It’s a comedy challenge. And not just any comedy challenge – it’s a roast! And not just any roast, it’s a roast of winners of the semi-coveted title of Miss Congeniality. How will these queens EVER come up with material that’s deeply cutting and hilarious in relation to these nice queens? A roast is not about just coming up with deeply problematic and offensive jokes, they also have to be really funny, and with the added challenge of roasting “nice girls” some of the contestants fail. Hard. But what else is new? This is RuPaul’s Drag Race and the bad standup routines and bad roast sets always become the most iconic and hilarious parts of the show’s most quotable moments. With season 13’s roast, however, we see what happens with a queen plummets and another queen soars towards a much-needed win.
“A SICKENING One-Year Supply Of Anastacia Beverly Hills Cosmetics”
Utica has sent the legendary Tina Burner home and the very beginning of the episode shows her being sad and saying that Tina deserved to stay over her but then talking about how amazing it felt to lip sync (for the second time). The other queens give her strange looks and there’s a cut to Gottmik in the confessional saying how confusing Utica’s attitude is. All of this is to set up that maybe we the audience should have some reservations about Utica’s place in the competition and where she fits in the dynamic of this Top Six. There is a tiny bit of whiplash however when almost immediately after RuPaul arrives in the workroom (the next day) he asks the queens to pair up for the mini-challenge since Gottmik jumps into Utica’s arms; the editing would have us believe that Utica is rubbing everyone the wrong way, but the footage is showing us otherwise. Curious.
The mini-challenge is a funny way to highlight one of the sponsors of the show with one queen being the arms for the other as they put on Anastacia Beverly Hills makeup, particularly the Norvina eyeshadow palettes named after the company’s president, who makes a brief appearance during the challenge. Norvina is radiant in a sexy, space-y look and, as someone who owns one of the ACH Norvina palettes, I have to stan. The goal of the mini-challenge is to have the funniest face after each team gives a demonstration of the makeup and it ends up being a hilarious and worthwhile challenge: there’s a lot of eyelash glue being used as lipstick and fantastic Youtube MUA-worthy commentary as the arms and hands go in blind. Rosé and Kandy end up winning the challenge but it was Utica and Gottmik who completely stole the show as Utica’s beanpole arms contrasted with Gottmik’s small body and stunningly hilarious narration. So yeah, Rosé and Kandy win the mini-challenge which means that they get to choose the lineup of this maxi-challenge, the roast!
Rosé and Kandy decide that they both want to take chances while making the roast as entertaining as possible. For them, putting themselves at the very beginning and the very end of the lineup is taking a huge chance and the other queens are gagged at their nerve – those are the two hardest positions for any comedy lineup, even for the pros. Kandy will open the show, followed by Symone, Utica, Gottmik, Olivia, and then Rosé, who will close them out. The two of them are extremely confident that they will do well, but should they be? As it turns out, yes. If you’re funny AND you’re confident in your own comedy, you do really well on this show!
On the other side of the spectrum, we have Symone and Gottmik who are especially worried about doing the roast, while somewhere in the middle are Utica and Olivia who are both so sure they’ll do well even though they have no real reason to think so: Olivia’s nice girl persona seems to be at odds here with her diva persona and Utica has dropped the ball in almost all of the comedy challenges (despite her improv comedy background) and this trend continues with her roast set. This week’s guest judge is the hilarious Loni Love and she works with Michelle Visage to coach the queens on their material. When Utica hits the stage, she starts right in with a lot of fat jokes that get some chuckles from Loni but Michelle tells Utica (who is a very tall, thin person) that using hand gestures to signify someone being overweight isn’t really funny and maybe too offensive (a roast is meant to be offensive but the caveat is that the offensive joke must be funny). What happens next spells almost certain disaster for Utica as it LOOKS like she’s trying to roast Loni and Michelle over their bodies but on a second watch, it looks like these may be part of her set and not just directed at them. It’s some very tricky editing but the writing is on the wall: Utica is getting a slight villain edit.
“Let’s Get This Roast A-Cookin’”
The problem about having a comedy challenge with this number of girls is that, unless there’s some kind of outright drama going on, the majority of the airtime is made up of the queens constantly questioning how they’ll do in the challenge. It’s an almost obscene amount of filler but there’s at least one last saving grace to spice things up, which is Utica’s shady side re-appearing in regards to Olivia. For the second time this season, we see Utica tell Olivia one thing, and then completely contradict herself in the confessionals. It’s another example of Utica’s tumble from grace, which is ironic as she was pegged very early on as a possible season 13 Miss Congeniality. Speaking of which, it’s time for the Nice Girls Roast, with some of the more recent Miss Congeniatys, season 11’s Nina West, season 9’s Valentina, and the reigning Miss Congeniality (and the Most Valuable Queen of all time!) Heidi N. Closet. As these very kind queens perch on the stage, RuPaul, Michelle Visage, and Loni Love are joined by judge Ross Matthews. The show kicks off with Kandy, who is funny without even trying, getting a round of laughs and applause from the audience of seven (filming during the pandemic means there is no crowd) but the laughs quickly die when Symone makes it to the stage. And what a shame. Symone has always made everyone laugh in previous challenges but she fully bombs on the stage and gets very few laughs.
