TV

This week’s Drag Race brings the drama, mama, as queen breaks down on the runway

The fourth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 14 saw the remaining queens deliver on unnecessary drama, tears and Jennifer Lopez. So, the usual, really.

“She’s a Super Tease” kicks off with Jasmine Kennedie waxing lyrical about how she feels she should have won last week’s fashion ball over Willow Pill.

It’s a fairly standard moment of Drag Race delusion from a queen that most would regard as something of a background player up until this week, but it’s cut short by Kornbread who takes the opportunity to tell Jasmine she talks too much and listens too little.

It seems like a reasonable thing to say, and the other queens back Kornbread up, but the validity of her point is diminished by the way she just won’t let it go.

The rest of the episode is punctuated by shots of Kornbread yawning and rolling her eyes whenever Jasmine speaks, and attempting to school her on the art of conversation but frankly, it comes across closer to bullying than constructive criticism.

We’re sure the always-loquacious Jasmine is annoying to be around but she seems harmless and ultimately innocent if a little lacking in self-awareness. Thankfully, things seem to simmer between the pair after Jasmine specifically opts to be on Kornbread’s team in order to prove her hater wrong which seems to have mostly worked out.

This week’s maxi-challenge sees the girls split into two teams who each need to script, perform and shoot a ‘super tease’ of clips that allude to the drama viewers can expect from this season.

The standouts include Willow Pill and Angeria, as is becoming routine, plus a genuinely hilarious performance from DeJa Skye parodying a typical Drag Race sob story reveal by breaking down and admitting to the girls that she was unable to walk for the first two years of her life, and often would wake up in her own shit.

“I was born at a very young age,” she tearfully discloses to Angeria who reassures her she’s “grown so much” since then. It’s a stellar performance from both queens, and genuinely funnier than anything on SNL in approximately a decade.

As with any acting challenge, there are more than a few lead balloons. Whilst glamazon queens like Kerri Kolby and Jorgeous unsurprisingly underperform, Kornbread, a self-proclaimed comedy queen, gets way too in her own head and delivers a totally over the top, one-note performance. 

Later in the episode, she’s reduced to tears in front of the judges when they offer the same critique, the second time we’ve seen her completely break down this season. 

A highlight of the episode comes from guest judge Loni Love who offers her some thoughtful, empathetic advice that she doesn’t need to fall back on fat jokes so much, and it’s true. We’ve seen her be genuinely hilarious in the werkroom so here’s hoping she’s able to bring some more of that in future challenges.

It’s a testament to Jennifer Lopez‘ charisma that even in a prerecorded, painfully PR-driven video message to the queens (which helpfully includes the release date of her new movie Marry Me – 11 February, in case you missed that), she manages to put a smile on your face.

She ends her message by telling the queens to “‘Get Loud’, stay proud and be fierce – “but not too fierce – there can only be one Jenny from the Block,” she says with a wink. Truly, nobody does self-promotion quite like J.Lo!

The queens take to the runway for a J.Lo-themed extravaganza and the looks are… mixed, to say the least.

DeJa Skye somehow manages to elicit praise from Ross Matthews for her “loose interpretation” of the singer’s MTV VMAs 2018 performance look (what do you mean you don’t remember that ‘iconic’ J.Lo look?). We suppose one man’s poor execution is another man’s loose interpretation. We did appreciate Maddy’s 2021 presidential inauguration look though.

Overall, we can’t help but feel there were a lot of missed opportunities here. Of course, the green Versace dress rears its ugly head, donned here by Kerri Kolby, but other than that there’s a real absence of genuinely iconic Jennifer looks.

Where was the all-white tank top, bell-bottoms and bandana combo she stepped out with Diddy in? Where was the diamonté-studded “J.Lo” tank top from the “Love Don’t Cost A Thing” dance breakdown?

For the love of God, where was the baby pink, fur-cuffed winter coat and pigtails from the “All I Have” video?!

These queens really let the community down if you ask us. However, we must give credit where it’s due to the music producer who chose perhaps the most grossly underrated J.Lo song of all time, ‘Play’, for this week’s lip sync.

When all was said and done, Kerri Kolby and Alyssa Hunter found themselves in the bottom two, left to battle it out in what transpired to be a supremely lacklustre lip sync from both queens, with Alyssa suffering an unfortunate prop malfunction and Kerri being essentially afraid to move for fear of tearing a stitch on her genuine Versace S/S 2020 evening gown. 

In the end, Alyssa Hunter was sent packing with nothing but a lousy white-labelled bar of RuPaul chocolate and a busted money gun.

We’re not sure we stand by the verdict – she may have a face like a yassified filter but what else can Kerri bring to the table?

Alyssa seemed like she had a lot more to give but we guess we’ll never know – or at least not until All-Stars 7 is cast.

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