*distortion zone* “Welcome to Snaaatch Gaaame …”
*tv static*
Hi Ugly, it's me, Bussy, and welcome back to my channel. Today we'll be taking a deep dive into
the Snatch … Game, to answer some questions. Has Season 14 of RuPaul's Drag Race brought
upon us the death of Snatch Game? Like what in h-e double hockey sticks happened there?
And more importantly, should we ever see Snatch Game again? We've got a lot to go over today,
but regardless of where we end up, just remember the winner is … who cares!
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To start, let's go back to the beginning back to when the Earth, the Sun, and stars all
aligned … wait, too far. Uh, 2010 is good. Snatch Game was introduced in season 2 of RuPaul's Drag
Race where Tatiana's Britney Spears and Pandora Box’s Carol Channing defined great performances
in the genre. And it has since appeared on every season of RuPaul's Drag Race as a main challenge.
At its roots, it parodies Match Game, a television competition show originally airing through the 60s
and 70s where contestants tried to match answers given by celebrity panelists to
silly “fill in the blank” questions. Hey look! There's Betty White! Is it all making sense now?
But Snatch Game is less about being a parody of the TV show Match Game, which was always
silly and comedic in nature, and more so a challenge meant to test the parody, improv,
and impersonation skills of the contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race. And since its debut,
Snatch Game has been hailed as a fan favorite episode with average IMDB user ratings of episodes
of RuPaul's Drag Race containing the Snatch Game challenge often rating higher than the
entire season's average episodic ratings. But more than being loved by fans, Snatch Game is
also loved by the franchise and the queens who participate in it. The franchise gets to pocket
intellectual property that they can reuse and re-monetize for the rest of eternity,
and the queens have an opportunity to give an unforgettable performance. Which brings me to
my next point of why people love Snatch Games so much. It is often very good, and very bad.
But let's go ahead and break that down with some data, of which we'll be limiting the scope of
our analysis today to the main US-based seasons, including the most recent catastrophe of a Snatch
Game in season 14, there have now been 13 total Snatch Games. They typically appear somewhere
in the middle of the season, which translates to appearing in episodes 4-6 for the earlier ones and
now 7 or later in these newer longer seasons. Which means by the time we roll around to Snatch
Game, we have 8-10 contestants at most left, giving us plenty of opportunity for good and bad.
And of course this next section is subjective, but I attempted to quantify how many queens in
any given season we can expect to give great, just okay, and bad performances. And by my count, we
can on average expect 2 truly great performances in any given Snatch Game. Which is about 23%
of the total number of queens participating in the Snatch Game. I count 3 seasons with 3 truly
great Snatch Games, and 8 seasons with 2 truly great performances, but the most important piece
of data that I’ve derived from my subjective opinion today, is that over half of any given
cast on average was straight up bad at Snatch Game. Like, really bad. Like on average, Snatch
Game has just always been a really bad challenge for drag queens entering this competition, because
it doesn't really test their ability to do drag at all. But I'd argue this is largely by design,
or at least a happy accident the producers discovered very early on in the production of this
series. The reality of half or more of any given cast being bad at Snatch Game, or even just okay,
allows the producers an episode conveniently placed in the middle of the season to justifiably
put almost any two queens left in the cast into the bottom. And this is perfect for closing story
arcs mid-season and opening new ones, building lip-sync assassin narratives, or simply opening
up the opportunity to eliminate a queen that they weren't happy with so far in the competition. And
the reason all of this is possible is because in Snatch Game, what you see isn't always the truth.
The Snatch Game that we see as viewers is a highly edited version of what occurred in the studio
that day. It is in my opinion, the challenge that provides the most warped perception of reality to
the viewer. Because in other challenges, viewers can see if choreography is flubbed, lyrics for
a verse are written badly, or if a queen's acting was straight up bad. And I'm not saying this show
is rigged or trying to spin any wild conspiracy theories, I'm just saying that it is very much
both reality TV and a competition. And Snatch Game is just one of those challenges that is never
even attempted to be showcased as “fair”. We never see an equal number of responses given from each
contestant, so we never truly understand the full breadth of a queen's performance in Snatch Game.
