DanThat'sCool!

 

 

He’s on your side. And He’s on your thighs. Halleloo!

 

 

 

 

 

Forget the roofy in her drink. We should dye those roots all one color. That’ll mess with her head.

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously. If she mentions Lion King one more time I’m gonna have to get all Simba on her a**.

 

 

 

 

I know you see me, you little squeak toy. You take on my kids, you take on Mama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

54 pirouettes? That is just f***d up.

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, we see you honey. You don’t need to raise your hand every time someone uses the word “pretty.”

 

 

 

Shut. Up. She goes to school two days a week? The freakin’ mailman probably spends more time in the building.

 

 

 

I swear, sometimes this show just makes me dizzy.

Maybe not 54 pirouette-dizzy…but still dizzy.

Sometimes there are so many people coming and going and screaming and crying and getting angry at things they brought on themselves that I just need to go out in the ALDC parking lot and lay in a pothole for a few minutes to escape all the madness.

Dance Moms…both the Original Recipe versions and the Replacement Team…were all back this week, tripping over each other in the studio as Abby Lee Miller tried to thin the herd and regroup before the next cattle auction.

After last week’s fairly unproductive 1960′s mini-van sit-in by the first string of Moms, the second wave draft players were back to see if they had made the cut or not.

Pulling together an entirely new team of dancers one week before a competition hadn’t really worked out quite as well as Abby had hoped it would, and the girls only came home with some Indiana State Fair souvenirs and a 2nd Place trophy.

Which in AbbyLand is really just the 1st Loser trophy.  So thanks, but no thanks.

Luckily, Abby had salvaged some street cred with the last minute additon of Cartoon Network’s own dancing phenom Sophia Lucia (…whose name can only be spoken while doing that raised Italian hand thing that Grandmamas do when they tell you to “Mangiare!”…) and the newbie was already the buzz of the Dance World.

As the new Moms all streamed into the building, the old Moms were pulling up in the parking lot like a Secret Service convoy doing a sweep of a news conference site.

The only Mom MIA from the new batch was Shelly and her daughter Ally.  They had both returned to New Orleans after the weekend’s competition, thanks in part to Moms Marcia and Gloria getting all Mean Girls on them and trying to blame Ally for the group coming in 2nd.

Shelly didn’t need that s*** and took her kid and her Mardi Gras beads back home, leaving Abby already short one dancer in the first two minutes of this week’s episode.

By the third minute, Ms. Miller had also kicked Marcia and Gloria out to the curb for not playing nice with others, which left squeaky Sophia sitting there all by herself to contemplate Life, and how her Mom Jackie gets her hair to look like that.

Seriously.  Mom’s hair is a lot work.  It’s blonde if you’re looking from the front.  It’s blonde and brown from the side.  It’s all blonde in the back unless she has part of it up, and then it’s all brown in the back.

By the time she does those two curling iron ribbons in the front (…which are clearly reserved for Competition Days only…) there is just way too much going on there.

While Kelly stayed outside leaning on a van like girls do in mall parking lots when they refuse to go inside to the Food Court because they know the boy they just had a texting fight with is still in Macy’s somewhere, the rest of the original Moms  headed into the building to try and finagle their way back onto the team.

As Holly testified that she had God on her side, Abby noted that she probably also had Him somewhere on her thighs, which was so oddly inappropriate and nonsensical that it has already inspired me to write a new hymn for next Sunday.

Gimme an organ, a choir, a bucket of the Colonel and raise your thighs to the skies.

It’s a work in progress.  But trust me…it’s gonna rock some pews.

Fry it and Testify it, mmmkay?

After some front desk drama, all the Moms signed another one of those annual Blood Contracts that Abby makes them sign and then everyone filed into the studio for the season’s first Pyramid of Shame.

Except it wasn’t really a pyramid.  Psych.

It was just Sophia’s headshot from that Alvin Squeakquel movie (…”All The Single Ladies”…) and then a bunch of other people all taped in a pile at the bottom.

Chipmunk:  One.  Everyone Else:  Thanks for playing.

