‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 12 Episode 11 Recap — One Woman Shows
With no elimination last week, the competition is only getting more fierce, and not in a good way. Now, the queens must compete in a comedy challenge to come out on top, even appearing in front of The View’s Whoopi Goldberg. Here’s what you might’ve missed on the latest episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12.
This article contains spoilers from the most recently released episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12. Read at your own risk, squirrel friends!
Everybody loves puppets!
It’s a new day in the Werk Room and Jackie is feeling thankful for another chance to prove herself. Miss Jaida Essence Hall, on the other hand, just clocked her third maxi challenge win. That’s huge! Jaida’s win, though, was a bit of a wake-up call for Gigi. She even brings up that she was gooped Jackie stayed.
Speaking of huge things, it’s time for the queens to reach their hands inside the hole to pick a puppet of their competitors. They then drag up the puppet and do their best impersonation of their chosen season 12 sister. With a severely contoured puppet of Sh*rry, Jackie is the winner of this week’s mini-challenge.
RuPaul shares what this week’s maxi-challenge will be: a 5-minute one-woman show. They can do multiple characters or they can be themselves, they just have to make RuPaul, the judges, and the celebrity guest judge, Whoppi Goldberg, laugh. Because Jackie won the mini-challenge, she’s in charge of picking the order.
The maxi-challenge this week is a comedy challenge
Jackie tries to take everyone’s wishes into consideration when picking the order of the show, but, naturally, no one wants to go last. Jackie says she doesn’t mind going first and asks Jaida if she’d be okay going last. Jaida reluctantly agrees and the rest of the queens are placed in the middle of the lineup.
Each queen has a chance to run their ideas by RuPaul and Whoopi Goldberg on the mainstage. There are clearly a few problems. Jackie’s idea to go through the “herstory” of Drag Race isn’t getting any laughs from RuPaul, so she decides to switch her idea entirely. Crystal talks about going “all the way” with her jokes, so she’ll be doing her show as a male exotic dancer. RuPaul loves it.
Gigi, on the other hand, wrote herself an entire script and planned to memorize it for the challenge, but RuPaul and Whoopi Goldberg encourage her to improv and “be herself.” In her confessional, Gigi explains how difficult that is for her. She’s considerably nervous going into this week’s challenge.
On the runway, the category is ‘The Color Purple’
The queens each go up to do their comedy routines. Jackie goes first, with two glasses on chairs to represent her parents. She makes the judges laugh a fair amount, while still taking the time to talk about her life/family.
Crystal, as a male exotic dancer, has everyone dying at her dance moves. Heidi also goes the family route, impersonating a meal with her family, but she’s switching between characters a lot, and, as Michelle Visage points out later, it’s kind of confusing.
Gigi is next, as her flight attendant character and she has the audience laughing with her jokes and her call-outs. Jackie points out that Gigi keeps referring back to her outline, but it’s not that noticeable. Last up is Jaida, who tells the story of the time she put the “pee” in “pageant.” She’s not getting many laughs at all.
It’s time for the runway and each queen dresses in their purple best. The looks are each pretty different (Gigi Goode does a Scooby Doo-inspired look while Jaida has on a full pageant fantasy.) While getting critiques it’s pretty apparent Jaida will be in the bottom and when RuPaul asks her if it was her choice to go last, she says no. She also says she was a little “fatigued” from sitting through the 17-minute performance beforehand.
After the judges deliberate, RuPaul decides that Crystal Methyd is the winner of this week’s challenge. (Finally!) Heidi and Jaida Essence Hall are the bottom two and after lip-syncing to Prince’s “1999,” Heidi sashays away. Five queens remain.
New episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race premiere on a weekly basis on VH1.
