The Roast of Michelle Visage
Grade: A
On the second-ever RuPaul’s Roast, RuPaul has turned the script and the queens will be roasting Michelle Visage to a crispy 410 degrees over a slow-turner. Beautiful.
No, but seriously the queens this week are tasked with roasting the biggest drag queen of them all, Biological Woman Michelle Visage. And it goes…interestingly.
First, the queens gather for a day at the Library because Reading Is What! Fundamental! I’m writing this a few days because I didn’t care that much—this is almost better because I’m left with the emotions and not just the plot.
Before the queens read each other, it’s set up that Peppermint and Farrah are the only ones to have not won a challenge—something Pep realizes means that either she needs to win one or get eliminated. Farrah has no idea what day it is or where she is.
Sasha, Valentina and Peppermint are all very funny—Valentina’s “I lied, you ugly stripper” had me laughing so loud. Farrah, Alexis and Nina were…like whatever. At the end, Valentina is declared the winner and Alexis gets offended that the other queens made fun of her weight. And for someone who made a joke insinuating that Farrah was a prostitute, it feels a little rich.
These are television-adept queens, so they know how the episodes play out. Alexis tries to turn her thin skin into martyrdom in front of Ru and Ross Mathews during the walk-through, but Ru rightly points out that Alexis read all the other queens, so why did she think she would be untouchable? Alexis has no answer, because there is no answer.
Sasha is having trouble balancing her own intellectualism with the challenge at hand, and Farrah is just having trouble. And while Ross offers advice to both of them, including an exact formula for how to tell jokes for Farrah, only Sasha heeded the advice and ended up doing better for it.
The emotional Mirror Talk is about anti-queer sentiment in Russia—where Peppermint had a scary encounter at the airport, and Sasha had to go back into the closet while studying in Moscow. On a RPDR recap show, they complained about the fakeness of the Mirror Moments, but I actually enjoy them. What can I say? I like routines.
On the main stage, Ru welcomes guest judges Fortune Feimster (comedian) and Tamar Braxton (who has been on the show a couple times, and each time with a new, prettier face). Ru then drops the bomb that the queens will be roasting not RuPaul, but Michelle. For having it sprung on you that you’re about to be the subject of mean jokes, Michelle handles it pretty well. But then again, Michelle is used to having things sprung on her. (ROAST).
Shea opens the show in a killer blonde bob. She’s funny but not gut-blasting, which is fine because she had the hardest job of all—walking into a cold room. Sasha follows and after a rocky start, begins laying into a “Michelle Visage is so Jersey” formula that she slays with. it goes on a little long, but Sasha acknowledges that and continues to beat a dead horse. After that is Valentina, playing a chola-esque caricature. It was funny but not overly hilarious—I like how fucking weird Valentina is.
After that is Trinity, who does a country version of Valentina’s that is much less successful. It was more mean than funny, but not entirely unfunny. After Trinity is Farrah, who is so actually mean I was physically uncomfortable. After two failures, Peppermint comes in and kills. She makes a hilarious Michelle Williams riding coattails joke that was just enough. Nina comes after Pep in a weird old-lady bit. They all clearly took a page out of Coco Montrese’s book, a pageant queen who won the roast challenge with an over-the-top character. But it becomes steadily less funny the more people do characters.
So by the time you get to Alexis, WHO ASKED TO CLOSE THE SHOW, I was done. She had painted herself green and was wearing a Star of David necklace (Is Michelle Jewish?) and was just saying weird, passive mean jokes. It completely tanked and she was dressed down by the judges for it.
In the end, Peppermint won the challenge, but was tightly followed by Sasha and Shea—I personally think Sasha could’ve taken the win. And in the bottom two is Farrah versus Alexis to Dolly Parton.
In the end, Farrah is sent home. It’s been nice knowing her, but we all know that if not for Eureka’s surprise medical emergency, Farrah would’ve been gone many episodes earlier. She was beautiful and she was grace, but she was not Miss United States.
This recap was literally so boring idk. I’m cooking broccoli right now, so I have other things on my mind.
BYE!!!!! Next week is “My Pilot’s On Fire” where the queens create TV pilots. Wow. Why.
The Wunderkindof 