Drag Race UK 8 Episode 4: Paris Baby Survives the Rusical

Drag Race UK 8 finally gave us a Rusical worth talking about. KY Kelly and Mocha walked away with badges, Naya Thorn came painfully close, Paris Baby threw another wobble before absolutely fighting for her life in the lip-sync .

SPOILER ALERT – The Delta Quadrant left the competition carrying a cardboard box. Honestly, British television.

Four episodes in, I think we can safely say one thing about this season: nobody is interested in giving us peace.

And thank God for that.

After a Snatch Game that left me wanting considerably more, episode four took the remaining queens to Croydon — spiritually, at least — for Croydon – The Rusical, a very obvious and very camp love letter to Chicago.

Singing? Check.

Dancing? Check.

Women in prison? Naturally.

Several drag queens behaving as though the Tony Awards depended on the next eight minutes of television? Absolutely.

And, surprisingly, almost everyone delivered.

Croydon – The Rusical was actually… good?

Let’s start with the biggest shock of the night: nobody completely died on that stage.

You know the Rusical formula by now. One queen gets the role everyone wants, someone discovers approximately twelve minutes before filming that choreography involves moving their feet, another insists that their character “wasn’t written to stand out”, and Michelle Visage looks concerned.

We’ve been here before.

But Croydon – The Rusical was refreshingly competitive. The standard was high enough that the judges genuinely had to start looking for differences rather than obvious disasters.

KY Kelly, though, was difficult to ignore.

Vocally confident, completely committed and polished from beginning to end, KY looked like someone who knew exactly what this challenge required and had arrived prepared to collect another badge.

At this point, KY’s confidence occasionally borders on “yes babe, we know you’re good”, but here’s the annoying thing: she keeps backing it up.

And that is rather inconvenient for everyone else.

Mocha keeps quietly becoming one of the season’s biggest threats

Then there’s Mocha.

I’m beginning to think we need to stop describing her as someone who is “emerging” as a contender because, darling, she has already emerged.

This was her second challenge win, and we’re only four episodes in.

Mocha brought polish, character and one of the strongest runway presentations of the night. Even if I personally thought KY had the stronger Rusical performance, I can understand why the judges went for the double win when the entire package was considered.

What I particularly like about Mocha is that she doesn’t seem to need to fill every available second of screen time to remind us she’s there.

Some queens announce themselves.

Mocha simply turns up looking expensive, does the job and waits for RuPaul to hand her another badge.

Very efficient.

Very British.

Almost suspiciously professional for this cast.

Naya Thorn nearly had it and then came the runway

Naya Thorn was another standout in the Rusical and could easily have been part of that winning conversation.

Then came the literary-character runway.

Oh, Naya.

Naya chose Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby while also admitting that she hadn’t actually read the book.

Now, I am not suggesting that Drag Race contestants need to submit a dissertation before being allowed onto the runway.

But if the assignment is essentially “choose a character from literature”, reading at least the Wikipedia introduction might not be an outrageous expectation.

The bigger issue was that the look simply didn’t immediately communicate Daisy Buchanan. It was beautiful because Naya is beautiful, but “beautiful woman wearing glamour” is rather different from creating a recognisable literary character.

And on a runway where queens were drawing from everything from Pinocchio to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, there was room to go absolutely bonkers.

Instead, several looks felt strangely restrained.

Books gave you all that material and this is where we landed?

Babes. Libraries died for this.

And then there is Paris Baby

Last week, I described Paris Baby as entering a sort of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde phase: one minute sweetness, encouragement and vulnerable baby queen; the next, shade, attitude and enough emotional whiplash to require a seatbelt.

Episode four did absolutely nothing to change my mind.

If anything, we’ve upgraded to the full West End production.

Paris struggled in the Rusical, received criticism and then seemed to enter that very specific Drag Race emotional state known as “I don’t care, but I urgently need everybody to understand how much I don’t care.”

Babes.

If you have to announce repeatedly that you don’t care, there is at least a moderate chance that you care.

Quite a lot.

Her attitude after the critiques was probably more damaging than the critiques themselves. Walking away, checking out of the conversation and snapping back while the other queens tried to talk through the results gave us another glimpse of someone whose confidence seems much less solid than the exterior suggests.

And then came the runway revelation.

Paris admitted that part of her outfit came from Shein.