And then, no lie, Oprah came running in and surprised everyone in the audience.

“You’re on probation!  You’re on probation!  You’re ALL on probation!”

That’ll teach you kids for having crazy Moms.  Gail, take me home.

The gang was headed to Ohio this week for another In10sity Dance Competition, and it was going to take a lot of work to get everyone back up to speed, since the only dancing the rest of the girls had done all week was that Flash Mob in front of The Limited.  Time to put your shopping bags down and get cracking, kids.

Sophia got a solo.  Natch.  But so did Chloe, which made Christi complain about something or other.

What?  She complains when Chloe doesn’t get a solo, and she complains when she does get a solo?  Not really sure where the middle ground would be on this one.

Christi wasn’t very happy this week and there were multiple Christi Moments, which we may or may not get to discuss in any depth.  We’ll see.

As the Moms all hit the Mom Perch, the girls got down to some actual dancing, which was a nice change of pace.  The new girl squeaked and smiled herself all over the studio walls, while the old crew just kind of moped around and went through the motions.

You could tell the last week really sucked it out of them quicker than a drag from Sophia’s helium balloon.

Upstairs, the Moms all learned that Sophia could do 54 pirouettes in a row without stopping, which I guess must be good for at least one or two Show & Tell Days and some Guinness World Records bragging rights.

As someone who can barely spin around in a fitting room to check the back of my pants in a 3 way mirror without blacking out, I do have to bow to the little tyke on that one.  My psychic powers also told me that at least half of those spins would be showing up on stage at some point this week.

In a zinger to their unemployed Dance Moms: Miami sisters, Christi then called out Jackie for talking smack about Florida’s own Mia Diaz.

Little Mia didn’t actually show up on DM:M very often, except for that night when a fire on the complete opposite side of the city turned Stars Dance Studio into a scene from the Apocalypse.  But it seems that she’s a pretty big dealio in Boca.

You remember that scene, right?  The smoke didn’t even come across the highway and yet you would have sworn that one of the boys was about to give birth on camera.  I may have to dramatically flip a scarf over my shoulders tonight in tribute to Victor and Angel.

All gone too soon.

Keep being Fierce, boys.  You might also want to update your website, or just shut it down.  And you spelled “contemporary” wrong.  But I digress.

As the girls rehearsed and tried to get back their mojo, Christi and Kelly tossed around some potential freshman hazing options for Jackie.  Everything from battery acid on her fake eyelashes to slipping a roofy in her water bottle.

It was refreshing to see Kelly actually draw the line at blinding someone, no matter how much she couldn’t stand her.

But if anyone was going to take out Jackie in the parking lot, it was probably going to be Holly, who almost flat-lined when she found out that Sophia only went to school two days a week.  For two hours each of those days.

And 2 + 2 = 4.  You can check my math.

There’s nothing a doctorate-holding school principal likes to hear more than a story about how a home schooled child is done for the day by 11am on Mondays.  That didn’t go over too well, especially when she realized that Sophia spends more time stretching each day than she does doing her fractions.

I’m not touching that one.  It’s all yours, dancing chat room people.

Realizing that she had somehow gone from feast to famine and then back to feast again, Abby now had too many dancers for the group number, so somebody had to get cut.  After a drawn out casting call lesson with all the Moms (…and one delightfully ghetto spray painted bus stop bench that Jill seemed afraid to sit on without protecting her Louis bag from thugs…) Abby cut Brooke, who left so quickly that you know she already had something better planned for the weekend.  Girlfriend does love her cafetorium school dances, and the getaway car was out back by the dumpster.

During the lesson, Abby once again uncomfortably saluted Sasha Nia‘s ethnicity by implying that our little dancer was destined to wear a gigantic puppet head and sing Hakuna Matata for her rent money after graduation.

Holly has the best WTF faces ever.  Period.

Finally, it was Showtime!

Now that the ALDC is such a big deal, they tend to enter each venue like it’s Release Day for some official Justin Bieber limited edition iPhone 5 or something, with a million little girls all screaming and posting pictures on the fly to their Facebook page.

