Ron Does Stuff

We’ve got a top four! After Morphine Love Dion’s elimination in the previous episode, we now have Sapphira Cristal, Plane Jane, Nymphia Wind, and Q occupying the top four spots this season.

Now the question is…will there be four of them going into the finale? Or will it be just three of them? How are they going to lip sync for the crown if it’s just three of them? Will they even be lip syncing for the crown this season?

Let’s find out!

Sapphira is pretty cool about acknowledging her own fears during the lip sync, admitting that she thought she was going to be the one to sashay away. But on the plus side, this may be the vulnerability that the judges have been looking for.

Q and Plane, on the other hand, take jabs at each other playfully. Q also gets a jab in at Nymphia and I don’t know if Nymphia knows that it’s playful. And considering how Q had a jab for Nymphia eaerlier on in the season as well, I don’t think Q was being playful either. BUT! I wasn’t there in the Werk Room so whatever.

The next day, Nymphia shares that they want it to be a top four, but that you never know with Drag Race, which just tells me that one of them is going home this episode. How will they determine the winner this time around? Will it be like season 8 with the totally superfluous musical numbers that had no bearing at all?

Ru comes in for this week’s mini challenge which is…lip-syncing underwater? At first I thought it was going to be like the season five underwater photoshoot but turns out it’s more like the leaf blower lip sync from season 7.

Like…girl. I don’t know what the criteria for judging is but the winner of this mini challenge is Sapphira Cristal. She did manage to take off her wig and dip her rubber titties in the water as well. She wins a trip to Mexico!

Ru then reveal’s that their Maxi challenge for this episode is to write stories about their own life as a way to cross-promote her own book, The House of Hidden Meanings. Ru reminds them to not forget to plug their book, which just reminds me of Jessica Wild during the Absolut Vodka challenge in season 2. Will we get a repeat?

Everybody already knows about Nymphia’s aversion to writing, but as it turns out she isn’t the only one who hasn’t put pen to paper for some time now. Q says as much, and Plane doesn’t look like she’s having an easy time going about it either.

Nymphia is first up with the cover photoshoots and while she says she’s serving Catwoman, what I’m seeing is Sandara in “I Am The Best”.

Q…looks like an old white woman. I’m sorry okay. Also Ru immediately clocked how nonsensical her book title is. How do you take a bite out of soup?

Sapphira does well, of course, and Ru really is getting into her Tyra Banks-in-ANTM-season one in this episode as she helps all the girls out and directs them when it comes to posing. Plane Jane even points it out!

Plane is the first one to go on the podcast interviews and was it really necessary to bring up Amanda Tori Meating? She’s been gone for several episodes now let the queen rest! Even Matt points out that you don’t need to be shady just because the interviewer asks you to be!

Sapphia looks really set to win her fifth challenge because Matt is just enamored with her and she really does open up in the podcast interview, talking about how her grandma didn’t initially accept her and how being called a slue-foot was embarrassing at the beginning but is now something she’s embraced.

Q, on the other hand, starts out awkward in her interview. BUT she gets it together as the interview progresses and even has a moment of vulnerability talking about growing up poor.

Nymphia, surprisingly at least for me, smashes the interview. As someone who didn’t grow up in the United States, Nymphia already brings a different perspective from the other queens and it’s something Matt immediately latches on and finds interesting. She may just be safe on this challenge!

As the queens prepare for the runway this week they have the usual look back about the ups and downs of the season and it’s all fun and congenial and they look like they really bonded but as Sapphira points out, Ru hasn’t used the word semfinal in a long time if at all and she feels like someone’s going home tonight. And I feel the same way as well because you KNOW they showed all these happy drag queens so they can wring some tears out of them later on in the show.

The runway theme for this episode is fans and COME ON. If Nymphia doesn’t ace this runway I don’t know what to do. You’re Asian and the Asian dragon lady with a fan is a very popular stereotype! And well, she went Marie Antoinette with it. That’s life I guess.

During the judge’s critiques, it looks like Sapphira and Nymphia are going to be the top two queens? Sapphira charmed the judges, no surprise there. Just like with Matt, the judges were enthralled by Nymphia’s perspective from Taiwan and how the Western cultural dictatorship has annihilated her self-esteem. It’s Q and Plane Jane who get the worst critiques, so I guess all the playful teasing throughout the episode was to set up what looks to be a lip sync between the two of them.

And Nymphia WINS THE CHALLENGE OH MY GOD? Like I felt like she was going to be safe but not actually win! She’s off to the grand finals! Sapphira, of course, is also off to the finals because she has a crown to take home.

Q and Plane Jane lip sync to Tina Turner and…it’s a performance, I guess? It’s two white girls performing to Tina Turner. It wasn’t going to be as good as everyone wants it to be. And now we have a top three because Q is sent home! I feel like this happened because of her very visible stank face during episode 11.