RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: Snatch the Game, Snatch the Crown

By
Jason P. Frank,
a Vulture writer covering comedy, theater, and music

Snatch Game

Season 16

Episode 9

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

It’s Snatch Game! Woohoo!! Everybody’s favorite challenge that inevitably turns out to be worse than you remember (then romanticized within a few months) is back, baby! Last year’s Snatch Game left me with Snatch blue balls — they did the episode with 14 queens, dividing them into two crews. It was a fun experiment but not something I’d ever want to see used again. Snatch Game works best as a ratcheting up of the pace and a divider of the season. Most seasons can be separated into BS and AS (Before Snatch and Anno Snatch), with the before being filler and the after being the main characters. We’ve been in a bit of a lull this season — the contenders were fully established but there was still some filler — but now it’s full steam ahead. Even one of the presumed filler queens got the boost she needed this week to have a full arc.

Part of the reason Snatch Game works so well as a divider is that it is, in fact, really hard. The iconic performances are funnier, and bombs are more tragic than any other challenge because the queens have no room to move. It’s a gladiator battle without anything but your wit to help you. Even queens who are clearly prepared can end up tanking when Snatch Game, something that doesn’t happen with pre-made makeover looks or a pre-written verse. This shit is hard, and the show is all the better for it.

By now, the one true rule of Snatch Game is firmly established: Make RuPaul laugh. In a season that has been rife with strategy and where the queens are actively and occasionally tiringly playing into what they think the show wants from them (would they be constantly calling themselves dumb if Ru didn’t like it?), Snatch Game is the test. The smart queens choose a character they know Ru will like, and the smarter queens are funny even if she doesn’t. Sometimes a queen will truly innovate in the challenge and up the stakes, like when Kennedy did a man, Bob did two characters, or when Gigi actively went against Ru’s advice, but most of the time the challenge is as it was. It’s a constant, it’s a difficulty, and it’s what keeps Trixie Mattel up at night.

Anyway, enough ink has spilled for 15 seasons now on the idea of Snatch Game. The real question is how this crop did. Ultimately, I’d say it was pretty good. Despite some transcendentally good individual performances through the years, no Snatch Game is as good as you remember it. There are always flops, there are always some pretty good performances, and there are always middling queens. Tonight, there were two legitimately good performances, one surprisingly okay one, some meh at varying degrees, and two tragedies. Not a bad track record. Would it be better if some of the “meh” was either good or flop? Of course! But I laughed both with and at the queens, so I’m satisfied. My Snatch load has been blown.

But before we get to the performances themselves, I should note that the episode crams in two iconic challenges. Following the beginning of the episode, in which Mhi’ya says more words than she’s gotten out the entire season, we get the reading challenge. Generally, I’m not a fan of modern reading challenges — they’re edited within an inch of their life, and the one queen who gets the most reads in the edit always wins, which takes some of the fun out of the proceedings. Also, nobody does it with panache anymore. Back when the first reading challenge was presented, part of the reason Jujubee gave the best performance to this day was that she embodied her reads vocally. How many reads over the past few seasons can you remember the rhythm to? I know every beat of Jujubee’s. Xunami ultimately wins, but my favorite read of the episode is Dawn’s Nymphia read about bananas.

The Snatch Game preparation time is pretty lowkey — no two queens are doing the same character, only one queen switches her pick, and it’s Mhi’ya, so she’s not very loud about it anyway — but it’s still fun. Because this is a returning challenge, part of the fun of a Snatch Game episode is predicting who will do terribly based solely on their character. For what it’s worth, I knew immediately that Xunami was sunk. Ru seems into her Gold Tooth Fairy, which is wrong. She never articulates her angle, only that she is free to choose any angle she wants. Also, I’m not into made-up characters. Do the challenge.

Okay, onto Snatch.

I do not care for Q’s comedy. She is a competent queen, but lately I’ve come to find her competence dull. She plays Amelia Earhart (groan) and starts off with a pre-written joke about peanuts that doesn’t answer Ru’s question at all. Eight weeks in, I feel confident saying it: She is just not interesting enough for me. Making Q look better is that the two queens to her left are Xunami and Nymphia, the cratering bombs of the episode. Xunami is so bad it is funny, while Nymphia is mostly just sad. Xunami has no idea what she’s doing, and Nymphia’s idea isn’t funny. At judging, Ru comes down on Nymphia for being “too cerebral,” but she’s stated multiple times that she simply has trouble communicating. That could be the weakness that loses her the competition. The final member of the top row is Dawn, who is fine. Her issue is that rather than play Meghan McCain, she criticizes Meghan McCain. It would be both funnier and sharper commentary not to be so blunt.