It’s deafening.  I don’t even think it’s safe.

Backstage in the makeup room, Abby focused all her attention on Sophia while Christi began a slow boil.  Jackie had her Game Day curls in place, while Maddie wandered aimlessly, wondering how she had lost Top Billing status in just the short time she was gone getting those new clear braces put into her face.

Sophia and Chloe banged out their solos.  Sophia was Mrs. Roboto in her Superstaaaah routine, complete with at least 51 of her patented 54 jet spins.  Chloe did great as well, but Sophia’s magic unicorn dust was still floating around the stage by the time she had to perform and it freaked her out a little bit.

The group dance was a timely Red Carpet number, complete with red carpet but minus Ryan Seacrest, and once mini Mackenzie figured out how to unroll the Slip & Slide without poking her own eye out, they made it through the song.

That one really wasn’t MackAttack’s fault.  The carpet was one of those wedding aisle roll-out deals, and the poor kid was ratted up with about 3 feet of XXL Jersey hair setting her off balance, so she did the best that she could.  You try it, haters.

Sophia took top spot.  Chloe came in 2nd runner-up, which I guess is worse than 1st runner-up, though I’ll never understand why they don’t just call it second place and third place.  It’s not like this is Miss America and somebody is going to have to step in when Sophia stubs her toe or drills herself into the Earth’s core.

But, whatev.  That’s another chat room problem.

Chloe also got a special Expressive Heart award which they give to dancers with…well…expressive hearts, I guess.

The group number then took first place, and everyone was happy for a brief moment until Kelly started missing Brooke, and Christi started being Christi.

She and Abby went another round, since each episode is required to end in a chick fight.

Melissa showed her full support by turning her back on everyone and letting Jackie freshen up her makeup.  Did you see it?  How odd was that in the middle of all the dramzz?

Christi then accused Abby of taking credit for Sophia’s dancing expertise, even though she had just imported her from wherever less than two weeks ago, and the whole thing started up again.

And again.  And then one more time, before the whole thing was over for the night.

Thanks for joining us for the Red Carpet arrivals.

Seacrest out.

 

 

Seriously. How many times have I said to only shoot me from here up..?

 

 

 

 

And I’ve been waiting for this my whooole life. And Dance Moms has only been on for two years. So I’m like totally psychic.

 

 

 

 

And then, no lie, she sez “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit.” Girrrrl, pleez. Honey Boo Boo Child sez that s*** is nasty.

 

 

 

 

And for the last time, it’s PCD. Not PCP. They just danced like they were on it.

 

 

 

 

“Dance like Fred Astaire or Mama yank yo’ hair.” You might want to put it on a glitter glue tee shirt if you know what I mean, honey.

 

 

 

 

Bitch, please. No more photos. Diva needs her juice box.

 

 

 

 

And so it begins.

For those of you having a tough time getting through the shakes and withdrawals of Dance Moms detox, it’s your lucky day.

Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition has arrived to take the sting out of having to face the cold, hard fact that Chloe and Maddie are back in school and won’t be clawing their way up and down the ALDC Pyramid every week.

Dance Moms is over, but Abby Lee Miller ain’t going anywhere.

Considering the fact that a mere two years ago most of the Free World didn’t even know what ALDC even stood for, it’s a testament to everyone involved in the Dance Moms phenomenon that Abby and all her matchy-matchy primary colored accessories are now part of pop culture.

You go, girl.  You go all the way to Los Angeles.

And you start a dance competition show, girl.  Because Lord knows we don’t have enough of those on television already.

And so was born AUDC, not to be confused with the aforementioned ALDC even though it’s the same person.  So I understand if you already can’t keep up with what’s about to go down.

Yes.  It’s another dance competition show.  But it’s different.  The same.  But different.

It’s Dance Moms meets So You Think You Can Dance meets Survivor meets The Swan meets pretty much any show where someone gets cut every week and goes home crying.

And maybe even American Idol if you count host Kevin Manno and his skinny tie, who wants this whole thing so badly he even smells like Seacrest.  Pick your favorite Reality Show and you’ll probably find a little snippet of it in here somewhere.  But it’s all good.

