Drag Race is back! Well, it never left, but I did. For various and mysterious reasons, I missed last week's episode. Apologies. Let's start anew today, with the rockingest episode yet.

Yes, the challenges this week were rock & roll themed, because nothing says drag queens quite like pot-bellied straight dudes drinking beer and doing a little thrashing. No, the reason they did it is because a couple of months ago RuPaul was having dinner with a friend at the Capital Grille in Scotsdale and he ran into Teri Nunn from the band Berlin, and she seemed good, but a little bored. "Whatcha doin' these days, girl?" he asked her. "Ohh, you know. A little of this, little of that." "Well why don't you come on my show, you can be a guest judge." Teri grinned. "No fooling?" Ru smiled. "No fooling."

So that is why they had a Rock & Roll episode, I suspect. To help out kind old Teri Nunn from Berlin. That's a good enough reason for me! The first challenge was wigs. Everyone was asked to make a rock and roll wig. Miss Tyra, because she is about as smart as a wooden winsock flapping dully in the breeze, just made an orange Beyoncé wig. Oh god, excuse me. A Sasha Fierce wig. Tyra almost slapped me for that blunder! Please tell me, dear producers, that the grand surprise at the end of the season will be that we'll get to watch Tyra meet Miss Boncee. "Boncee! Boncee! Boncee!" he'll cry, jumping and clapping, running into walls. Of course it will actually just be Kelly Rowland dressed as Boncee, but that won't matter. Please give us that? Pretty please?

A coupla other queens went for the Raggedy look that RuPaul so adores, with cigarette butts and shards of things in the wigs, but they were not the winning look this week. No, instead it was Miss Pandora's Boxxx, who made a "guitar" out of bobby pins and plastic string. It was a creative idea, but it didn't exactly work. Much like Pandora herself sometimes. (Not when doing Carol Channing though. That always works.) But yes, Pandora won and her grand prize was... ten more minutes of expert singer training from Teri Nunn. Worth its weight in gold records, that.

After the Van's Wig Tour had ended, it was time for the gals to put together rock costumes. Mostly this meant retrofitting previous dresses with shiny zigzag The Max-style decals and stuff, as if they were Barbies from 1987 or something. (My sister had — OK, we had — a Barbie that had an acid wash black jean outfit and bright hot pink triangle-shaped earrings and a neon green guitar.) Or they were like Jem dolls. Ha, there was something great with Jessica Wild last night related to Jem. Rupes was doing her usual Tim Gunn walkabout, assessing the girls' progress and offering sage older-queen wisdom. She asked Jessica Wild what that girl was up to, and Jessica said "I think I am going to look like the cartoon Jem and the Holograms." Which, ha. Much has been made this season about J. Wild's language and culture barrier problems and yet, she knows exactly what Jem and the Holograms was. That is truly the universal language: mid-'80s cartoons about rival girl rockbands. Well done, culture.

The scary thing about this particular competition was that the girls had to sing, foreal. No lip-syncing. This was straight up warbling. Most of the girls were terrified, because they are not singers. That's why they became drag queens! Luckily they had the expertise of Teri Nunn to glean things from. Raven, who though kind of mean is maybe my favorite (she seems smarter than a lot of them somehow), was freaking out because she loves Teri Nunn, apparently. And Teri Nunn loved her! She wanted to date the boy Raven, whose name is Norman Finklehauser. (I mean, I wish it was. I wish they all had real names like that. Tyra = Dwayne Meepgood. Sahara = Ezra Pearlstein. And, oddly, Pandora Boxx = Ridge Powersmax.) Tatiana was such a nervous little drag queen that she barely sang. Sahara was a close second in the suckage department, and Jujubee led the pack, because she can actually sing a little bit. The die has been cast!

Except nothing is ever certain on the Miss Public Access Pageant. Somehow, crazy Jessica Wild managed to squawk and writhe her way to a first place finish. You can watch her routine above. I suspect she won simply for doing that awkward cowboy dance up the runway with the mic stand. It was a thing of terrible beauty, that move. Tatiana came out and totally didn't embarrass herself! It helps that she is a very pretty drag queen. As we all know, beauty trumps all else in this world. Sahara came out doing some kind of herky-jerky voodoo revival dance that was vaguely reminiscent of this. (Though, not nearly as exciting or wonderful as that.) Pandora was physically fine, but vocally pretty drab. Tyra just walked out and bellowed in her deep, sonorous baritone. I swear, there may be nothing creepier in life (or, at least, on Logo) than watching pretty dainty Tyra walk out and open her mouth and out comes James Avery's singing voice. And then Jujubee came out and we were all really excited but, oops, she got out of time with the music and totally whiffed it and that was that. Booooo, Jujubee. Booooo.

Sahara and Juju ended up in the bottom twotwo and had to lip sync for their liiives. Sahara did her usual awkward pirouettes and dance moves, while Jujes wriggled around in desperate beauty on the floor, hair in her face, tears welling up in her eyes. It was a good performance! I mean, for the show. I shudder when I picture sitting in that shanty studio, the wooden risers creaking as the girls trample all over them, these weary little lip syncs going on and everyone (like four people) having to clap at the end. But I try not to dwell on that. It's better to imagine these girls are performing in front of hundreds on a starry night, instead of a dozen or so, in the mid-afternoon.

In the end Jujubee saved her ass with the lip-sync and Sahara, one of our more boring contestants, was sent home. Back to the wander the desert, searching for an African Priscilla. Oh well, goodbye!

The saddest thing about this episode was that we didn't get Ru's usual runway commentary. So I'll offer one of my own:

"Oh Juju, girl. Circle does not get the square. Caroline Rhea has fooled you again."

Does that work?