RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE S14E7 “The Daytona Wind”: One Way Or Another, This Is Drag Race At Its Finest

RuPaul’s Drag Race is one of my favorite TV shows and, despite finding this current season a bit lacking, I must say that this was one of the finest weeks of Drag Race and I hope that it will be remembered for both the main episode and for such an earth-shattering Untucked;  not just because of all the laughs, tears, and ADR’d fart sounds, but also because of how ready I was to give this week’s episode such a negative review.

After Maddy’s elimination, Jasmine returns the workroom as confident as ever and there’s barely even a discussion of the lip sync, since it was written in the stars that Jasmine would send Maddy home. Things get awkward and bitter fairly quickly though when Daya (once again) goes on and on about how she had made her runway look “out of nothing” and how she was so sick of being declared safe, and then finally she’s confronted and told to name names of the girls she thought she did better than, namely, Jorgeous.

Daya calls her outfit “the sexiest napkin” on the runway and Jorgeous seems pretty hurt by Daya not thinking that she had deserved the win (she didn’t deserve the win but that’s beside the point). As Daya goes on and on, the camera cuts to different queens reacting to her complaining and it looks like Daya’s semi-villain edit is in full swing. Or is it?

*Insert Drag/Soap Opera Puns Here*

The next day, Daya gives Jorgeous an apology for what she had said but Jasmine and some of the other queens smell a stunt and think that it’s a fake apology. However, before it can be analyzed further, RuPaul enters the workroom to announce that the queens will act in a soap opera called “The Daytona Wind” and that Jorgeous will be the one to assign the roles. As everyone goes through the script, the parts get assigned and it seems that Lady Camden is the queen with the leftover part, as queens call dibs on just about every role before she can even finish reading the script.

The summary for “The Daytona Wind” is that there are three drag dynasties, based on the real-life drag-turned-Drag Race houses and dynasties of the Davenports, O’Haras, and Michaels. This is a pretty interesting angle for the show to play with as it not only references the wide net of related queens on the show (there have been many, many Davenports over the years) but also the legacy of houses in the ballroom community and in drag culture. One of the biggest influences for RuPaul’s Drag Race is the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, which highlights the various houses of New York City, some of which are still going strong today as RuPaul’s Drag Race’s own Aja has since joined the House of LaBeija. Having the characters in this soap opera be based on these drag houses is a nice little reference and nod.

In classic 1980’s soap opera style, there’s going to be a wedding between the Davenports and the O’Haras but it turns out that the groom is in love with someone from the House of Michaels! The roles are as follows:

• Kerri as Deandra Davenport
• Angeria as Maxine O’Hara
• DeJa as Maggie O’Hara
• Jasmine as Hattie Ruth
• Jorgeous as Sierra Michaels
• Daya as  Michaels Sister #1
• Willow as Michaels Sister #2
• Camden as Leona Michaels
• Bosco as Fancy Michaels

When they all have to film their parts, RuPaul has everyone watch each other’s scenes so that there’s consistency in the acting style (among other reasons) and I think that this is probably the key to this maxi challenge ending up so well and for the outcome of the episode. In many acting challenges of the past, the queens aren’t necessarily watching each other film their scenes but because this specific maxi challenge needed synchronicity, it gave way for a better, more cohesive product.

Some queens seemed to struggle a little more than others, like Angeria and, at first, Jasmine. There’s been a lot of talk about Jasmine looking like a younger Alyssa Edwards (a legend of RuPaul’s Drag Race) but when she comes out onto the stage, it is absolutely uncanny…and her acting style goes with it. At first, Jasmine is as awkward and inhibited as Alyssa ever was in an acting part but as she gets direction from Ru, it somehow gets better, and even funnier, so much so that in Bosco’s talking head, she says that Jasmine’s was her favorite performance.

In a surprising twist, Jorgeous – the queen I said last week likely won’t last much longer since she’s been shown to be a weak actor – completely turns everything around when she channels the telenovela characters that her mother and sisters would always watch on TV. It’s really amazing to watch as Jorgeous makes RuPaul laugh after she nails every reaction prompt that Ru throws at her. This may be a fluke but it’s still really fun to watch Jorgeous shine in something that isn’t just dancing.

