Good morning, Bitches! It’s the Semifinals. Episode 14 (rightfully) started off with the queens in utter shock over last week’s elimination—Darlene was particularly devastated by her new friend’s departure. But with Jane gone, the remaining queens had a new fire in their eyes. It’s anyone’s game now.
Our top four—Myki, Nini, Juicy, and Darlene—had one more hurdle before the finals. And it was another improv comedy challenge: the live talk show Good Morning, Bitches! Jane would have crushed it. Sigh.
But first, RuPaul treated us to the classic Tic-Tac Chat, where we got Emmy-worthy trauma dumps from each queen alongside tidy recaps of their progress. Nini was praised for her engineering prowess but challenged for her “lack of humanity” (ugh) while Myki got a winning edit about her meteoric rise through the second half of the competition after the other queens ranked her last in Rate-A-Queen.
Juicy emphasized her formidable dance skills as her healthy vehicle for self-expression. Darlene leaned into her dark horse edit, talking about how sticking to her guns both kept her in the competition and helped her move forward in her life without familial support. Darlene and RuPaul also bonded over their sobriety journeys. (RuPaul has been sober since 1999, which is longer than most of these queens have been alive.)
RuPaul’s trauma-mining has always been awkward, but the Tic-Tac Chat went to new heights of cringe in Season 18. Dressed as a painter, RuPaul revealed a portrait of each queen after their interviews, and each one looked suspiciously like AI slop. On a show about queer creativity!? Right in front of my salad!??
When RuPaul tasked the queens to pair up for their final challenge, Myki wisely avoided Juicy, remembering how she was overshadowed by her in Episode Three’s improv comedy challenge (I suspect Myki’s coaching was the reason Juicy won that challenge). Myki instead partnered with Darlene, leaving Juicy with Nini. It seemed like a balanced game since all of these queens had won a previous comedy challenge, but the results were anything but.
Under the direction of Ross Matthews, Nini and Juicy were not able to find flow together during their live taping. Juicy kept losing track of the time queues while a frazzled Nini tried to keep the team on track. They weren’t a complete trainwreck, but guest interviewee Zane Phillips’ muscle diet of “taking scoops out of a bucket of turkey and a bucket of beef” was the most memorable part of the sequence.
The judges weren’t feeling it, either. Juicy was panned for relying too heavily on sexual innuendo (lol okay). And Nini and Juicy were both critiqued for sounding too stiff and self-edited for a morning news segment.
Juicy’s Havana-inspired rags-to-riches runway for the “Drag Excellence” theme was beautiful, but too busy: most of the judges thought she was dressed as a tree. That’s where Nini pulled ahead. Her dazzling silver and black gown was drag excellence, showcasing her technical prowess and creative fluidity. Guest judge and singer/actress Teyana Taylor wanted to take Nini’s look home.
Myki and Darlene, on the other hand, struck gold. Darlene’s kooky comedy perfectly complemented Myki’s cheeky poise, and the pair sailed through Good Morning, Bitches with grace and élan. (Darlene’s “breakfast Minnie Mouse” look from the challenge will live in my head rent-free for at least another week.)
On the runway, Myki’s elegant gown gave Miss Universe (literally) and the judges praised her for her superior hosting skills. And Darlene got even more glowing reviews. “Everything was incorrect,” Michelle said of Darlene’s challenge performance, speaking to her unique ability to bring fresh energy to a reality television show that’s now old enough to vote. And Teyana Taylor praised Darlene’s 70s-inspired glamorous red and gold gown as “soft and cunt and pussy,” despite Darlene’s hilarious insistence on wearing those horrible blocky shoes that Michelle hates so much. TL;DR: Darlene is a rare master of camp, a stupid genius, and the embodiment of queer joy.
And the Final Three Are…
Myki and Darlene were awarded a double win for the week, advancing them to the top three. (Appropriate, since Darlene’s never been in the bottom two, and Myki’s only bottom placement was when she was wrongfully put there in Rate-A-Queen.) This left Nini and Juicy to lip-sync-for-their-lives.
The pair were neck-and-neck in terms of track record: both had gotten similar critiques in the challenge, both had two wins, and both had had their fair share of bottom two placements. This was a matchup where the lip-sync felt like an appropriate deciding factor.
With Nini in silver and Juicy in gold, the pair squared off to Chappell Roan’s masterpiece, “Super Graphic Ultra-Modern Girl.” Juicy shed her golden tree immediately for a lime-green dance costume, but Nini remained in her structured gown. I wondered if Nini’s strategy was to impale her competitor on her three-foot-long spiky side-boobs.
Nini may not have been able to do splits and tricks in her restrictive costume, but her lip-sync was impeccable. Juicy didn’t bring enough to the performance (especially with her words), and sashayed away just shy of the final.
And there we have it! Our top three of Season 18: Nini Coco, Darlene Mitchell, and Myki Meeks. I’m still cracked that Jane’s not there, but I’m looking forward to seeing who snatches the crown two weeks from now.
But first, we’re getting the reunion that does that absolute most: the “Lip-Sync LaLaPaRuza Smackdown,” where all the eliminated queens return to battle it out for a cash prize. We’ll get to see Jane again, plus all our other favorite queens of Season 18.
See you next week!
