Rupaul’s Drag Race: Alaska continues her victory march in “Drag Fish Tank”

The queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race keep it light in an episode that tests their creativity and forces them to wear pants. What a great show.

So Alaska 5000 is going to win this thing, right? So far, there have been six episodes of Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 2, and Alaska has won three of them. That’s half. That’s a total of $30,000, which is more than the winners of the first two seasons of the show got in prize money. And it’s not like her wins are undeserved—her Mae West impression back in the Snatch Game episode was terrific, and her take on Bette Davis a couple of weeks ago was perfection. But is the inevitability of her victory making the show boring?

Not really, because the question of who wins has always been incidental to RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s more about the branding. RuPaul, getting uncharacteristically animated on the judges’ panel tonight, breaks it down:

"I’m a marketing genius! I marketed subversive drag to 100 million muthafuckas in the world. I’m a marketing motherfuckin’ genius over here."

She’s not wrong. RuPaul sold America on the idea that drag can be mainstream entertainment. She found these underground artists, plopped them in a TV-friendly format, and let ’em rip. We’ve been fascinated ever since. There are very few people like this on television, and their existence alone is enough to hold our attention.

Tonight’s challenge revolved around that concept. Each of the queens had to design a product based around her unique brand, and then record a commercial for it. Basically, it boiled down to them having good ideas and being funny on camera. There were no duds—this is All Stars, after all—but a couple definitely stood above the pack.

In short, the queens who trade on funny do well. Katya, after a couple of weeks in the bottom of the pack, puts her bizarro-world sense of humor to good use with a truly strange ad for Katya’s Krisis Kontrol, a refreshing body spray that “packs the right amount of thorazine to protect from anxiety, fear, hallucinations, or ghosts.” Hell, you could even make the argument that her product is poignant, since it blocks out stress by rendering the user dead to the world. And it almost didn’t happen. While making the rounds in the workroom, Marcus Lemonis, on loan from CBNC’s The Profit, tells Katya to scrap the idea, since her product has no practical function. But Katya’s been around the block enough times to know that practicality has little to no use on RuPaul’s Drag Race. If you can make RuPaul laugh, you win, and she does.

Predictably, the other stand-out is Alaska, who applies her razor-sharp comic timing and esoteric visual sensibility to a commercial for Alaska Thunderfun Fashion Tape. Like Katya, she knows the actual product doesn’t really matter, and concentrates on being funny.

• “What makes this product different, you might ask? That’s a stupid question.”
• “Available in three unique shades: Stunning, Fierce, and Yellow.”
• How much does Alaska’s fashion tape cost? “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

Was there any doubt she would win?

But before Alaska earns the top spot for the week, she has to lip sync against Katya to Joan Jett’s version of “Cherry Bomb.” (You might recognize The Runaway’s rendition from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack.) It’s a raucous lip sync where both girls bring their rocker chick best, but Alaska clinches it the moment she pulls an American flag out of her wig and tromps around the stage with it draped behind her like a superhero’s cape. Not even playing your leg like a guitar can beat that. Where was she hiding it up there?

In the end, Alaska sends home Tatianna over Roxxxy. I’ll let her explanation speak for itself. “If I send Tatianna home, then people will say that I’m favoring Roxxxy because she’s my friend. If I send Roxxxy home, then I’ll look like kind of a bitch because she lent me this shirt that I’m wearing.”

And then I’ll weigh in. Alaska’s right. People are going to say she made a biased decision. I think you could make an argument that Roxxxy’s commercial was better than Tatianna’s. Then again, I think you could make an argument the other way. At the end of the day, both were pretty lukewarm.

But there’s no way you could convincingly argue that Roxxxy beat Tatianna on the runway. The theme for this week—pants—didn’t bring out the best in anyone, but Tatianna had far and away the most fun with it, breaking out some parachute pants and a see-though silk jersey for a fond tribute to the ‘T’ in TLC, complete with dance moves. Plus, she showed a lot more passion than Roxxxy when arguing why she should stay.

Did that passion scare Alaska? Did she eliminate Tatianna to get rid of the competition? Thus far, the show has been free of that kind of strategic voting, so I doubt it. Still, this is a reality show, and an alliance has to form sooner or later.

Or at least that’s what the producers want to happen. But with reality show contestants like these, who can tell?

Next: First look at Outlander Season 3!

Random Ruflections:

• The episode kicks off with a typically ridiculous mini-challenge, the first one in weeks. The queens have to hang weights from their waists and nudge golf balls into “the big pink hole.” It’s “butt-butt golf.” Get it? Because euphemisms? Naturally, Alaska wins.
• Alaska also wins the war for camera time in the workroom with her high-spirited impression of Alyssa Edwards. There’s little she doesn’t excel at.
• Marcus Lemonis: “I think you have a little bit of a branding identity crisis.” Kayta: “Okay, well that’s very on-brand for me.”
• As usual, some of the best moments are spent just observing stray moments in the workroom, as when Katya calls Detox a “gutted, rotted, paint-scraping, IRS-cheating gila monster.” In good fun, of course.
• Katya’s descriptions of her outfits were a highlight of Season 7, but they’ve been more muted this year. She returns to form tonight. “I am giving you 1980s lesbian literary agent, disinterested pissed off Ellen Barkin fantasy.”
• Alyssa Edwards’ ad for her energy drink is dependably nonsensical, and not in the calculated way Katya’s was. “Why were you in front of the White House?” Graham Norton asks after it airs. Alyssa isn’t quite sure, which is part of her brand, so kudos.
• For a funny queen who’s 80% plastic, Detox is flying under the radar this year, neither excelling nor failing enough to make a lasting impression. I liked her idea for a new catchphrase, though: “Wash your fucking hands!”
• Graham Norton made for a decent guest judge, and lobbed some decent bon mots. To Alaska about her runway outfit: “From the neck down, you’re going to some fabulous Studio 54 disco. But your hair is going bowling.” He also looked hilarious at a loss for how to move on the runway.
• Elsewhere on the judges’ table, Todrick Hall seemed a little more at ease this week, but still gives off whiffs of “why is he here?”
• The judges are finding increasingly weird ways to pass the time while they wait for the girls to deliberate. In the season premiere, they drank cocktails. Now they’re skeet shooting wild wigs out of the air. I don’t like to think about what they’ll be doing come the finale.