u/certifiedwombat

After this weeks episode I’ve seen a plethora of people trying to push this narrative that all the junior stews outrank Ellie.

This doesn’t make sense bc all lowest ranking roles on a yacht have 1 stripe. The galley hand/chef assistant role would also be a 1 stripe position since it is entry level.

That would mean they are all on the same rank since they are all at the bottom of their departments.

They don’t outrank Ellie, but Ellie doesn’t outrank them either.

Don’t get me wrong, Ellie’s not my fav either, but this whole rank argument makes no sense and just seems like people are pushing it because they can’t stand Ellie

For me, a big one was the green dress situation for the silver spoons number. Taking the green dress away from Paige wasn’t to make her feel bad or not special but was for the visual of the dance. Chloe was front and center the majority of the dance so it made sense visually for her to be in the green.

Although I will say Abby should’ve been consistent and had Chloe lead the whole dance, as it looks unbalanced at the end when the lead shifts to Maddie since she is in the blue.

Ever since I first watched the show, I leaned more toward Christi’s side of things. Melissa definitely came across as a brown noser who constantly kissed up to Abby so her kids could stay the favorites. And after listening to a lot of BTTB, I can understand why the moms were frustrated. Melissa was often allowed to not “play ball” with the rest of the cast, yet Maddie and Mackenzie still received the best treatment. Meanwhile, the moms who were putting in the work to make the reality show entertaining didn’t really benefit from it in the same way.

But when I try to look at it more objectively, I also think Melissa was put in a pretty impossible position. If she stood up for the team or challenged Abby, Abby would punish her daughters for it. But if she sided with Abby, the other moms viewed her as selfish and disloyal. It really feels like she was in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

At the end of the day, as a parent, your kids are probably going to come first. I think about the AUDC situation where the moms supposedly made a pact not to send their kids, and Melissa went back on her word and sent Maddie anyway. I do think Melissa was wrong for breaking the agreement, but I also think people ignore the emotional side of it. What if Maddie was begging to go? Dance was basically Maddie’s entire life at that point, and Melissa may have genuinely felt like she was holding her daughter back from an opportunity she really wanted.

I’m not saying Melissa handled everything perfectly, because she definitely didn’t. She lied, avoided confrontation, and sometimes enabled Abby’s behavior when it benefited her kids. But at the same time, I can understand why she operated the way she did in such a toxic environment. I honestly think a lot of parents, whether they want to admit it or not, might have made similar choices if they believed it would protect or benefit their child.

Curious where everyone else falls on this now, especially after rewatching the show as adults.

I’ve been rewatching a lot of episodes of season 3, and I just feel really bad for Christi. In my opinion, Christi truly is GOAT of all the dance moms. She was never afraid to stand up to Abby or stick up for others even at her own expense. But she never got the same in return.

Take for example Kelly, whenever she would leave Christi was always sticking up for her and her kids constantly. But when Christi was suspended after the pink lemonade incident, it was crickets, kelly never stood up for her.

As someone who really values loyalty in a friendship, it’s a hard watch to see one friend really ride hard for the other one but not see the same in return.

The moms mention that each of the girls had different styles they were stronger in when it came to dance.

Brooke by far has the most distinct style because no one else did contortion.

But everyone else’s style just kinda flows together for me (I’m not a dancer so i don’t have an eye for that stuff) especially Maddie and Chloe who both did lyrical numbers.

How would you describe each of there styles.

For the sake of this conversation I’m referring to the Pittsburg dancers: Maddie, Chloe, Brooke, Paige, Nia, Kenzie, and Kendall

I’ve honestly never seen another fandom so obsessed with drawing a strict line in the sand about who is and isn’t an “OG.”

I really think a lot of this stems from Season 7 during Christi and Jill’s fight, when Christi kept repeatedly saying Jill wasn’t an OG. Before that, I don’t remember the fandom being nearly this intense about it or putting the original cast on such a pedestal.

What’s interesting is that most fandoms don’t operate this way. Fans usually acknowledge that long-term cast members become core parts of a show, even if they weren’t there on day one.

For example, on Dancing with the Stars, many fans consider pros like Derek Hough, Julianne Hough, Mark Ballas, Cheryl Burke, and the Chmerkovskiy family to be “OGs” of the show, even though none of them were part of the very first season. Most people just see them as foundational members because of how long they were involved and how much they shaped the show.

And to be clear, this isn’t me trying to argue that certain people are or aren’t OGs. I just genuinely don’t understand why the distinction matters so much to this fandom specifically. Sometimes it starts to feel really cliquey and almost middle school-ish, especially when people use it to invalidate cast members who were still major parts of the show for years.

On BTTB it gets brought up a lot how Kendall was not trained by Abby, whenever Jill refers to Kendall as an Abby girl.