A Little Bit Of Queer Her-Story & Kink Commentary

As always, it’s impossible to tell how the performances are going to go during the filming or rehearsing part of the episode but Angeria definitely feels nervous about what she did and it looks like our front runner may finally stumble in the competition. The next day in the workroom, as everyone gets ready for the runway, they talk about the theme being “Chaps on the Runway” (Writer and former rodeo cowgirl note: it’s pronounced “SHaps”, not “CHaps.”) and the conversation turned towards the leather subset of the LGBTQ+ community and San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair. Angeria, who has made a name for herself over the last few weeks as a kind-of sheltered queen that needs to be clued into certain things by the other queens (i.e. not knowing what a Gold Star Gay is), says she doesn’t know what Folsom is but when the other queens inform her that it’s a leather and BDSM festival where people have actual sex in public, to which Angeria charmingly exclaims that she wants to go.

The leather community and Folsom are a great topic for the queens to discuss as they get ready for the runway because the topic of having kink and leather subsets of the community at Pride has become a contentious one, especially as Pride has become more commercialized and more “family-friendly.” There are debates over whether or not fetish and kink belong at Pride parades and whether or not children should even be allowed to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

As Bosco puts it: “There is always a family-friendly version of Pride but I don’t necessarily think that every gay space needs to be family-friendly. There’s some grit there and there needs to be space for that grit to stay there.”

“And The Bottoms Are…”

Joining RuPaul, Michelle Visage, and Ross Matthews on the judging panel is returning special guest judge Ts Madison, a trans activist and darling of RuPaul’s Drag Race. As the queens show off their chaps or chaps-inspired looks, Ts and the gang gave some hilarious commentary and one-liners. As far as the runway looks go, the best ones are undoubtedly Bosco’s millennial pink homage to biker bitches and Lady Camden’s mustachioed Freddie Mercury-inspired look, complete with a fake-out fall on the runway – the first real hint that this was going to be an episode for the books. Lady Camden comes out in a big wig with an attached train and then, whoops, she trips and falls hard on the runway, causing the wig to fly off. As the judges react with concern, Camden composes herself, leaves the white wig behind, stands up, and poses, revealing a short brown wig and a matching mustache from the 1980s and a chapped-jumpsuit reminiscent of Mercury‘s outfits from Queen‘s 1970s arena rock era. It’s a total gag and Camden plays up the rockstar frontman edge as she struts and dances her way across the stage. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Camden was going to win this episode after this incredible performance.

Everyone returns to the stage and are shown a “Director’s Cut” of their soap opera, which RuPaul has riddled with ADR fart sounds, making the queens all laugh uncontrollably as they were clearly not expecting there to be just a chorus line of fart sounds edited in between their dialogue and monologues. Within the actual soap opera, it’s good to see that Jorgeous did just as well in the final cut but also disappointing to see that Angeria’s performance wasn’t on par with her previous weeks. In all honesty though, everyone does fairly well in the challenge. The best are undoubtedly Jorgeous, Lady Camden as the lesbian mother of the House of Michaels, and Bosco as the older lady who reveals the dirty O’Hara-Davenport secret and is based on the titular Fancy of Reba McEntire‘s famous song about a poor girl sent away at 18 to become a prostitute.

RuPaul says that Kerri, Angeria, and DeJa are safe, and in a major twist, declares that everyone else in the challenge – Bosco, Camden, Daya, Jasmine, Jorgeous, and Willow – are all in the Top for the week, meaning that there are no Bottoms for the week and no Lip Sync For Your Life. Instead, we’re getting a Top Two Lip Sync For The Win and while it’s obvious that Lady Camden is getting her first win (it should be, at minimum, her second win but whatever), Ru‘s other choice is completely questionable and reeks of storyline as  RuPaul declares Daya Betty one of the Top Two. On one hand, I’m happy that this semi-villain edit that was simmering for Daya seems to be dead in its tracks, but I also don’t think her performance (or her runway look!) deserved one of the top spots. If anything, Bosco or Jorgeous should be going up against Camden.