Our first great Snatch of the episode is Sapphira as James Brown. Choosing James Brown is obviously wise since Ru loves him, and Sapphira is high energy, very glittery, and quick on her feet. She has yet to screw up. Next is Plasma, who does a serviceable Patti LuPone impression and then proceeds to mostly just share facts about Patti LuPone. You couldn’t think of a time to yell at somebody about a phone, girl? Morphine’s Anna Delvey is just boring, and “You’re poor” does not a character make. Mhi’ya gets a lot of credit this week for her performances as “Trina’s cousin Shaquita.” It’s great to see her do well. I’m happy that her trajectory has changed, and I hope she keeps it up. Also, I don’t think this performance was that good; it was mostly just surprising.

Finally, there’s our winner. Plane Jane has, by now, fully established herself as the best comedian of the season, and it’s exciting that she kept that up here. She plays Serbian pop star Jelena Karleuša, who, if you were not aware of, should be your next YouTube rabbit hole at the very least. My favorite fun fact about her: She has won multiple awards at the Balkan award show with the best name in award show history: Music Awards Ceremony. Balkans! Plane kills it. Slavic accents are, sorry, often inherently funny in the way that the accents on Derry Girls are inherently funny. Her comedy beats are natural — listen to the pause she takes when she says, “No, it’s not true, you are very … ugly man” — and her responses are quick and pertain to the situation. When they ended the game, I was disappointed I wouldn’t get to see more of her.

The runway category this week is “Dancing Queen.” Q is the robot, which I’m pretty sure translates to “I already had a robot costume.” It’s fine. Xunami looks beautiful in her Salsa outfit, but her lowkey drag style means that she often toes the line between “fashion forward” and “forgettable.” This week falls into the latter category. Nymphia does a Japanese Butoh-inspired look and performance, and it is maybe my favorite look of the season — both beautiful and interesting. For more context on Butoh, I’d recommend watching a performance by the art form’s founders Kazuo Ono and Tatsumi Hijikata. Dawn has the unfortunate onus of following Nymphia, but her polka look is cute enough. Sapphira’s Drag U Majorette look is great, the wig makes it even better, but the best part is Sapphira’s performance. Plasma’s performance is also the best part of her look, but the difference is that her outfit is ugly. Morphine’s Flamenco outfit is adorable. Mhi’ya continues her good week with a solid ‘90s hip-hop look. Plane’s Latin ballroom outfit is a little underwhelming.

Ultimately, Plane wins out, even if Sapphira was right at her heels with the better runway. Nymphia ekes by, probably due to her runway, but Morphine has every right to call bullshit if she wants — she was not nearly as bad as Nymphia in the challenge. We ultimately get a Xunami/Morphine best friends lip sync to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” and my primary thought was: It’s insane that they haven’t used this song yet. There’s a lot of cute dancing together, but Morphine still wins out pretty decisively. Xunami going home does feel like a turning point this season — we’re officially at the stage where it feels like anyone can go home, and, as usual, it’s Snatch Game that brought it on.

• Q says that she’s done improv before, but Snatch Game is different because you have to think of things on the spot. Plane says some shit that gets people annoyed.

• Ru has her best pun in ages this week to Nymphia with, “Your Jane Goodall wasn’t … good at all.”

• More strategy talk this week with the potions thing! I cannot imagine Plane using it on someone else unless it’s the last week.

• Trauma Makeup Corner: I found Sapphira’s story about her dad deeply affecting — we’re at the point in the season when these segments start working a little better because they’re not trying to get me to care about queens I don’t know; they’re providing insight into the queens I do know.

• Top Four Predictions: The top three are clear with Nymphia, Sapphira, and Plane. Nymphia’s gotta have more than a bad Snatch Game for me to lose complete faith in her. Against my will, I will stick with Q for the fourth spot.

• Gay thoughts from gay people: I asked my friend and one of the best working stand-ups, Jay Jurden, what his advice for Snatch Game would be. His advice: “(1) Land your jokes! (2) That lady is seasoned; she loves a classic. Save your new shit for TikTok!”

• UK vs. the World report: The branding challenge was cute enough, but it’s no surprise that the top two was, for the first time, made up of queens whose countries primarily speak English. Gothy continuing to be there while having the runway walk she’s got is insane. Come on now. Sorry to say it, but there’s no love lost for me with Jonbers going home. Just not my kind of queen. Moderately happy for Scarlet, who seems to have finally connected with the judges, and extremely happy for Tia, who is finally ready to slay. Still, I reiterate: This is primarily a Marina and LGD stan account.

RuPaul’s Drag Race Recap: Snatch the Game, Snatch the Crown