On Drag Race.

In front of Michelle Visage.

Girl.

Somewhere, a sewing machine unplugged itself out of protest.

But Paris Baby absolutely won that lip-sync

And this is where things become irritatingly complicated.

Because Paris may have spent much of the episode testing everyone’s blood pressure, but when RuPaul put her in the bottom against The Delta Quadrant, she woke up.

The song was “Shine” by Booty Luv, and Paris attacked it like the stage owed her money.

Splits. Kicks. Tricks. Movement. More movement. Another trick. Possibly every drag move she has ever learnt being deployed within approximately three minutes.

Was it subtle?

Absolutely not.

Did subtlety matter?

Also absolutely not.

Paris understood that she was fighting to stay in the competition and made it impossible not to watch her.

Delta, by comparison, stayed much more within her character and performance style. Charming? Yes. Very Delta? Completely. Enough to beat Paris throwing the entire contents of the drag toolbox across the stage?

Sadly, no.

Ru made the correct call.

And I say that while being genuinely gutted to lose Delta.

The Delta Quadrant deserved more time

The Delta Quadrant was one of those contestants whose drag actually felt distinctive.

In a franchise where increasingly polished queens can sometimes start to blur together, Delta had something immediately identifiable: awkwardness turned into comedy, very British references and an entire aesthetic that seemed to exist somewhere between regional theatre, an office Christmas party and your auntie’s local pub.

And then came that exit.

After being eliminated, Delta returned to the Werk Room carrying her belongings in a cardboard box, fully committing to the redundancy gag.

Even her farewell felt like an HR department had just politely terminated her employment.

It was ridiculous.

It was understated.

It was perfect.

And suddenly losing her in episode four feels far too early.

Anita Piss may secretly be the sanest person in this Werk Room

Meanwhile, Anita Piss continues to fascinate me precisely because she seems to exist in a completely different television programme from everyone else.

Chaos erupts.

Paris is upset.

Someone is offended.

Someone else is defending their drag.

And Anita appears to be sitting somewhere thinking, “Right, shall we have a biscuit?”

Her dry confessionals are becoming one of my favourite parts of the season.

She landed low this week, although I wasn’t entirely convinced she deserved quite that much criticism. Her Rusical performance was perfectly serviceable, and some of the judges’ issues appeared to come down to the runway interpretation rather than a disastrous performance.

But what Anita increasingly provides is something this cast desperately needs:

a normal person standing near the madness.

And every reality show needs one.

Four episodes in, the personalities are finally becoming clear

This is the part of season eight I’m enjoying most.

We now know who these queens are becoming within the competition.

KY Kelly knows she’s talented and makes absolutely no effort to hide that knowledge.

Mocha is quietly accumulating one of the strongest records.

Naya Thorn has enormous potential but occasionally appears capable of becoming her own biggest obstacle.

Coral-Hole Mandi is starting to show more bite, particularly when defending her drag.

Flesh remains polished, gorgeous and slightly difficult to read — I still want to know much more about her.

Alik continues to have a strange charm that makes me want her to succeed even when the challenge isn’t built around her.

Anita Piss is apparently the exhausted adult supervising the school trip.

And then Paris Baby.

Paris is still the biggest question mark.

Not because she lacks personality.

Christ, no.

There may currently be enough personality there for three separate contestants.

The question is whether she can learn to control it rather than letting every criticism become an existential event.

Because this episode proved something important: when Paris focuses that energy in the right direction, she’s dangerous.

That lip-sync was the first time I felt we saw exactly what she could be in this competition.

The problem is getting that Paris to turn up before Ru says, “I’m sorry my dear, but you are up for elimination.”

So, was episode four the best of Drag Race UK 8 so far?

For me?

Yes.

Not because Croydon – The Rusical reinvented Drag Race. It absolutely did not.

We’ve had Rusicals. We’ve had prison parody. We’ve had literary runways. We’ve had queens fighting backstage after critiques approximately seventeen thousand times.

But this episode finally brought together what season eight has been promising: good performances, increasingly defined characters, genuine tension and a lip-sync where somebody very clearly decided they were not going home.

KY and Mocha deserved their badges.

Naya remains one to watch.

Paris remains exhausting, fascinating and — whether you like it or not — extremely good television.

And Delta?

Ru-dundant far too soon.

Best regards.