The dealio is that 12 dancers and their 12 Dance Moms are all competing for one coveted spot in the Joffrey Ballet Young Dancers Program.

That’s right.  The same Joffrey Ballet where crazy Chaos Cathy Nesbitt and all her Candy Apples dancers almost got everyone booted out onto the streets of Manhattan for screaming and eating pepperoni pizza slices during open auditions back on that infamous episode of Dance Moms.

It looks like Abby and the admissions department all hugged it out though, because someone is going to score a spot at the Joffrey by the time this thing is all over.  And worst case, even if the lucky winner spends the rest of their career getting turned away at every audition and never dances again, they’re also leaving this show with $100,000 prize.

So it’s a pretty sweet deal.  Which would explain some of the Moms.

Since this was the first episode, it was more of a Meet & Greet for starters before the first elimination.  With a nod to Project Runway, we got to meet a few contestants stuck in traffic acting like they were on their way to meet Tim Gunn for the first challenge before Fashion Week.

Jordyn and her Mom Kelly were first up.  Jordyn looked like she was happy to be part of the show.  But not as happy as Mom.  Not even close.

Kelly was literally pinging off the car windows like a puppy on the way to the vet for the first time.  She was sooooooo excited to meet Abby.  She was living right now.  Living.  Someone crack a window.

The token boy of the show Zack, and Mom Gina were also excited.  Mom was nervous, but Zack was cool as a cucumber.  It’s totally irrelevant to the story, but Zack’s voice was not what I expected when he opened his mouth.  It was a little high, like a Nickelodeon cartoon, but he’s representing BoyPower and dude gets one bonus vote just because.

The last cab ride was with Hadley and Mom Yvette.  Hadley was kind of like a Paige 2.0 from Dance Moms.  Yvette was a dance teacher with a penchant for cutesy inspirational rhymes.

Yeah.  Let’s just say that if this was a VH1 Pop Up Video Show, right about now was when a neon “UH OH!” would have splopped up from the bottom of the screen because according to Lifetime TV, dance teachers never shut up.

My psychic powers told me that she would most likely try and get all up in every other choreographer’s face.  They also told me that she and Hadley had never seen an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, or the two of them would never have been so publicly celebrating their biscuits.

When everyone had finally made it to the fancy pants venue, it was time to meet Abby, who appeared to have swiped one of Maddie’s crowns and repurposed it into one major league headpiece.

Kelly had obviously not calmed down yet from the ride over, and probably had not wiped her PupKiss nose prints off the window either.  She was freaking.  Out.  Big.  Time.

During the explanation of the rules we met Elisabeth and her Mom Erin.  Both really nice and friendly, but you totally know that Erin has one of those plastic templates from Sephora that she uses on those eyebrows.

Whoa.  Just whoa.

We also met Tua and her Mom Shayna.  Mom was from Hawaii and made me want to book a flight just so she could greet me when I came off the plane.  I liked her smile.

The first challenge was to learn a group number in 45 minutes, which was taught by either Anthony Burrell or Ne-Yo.  It was hard to tell with that chapeau.

I wish I had a head for hats.  He looked fly.

Towards the end of their rehearsal, Abby came back in to check up on everyone and assign trios.  Her blinding head piece pretty much caused a few dancing trains to jump the track and then everyone either bumped into each other or looked at their Moms for guidance.

With a nod to either RuPaul’s Drag Race, where you have to hot glue gun a doll into a fierce Queen in under 45 minutes, or Shear Madness where you go all Supercuts on somebody’s nervous head, the point of the first mini challenge was to just pick a winner.  Plain and simple.  That winner then got either Tribal Immunity or the choice of dance style for the Trio Dance.

Elisabeth won, and she chose Contemporary.

The first real snark of the evening came when Yvette commented on Elisabeth’s seemingly overconfident attitude.  Whispering as though she had some government secrets or a juicy pregnancy rumor that she was about to break to the media, Yvette let us know that she was not that impressed with overconfident people.

