Meanwhile, Alaska and Lineysha recognize that the most popular parts of "Toddlers and Tiaras" are when the children are unruly, over-caffeinated brats, each one a l'enfant terrible with a spray tan, and baby-dickpig Lil' Poundcake delivers the win. I'm pretty sure Lil' Poundcake is also going to win Season 18 of RuPaul's Drag Race.

One of these days, I'm going to assemble a YouTube video that's just woven-together soundbytes of Willam and Lumpy Space Princess.

The queens team up and drag out their My Size T-Barbies. I know I haven't shut up about Monsoon Season since I start recapping, but Jinkx's son Nick "Kami" Sahoyah had an astute observation on Twitter : Little Vaxeline Androxxx Zoe is serving "Adventure Time" Lemongrab realness.

(Sidenote: I love Alyssa's aggro-wear today. Between her "COME AT ME BRO!" shirt and "LIKE A BOSS" hat, Alyssa clearly knows the story producers have chosen this episode to beat the Miss Gay America horse until there's no more drama to leach from it.)

Ooh, SheMail! The queens will aim their sequins and bronzers on child-sized dolls for the Miss Junior Drag Superstar mini-challenge.

It's all vaguaries for now. Roll credits! The queens arrive for the morning, discussing the challenge to come. Roxxxy throws up her hands and hopes aloud, "No more team challenges!" Girl, to quote you last week, didn't you know you were coming on RuPaul's Drag Race? After the first episode, it's all team challenges until the Snatch Game, and we don't play the Snatch Game with twelve girls. (The number of queens we *do* play the Snatch Game with is a matter of interest for this season. Spoilers ahoy , drag nerds.)

"JUST SAY WHAT ALYSSA DID SO WE CAN SCRUB AND GO TO SLEEP."

However, a producer prompts Vivienne to stir the Colyssa pot, because that's naturally what these queens want to discuss after a hellishly long Elimination Day. The exchange among the queens is so heavily-edited that it's hard to tell how the actual conversation went, but we glean that Alyssa broke some contractual rules related to the title of Miss Gay America, and the crown was passed to first runner-up Coco. Tonight, nobody has the energy to get excited about any of this.

As the show opens, we close the chapter on young Serena ChaCha and her well-read paella. The queens are 100% behind Monica, and for post-elimination, the mood in the werkroom is high.

Oof. The Word of the Day is "Trainwreck!" No disrespect meant to the beleaguered queens this episode: I love a good off-the-rails-in-the-ravine episode.

Lineysha and Alaska choose their teams, which goes about how you'd expect.

I like each of Alaska, Detox, and Roxxxy individually, but I'm so over Rolaskatox. I was cheering for the Boogers in Season Three, and I'm cheering for Alcohovadinkxyshicanne now. It's more of a mouthful, but they're less obnoxious about it. From the looks on their faces, the other queens agree with me.

In addition to Rolaskatox, Alaska's team has Vivienne, Montica (for Alaska has renamed her, and Montica is pleasurable to say, isn't it?), and Alyssa, who doesn't mind being picked last for the team she'd hoped to be on anyway.

They choose "Barnyard Buddies" as their show's theme, featuring a rubenesque Alaska (Paul Reuben, that is), Detox as the Disco Chicken Remix, and Roxxxy as the lisping Tasha Salad. Vivienne will play Tasha's anxious friend Anita Bump, and Montica is asked to embody the legend of all young-beautiful-hard-knocks-trans-women roles, Venus "Let's talk about reading" Xtravaganza.

Alaska has Alyssa play Uncle Dick the Cross-Dresser, and Lord help me, I love it. I know Alyssa wasn't into it, but Uncle Dick the Cross-Dresser is my new spirit animal, y'all.

On-set, RuPaul wastes no time in reading Alaska for being in "male drag." I side with Alaska: there's overblown make-up, there's a costume, there's an invented voice and carriage and set of mannerisms. It's drag, or at the very least, it's not any less character-role than anybody else.

Anyway. I get Season Two flashbacks. Have some side-by-sides!

Poor dumb Ellie Mae.

Detox starts "Barnyard Buddies" strong, clucking out "BAWWWWWWKKS!" to teach the Word of the Day, "Box." She and Alaska have pitch-perfect acting chemistry. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the other acts on this team: while Roxxxy matches the over-the-top energy required for a little kids' show, Vivienne is aiming for actress instead of caricature, and while her performance would have been passable for other acting challenges, it's much too low-energy for this context. The same thing happens for Alyssa and Monica: Alyssa, a professional dance teacher, works with children and clearly understands how to keep kids' attention, but Monica freezes under pressure and has trouble getting her lines out.

It doesn't help that Alaska and Alyssa stand stock-still, staring into the fourth wall like Dora the Explorer silently begging for mercy. As Miss Xtravaganza would say, this team is going through it.

Meanwhile, the locomotive is careening off the bridge on Team Lineysha too.

For this challenge, your thinking cap will need to double as a crash helmet.

"The Magic Bush" features Honey and Coco as T.T. and Tiny, who teach children to tell the T. Coco wastes no time scaling the cross: between Alyssa's continued presence and the insult of playing a character named Tiny, she's clearly feeling persecuted, and she quickly relinquishes all agency over the situation. To her credit, despite being on the team with the two best costumers, their phoned-in rainbow-puzzle ponchos are deeply awful.

