RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE S14E13 “The Ross Mathews Roast”: A Ru-Demption, A Double Sashay & A Light At The End Of The Tunnel

After surviving last week’s episode thanks to the divine intervention of a golden chocolate bar, Bosco is in phase three of her redemption arc after failing so hard in the Snatch Game, then the LalapaRuza, and THEN last week in the Rusical. She’s still a frontrunner alongside Angeria and Camden but Bosco really needs to do well this episode because – as Jorgeous so shadily reminded us all last episode – Bosco lip synced for her life three times in one episode. Ouch.

Despite there still being seven queens who are still in the competition, we’re nearing the end of the competition and at the beginning of this episode, it seems that the damage control Bosco had spoken about last week is coming to fruition as she appears to bear no ill will or hurt feelings over Camden winning last week or Jorgeous calling her out in front of the judges – Bosco knows that she messed up and she’s promised to be a team player this time around – but will it end up biting her in the ass?

Seven Beauties

While mini-challenges are often not worth mentioning or remembering, this week the queens must get into teams of four and three where they must work together to paint a recreation of a beautiful real-life Gus Cutty mural of RuPaul and Dolly Parton that can be found in North Carolina. The teams are DeJa, Jorgeous, and Angeria who must paint Ru while Camden, Willow, Daya, and Bosco paint Dolly using paint that is inspired by the colors of a new makeup palette from one of the show’s sponsors. It’s a pretty interesting challenge considering how un-mini it is. These queens must have needed a lot of time to do their mural recreations and they didn’t even turn out that great, especially team RuPaul thanks to DeJa’s attempt at painting her nose – it makes for a cute, funny moment and in the end, Team Dolly wins the mini-challenge which means that they get to choose the order for this week’s maxi challenge – a roast!

The roast has become a great tradition of Drag Race that has included roasts of RuPaul and Michelle Visage. They don’t come around too often but when they do, they make for a fantastic challenge that gives some of the best moments of their respective seasons (who could ever forget Manila Luzon‘s roast of Lady Bunny‘s “funeral”?), and this time around, it’s a roast of RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Ross Mathews.

Due to having such a controversial attitude last week, Bosco volunteers to be first in the lineup (a very, very tough position, next to the closing spot) and, after listening to the losing team’s preferences, the rest of the order being: Jorgeous, Willow, Angeria, Daya, DeJa, and then Camden volunteering to go last so that there’s no way she can fade into the background, a criticism she’s gotten in the past.

As everyone sits down to write their jokes, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s got any good material, and when they go out to the main stage to meet with their comedy coaches, Michelle Visage and the episode’s special guest judge Dulcé Sloan (The Daily Show), the misdirects are nonstop. Most of the queens whose jokes don’t land with the coaches end up doing really well, while the opposite is also true. Surprisingly though, the queens you expect to do well do just that and the queens you expect to be weak end up in that bottom position.

“Let’s Get This Roast A-Cookin'”

Kicking off the roast, we have Bosco who not only took the notes from Michelle and Dulcé and ran with them, but she gave perhaps the best opener of any roast in Drag Race herstory with her best joke being, “RuPaul, you are so old that when you say you are vers, you mean that you are both hunter and gatherer.” Next up is Jorgeous who actually has a few good jokes in there but she definitely lets her tongue trip her up and get the better of her. Jorgeous’ best joke was probably when she compared Ross‘ farts to a turkey gobble but there were few others that are worth repeating. After Jorgeous is Willow who does a complete 180-degree turn from earlier, with her best joke being about how Camden looks like she’s the product of incest and saying that Angeria has “the beauty of Rumplestiltskin”.

Angeria’s set has great energy but unfortunately, her charisma and the fact that she acts like she’s the funniest queen in the world brings laughs. Her best joke was a play on words after comparing Dulcé to Lizzo and asking her if she’s “feeling OK as hell.” Angeria’s set isn’t great but it’s nothing compared to Daya’s who, after making the coaches laugh out loud earlier in the episode, adds way too many words to her jokes and takes forever to get to the punchline, deflating her jokes completely. The one joke that stays in that killed earlier is how Ross is so gay that his “favorite candy is PrEP”, a reference to the medication that helps prevent HIV.

