‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ season 16 episode 14 recap: ‘Booked & Blessed’

John Benutty
·7 min read
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“RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 16 continued on April 5 with the fourteenth episode in RuPaul’s quest to find “America’s next drag superstar.” Previously in episode 13, Sapphira Cristál found herself vulnerable to elimination for the first time in the competition after serving up the judges’ least favorite “family resemblance” in the drag makeover challenge. In the Lip Sync for Your Life, her track record proved too impressive for Morphine Love Dion, lip syncing for the fourth time, to overcome.

Seated at the judges’ dais this week for episode 14 titled “Booked & Blessed” was Emmy winning host RuPaul Charles, longtime bestie Michelle Visage, recurring judge Ts Madison, and journalist Ronan Farrow as the special guest judge.

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The queens still vying for the crown are: Nymphia Wind, Plane Jane, Q, and Sapphira Cristál.

Check out our full recap of episode 14 below:

Morphine’s elimination narrowed the competition down to a final four of girls who all boast challenge wins in the season. Sapphira was determined to not let a trip to the bottom two hinder her chances at claiming the crown while Jane was proud to have joined Sapphira in the “four wins club.” For Q, she was still convinced that some of the wins that Sapphira and Jane got weren’t deserving and that she should have won instead so she still had confidence that she had what it takes to compete against the rest of the queens.

The next morning, Ru congratulated the girls on making it to the semi-finals by delivering them another mini challenge. In this task they were to perform a lip sync underwater after getting in to “quick swimsuit drag” in 10 minutes. In the pool, the girls submerged their faces in water facing an underwater camera and did their best to lip sync to Ru’s song “Kitty Girl.” The winner of this final mini challenge was Sapphira who had Ru cackling throughout her performance.

For the maxi challenge, Ru reminded the girls that they had competed in a “book cover” mini challenge earlier in the season and so now she wanted them to “dig deeper” by writing stories about their own lives, give their memoir a catchy title, pose in a photo shoot, and then be interviewed by podcaster Matt Rogers. Ru also dropped the hint that this challenge would determine who among them makes it to the “Grand Finale.”

In their brainstorming and prep sessions, Q told Jane that she was going for a serious approach to highlight some of the things she’s gone through in her life while Jane was thinking she’d opt for a more light-hearted take on who Jane is as a drag queen. Sapphira wanted to touch on her spirituality and family, but she wasn’t necessarily comfortable with writing as a strength. Nymphia was the most worried because another writing challenge was her biggest fear, but her ideas took a turn toward the humorous when she considered talking about bananas (again) and farting.

Ru was on set for the photo shoot to direct the queens while celebrity photographer Albert Sanchez shot the images for their book covers. Nymphia wore a black catsuit and oversized boots in her shoot for “Breaking Wind: The Art of Letting Go.” Q’s book idea “Alphabet Soup: Savor Every Bite!” confused Ru because she pointed out that no one “bites” soup, but Q wanted the brand concept to be “fun, joy and camp.” Sapphira wore a 15-foot long ponytail in her shoot for “Slue Foot: Embracing All of Me” and impressed Ru with knowing how to pose both for her shape and look. Jane’s book concept “Plane Crash: How I Walked Away from Disaster” came with a tussled look that gave Ru a lot to work with as a director.

In promotional conversations with Matt, Jane started off by explaining the “tact of being bitchy” through her experience in the competition and named dropped Amanda Tori Meating. Matt was concerned that Jane got as shady as she did. With Sapphira, Matt was touched by Sapphira’s chapter about her grandmother and the conversations that she had with her and her mother about coming out as gay. She was able to bring humor to the conversation so that it wasn’t all serious. Q was less successful at communicating stories from her upbringing without the prodding and lead of Matt’s questions. Matt appreciated how “honest and candid” Nymphia was in her stories about bad dates and growing up in Taiwan. She also touched on how beauty standards brought her around to drag in an effort to find a way to meet those standards that she otherwise didn’t feel.

Later on the runway, the semi-finalists walked the catwalk in the “Fan-dango” category using fans as accessories to their garments. Q wore an orange structure tutu made of fans, Sapphira walked “like an African queen” in a blue dress that had hidden fans come out on the runway, Nymphia went period with an “Asian version of Marie Antoinette,” and Jane did her take on a Greek goddess in a gold armor dress.

In judges’ critiques, Michelle and Ts got emotional over Q’s podcast interview because it gave them a glimpse into what has made her the person she is today. Ronan countered that the looks she presented for the book cover did not match what she ended up writing about. Ru agreed that there were so many better options for using her name Q in a title. Ronan liked that Sapphira was “being herself defiantly” and Ts said she helped them understand her more through her writing and interview. Ronan said Nymphia’s cover photo was the best of the bunch, but Michelle was disappointed to see another Marie Antoinette look on the runway because it’s overdone. That being said, they all agreed that she touched them with her story and the vulnerability she showed. Ts thought Jane looked “amazing” on the runway, but was disappointed that the book cover didn’t look as great. Across the board, the judges didn’t understand how her interview connected the theme and never dived deeper into who she is.

After further deliberation, Ru and the judges decided that this was Nymphia’s week and she was the winner of the challenge. Also in the top was Sapphira, leaving Q and Jane as this week’s final bottom two. In their lip sync to “Better Be Good to Me,” Jane shed the skin of her garment so that she could move more easily, but also to make her breast plate the focal point of her performance. She won over the judges in the end when she started shaking them to the beat of the song. From the back of the stage, Sapphira and Nymphia were hoping that it would be a “double shantay” and both would remain in the competition, but Ru surprised them all in asking Q to “sashay away.”

NEXT TIME: The final three advance to the “Grand Finale,” but first the eliminated queens return to compete in a Lip Sync Lalaparuza.

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