Episode #5 - Snatch Game
Part Five (Note Form)
Ru welcomes us to the latest edition of the Snatch Game, and welcomes the contestants (actress
Kelly Marie Tran and comedian
Jaboukie Young-White) before introducing tonight’s stars. On the top row, from left to right:
Jessica as legendary drag queen Miss
Coco Peru
Nicole as reality star and former political aide
Omarosa
Eva as singer, artist and activist
Yoko Ono
Lady Boi as Drag Race season eight contestant
Derrick Barry
Drü as classic Hollywood actress
Gloria Swanson
On the bottom row, from left to right:
Honey as singer
Nina Simone
Rafaella as singer
Taylor Swift
VinChelle as Trump's favourite porn star,
Stormy Daniels
Big Dee as supermodel
Janice Dickinson
Yvie as the queen of all media,
Oprah Winfrey
The questions are, in order, “lazy Lisa is so lazy. Instead of covering her face with foundation, she just uses [blank]”, “Greedy Glenda is so greedy. Whenever she eats out in West Hollywood, she orders [blank]!” and “drag queens are so generous. Ahead of the royal wedding, they clubbed together and bought Harry and Meghan a brand new [blank]!”... yep, I wrote this thing so long ago that the royal wedding was still an upcoming event. Worse is that I'd initially wrote the question to be about the upcoming royal baby, and figured that I'd be safer off time-wise going for the wedding. Hey, just roll with it.
The Highs- Eva's Yoko Ono consists of lots of nonsensical answers, incoherent screaming, strange noises, attempts to play parts of the set like musical instruments and blatant plugs for her art collections mid-answers.
- Honey, as Nina Simone, boldly begins by threatening to shoot RuPaul, but dials it back with bouts of random jazz singing, elaborate stories from her career and bitchy retorts to some of the whiter queens.
- Big Dee's well-prepared Janice Dickinson manages to come across as more of a loving tribute than a send-up, and consists of a mixture of delightfully crude comments ("I used to know a guy who owned a fudge store. One night we ****ed so hard I almost... wait, can you say 'fudge' on television?"), rambling showbiz stories about the times she did coke with Liberace and liberal c-bombs. At one point she dons an eye-patch on one eye and, after looking across to Stormy Daniels, asks Ru to give her the other patch.
The Ones in the Middle- Jessica's Coco Peru is full of quotes ("okay that was homophobic", "oh sweetheart, your poor mother", "I'm slitting your throat in your sleep", "which gay man thought this up?", "that's it, I'm writing a letter", calling Ru a little cocoa puff) that don't make much sense in or out of context, but Jessica manages to make Ru giggle and that's all that matters in this game.
- Lady Boi slurs her way through Derrick Barry, avoiding many of the obvious jokes one could make based on Derrick's season eight perormance and instead squarely focusing on her now-iconic drunk roast which, similar to Jessica, she seems to know verbatim. All the hits are there - "Thorgy Shlor", "season hate" and even a "I don't know if the answer is Chuck, but tonight your answer is truck" - but never quite pops.
- Rafaella's Taylor Swift is fairly one note, revolving around the joke that the old, innocent country star Taylor (who she begins Snatch Game as) is dead and gets violently replaced by Reputation-era Taylor, even if she characterises this mostly through a wig change. She also keeps applying black lipstick throughout. At one point, she eats the lipstick.
- Yvie's Oprah is perhaps not the best or most nuanced choice she could have gone with, but she gets a lot of mileage out of the voice, bellowing random celebrity names ("John Travoltaaaa! Juliaaaa Roberts! Madonnaaaa! Breeeeaaad!") at a willing RuPaul, cracking the usual lesbian-with-Gayle jokes, asking Stormy "what is the truth" about her affair with Trump (VinChelle does not play along for some reason) and concluding her Snatch Game by throwing her cards across the room, shouting "you get an answer! And you get an answer! And you get an answer!"
The Lows- Nicole's Omarosa goes the way of Asia O'Hara's Beyoncé; she's catty without being funny, and even though she tries some fun back-and-forth with Stormy over Trump, she goes quiet for the rest of the game when VinChelle decides not to engage.
- VinChelle's Stormy seems too preoccupied on her appearance (big fake breasts, a blonde wig and talc all over her skin, which is... a choice) that the jokes take a back seat, and the ones that she tries to throw out land somewhere in Alaska. She doesn't even have any storm puns prepared, which is the real travesty.
- Drü falls victim to the same fate as Robbie Turner and, to a lesser extent, Miz Cracker: assuming that playing someone who's been dead for fifty years who much of the show's key demographic won't be familiar with will be an automatic Snatch Game win. It isn't the worst of the night, but Drü relies too much on her Norma Desmond shtick and pulling faces than on telling good jokes or interacting with the other queens.