Hello, Pot?  Meet Kettle.

The competition then broke up into 4 trios, with 4 dance styles.  Contemporary.  Hip Hop.  Tap.  Jazz.  That is what they would be judged on and then one of the little dancers would hit the road after all that work.  That’s why it’s called a competition, kids.

Somewhere along the way we also met the other two judges, but I forget where and when.  Trying to keep track of 12 brand new kids and 12 brand new Dance Moms is a lot of work, people.  You try it…and then maybe I can finally go to bed early one night.

Robin Antin.  Famous for the Pussycat Dolls, Botox and her Hair Guy brother Jonathan from Bravo TV.  What ever happened to him? He always had the best jackets.

And Richy Jackson.  Famous for tweaking his name like a crazy a** Toddlers & Tiaras contestant, those crazy a** BeDazzled vests and for teaching Lady Gaga how to dance in those crazy a** shoes and meat dress.

Since this was the first episode, they had to cram in all the rules and all the new faces, so a few Moms and kids got slighted.  That’s probably also code for who the producers think is the craziest and makes for good TV, which is fine by me.  We love crazy.

To keep this thing moving, I’ll skim over the trio rehearsals and the guest choreographers.

Except for the Bobby Newberry part.

I just can’t.  That bitch is so faaaaabulous that I almost paused my DVR and drove across town to the RamRod Discoteca just to slap a Club Kid in the face.  Seriously.

I hear you talkin’.  I see you walkin’.  Don’t need no squawkin’.  MmmHmm. Werk.

Where’s my glue gun?

Since everyone was new, the MomDrama was fairly limited except for a little sumthin sumthin that was about to go down during Showtime.  Leading up to the actual competition though, most of the Moms played nice even though some of them wouldn’t stop yakking.  And my psychic powers were once again proven accurate as Yvette got all up in her choreographer’s face until she was pretty much told to sit on her own hands and shut up.

Finally it was Showtime!

Richy was rocking the whackiest vest yet and Robin was rocking about two cans of Jonathan’s hairspray.  No wonder he gave up the product line.

First trio: Hip Hop.  Sassy little Asia made Mom Kristie proud by booty popping her way around the stage like Beyoncé while Jordyn and Lexine played like paparazzi stalkers.  It wasn’t really full scale hip hop, but more like three little girls acting out a video they weren’t supposed to be watching online.

Lexine goobed up her front walkover, which everyone seems to do on Lifetime at some point, which in turn made Mom Maria cry.  She cried a lot this week.  She also immediately assumed that Lexine would be going home since she blew her routine, and immediately told her the news before the judges had even seen the other numbers.

The loud ‘pop’ you heard was a young girl’s self esteem going buh bye, which resulted in the oddest back alley Dance Mom throw down we’ve seen yet.

Jordyn’s Mom Kelly tried to talk some sense into Maria, until Maria screamed at a kid that she didn’t own and then everyone blew a little nutty.  You don’t yell at the wrong kid.

Second trio: Jazz.  Since it has been well documented that I know nothing about dance but insist on talking like I do, I’m not sure if it’s a Lifetime TV thing or a general industry rule that every boy who dances has to do that one leg up in the air move like my man Lucas always did on Dance Moms: Miami.  Because Zack was busting them out like it was his day job.

(And speaking of Miami…you tell me that Victor and Angel weren’t sending out a string of phantom tweets tonight wondering why these f***ing newbies were all hogging their time slot.  Oh, Lifetime…)

Hadley and Madison completed that trio and got pretty good props from the judges.

Third trio: Tap.  Finally.  You never see tap in these shows.  Or anywhere, for that matter, unless you still own a black & white TV and get that channel that always shows Busby Berkeley movies.

Tua didn’t care for the dance style and doinked it up a little bit.  Tessa and Kyleigh Jai didn’t seem to be loving it either.  Maybe it was just the whacky Old Hollywood flapper wigs that looked like ginormous steel wool scrubby sponges on their heads that was making them lose their focus.  We’ll never know.