Let's look at a quick example from season 11: Silky, the winner of this Snatch Game
had 5 speaking moments in the final edit, between answering questions directly given to her by Ru,
and chiming into other queen's responses. Plus there's a more subtle way that producers can
manipulate how you perceive Snatch Game. We also saw 2 confessionals inserted into this
Snatch Game from Silky herself, and when you leave this Snatch Game you feel like Silky
absolutely dominated this challenge. And don't get me wrong, I think she was hilarious and did great,
but showing Silky with 7 total speaking parts during this Snatch Game, confessionals included,
is hardly a fair representation of what actually happened when
you look and see that the other contestants got 2, 3, 4, maybe 5 speaking inclusions. The final
edit of that Snatch Game is so important – more than it is for any other challenge
in justifying the judge's decisions for a given Snatch Game challenge episode.
So to quickly recap this section of the video, queens doing bad in Snatch Game is not only a
reality, but an expectation of the producers, which ultimately only helps the producers
produce. But that does leave the question: Why do fans consistently leave good reviews
on episodes containing a challenge where half of the cast is expected to do bad,
and so much manipulation is possible? And I think the simple answer to this question is
that the good performances are often very good, and the bad ones, as I said earlier, are often
very bad. And the natural extreme between the good and the bad present in the cast's abilities
amplified by that manipulation and editing ultimately feels really rewarding. We have a
clear winner and a clear loser. And not only do fans like the dynamic of having the high highs
with the low lows, but it's important to remember that having somebody completely bomb Snatch Game
is just as good as having somebody do extremely well in the eyes of reality TV. Both types of
performances are just as likely to get talked about on social media, and guess what? Re-watched
years later. Just look at these MsMojo video compilations for Snatch Game performances: Top 10
Best and Top 10 Worst – what ultimately matters is that these performances are unforgettable.
And while we're here, let's go ahead and take a walk down memory lane and check out some of
these unforgettable performances. On the laugh out loud side we have Adore’s Anna Nicole – “do
you like my body?” Or Chad Michael's Cher – “I don't know why they keep booking me for
these chicken [ __ ] gigs! I'm a [ __ ] Oscar winner!” BenDeLa’s Maggie Smith – “excuse me,
we originated the language!” And on the stomach-curdling fetal position cringe
side we have Phi Phi O’Hara’s Lady Gaga – “give a twirl, give a twirl, give a twirl!” Or Aiden
Zhane’s senile Patricia Quinn that was played so badly, Patricia Quinn sounded off on social media
disapproving of the performance! And at the top of my most cringe Snatch Game performances I think is
Alyssa Edwards’ Katy Perry, who told RuPaul that she would never kiss a girl when she asked … the
only queen by the way ever asked to #rupologize on Twitter to the celebrity they impersonated.
And yes, that tweet is still up, and yes I did just retweet it in anticipation of this video.
Snatch Game is not only an important pivotal moment in the show for the producers to dip
their hand in and manipulate some storyline narratives, but also often a defining moment
for a queen's career, which is what makes season 14 Snatch Games so terribly tragic.
For the first time ever in a Snatch Game challenge, the judges put everybody into the
bottom except DeJa Skye, who was given the top winning placement for her portrayal of Lil Jon
– “YEEYUH” But why? Because it's not like we haven't seen overall bad Snatch Games before.
Season 4's entire Snatch Game was notoriously messy – from Kenya passing out as Beyoncé,
to Snooki smush-smushing the entire lower half of the panel, it was complete train wreck. But there
were 2 stellar performances in that one – Sharon and Chad's – and it also borne one of the most
important quotes I think of the entire Drag Race franchise from Latrice: “ the level of
unprofessionalism? Far too much.” And I think an interesting statistic that backs up my feelings
about good and bad Snatch Games is that IMDB user reviews of Snatch Game episodes where
there are less completely rotted performances and more generally okay ones are actually rated
lower than the Snatch Games where there are both really good and really bad performances.
And herein lies the problem with season 14 Snatch Game – it reeked of mediocrity. The
only remarkable performance across the entire cast, good or bad, was DeJas. Willow's Drew
Barrymore was not enough of a caricature, and was in my opinion, too intellectual. Bosco's
Gwyneth had props, but no delivery? On top of the fact that her and Willow kind of played the
same type of character, Angeria’s Tammy Brown was weird enough, but one note, and Jorgeous’ Ilana
certainly was not Ilana, but you could tell she at least knew what she was talking about.
