This week the queens were challenged to form two girl groups, each team were given the same song “BDE” (Big Drag Energy) but had to perform either a “top pop” version or “power bottom” version.
All the girls were surprised to see Veronica Green eliminated from competition so early, but agreed that Vanity deserved to win her lip sync.
The next day Ru arrived to announce the maxi challenge giving Scarlett and Vanity the role of team captains and let them choose their own teams. Scarlett chose Kitty Scott-Claus, Charity Kase, and Krystal and Vanity chose Ella Vaday, River, and was left with Choriza – who wasn’t too happy about being picked last. The song would be mixed into two versions, one uptempo and one mid-tempo power ballad, and they would all have to write their own verse.
Last week’s winner, Scarlett got to listen to arrangements before the other queens and choose which one she wanted to take for her team. It came by no surprise that she chose the pop version of the song leaving Vanity’s team with the power ballad.
While in the werk room the queens were treated to a surprise appearance of UK pop group Steps, members H, Claire Richards, Lee Latchford-Evans and Faye Tozer for a little music mentoring.
Scarlett’s groups, The Slice Girls was the first in the studio but seemed to struggle finding coherence, especially with charity’s witchy character. Despite dubbing themselves the underdogs, Vanity’s group Pick’n’Mix, did well in their recording session. Ella struggled in parts but with emotional lyrics from Vanity and River and energy from Choriza their chances looked good.
The Slice Girls also stumbled while rehearsing their choreography, even knowing that their group lacked strong dancers they over complicated their steps and failed to listen to advice from their instructors. Pick’n’Mix faired better in choreography, and kept in mind the advice that with power ballads that the key is to not leave the audience feeling bored.
While they go ready for the main stage Ella and River discussed how important it was for their lyrics meant to them, and River opened up about recently loosing her mother to COVID-19.
This week, Ru was joined by Michelle Visage, Alan Carr, and special guest judge Emma Bunton.
First to performed “BDE” was The Slice Girls and it was clear early on that the judges were not loving what they were seeing. An unfortunate moment for the group was Scarlett forgetting the words to her own verse and rolling her eyes on stage – as well as missing marks for the choreography. The power ballad of “BDG” from Pick’n’Mix was slower and impressed the judges more with its simple choreography and happy energy.
On the runway, the queens dressed to impress with “Night of 1000 Spice Girls” with Krystal opening in a baby blue fur coat as Baby Spice. The only Spice Girl not represented on the runway was Posh Spice and if any queen was to pull of Victoria Beckham we would have thought it would be Krystal. But apparently no queen was was up to that challenge.
Based on their performances and runway looks, Pick’n’Mix were declared the winners of this weeks challenge and each got themselves a RuPeter badge. That meant that The Splice Girls were all up for elimination, Charity was critiqued for her outfit choice during the performance and her witchy character while Scarlett was was called out for rolling her eyes on stage when she messes up. However, they weren’t hard on her, but made the point of not letting her disappointment show.
In the end it was Charity and Scarlett in the lip sync, battling it out to Spice Girls song “Who Do You Think You Are?” This was a hard lip sync to watch, with two strong queens in the bottom who clearly had a lot more to show in the completion. Well clearly Ru thought so too, because no queen went home! We got a double save. After Victoria Scone went home early due to her knee injury, it was likely a double save was in the cards in order to keep the show on track with its running order. It’s a little bit of a surprise that Ru didn’t use it to save Veronica Green, but we are glad to see Scarlett and Charity given a second chance this week.
Style-and-Wear 