Tessa got called out for no performance face.  Mom Renee‘s arms were so jacked I’m not sure that I would have even messed with her kid.  But Abby is pretty ballsy.

Final trio: Contemporary.  With the confident Elisabeth and Brianna and Amanda.

Yeah.  Not so much. Elisabeth didn’t have a very good night.

Amanda was great.  Richy gave the whole thing a finger wave, which looked like he was clubbing and forgot to buy a glow stick.  Miss Thang?  He loved it.

When the judges all ganged up on Elisabeth and asked her why her head wasn’t in the game, she broke down and played the Divorce Card.  With a nod to All My Children, Liz broke down and revealed that Mom and Dad were divorcing and dance was her escape from all the bad stuff at home.

Shayna got all Hawaiian OhNoSheDin’t and then the whole thing just kind of backfired on Elisabeth.  Home is a hot mess?  Leave it at home.  Thank you very much, missy.

You don’t see Celine bawling like a baby do you?

In a show of whatever the opposite of solidarity is called, all the other Moms immediately figured that both Mother and Daughter were using the divorce to distract the rest of us from the fact that Elisabeth can’t keep her knees together.  Even the breakdown of the holy sanctity of marriage can’t cover the fact that somebody’s technique sucks big ones.

After some more tears and 30 seconds of Survivor theme song drums, Tessa was the first one cut due to the whole performance face being MIA thing.

Mom flexed her guns and then the two of them dragged their luggage out the door and out of the competition as Tessa expressed her displeasure with the results and pretty much almost gave Abby a special finger wave of her own.

And then there were 11.

 

 

 

I got two words for you. Stupid. Hair. Yeah…I went there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mia? Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

 

 

 

 

 

 

You do not want me to get all Miami Gotti on your a**, blondie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They said never cut your own bangs. But did I listen? No.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You only get one chance to throw the cookie in his mouth. One chance.

 

 

 

 

Careful what you wish for.

It took 7 and a half episodes…but we finally got the kind of meltdown that would make even  Abby Lee Miller proud.

That’s right.  Dance Moms: Miami finally lived up to its namesake Birth Mother with a veritable meltdown potpourri of screaming, yelling, tantrums, slamming doors, crying children and the kind of telenovela drama usually reserved for recipients of a Daytime Emmy.

And it was over the top.  Season Finale over the top.  Fiercely over the top, in a Season Finale kind of way, bitches.

I think you get my point.

After basically boxing up and bringing home every trophy possible from their most recent competition, Team Stars was back home in their military line up to get this week’s work orders.  Even rockstar dancers need a splash of cold reality in their face to keep them grounded, so nothing ever starts without The List.

This time around all the Moms were present, which meant they were once again one chair short.

Seriously? Eight weeks later?  Can someone please get Angel a calculator when you pick up his Rosetta Stone DVDs?

I’ll cut Angel some slack and give him the benefit of the doubt this time.  It is possible that the studio was recently robbed, and the burglars only had time to lift one Mom chair and a tube of Victor’s FreezeItUp hair gel.

Did you see Ms. Smalley’s ‘do?  What was that all about?  All that finally sculpted Closer to Jesus hair had collapsed and was flopping all over the place.  Shameless, I tell you.

An insult to choreographers everywhere.

After dramatically brushing hair off his forehead like a dog that just won at Westminster, Victor got rite down 2 bidnezz.

Topless Lucas was at the top again.  He had taken 1st Place in his category and a stash of special awards last week,  so that got our little one legger prime seating on The List.

Lucas was psyched, and said it made him feel like “Hell on Wheels.”  It also made him rip his shirt off like a 65 pound Incredible Hulk and do that Club MTV shoulder swagger thing he always does.

Cutting back on carbs paid off for Hannah, and she found herself in the second spot.

As we’ve already discussed, the Boys are not big on math, so they made it clear that Hannah was in second place because…duh…she got 2nd at the competition.  That made it easy to figure out, and Angel didn’t risk getting his third ice cream headache of the day.

