This weekend I caught up on "RuPaul's Drag Race," and I'm glad I did. After being underwhelmed by the first episode (you can check out why here) and being similarly bored by the second, I found the last three episodes to be a huge improvement. So congrats, Ru! You've sucked me in!

Alas, last night I was heartbroken, as one of my favorites for the win sashayed away. Wee, adorable, perky genderfuck artist Ongina was cut after landing in the Bottom 2 with Bebe Zahara Benet, who practically ripped the stage apart during her fierce lip synch number. Bebe has been a dark horse candidate since she dominated the talk-show challenge a few episodes back, and last night's performance proved she's clearly a threat.

But that left poor Ongina out of the running, and that's a real shame. She's tickled me since practically the beginning, and this weekend, while watching her in the Viva Glam screen test challenge, I made a comment to my friend that she could totally win the entire show. And then, after she won the challenge, when she revealed that she had secretly been living with HIV for the past two years, I immediately thought she had it in the bag. What a fantastic, unlikely role model Ongina would have made for the drag community. It was clearly very difficult for Ru to send Ongina home, but given the circumstances, I can't fault the decision. Bebe beat her in the lip synch, and the two of them definitely deserved to be in the bottom after the challenge.

That challenge was to take butchy female fighters (boxers, martial artists, etc.) and transform them into little drag "sisters" -- basically mini-me versions that encapsulated each queen's drag persona. Ongina screwed herself by playing up the masculine/feminine dichotomy of her pairing (she is a very girly man, her partner a very manly woman), but as the panel pointed out, that wasn't the assignment. Bebe and her little sis bore almost no resemblance to one another, with Bebe in one of her fabulous African-inspired gowns and her partner in full-on Middle Eastern drag. She was also the only fighter to look worse post-makeover.

I thought the remaining contestants all did well, but I would have flipped the judges' decisions on who won the challenge. Ru gave it to Rebecca Glasscock, pointing out that her little sister had been transformed into Rebecca's spitting image, and that her transformation was the greatest. True. However, I would argue that both of them looked amateurish, like any beginner queen you could see in any drag club in the country. That's fine, but this is the search for America's next drag superstar, and while I like Rebecca, I just think at this point in the competition she's seriously outclassed. Shannel, Nina, and Bebe (and Ongina!) are all talented, have unique drag personae, and have real star quality. They are perfect storms of drag. Rebecca is barely a transvestite tropical depression. Give her a few more years and I bet she'll be amazing. She's just not there yet.

Shannel got dinged for not sharing the stage with her drag sis, and the judges once again alluded to her snooty attitude. Even though she kind of asks for it, and she's both defensive and occasionally clueless, I like Shannel. She's inherently glamorous, and a drag superstar should be a little full of herself.

Meanwhile, I think Nina Flowers should have taken the win handily. If the assignment was to transform the butchy fighters into miniature drag versions of themselves, Nina did that flawlessly. Her fighter really did look like her little sister! The judges complained that the end result looked more masculine than her non-drag version, but that's the entire point of Nina Flowers. She's playing with gender in really interesting ways, and if her fighter had come out all soft and dainty, it would have had nothing to do with Nina.

So that leaves us with a Final 4 of Nina, Shannel, Rebecca, and Bebe. I hope that next episode Rebecca gets sent home (again, nothing against her, I just think at this point in the competition she's not at the level everyone else is), as that would make for a pretty fierce Final 3. While I would have preferred Ongina over Bebe, she's certainly a worthy replacement.

I'd also like to point out that after the first episode, I never thought I'd be this invested in this show. I need to remember that any series needs a couple episodes to find its groove, and "Drag Race" has definitely found it. The contestants are compelling (I still think it would be way more juicy if they were all living together in a house instead of put up in a hotel, which is what I've read), the challenges have gotten WAY better, and the production values have been significantly tweaked. That egregious soft lighting that marred the first episodes has been largely done away with - and thank god for it, because it made Ru look terrible; last night she looked ravishing - and the whole thing just generally looks and feels a lot more professional. Here's hoping it's picked up for Season 2 with a MUCH larger budget, because I think it could do for Logo what "Runway" and "Top Model" did for their respective networks.