Review: Canada's Drag Race, S2 E4 The Snatch Game

Each week Toronto based comedian Chris Middleton will review the latest episode of Canada’s Drag Race. Season two premiered October 14 on Crave.

This is the episode I anticipate the most — for better or worse. *Cue’s music* We got the reading mini challenge episode; we have the Snatch Game episode; we have the combination reading mini challenge and Snatch Game episode! 

To be honest, Snatch Game is one of those challenges that mimics the experience of some describing an amazing live performance. It’s either kind of good or painfully bad.

Kendall made a great observation in the workroom that summarizes what I think is the best approach to Snatch Game.

“It’s actually better if you don’t know [the character], because you can do whatever you want.”

That’s the secret to Snatch Game. You don’t actually need to be good at your celebrity impression. That’s not, and has never been, the point. RuPaul has said this many times. Take all the research you’ve done about your character and throw it out the fucking window.

Just pick a few things to do that are funny for the character you choose and stick to them. While that’s simple advice, it’s hard to quantify what those funny things are.

Synthia’s performance was stellar, not because it was a spot on Rachel Zoe impression, but she heightened a few traits she could do really well and stuck to them. She churned her voice through a robot simulator, threw in some notable phrases, and played it like a recognizable valley girl. Pythia was great because she played Grimes very similarly to Kayta’s Björk on All Stars 2, a bubbly yet unhinged, and added a bit of computer jokes. 

An aside: I wasn’t surprised these two did the best, as they were — for me — the best in the reading challenge. Synthia had actually cutting reads, and Pythia was so stupid (which is one of the best compliments I can give).

A lot of queens get lost in their impression and forget that we’re not going for an Academy Award, we’re going for a Canadian Comedy Award.

Eve had Bernie’s voice, the costume and the mannerisms down, but gave pretty generic answers to the questions. The left can rarely agree on anything, but I think we can unite under this safe performance.

Suki’s struggle as Yoko was so sad to see, because in the workroom she made Brooke Lynn laugh with her crazy singing. She also gave a great line to Traci on the (sh)ETalk red carpet about how she broke up the Beatles. She had things and didn’t use them! It was a Yoko Oh-no! And Adrianna… You’re lucky you came for my heart with a Riverdale themed runway, because you nip-slipped up on this one.

That being said, this Snatch Game — on the scale established earlier — was kind of good. Again, Canada has brought it to Snatch Game, though Brooke Lynn set a low bar for us all.

Suki also had the best line in UnTucked regarding her positivity. “What do you do when you have a chance? You take it [and] cry about it? That’s privilege.” Eve was sitting real quiet over in the corner — I noticed that much.

This elimination though… Gutted. Suki Doll was someone I was super looking forward to seeing because she had made some of the best runways from season one — and her runways really showed those skills. Eve is great, but they didn’t show anything in this episode to warrant a save from their third time in the bottom. Whatever, in true modern Drag Race tradition, little to no white queens were harmed in the making of the first four episodes. Cool.

See you next week for a Girl Group challenge!