Heading into the fifth episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18, Kenya Pleaser had just knocked the recently-having-fainted Briar Blush out of the competition after both failed to impress with their bestie vs. bestie designs. Vita VonTesse Starr became the fourth queen to snatch a maxi challenge win, while Athena Dion and Mia Starr were simply glad that their personal antagonist Briar was no longer around.
This week, the queens are split into two groups with half showcasing their talent on the Main Stage while the others watch and rate their performances, setting everyone up to show their catty side in the super shady Rate-A-Queen twist. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson serves as guest judge alongside series panelists RuPaul Charles, Michelle Visage, and Ross Mathews.
The queens still competing for the crown on Season 18 are: Athena Dion, Ciara Myst, Darlene Mitchell, Discord Addams, Jane Don’t, Juicy Love Dion, Kenya Pleaser, Mia Starr, Myki Meeks, Nini Coco, and Vita VonTesse Starr.
Read on for our recap of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18, Episode 5, titled “The Rate-A-Queen Talent Show, Part 1,” which aired Friday, Jan. 30 on MTV.
Myki MeeksMTV
“Safe bottom is very responsible, OK?”
— Myki Meeks
At a point in the competition when the girls were struggling to stay out the squabbles with one another, Ru arriving to announce the return of Rate-A-Queen felt like two steps back. Even though the group would be split into two groups, a Part 1 and a Part 2 of the Talent Show, Jane was concerned that the pre-existing relationships among the cast would factor into how fairly, or unfairly, the ratings go. To make matters worse, Ru asked that the queens divide themselves into the two performance groups and agree upon their own running order for each show. Once the ratings are tabulated for each Part, the top two would Lip Sync for the Win and the bottom-rated queen in each group would be up for elimination against each other.
To determine the groups, the queens assessed what style of talent each would present and tried to position themselves against queens who wouldn’t be direct competition. For the Florida-based queens (Juicy, Athena, and Mia), they knew it would be bad strategy to have all three of them in one group, but in order to divide their trio evenly they brought in Kenya as a fourth in an agreement to split two-and-two with a commitment to rate their sisters one and two no matter what. Separately, Mia and Kenya also made a deal with Ciara, Nini, and Myki to rate everyone in the Q-pop girl group “GLAM!” highest.
Jane Don’tMTV
“I planned to be judged by RuPaul, but now I’m going to be judged by a bunch of bitches from Florida who can’t read.”
— Jane Don’t
With an uneven number of competing queens, Vita was given the advantage as the latest maxi challenge winner to choose which group of five she would perform with. Once all the alliances and deals were hashed out in small whispery groups, it was agreed that Nini, Vita, Juicy, Mia, Ciara, and Darlene perform in Part 1 and Discord, Jane, Kenya, Myki, and Athena perform in Part 2. Prior to the first part of the talent extravaganza featuring the first six performers, all 11 queens walked the runway in this week’s “Not Today, Satin” category featuring standout looks from Juicy in a green and purple oversized carnivorous flower gown, Myki in a black leather and periwinkle satin stunner, and Kenya, who looked better in a garment borrowed from Jane than Jane did in her own confusing bird gown.
During the talent show, Ciara opened with a spoken word, interpretive dance number about rebirth dressed as a skeleton butterfly. Juicy followed in a slick hot pink robotic outfit with an original track built to show off her insanely tight flips, high kicks, and splits. Next was Nini as a praying mantis with the instant-catch-phrase-creating “You wanna make me mother? I wanna make you dinner” track, followed by Vita with a lackluster Alabama aerobics session and Darlene with a comedic country song about tools. Mia served as the closer with hip-hop choreo to match her “Mama Mia” rap track.
Athena DionMTV
“She comes from the Athena Dion Academy for Young Aspiring Artists and she served, bitch.”
— Athena Dion
Instead of offering the queens critiques on the Main Stage, the judges remarked on the performances while the girls rated each other backstage. Zara explained that the words of Ciara’s performance were lost and it felt like “the costume was the talent.” Ross understood the character that Juicy presented in her choreography as a robot and Michelle referred to it as a “10 out of 10.” Zara thought Nini was a favorite of the night in both her silly stage performance and the way she looked as a praying mantis and in the runway category. Michelle noticed that Vita “dropped her lip sync quite a few times” in the span of a one minute presentation. The panel felt the charm in Darlene’s set, but also agreed that she could have pushed it further and Ross thinks her runway was “amateur hour,” especially when compared to Mia who they thought performed like a star. Overall, their favorites were Juicy and Mia and their least favorites were Vita, Ciara, and Darlene.
In their private Rate-A-Queen sessions, Athena and Kenya both stayed true to their Dion family alliance by placing Juicy and Mia in the top spot, but both Kenya and Myki failed to honor the GLAM! alliance in their placements of Ciara in the bottom half of their rankings. Both Vita and Darlene also took hits from some queens, but were declared safe alongside Nini once the averages were tallied. On the top was nice Juicy and auntie Mia, who went head-to-head in the LSFTW to Zara’s song “Pretty Ugly,” and the dance battle everyone else was hyped to watch did not disappoint. The two were so evenly matched that before handing out the win to both of them, Ru declared the match-up as “how you compete for the crown.” Left at the bottom of the rankings was Ciara who would stick around until next week when she competes against the bottom queen from Part 2 in her own lip sync for survival.