that had its place taken by a special elimination. As for the lip-sync itself, the song was ‘Whip My Hair’ (yeah, the song sung by a 9-year-old) and Alyssa and Roxxxy, well, whipped their hair. Roxxxy pulled a trick out of her hat though. Early on she took her wig off (considered a total shot in the foot for a racer to do) only to reveal… another wig! This wig was much longer and straighter and a better candidate to whip back and forth. So clearly Roxxxy knew she bombed the roast so she had a secret weapon in waiting for the lip-sync (of which they know what the song is ahead of time). Very nice strategy.

This episode was in my opinion one of the most entertaining of the season (runway-free and all), and I highly recommend you watch it this one if you watch any. I know this post was a little scant, especially on the writing side, but there simply wasn’t much to say. And nothing is more unfunny than repeating a joke (especially in writing) out of context, and then saying ‘oh it was funnier when you actually hear it.’ So do yourself a favor and watch this one, it’ll make you smile.