Dance Moms returned to Lifetime last night, louder and more spellbindingly horrific than before. I’d believe you if you told me that dance coach Abby Lee Miller spent her between-seasons break chewing on broken glass and taking screaming lessons from Al Pacino. She’s that scary.
Although, as I watched the episode last night, I realized that Abby reminds me more of another Hollywood mainstay: Mama Fratelli from The Goonies! (Earlier this week, my BuddyTV comrade John Kubicek compared Abby to the bus driver, Ms. Crabtree, on South Park, while is also completely accurate and perfect.)
Say what you (or rather, I) will about Abby’s methods, but the woman GETS RESULTS. And she also makes for some of the most outrageous moments on reality television. Here are my favorite jaw-dropping and laugh-out-loud moments from last night’s Dance Moms premiere. (If you missed it, watch the episode on Lifetime before it’s gone.)
5. Abby yelled at Holly, one of the moms, because she had the audacity to go to WORK, at her JOB, instead of attending the meeting where Abby posts photos of the children in the shape of a pyramid to teach them who’s better and who’s worse on the team. Obviously, any meeting that ranks the children is mandatory for the parents. And it’s in the middle of this argument, when Abby accuses Holly of not caring about her “not so swift” child, that Abby comes at Holly with this gem of an argument: “My dad even took me to the mother/daughter talk about getting your period.” Case closed!
The best part of this fight was watching the other moms listen from the other room and say what we were all thinking: “Oh my God, she’s talking about her period? What does that have to do with anything?” “I don’t know, but I want to kill myself.”
4. The return of Cathy and the Candy Apples Dance Center “rivalry”! Cathy is a nightmare made of maroon lipliner and completely unearned self-confidence, and I can’t wait to see how she attempts to “bring it” to Abby this season. She’s the Midwestern mom version of an old-school Batman villain: Over-the-top costume, cringe-worthy catchphrases, stupid plans, and she’ll always lose. (Plus, I’m not entirely convinced that her daughter isn’t a sack of potatoes.)
Case in point: The Cathinator has attempted to hijack Abby’s “pyramid” and make it better. First, by making her pyramid ELECTRONIC, because Cathy, like any great super-villain, is on the cutting edge. And second, she’s “improved” the pyramid by not making it a pyramid at all. It’s just a line with a lump on top! This is Cathy’s attempt to be positive with her dancers, but really, she just made the pyramid pointless, and made it look like she doesn’t know her shapes.
3. When Abby held auditions for the new dancer, and the mother of some six-foot-tall girl who got cut got SO MAD about it. Abby claimed the girl got cut because she was too tall (which she was), but the mom just kept screaming “FIND HER A SPOT!” while tribal drums got louder and louder in the background. I thought we were about to witness a human sacrifice. (Which, in a way, I guess all these little girls are. At least in spirit.)
2. “You save those tears for your pillow, in your room, ALONE!” – Abby to the poor new dancer who is on automatic “probation” until she “proves herself.” (Probably forever.)
1. Abby and Kelly fought about schedules and payments and what-have-you, and Abby screamed her best slam to date: “You’re the reason I don’t take Discover anymore!” And then Kelly called Abby a WHORE! Whaaaat? (Watch the fight here!)
What did you think of the Dance Moms premiere? Check out a preview for next Tuesday’s new episode, when Cathy’s first evil scheme goes awry:
(Image courtesy of Lifetime)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Meghan hails from Walla Walla, WA, the proud home of the world’s best sweet onions and Adam West, the original Batman. An avid grammarian and over-analyzer, you can usually find her thinking too hard about plot devices in favorites like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and How I Met Your Mother. In her spare time, Meghan enjoys drawing, shopping, trying to be funny (and often failing), and not understanding the whole Twilight thing. She’s got a BA in English and Studio Art from Whitman College, which makes her a professional arguer, daydreamer, and doodler.