To be honest, though, Daya getting thrown a bone barely matters in the long run because the lip-sync song – “One Way Or Another” by Blondie – was in the bag for Lady Camden. Before the first riff is even played, Camden asserts herself as the domineering performer in the lip-sync; she’s pulling out dance moves, sexy rock n’ roll attitude, and campy moments that are as effortless as her transition from glued-on mustache to a drawn-on mustache, to better allow the judges to see her lips move to a song that she has obviously performed before. I hardly recall what Daya did in the lip-sync but I’m sure she did a good job. In the end, Lady Camden wins the $5,000 cash tip after giving us the literal best lip sync of the entire season (so far), Daya is declared safe and everyone leaves the stage happy and grateful to be able to return next week.

Don’t Stop Me Now!

There are many funny and enjoyable moments in this week’s episode, but what really boosts it into the stratosphere of high-quality episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race is the revelation that takes place in this week’s Untucked. After Ts Madison comes to see the girls backstage (and manages to be the only one in the episode to pronounce “chaps” correctly!!), the queens begin to talk about transitioning and being trans. DeJa asks the group if anyone has thought about transitioning, to which Bosco – who, if you’ll remember, announced that she is a she/they trans woman two weeks ago on Instagram – says here that she thought about it, especially during the pandemic and how, not being able to perform as Bosco, made her consider transitioning. Bosco also mentions how she wanted to “move the lever over a little bit” while still identifying as nonbinary (which is considered to be within the realm of being transgender as transgender is an umbrella term). When Bosco talks about how her boyfriend is all for her exploring her gender identity, the camera cuts to Jasmine who seems to be fighting back tears.

Jasmine begins to speak and the entire room grows silent as she tries to find the words, saying that she didn’t think that this topic would come up for her. Immediately, Kerri takes Jasmine’s hand, knowing just exactly what she is about to say while simultaneously giving her the strength to say it. Jasmine talks about preparing to get on hormones before coming to Drag Race and then deciding not to. However, Jasmine says that after getting to spend time with Kerri who, at this point in filming season 14, was the only queen to represent herself as trans woman (Kornbread wasn’t shown to talk about it in her episodes and publicly came out as transgender only a few months ago), that she is inspired by Kerri’s confidence in herself and that Kerri helped affirm in herself that Jasmine is also a trans woman.

While she and Kerri cry together, Jasmine talks about how she held this part of herself back for so long because she didn’t want to “hurt her dad” who, as mentioned in an earlier episode, needed a lot of coercing from his girlfriend to even accept Jasmine as a drag queen.  Jasmine talks about how she’s grateful that both her and Bosco have such supportive boyfriends and that Kerri is the ideal woman and that if she could be half as gorgeous as Kerri that she would be happy. With this, Kerri gives the most avowing and beautiful speech of any that have been said on RuPaul’s Drag Race:

“You are really gorgeous, and the energy that you need, you hold in yourself. You don’t have to look outside yourself to find that, because the woman that you are is housed within you. And the fact that you had the strength to bring that forward is the affirmation that you were needing to push yourself into who you’re going to be. When you know what you need, go and get that. You owe it to yourself to be happy and to live your life as the human being that you want to be. That puts the “T” in the “LGBTQ.” It is a family.”

Conclusion: The Daytona Winds

If you’ve been reading these reviews each week (thank you by the way and blessed be!) then you know that this season has, more than once, left me frustrated and underwhelmed. From Kornbread leaving to some pretty questionable maxi challenges, there have been plenty of reasons to just feel run down by season 14. I very much felt this way for a good chunk of this week’s episode, not gonna lie. I was over the whole Daya-hating-being-safe storyline and I felt that having no Bottom queens was, ugh, such a cop-out, but by the end of episode seven and this week’s Untucked, I was a crying mess, regretting ever talking bad about what I now firmly believe to be one of the best episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race + Untucked. So much happened this week and I can only hope that we get to see more high-quality Drag Race next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. Either way, I’m still going to be writing these reviews and I hope that you, lovely reader, will continue the journey with me.

Was this one of the best episodes of Drag Race ever? 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.