Sammy nailed her solo last time, and really improved on her artistry.  Victor flashed his Addam’s Family manicure and confirmed that she was indeed stunning last week.  But she had to be in the third hole because the first two were already filled and he had used that kind of foam tape that really sticks to the mirror.

So like any good girl, Sammy stopped at third base.

Slurpy Kimmy was next to the bottom in fourth place.  Luckily a couple of jiggly mess ups in the group number won’t adversely effect her Mensa score, so it will still all work out in the end.

But Kimmy and Mom Ani tend to put the O in OCD, so they immediately made plans to use this as a lesson in humility that they would both discuss in depth tomorrow at 4am while Kimmy downs her 3rd cup of Joe and completes the footnotes on her Molecular  Dynamics thesis.

I love Kimmy.

Speaking of hot coffee…Susan’s pot was just about to boil over when Jessi landed at the bottom again.  Jessi had touched the floor during her off balance extension, which is not cool.  You either cover up your wobble like a pro, or crack your head open and learn from your mistakes, missy.

Susan was destined to set off the building sprinklers today, you could just tell.  Someone was overheating her engine block, and it was only a matter of time.

Based on The List, Lucas and Kimmy were dueting again, while Sammy and Hannah were doing solos.

Jessi?  Well, thank for playing.  If you leave now you won’t miss the bus.  According to my finely honed psychic powers, this just ain’t gonna be her week.

But this is the week for Tulsa, Oklahoma…and the iHollywood Dance Competition.  Yippee I Ay, I guess.

When I saw it spelled like that, with the little “i” and the big “H” I got all excited thinking that Apple had their own dance competition where everyone wins iPads or iPhones or iPods, but no such luck.  Turned out it was just another normal competition with frames and trophies.  Wah.  Wah.

But this week there was a surprise! A surprise for all!  Drumroll, please.

In came Star’s 10 year old Elite Dancer Extraordinaire Mia Diaz!

Insert the patented Dance Moms HyperSpaz here: ________________!

The kids went completely Nutella and got their group hugs on while the Moms all ground their back teeth into chalk dust.

If you follow the activities of young children anywhere outside of the NBC Dateline Internet Chat Rooms, then you know that Mia is a big dealio in the dance world.  She brings with her years of experience, years of trophies and years of being a mini-celebrity in the competition industry.

She also brings with her a mother who I swear is Victoria Gotti from Celebrity Apprentice.  Or at the very least, her DNA cloned Miami replica.

Even if she’s not previously married to the mob, she will cut you.

It was clear the second that Susan unleashed her laser beam stare and Brigette swallowed her gum that there was no love in the room for Leo as she hustled in behind her daughter.  You would think she was an iHollywood handler making sure her SuperStar client got to speak with Ryan Seacrest on the Red Carpet they way she shoved Mia into the crowd.

It was that kind of entrance.

As all the Moms were herded into their cage, the kids got to rehearsing.  Leo sized each Mom up and down like she had an infrared x-ray spy scanner implanted in her skull while Ani teared up.

Since Kimmy and Ani are the only two people in the studio who can do math in their head, they had both already figured out that one of the kids was probably going to get cut now that Mia had arrived.

Ani left the room to commiserate with crazy Mayra, who was rocking some seriously new hair from the Jaclyn Smith Wig Collection.  And who says you can’t get a good curl with synthetics?

Leaving Stars Dance Studio for a few minutes, we got a chance to meet Brigette’s family for the first time and spy on her her home life, which was not pretty.

Lucas’s brothers, Lex and Logan, not only have two of the coolest comic book names evah but completely support their dancing sibling, as long as it doesn’t conflict with Dad’s football plans.  Brigette’s husband, or at least the top of his head that was buried in the Sports Section of some Miami rag, wasn’t really feeling the whole dance thing and it’s taking a toll on their marriage.

You could have turned off your television right here and been able to figure out how that is all going to work out in the end.  Sad.

As the competition grew closer, everyone was pretty much a hot mess in rehearsals.  Having Mia breathing down their necks was taking a toll on their focus, and Victor was not happy.

He was definitely happy that he had found his missing gel and gotten his hair mojo back, but the kids were another story.