The worst of the night is undeniably DeJa who not only goes against all of the advice of the comedy coaches but not a single one of her jokes land – none of them are even remotely funny or are delivered completely wrong. It’s a total shame too because DeJa is usually very funny and she at least gets one laugh in after introducing the closing queen, Lady Camden. Speaking of closer, Camden kills the end of the roast, bringing it all full circle. It’s not only her delivery but also most of her jokes, the best ones being the roasts of Michelle.

After the runway and the critiques, the winner is crystal clear, but who will end up in the Bottom? Most of the queens were either below average, like Angeria and Jorgeous, or downright bad, like DeJa and Daya – what is RuPaul to do? Well, the easy part is declaring the top queen of the week, which ends up being Bosco! Not only is this a well-deserved win, but it’s also a very tangible and essential redemption for Bosco after she faltered so hard for so many weeks in a row.  As for the Bottom Two, RuPaul actually declares it a Bottom Three with Jorgeous, DeJa, and Daya and only one queen will survive until next week.

This is honestly pretty gaggy because, not only is this Jorgeous’ fifth time being up for elimination but it’s also a re-match between DeJa and Daya, as the former ended up sending the latter home way back in episode two of the season. Remember that?! DeJa and Daya have also both been referred to as Lip Sync Assassins, either by RuPaul herself or by the other queens. This is a pretty gnarly lip sync. What it comes down to though, is the song choice which is “good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo, a pop-punk throwback hit that requires attitude over dance moves.

This immediately puts Jorgeous at a slight disadvantage, especially when you realize that Jorgeous is hardly shown on-camera compared to the other queens and that Daya is giving anger while DeJa gives lighter emotions as the two of them appear to lip-sync against each other. In the end, RuPaul declares Daya the winner and, if I hadn’t seen the lip sync with my own two spectacled eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. Daya Betty beat the two lip-sync assassins of season 14? That un-possible. But Daya is hungry to prove herself and to go all the way to the end of the competition, and that showed in this lip sync, making her the deserved winner.

Conclusion: The Ross Mathews Roast

At this point in the competition, we can all breathe a sigh of relief: not only do we no longer have to deal with the cheap tension brought on by the golden chocolate bar, but we finally have a Top Five which means that season 14 is finally coming to a close. And while the tallies for most wins were fairly even for about a month there, we have a new breakout frontrunner thanks to Bosco earning her third win this episode. That puts her directly in the lead with Angeria and Camden and their double wins close behind, and then finally Daya and Willow trailing behind with one win each, with Willow’s only win being from way back at the beginning of the season.

I don’t think this means that we should count Willow Pill out, however; not only does she have one of the most compelling backstories of the season – living a chronic illness that required her brother to donate a kidney to her, but Willow is also the fifth queen from season 14 to come out as a trans woman, which she did in an Instagram post a couple of weeks ago. Willow is a bright, shining star this season whose strategic mind and dark humor have brought her far in the competition and deep into the hearts of the Drag Race fandom. At this point in the competition, I couldn’t really say who will be the winner of season 14 though the three favorites to win are undoubtedly Angeria, Bosco, and Willow. However, Camden and Daya have given us remarkable storylines, evolutions, and redemptions that have, on many occasions, been the lifeblood of this season.

Any one of these five queens deserves to be in the Top Four, and of that Top Four, I cannot imagine myself being mad at the final outcome. I think this is the first season where I would be legitimately pleased to see anyone in the upcoming Top Four ending up with the crown, be it Camden and her earnest personality and unbelievable talent, Daya and her perseverance and attitude, Bosco and her unrivaled runway looks and comeback story, Willow with her high-quality drag and unique perspective, or Angeria with her classic pageant looks and her unparalleled charm. What other season in recent memory can boast such a satisfying Top Five or Top Four?

Do you think Daya deserved the Shantay You Stay? Who’s your winner of season 14? Let us know in the comments below!

A new episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 14 can be seen every Friday at 8/7c on VH1.

Watch RuPaul’s Drag Race