These queen seemingly answered the questions that Ru was given with no surprises. And sure
the producers could have easily done a top and bottom edit of this Snatch Game,
but there were no extreme lows to balance out the extreme high of DeJa's performance. So instead of
taking a boring L on this season's Snatch Game, I think the producers put their producer hats on,
and decided the best reality TV outcome of this boring Snatch Game, would be to put everybody in
the bottom in order to keep people talking online, and have at least something to gag over. And in
an interesting way, I think this choice by the producers was actually a choice to not produce,
and let that mediocrity reign. And of course the cherry on top here to justify this decision is
that they obviously had a lip sync smackdown planned for some time during this season,
because, spoiler alert, they certainly did not purchase the rights to air on international TV
5 or 6 new songs just because RuPaul didn't like Snatch Game performances.
I have seen people talking online about how they thought the entire Snatch Game was a setup to put
everybody into the bottom. But for the reasons that we discussed in this video, I don't think
that that was an original plan of the producers. I must admit though, there were some interesting
things that happens during this Snatch Game that felt a bit off, so let's go ahead and talk through
those. The first thing I noticed watching this episode was when RuPaul did his workroom
walkthrough, he didn't ask anybody to change their character. This is typically something we
always see RuPaul do, and during Snatch Game, RuPaul seemed more disinterested than usual. For
example, both Bosco's Yannick Candle and Kombucha Drink got blank stares from RuPaul, and to one of
Angeria’s responses as Tammy Brown, he kind of just says, “I have no idea what you said, were
moving on,” and when he wasn't not engaging with these queens, he was in some cases I think pushing
some of him a little harder than he might usually. For example, he volleyed with Willow's intro line
as Drew Barrymore until she finally fell flat. And again, I'm not saying that what these queens did
in the Snatch Game was funny, I'm just saying it did kind of feel like Ru really was not into what
was happening, which is atypical of Ru during a Snatch Game. But did a very bland Snatch Game lead
into Ru not being happy with what was happening? Or did Ru’s hesitance to engage and understand
some of these queen's comedy lead into a very bland Snatch Game? I guess we'll never know.
But all things considered, I really don't believe in some giant conspiracy about this episode. I
just think RuPaul's Drag Race wants to make the most interesting and dramatic TV as possible.
And if the contestants aren't willing to work or can't provide the most dramatic and interesting
TV possible, then the producers are gonna look for a way to make that happen. Was it the right choice
though …? Uh, let me know what y'all thought down in the comments below. This was like the 5th
episode of the season without an elimination, and we are on episode 10 and still have 8 queens
left … to put some perspective on that, season 8 was already at their grand finale on 10.
Either way, it's no secret this Snatch Game sucked. But is it dead? Did season 14 kill it?
This cast might have mangled its body and tossed it into a river, but
no, I don't think they killed it. And I certainly don't think that because of what happened in this
Snatch Game the challenge will be going anywhere in the future. However, if evaluating Snatch
Game’s life force on the ability of it to test a drag queen's ability to do drag, then yeah,
it's dead, and it always has been. It’s not even good at testing whether a queen can win
Drag Race! Only 3 queens in the main series who won Snatch Game went on to win the crown
of the season. Jinkx, Aquaria, and Bob by the way. Which leads me into our final question:
should we see Snatch Game again? Absolutely! Even if it tests nothing other than a queen's
ability to make RuPaul laugh, the moments that we have gotten from this challenge, both amazing and
amazingly cringe-worthy, are worth risking it all for. And the winner is: who cares!
As always I want to say thanks to you for watching today's video, today's video sponsor
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patrons who make my channel possible. I also want to give a special shout out to Angel, Cyrus,
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Ryan Bince, Sehler, Steven, Thom Jaco, Tom Young, Topher, Triton, Wealie, and Yijit,
who are all supporting me at my Bussy Queen Collector tier. See y’all later, love ya, bye.
Just ask yourself, do you wanna live in a world
where Alyssa Edwards didn’t have to RuPaulogize on Twitter to Katy Perry?