TV Rucap: RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12 Reunited – “Quaranqueens in the house”

For the first time in Drag Race Herstory, “Safe” is a good word, and Ru is happy that all the queens are looking good and feeling healthy. Twelve of the thirteen Season 12 queens competing for the crown, scepter, and title of America’s Next Drag Superstar gathered together for a “virtual slumber party,” to celebrate their work on this season and to throw just a little shade in advance of next week’s virtual coronation. Some of the highlights of this little soiree include:

“I started a bedroom queen, and I’m still a bedroom queen”

Perhaps no one was better prepared for quarantine life than Aiden Zhane: famous for doing her drag… primarily in her bedroom, she shares, “Bitch, I’m used to this, okay,” in a video quarantine diary. “So, hey, I’m like equipped for this life, right? WRONG! I’m going insane!” You and us both, girl!

“My grandmother taught me, growing up, that there’s only two things that I ever need to be afraid of: that’s God and her”

Miss Congeniality frontrunner Heidi Hydrates Afrodite N. Closet from Ramseur, North Carolina was not happy when guest judge Nicki Minaj read her for her makeup, and given that the Queen of Rap didn’t elaborate why she felt this way, Heidi asked her straight to the face what her problem was in that week’s Untucked. Since Ms. Minaj is neither God not her grandmother, Heidi now shares that she wasn’t scared of her! Takes a queen to call out The Queen.

“Who the fuck is Peepee Le Poo?”

Nicky Doll, France’s first export to hit the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, shares that her fans teased her a lot just for being French, and wonders aloud, “Who the fuck is Peepee Le Poo?” giving her season sisters a chance to fangirl over the iconic Looney Tunes skunk. “Everybody talk to me as ‘hon, hon, hon,’ and ‘whoo-whoo-whee’ and ‘scare bleu,’ and I’m like: nobody in France says that!” 

#Justice4Jackie

RuPaul calls Jackie Cox the “Susan Lucci” of the season (except that Susan Lucci eventually won that elusive Daytime Emmy, but poor Jackie never won a Maxi Challenge this season), so if you thought that Jackie nailed her Lisa Rinna Snatch Game performance (and if you think that she should have won, Season 8 winner Bob the Drag Queen and All Stars 4 Winner Monét X Change both agree with you), you’re not alone: Lisa Rinna (and her husband Harry Hamlin!) recorded a video message praising Jackie. Rinna shares, “I loved your Snatch Game, okay? I’m honoured; I’m thrilled.; it was fabulous: my favourite part was when you picked up the wine glass and you said, ‘let’s not talk about the husband.’” RuPaul gets to say the words she never uttered in Season 12: “Condragulations, you’re the winner of this week’s challenge.”

“Jan, Wha Ha Happenedt?”

It’s not every day that a Drag Race Girl is willing to call out their own bullshit, but Jan confirms that what we thought she was feeling was the real tea. “Yes, I definitely did cry, and was upset about Brita leaving, but the girls were right,” she confesses in regards to her obvious disappointment over not winning the Madonna Rusical challenge. 

Reading is Fundamental!

This season weaseled it’s way out of the fan favourite mini-challenge (although at least it brought us back PUPPETS!): the library was not open for the Reading Challenge in the traditional sense. Ru gives the girls a chance to read each other, and we get a few gems like:

–          Brita on Aiden Zhane: “I’m really sorry how I treated you all season, but I was just preparing you for how Patricia Quinn would treat you after the Snatch Game.”

–          Brita on Dahlia Sin: “You sure do talk a big game for someone who came in 13^th place on a 12 person season.” (one of the rare allusions to Sherry Pie this reunion)

–          Dahlia Sin on Brita: “Baby girl, I lasted more episodes than you did, thanks to broccoli, baby!”

–          Rock M. Sakura on Nicky Doll’s reading failure: “Don’t worry, you guys: I put everything into Google Translate, and it came out funny.”

This may not have been the spectacle of drama that the iconic Season 9 or 10 reunions were, but in these times, in case your own pajamas and pair of floppy slippers weren’t doing the trick, this reunion was comfort food with familiar faces to leave you feeling warm and fuzzy on a Friday night.