However from my understanding, even though Jill and Kendall joined the studio in season 2 for the purpose of getting on the show, outside of the show Kendall (and her sister) were actually members of studio and taking classes.

BTTB is recapping season 5 right now, and Kendall joined in season 2. That’s at least 3 years time, and I’m sure Kendall by that point has taken enough classes and danced at ALDC to be considered Abby Lee Trained. But they still say Kendall was not trained by Abby.

Also Kendall joined the show at 8 years old, and I’m not a dancer but I don’t believe your dance training stops at 8 years old or with whoever your first dance teacher was.

I used to be a musician and I had several teachers over the years who taught me music. I would definitely say all of them played a role in training me.

For the sake of this discussion I’m only referring to seasons from the main run of the show: Seasons 1-7

For me it would be:

2

1

3

4

7

6

5

I feel like season 2 was the most “dance moms” season if that makes any sense. Like when I think of the show in its prime era, it’s normally season 2. Overall it was a very light hearted season, there was enough drama for it to be fun but not so dark like the later seasons.

Hello can someone please explain this to me like I’m 5 years old? I’ve been watching videos of people editing in Lightroom classic and they seem to use all 4 of these sections when editing their photos.

Idk what I’m not getting, but it just confuses me, like why are we editing the colors in one section then editing them again in the other 4.

Whenever I’ve tried to use all 4 on my photos I feel like I’m over editing and then I feel overwhelmed.

Can someone explain what the purpose of using each one of these is?

I love back to the barre, it's one of my favorite podcasts and I'm always going back and relistening to episodes.

When I first started listening in 2022, I remember thinking it would take forever to get to the really juicy stuff like Kelly slapping Abby, but now we're way past that and through the first half of the show (they are currently recapping season 5 out of 8).

The whole premise of this podcast was recapping dance moms and discussing the BTS. So once they finish recapping the show, what do you think will happen to the podcast?

Now that they have producers notes, I'd love to see them go back and discuss the ones from older seasons (not recap every episode again, just hit the highlights) but there's only so much content they can do with that.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not trying to argue that Jill and Kendall are OGs. Obviously they aren’t, because they weren’t there from the very beginning.

But the Irreplaceables were supposed to be a completely separate team from the ALDC, so I never understood why the jackets specifically needed “OG” on them in the first place.

To me, the whole thing felt less like celebrating Chloe and Nia’s history on the show and more like taking a dig at Jill.

I’ve honestly always felt a little bad for Jill and Kendall when it comes to the “who’s an OG” debate, because people use it to downplay their contribution to the show just because they weren’t there in Season 1.

When most people think of the core cast of Dance Moms, it’s usually the originals plus Jill and Kendall. 

Jill and Kendall came in very early, were there during the prime Dance Moms years, and honestly fit into the cast dynamic naturally in a way a lot of later additions didn’t.

And when you really think about it, Season 1 was only 12 episodes. Compared to the 30–40 episode seasons that came later, that’s actually a pretty small portion of the overall show.

It’s so crazy to me that we’ve gotten little to no coverage of the deck team this season. Their only “drama” is literally just the ones involved in the love triangles: Joao, Daisy, Ellie and Eddy, Ben, Jenna.

They must be doing a really good job for the show to barely show what’s happening on deck.

Good for them, but I wish we got at least a little coverage of their team dynamic.

I’ve noticed that whenever one of the non-OG moms says they never watched Dance Moms, Christi and Kelly are usually quick to say they’re lying, especially when talking about Jill or Kira.

I understand why they think that, but I also think there’s a difference between watching the show and simply being aware of the show.

For example, Kira has said before that she mainly did the show for Kalani and didn’t really watch it beforehand. I can totally believe that. Kalani may have been a fan and wanted to be part of it, so Kira helped make that happen. I’m sure Kira knew Dance Moms existed, but that doesn’t automatically mean she was sitting down every week watching episodes.

Same thing with Jill. She lived in the Pittsburgh area, so I’m sure word got around that the ALDC was filming a reality show. Kendall may have wanted to join, and switching studios could’ve been a way onto the show. But again, that doesn’t necessarily mean Jill herself was actively watching Dance Moms every week.

To clarify, I’m not saying the moms had no knowledge of the show at all. Obviously they knew what Dance Moms was if they were joining the ALDC for filming. I just think people conflate “knowing about the show” with actually being a regular viewer of it.

This was a few years ago, whenever they were recapping season 3 of dance moms on BTTB.

They announced they had something in the works and it was something people wouldn’t expect, so they would give clue to what it was during each back to the barre episode.

IIRC they never revealed what it was and the “clues” stopped happening.

I believe this was prior to Kelly’s cancer diagnosis, and everything that went down in Christi’s personal life, so I’m sure all those factors might’ve had something to do with why it never came to be.