And with Utica up next, the roast takes a wild turn. While there are a few laughs, Utica stumbles a bit and, in an attempt to recover, goes for the full jugular. After making whale sounds at Nina West and telling Heidi she’s full of bull semen, Utica takes a shot at Loni Love‘s comedy career, which causes the guest judge to chuckle right before she fires back, “you’re the one bombing!” This makes everyone – the judges, the Nice Girls, and the contestants – roar with laughter at Utica’s expense. While I don’t really think it’s fair for a judge to heckle a queen after such a benign joke, I have also been a Loni Love fan since I Love The 80s Strikes Back and I Love The 70s on VH1 way back in 2003 and I am NOT here for anyone going after her. But then again, it is a roast so it’s all in good fun. Especially when Utica gives her topper, cementing her status as the BALLSIEST queen in the entire franchise’s run.
Now, here’s an interesting fact about RuPaul: while she may strut the runway in her gorgeous Zaldy gowns, it is well-known among Drag Race fans that when RuPaul sits down behind the judging panel, she changes into more comfortable bottoms, like sweatpants. Everyone on the show knows this, but it has never been addressed on the show…until now. Utica makes a dig at RuPaul when she compliments her fashion and then asks her to stand up and model the outfit for them. Everyone is stunned and looks to Ru to see what will happen next. RuPaul, with the biggest smile ever, casually flips Utica the bird and then does a bunch of hand gestures too obscene for television. The room erupts into the biggest laughter of the night and, yes, Utica did a terrible job, but holy fuck did she just earn the N in Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent.
And thankfully, the laughter continues with Gottmik’s set as she knocks all of her jokes out of the park, most notably with the jab at RuPaul‘s music career (available on iTunes) and a joke about Ross Matthews cumming when the pizza gets delivered in a porno – all great stuff. After Gottmik is Olivia who… makes a lot of choices and very few of them are good. Olivia tries to play up her polite queen shtick by acting very childlike in her demeanor and playing up how innocent and sweet she is. In the beginning, it comes off as grating and annoying (made evident by the cuts to Nina West’s unamused face throughout Olivia’s set) and, while she does manage to get in a few good laughs, Olivia’s set is just transparently bad. Oh, Can I Get An Amen, we finally get to Rosé, who absolutely DOMINATED in the coaching scene earlier in the episode. While her set was really funny, it was disappointing that Rosé’s set wasn’t as good as the one we saw when she was performing them to Loni and Michelle. Nonetheless, Rosé still did an amazing job.
In the end, the tops are Gottmik, Kandy, and Rosé with the OBVIOUS bottoms being Olivia, Symone, and Utica. And while it seemed like it was Gottmik’s night to win, it’s actually Kandy who Ru declares the top queen of the week – her first win! Everyone cheers hard for Kandy and her win, including Kandy herself making for a really cute moment from Miss Muse. While I think it should have gone to Gottmik, I’m not mad at Kandy finally having a win under her belt.
As Kandy celebrates, RuPaul declares the bottom two to be Symone and Utica – this is Symone’s second time in the bottom and Utica’s third. This alone stacks the lip sync in Symone’s favor (along with her four challenge wins) but, depending on the song, Utica could still turn it out. However, when those beautiful pipes blast through the speakers and the song is revealed to be “No Tears Left To Cry” by Ariana Grande, it will be Symone who stays and Utica who sashays away. They both do a fine job in the lip-sync but wow, Symone completely captures the opulence, the omnipotence, and just COOL feeling that the song elicits. It is absolutely no contest, and when RuPaul tells Symone “shantay you stay”, Symone repeats that it will never happen again, not again will she be in the bottom two. Can she make good on that promise? Symone better, because if the queen with four wins gets sent home so close to the finale, that would be a GAG and the fandom may well implode.
Conclusion: “Nice Girls Roast”
Utica is gone and we now have our Top Five – Symone, Gottmik, Rosé, Olivia, and Kandy. Despite being in the bottom two twice, Symone and her many wins are still an undeniable and unstoppable force in the competition – but is she shaken by this lip sync? The teaser for next week’s episode shows Symone in tears and I am hoping and praying that it is a misdirection by production to keep Symone stans sweating. As for the rest of the queens, the last few weeks have shown us that Olivia is spiraling a little. While she was in the bottom last week, she has also barely squeaked out of lip-syncing for a number of episodes, which is really such a shame. But, because of this trajectory, it seems like Olivia may be in danger of being the next girl to go home, especially now that Kandy has finally won a challenge.
Next week’s episode will be a comedic acting challenge which, at this point in the game, could go any which way since everyone in the Top Five has proven to be a capable actor, which makes me think that there may be some production shenanigans. As for this week, despite being a fun episode with one of the most iconic and cringeworthy roast performances (thank you, Utica!) it could have really benefitted from being edited down to 60 minutes instead of the now-standard 90-minute episodes, which will become more and more of a problem as more queens go home – let’s just hope it’s not Symone!
What did you think of “Nice Girls Roast?” Who do you think will be the next queen to sashay away? Let us know in the comments below!
A new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 13 can be seen every Friday at 8/7c on VH1.
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