The key to really enjoying RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars seems to be going with the flow. Strange judging choices? They’re everywhere! Bitter confessionals about one queen who, based on her edit, doesn’t deserve it? You know it! Rampant favouritism for queens Ru was already familiar with, as we watch queen after queen from smaller international franchises go home instead? Every week!
It can be all too easy to fixate on these issues, particularly when 12 separate countries have representatives competing, and the desire to see your hometown queen come out on top is strong. But Global All Stars has basically abandoned all pretense that it is a serious competition. Even this week’s choice of winner is actively laughable considering the edit of the episode itself. The only option in the face of such circumstances is to take the show at its word: if this is not a serious competition, then why should we take it seriously? Let’s instead enjoy the ride with as few cares as we can muster.
Luckily, when you put aside caring about such little things as “coherent narrative” and “comprehensible judging decisions,” Global All Stars actually has quite a bit to offer! This episode is by and large a delight, with a lot of funny performances—including and especially in the lip sync—and one of the most impressive instances of a queen pulling a rabbit out of a hat that we’ve ever seen in the franchise. (No, she doesn’t get rewarded with a win for it, but remember: we don’t take that seriously anymore.)
With my new carefree approach to Global All Stars, you’d think I’d have nothing to complain about. We’re going with the flow, baby! And hey, this week is the Snatch Game! We love the Snatch Game! Wait, no, I think I read that wrong … we don’t love Snatch Game, it says “Snatch Game of Love.” Ugh.
Look, I won’t deny that Snatch Game of Love has given us some good performances over the years. All Stars 5’s rendition was a particularly good one, with Alexis Mateo, Jujubee and eventual winner Shea Couleé all turning out performances that could’ve won in many seasons of OG Snatch Game. And there is something to be said for letting the “contestants” interact more with the queens themselves, as we see with Drag Race España judges Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (Los Javis, if you will) as this season’s Snatchelors.
But I earnestly long for original-recipe Snatch Game to return to All Stars. As All Stars 7 proved, even queens who have won their whole seasons have new pleasures to offer in the traditional format of this iconic challenge—imagine if we’d gotten just a fraction of Jinkx Monsoon’s Judy Garland because of the different format! There are some really good performances in this episode, and I can’t help but feel like we don’t see them at their full potential thanks to this being Snatch Game of Love.
With those complaints aside, let’s dive into the challenge. Our first group is made up of Kween Kong as King “Schlong” (aka a copyright-evading King Kong), Gala Varo as actress and singer Laura León, Kitty Scott-Claus as Princess Diana, and Nehellenia as iconic fashion designer Valentino. (That she starts by saying “Hello, it’s me! Valentino!” in a shout-out to Drag Race alumna Valentina is very funny.) Kitty did well in her original season’s Snatch Game, while Kween and Nehellenia placed safe in theirs. Gala landed in the bottom, which leads her to be nervous going into the challenge. Ru gives her some advice to amp up the dramatics—Laura León goes full telenovela, basically—but Gala never seems to get a handle on the character in the challenge itself.
Kween’s King Schlong is a bit of a nothingburger when it comes to characterization, although she’s funny enough. The stars of this group are Kitty and Nehellenia, who each have a very good idea of their character and cadence to their joke delivery. If I had to pick between the two, I think I’d prefer Nehellenia, just for giving us something a bit more oddball than Kitty’s Diana. But Javi Calvo picks Diana as his Snatchelorette—though as we learned with Jorgeous in All Stars 9, being chosen like this isn’t the same thing as being scored highly by Ru and the judges.
Round 2 sees Vanity Vain play two-time Eurovision winner Loreen, while Tessa Testicle leans on Ru’s familiarity with Swiss party icon Susanne Bartsch to get her through. Alyssa Edwards returns to a familiar well of her own, reprising her role as Annie Oakley from All Stars 2’s “Herstory of the World” Rusical challenge. Finally, we have Pythia, who initially wants to play Arnold Schwarzenegger. But a suggestion from Ru during the walkthrough—to lean into her Greek side by playing a mythical figure—really gets Pythia’s gears turning. She suddenly wants to change her character, but she has no outfit or anything to rely on.