To get the party started, he gave Mia a solo on the spot and sent Mayra into the cage to let Gotti know she needed to pay for the spot in competition.  Debi and Abby were not going to stand for that, and stormed out to have a meeting with whoever they could snag in the lobby.

I love when Moms storm out and take their purses with them.  After all these years of dance they still think that the other Moms are going to go through their stuff and steal chapstick or something.  I get great joy out of those moments for some reason.

To rub more salt in the wound, the duet was now a trio as Mia moved in on that turf as well.  Lucas loves his ladies, so he wasn’t too upset, but Kimmy gets some janky nerves when she’s put up against another dancer.  Victor made note of that fact that Kimmy has trouble with anything Fierce, and then spent the rest of the episode fully demonstrating his own skills.

Snap.  Pivot.  Work It.  Own It.  Learn from the Master, bitch.

Hannah’s solo rehearsals were about the only thing going well.  She managed to represent for the Big Girls again, and had amazing focus considering the uncomfortable manner in which Angel kept grabbing the front of his plaid Gap shorts.  Take it outside, dude.

The pressures of Dance 24/7 were starting to wear on the Moms as well.  Abby had taken to sleeping with one eye open since she had known Gotti for some time.  Debi had a tearful one on one with Hannah while Brigette finally cracked over her impending divorce to the Sports Section Guy.  Susan clinked and rattled to the point where you knew it would only be a matter of time before those pipes burst and everyone got scalded while Ani worried about…well…pretty much everything.  O to the C to the D.

Finally it was iShow time.

This competition must be a bigger deal than some of the others, because they had invested in an actual backdrop instead of rolling hotel tarp.  Keeping with the Hollywood theme, there was a gigantic Old Time movie projector graphic in the middle of the Dance Dance Xbox 360 artwork, but all I could think of was the Muppet Beaker and his beady bug eyes.  Rewind and check it out when they were giving out awards.  It was like Beaker had fallen into a vat of nuclear goo and gotten really, really big and now he was watching all of us over the MC’s shoulders.

The group number was all about Celebrity (…better known as Let’s All Dance Around Mia!…) and didn’t turn out so well.  Jessi fell out of her turn and Lucas had no shirt on again.

Blah.  Blah.  The dancing isn’t really important.  It’s the After Party where it got good.

Backstage, the whole Mia thing was out of control.  I missed who scooted all the kids out of the room, but luckily they were in the Safe Room when it all went down.  Brigette and Leo got all up in each other’s grill, chest to chest screaming about who is jealous of who.  (Whom?  I never get that right.)

When Gotti turned away with one of those Jersey Talk to the Hand flips, Brigette grabbed it like a dog grabbing a bone which snapped Angel into action.  Somehow he swooped down at her, almost knocking her to the ground like a crazy homeless woman.

In eight episodes, I can honestly say that was the fastest I have ever seen the guy move.  That knit poncho/cape button-up contraption he was wearing made Angel pretty aerodynamic.

Nobody lays a hand on nobody, though, and Victor kicked Brigette out of the room…and potentially out of Stars.

Just like any good DayCare, when one baby cries they all cry.  Susan started in on the Boys about favoritism and Mia and Leo being a bitch and the next thing you knew, she was kicked out of the room by Angel who momentarily morphed into some bats*** crazy gay Phantom of the Opera.  I don’t know how else to describe it.

Victor was picking them off like ducks at the State Fair.  Who’s Next?  Who’s Next?

There was so much fierce drama that I expected RuPaul to burst through the door and tell them all to just shut the f*** up and sashay away.

Susan walked a sobbing Jessi out of the building, vowing that she was done with Stars.

Brigette hugged a sobbing Lucas as he begged her to not tear him from his Stars family.  (Now is probably not the time to mention that you’re leaving Daddy.  Just saying.)

Everyone was clutching their pearls and fanning themselves like a hot July in Miami, child.

It was like the season finale of Dance Moms: Oprah.

You get to cry!  You get to cry!  You all get to cry!

No doubt about it.  Abby Lee Miller would be proud.