RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Welcomes Miss Piggy, Sends a Pair of Queens Packing in First Week on Paramount+

Andy Swift
·4 min read
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RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars made its Paramount+ debut this week, dropping a series of bombs in the process — and I’m not just talking about Trinity K. Bonet’s stand-up comedy. (Yikes!)

For starters, Mama Ru announced that this season is actually “a game within a game,” though we still don’t know what that means. In fact, all we really know about this “masterclass in survival” is that both of the queens eliminated in these first two episodes were stopped on their way out of the workroom and invited to play along. (Any theories? Feel free to share in a comment below.)

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As for this season’s crop of queens, I have to admit, it’s a pretty good group. I love that Jiggly Caliente is feeling confident as an out-and-proud transgender woman, I love that Silky Nutmeg Ganache pulled a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk out of her cleavage like it was nothing, and I love that Kylie Sonique Love… actually, I just love her in general.

Of course, the real star of this two-part premiere was none other than Miss Piggy, who Zoomed in for a front-row seat to the queens’ first mini challenge of the season. Did you ever in your damn life think that you would hear Miss Piggy open up her snout and say, “The library is about to open, because reading is what?” That’s because this show, not unlike the Muppets, makes the impossible possible. Ginger Minj emerged the unsurprising victor of the reading challenge, thanks to her jokes about Jiggly being stupid and Pandora Boxx being old. You know, the classics.

Then came the premiere’s main challenge, an all star variety show. And as the name suggests, the levels of talent on stage… well, they varied. I was fully feeling the Jantasy with Jan’s glass-shattering vocals, I respected Pandora’s commitment to the time-honored art of silly string boob cannons, I was impressed that Ra’Jah O’Hara could sew a non-hideous dress in less than 60 seconds, and Scarlett Envy gave me a whole new appreciation for bubbles. But none of these performers could hold a candle to Yara Sofia, who basically gave us the “Heavy Boobs” choreography from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend while rocking the most hilariously elastic knockers I’ve ever seen. (Seriously, did we know that Stretch Armstrong™ manufactures breastplates?)

But Serena Chacha’s wiggy song-and-dance? Silky’s off-key gospel number? Trinity’s cringey comedy act? No, sir. As Camille Grammer once said about her infamous dinner party from hell, the talent show “started out positive and it went down in flames.” Both Serena and Trinity found themselves on the chopping block, with Jiggly barely escaping to safety.

Coco Montrese — or “Coco Montreal,” as my phone insists on autocorrecting — turned out to be the first surprise assassin of the season, and she lived up to that title by besting Yara in a lip-sync battle to Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk.” (You know, that song all the gays love.) Coco then had the displeasure of revealing that Serena was the first eliminated contestant of All Stars 6. (We later learned that Yara was the only queen who chose Trinity’s lipstick; if she had won, Serena would have stayed.)

If you need to relive any of those moments, you can watch the premiere in full below:

With one queen down, it was time for the second main challenge of the season: a ball! And not just any ball. We’re talking 12 queens with 36 total looks, including one made using unconventional materials. It was like Project Runway meets America’s Next Top Model meets crack. But I guess that’s what Drag Race has always been, really.

Anyway, there were some killer looks on that runway this week — “too much, too much to mention,” as Elphaba would say — but we can all agree that Ra’Jah’s Judy Jetson-approved dress alone earned her that well-deserved win. And she made that thing! The talent!

Rocking a confusing mess of streamers, Jiggly absolutely belonged in the bottom this week, though I’m not convinced that Yara deserved to join her on the chopping block. Sure, Yara spent most of her time in the workroom goofing around, but her final hand-made look was solid. It was a lot, but it was solid.

Jiggly and Yara’s fates ended up in the hands of Ra’Jah and guest-assassin Brooke Lynn Hytes, both of whom slayed a lip-sync battle set to Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much.” The splits! The death drops! The spins! The cartwheels! Jackson — sorry, Ms. Jackson — would be very proud. And in the end, Jiggly became the second queen of All Stars 6 to sashay away.

Your thoughts on All Stars 6 thus far? Grade the premiere below, then drop a comment with your take on Serena and Jiggly’s eliminations. Plus, what the heck is this “game within a game”?

Launch Gallery: <i>RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 6</i> Cast Photos

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