We’ll get back to Pythia in a second, but first: as Vanity puts it, “Alyssa is Alyssa as Annie Oakley as Alyssa.” I gotta say, this run on Global All Stars is validating a lot of the prior criticisms of Alyssa on Drag Race. Jaremi Carey, the artist formerly known as Phi Phi O’Hara, may have drawn ire when he said the judges let issues pass them by because “it’s okay, ’cause you’re Alyssa,” but we’re seeing a lot of that this season. (Jade Jolie’s former declaration that Alyssa’s “shoulders should match them hips” also echoes in the mind during this week’s Eat Me runway, during which Alyssa’s failure to pad her hips stands out for all the wrong reasons.) Nothing Alyssa does this week is bad enough to land her in the bottom two—she is funny in the challenge—but her frequent bemoaning being called safe is looking more and more delusional. She should count her lucky stars she’s not being called out for more.
In the bottom three with Gala are Vanity and Tessa, and I think both of these are fair—though I’d switch their ultimate placements. Despite an actually pretty funny Loreen, Vanity calls herself out for bombing Snatch Game. I think her response to the ‘three words to describe yourself’ question (“Nails … no breasts … that’s three”) is one of the funnier lines of the whole challenge. A good reminder not to doubt yourself! Someone who does not doubt herself is Tessa, who is pretty bad as Susanne Bartsch, but still asserts in critiques that she got some laughs. And the judges agree! Tessa is an advocate for herself, and I think that’s ultimately what lands her in the top. Well, that and a pretty gorgeous Swiss cheese runway look.
But back to Pythia. Somehow, some way, Pythia pulls together a pretty incredible Zeus look on a moment’s notice. Not only that, she comes up with a really smart characterization of him as a dumb, horny jock, and it works. It’s genuinely great! Michelle Visage calls it “fucking brilliant,” and she’s really not exaggerating. It’s not like it’s an all-time great Snatch Game performance, necessarily, but there’s something really novel about the out-of-nowhere nature of it. There’s something to admire, as Snatch Game gets further and further away from its improvisational roots, about Pythia just taking a risk, putting in the work and knocking it out of the park.
Combined with her gorgeous and inventive spanakopita runway, you’d think Pythia would easily take this home. Somehow, Kitty wins instead, which is whatever. Like with Nehellenia after the girl group challenge (another one Kitty won!), what would be most narratively compelling is quashed to give a RuGirl another win. The Global All Stars production team’s allergy to creating compelling television is now amusing to me. I have reached Drag Race enlightenment. I have defeated my inner saboteur known as “wanting good storytelling.”
Gala and Vanity land in the bottom two, and in genuinely one of the most creative choices we’ve seen in eons for a Lip Sync for Your Life song, the queens must perform to the Muppets’ “Maha Mahna.” If this sounds unfamiliar to you, it was to me too—until the second it started playing. Even if you don’t recognize it by name, you’ve heard this nonsense song many times in your life. (I didn’t even know it was the Muppets!) It makes for a theoretically funny song choice, but in practice, Vanity absolutely smashes it. She gives my favourite lip sync performance of the season, so precise and comical in every movement. Gala is good, but you can actually feel her holding herself back from doing too much. She feels a bit constrained, while Vanity just feels like a natural.
In many ways, this episode belongs to Pythia and Vanity. Alongside Tessa and Nehellenia, they are our last remaining queens from franchises not hosted by Ru. While Nehellenia is still waiting on her first win (again, a win that would’ve been well-deserved after the girl group challenge), Tessa, Pythia and Vanity have all proven their mettle. I’d love to imagine a world in which they could make up our final four, but I’m not naive. At this rate, they’re all battling it out for the last spot next to the RuGirls. I would be frustrated, but that would require taking this seriously. I am resigned to unseriousness—though I would be pleasantly surprised if I turn out to be wrong.
And so we bid a sad farewell to Gala, who really was a joy to watch throughout this season. She actually makes for a good encapsulation of what this new ethos can provide while watching Global All Stars: she was a dynamite lip-syncer, a fun performer and a great TV presence. We enjoyed her while she was here, just as she enjoyed her own time. And now, she is free to return home, with scores of new fans in tow.