Ron Does Stuff

Another week, another episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Vs The World! In the previous episode, we saw Marina Summers snatch another win and things are looking really good for her! Which as a paranoid person I just feel like this means that she’s going to have a huge fall and then be eliminated.

I’M SORRY I’M JUST ALWAYS PARANOID AND SCARED.

The queens come back to the Werk Room after Gothy’s elimination and Marina, rightfully so, feels like Gothy has had enough chances and it was the right time for Gothy to go.

Choriza is also very emotional about getting to stay for another week because this is the second time her ass has been saved and Tia also picked her to stay over Gothy. It would really, really be funny if she ends up going home this week.

La Grande Dame, on the other hand, is plotting Marina’s demise. Baby, baby, don’t say that out loud to production because they’re going to make it so that you’re in the bottom again and maybe even go home! I think it would be a gag to see you and Marina at the top!

The next day Marina has fully taken the Pia Wurtzbach look as her own and is now calling it the Marina and you know what, I’ll allow it! I’m pretty sure Pia would allow it too because the Pinoy gays are the ones propping her up!

Meanwhile, Hannah and Choriza are both feeling the pressure of being the only queens in the competition without any badges. And with the competition being so close to the top four, they really should be working overtime now.

The queens then find out that this week’s Maxi Challenge is a dancing challenge just like the one in RuPaul’s Drag Race season seven when the girls danced in half-and-half drag!

Marina says she doesn’t want to give the girls further handicaps so she assigns the partners via height, which as someone with two left feet, I think is pretty fair? Just imagaine Tia Kofi and Marina dancing together? The height disparity is too much for it to look good!

Tia, however, is not feeling it because she feels like La Grande Dame can’t dance, which is also a fair objection I think. To which La Grande Dame, also fairly, asks why do people think she’s a terrible choice for a partner and maybe Tia is also not a good dancer?

Marina also does really well in assigning the dances by not really assigning them? She just picked the samba and let the other two teams decide what they want and Tia was the first to cave and say fine let’s do the quick step and Scarlet and Choriza got the tango.

Choriza is also feeling confident about her chances this challenge, even if she also admits that the doesn’t have the easiest time with choreo. But she’s persistent and will keep on doing it until she succeds!

Tia, despite her initial misgivings, now thinks that the La Grande Dame partnership is going to work in their favor. La Grande Dame even sneaks in a read on Hannah by calling her the Michelle next to Marina’s Beyonce and I hooted.

The queens start rehearsing and my goodness it is not looking good for Choriza and Scarlet. It doesn’t seem like either one of them are getting it quick enough! Marina and Hannah, on the other hand, look pretty comfortable learning the steps, even if they’re trying to make it look that they don’t in the confessionals. I have eyes people I can see!

La Grande Dame and Tia, despite seemingly coming to terms with their partnership earlier, look like they aren’t getting the steps that quickly either. But of course this could all just be clever editing and later on they end up winning the challenge!

This episode’s “Now You Know” is actually pretty interesting as La Grande Dame, Choriza, and Marina talk about their languages and how it’s dealing with gender. Of course, Marina correctly points out that for the most part, Tagalog is non-gendered compared to French of Spanish — the languages of colonizers.

The main challenge starts and I gotta say…La Grande Dame was right. It’s not that Hannah does badly, it’s just that Marina is overwhelming. It really does look a little bit like Beyonce versus Michelle!

Marina’s energy even throw off Choriza and Scarlet. I think they did well enough considering their skill level and the amount of time they had to prepare, but the big problem is they were going after Marina. You kinda have that performance still fresh in your mind while watching what they do.

When we get to the runway, Marina goes with the known Filipino staple, karaoke. I love how she did it and the nod to that karaoke voice that praises you after every song, but I don’t know if it translates to the Western folks? I don’t know what their karaoke machines look like over there!

The rest of the outfits are…meh, at least for me. The only other one I liked was Tia Kofi’s because as a gay man in a Catholic nation I am very aware of Saint Sebastian! I remember that cover for Anne Rice’s Violin!

During the critiques, it becomes really obvious that Scarlet and Choriza are going to be the bottom two, with the judges very clearly telegraphing that it’s Choriza’s time to go home because they kept referring to her manic face as the thing that distracted from the dance. Hannah and Marina, of course, get the top positions.

During the chatting portion of Untucked, Scarlet’s words from a previous episode come back to bite her because both Hannah and Marina express their worry that if either one of them falls to the bottom in the next episode, Scarlet is going to send them home. I guess this is pretty much the sign to say goodbye to Scarlet!

Can I just say that I love how the queens now look to Marina as the queen to beat when it comes to performance? Hannah seems particularly proud to be able to even hold her own against Marina! And boy does Marina deliver another knockout performance. There’s even a costume change! Which I did not see coming until it came! And Marina wins another badge. She’s the frontrunner at the moment, the only queen with three badges!

And would you look at that Marina sent Choriza home! I thought it was going to be Scarlet for sure!