Watching this scene, my friend Peter observed, "This seems like a slow-motion hate crime."

Lineysha's team has made the wise choice to have Jinkx host as the glittery, bouncy Princess Pink Lips. Jinkx has mastered the infectious grin, hasn't she?

She's joined by Jolly Jade, who teaches us how to blow!

If you want the side-by-side, it's elsewhere on the internet, but I'm not GIFing it. (You're welcome.)

The cute breaks down as we move into Ivy and Lineysha's "How to make a banana split" portion. While they work in the requisite jokes about big bananas and squirting cream, the entertaintment value for children is wanting.

Ivy's dress is possessed by Rowlf the Muppet, trying to break free of this perverted mockery of childrens' programming.

It's only downhill as we move into T.T. and Tiny. While Honey does her best, Coco makes it clear that she'd rather be anywhere but here. It's tough to tell who hates this challenge more: Coco or Michelle Visage.

Thankfully, we're spared more uncomfortable footage of Honey and Coco, and we jump to the next morning. Elimination Day is here, and Alaska still hasn't run out of electrical tape.

Is he slowly spelling out a message? I hope this is either a prank or some coded meta-game we're all unknowingly playing.

We enjoy a sweet moment about Jinkx's super-supportive grandmother, but before we get too cozy, it's time to attempt a denouement to the Coco/Alyssa feud. Rather than recapping that, I give you Twitter, circa Tuesday morning after this broadcast:

I love you, you love me, we're a dragging family. From the exchange we saw on TV, it's clear that both Alyssa and Coco had reasons to feel aggrieved, but this episode reminded me of nothing so much as the Season Four "Frenemies" episode: when Sharon and Phi Phi started to get along, it was inconvenient to the story producers, and it felt like the producers did everything they could to keep that feud going; similarly, we'd seen small congenial moments between Coco and Alyssa in the first two episodes, and this episode's fight felt television-instigated and manipulated (even though the resulting emotions were certainly real). Ugh. I like it better when people get along! I'd been really enjoying Coco in the first two episodes, and Alyssa could do no wrong for me in this episode, so although we were shown foreshadowing that they're not done beating this horse yet, I'm glad everything is cool these days.

Judging! It was stiff competition, but I award Best Breasts on Panel to RuPaul this week. Sorry, Coco-the-judge, but your tits terrify me.

Remember in Season One, when the stage was red-on-pink-on-red and the colors were all blown out and you couldn't see any details because your retinas went on strike?

It's some Valentine diarrhea realness up on this stage. Let's get to the looks!

Alaska's Pink Bridal Massacre look was brilliant. The gown, the splatter, the gun, everything worked for me. I was determined to withhold judgement on Alaska for the first few episodes, because every person on the internet has a tiresome does-she-deserve-to-be-here opinion, but this look seals it in: Alaska is just as good at the game of RuPaul's Drag Race as Sharon ever was, and she might be better.

Though her shoes were a problem for me, I loved Vivienne's look from the waist up. I want to buy those boobies on a stick from a clown and eat them at the circus.

I... I guess I'm the one who's not getting it, because I literally couldn't find a single nice thing to say about this. Whatever, I'm the dilettante and Detox and the judges are the professionals, so what the hell do I know. Detox's chicken was awesome, so I certainly can't begrudge her win on the challenge front.

Miss Jinkx gives me life. I could write three paragraphs detailing the ways that I love this, and between her challenge performance and this runway look, of course I think the win was snatched from her hands.

I continue to be charmed as hell by Ivy Winters. I wonder what happens if you try to stand on an elephant's back in those heels?

The theme is "pink?" Of course Jade is in her element. My teeth are rotting and I love it.

And... Honestly, everybody else looked nice? They all started to run together after a while; I have no opinion on whether, say, Alyssa's dress was nicer than Monica's, or Roxxxy's was nicer than Lineysha's. They were all lovely, they were all fine. I'm giving Coco a pass on her Miss Junior Drag Superstar look, and I'm giving Honey a pass on her sprinting the runway. After all that kidster wackiness, I'm sure everybody needed a break.

On the runway, Detox, Roxxxy, and Jinkx are correctly identified as the top performers of the week, while Vivienne, Monica, and Coco are in the bottom three. Alaska is also kept out for a finger-wag about her Pee Wee performance, but the judges admit that her runway was thrilling, and the "bottom" ranking is really more of a warning to the other queens: we don't want to see dudes in the Snatch Game, you hear?

On Untucked, Monica was upset that the judges wanted to see some banji swagger from her, and I feel for her, but if you're going to use the phrase "overgrown orangutan" in front of the judges, you'd better be prepared to deliver some old-school street realness in your performance, and sweet, soft Monica didn't bring that.

In the end, Coco's defeated puppet and Monica's flat Venus land them in the bottom two, and for the lip synch to the Pussycat Dolls' "When I Grow Up," Coco pulls out a tee-ball uniform change and a tight, high-energy performance.

Monica does a fine job with the lip synch, but Coco is a lip synch assassin, and she sends dear Monica home. We wish you well, Monica! <3

Next week: Black Swan realness!

In the meantime, let's be friends on Twitter. Let me know what you thought of this week!