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Last night, Lifetime debuted its spin-off to television's equivalent of panties in a bunch, Dance Moms. Set in Miami's unimaginatively named Stars Dance Studio, Dance Moms: Miami offers a new group of bitchy moms and their confused, obsequious children who are being instructed by two guys. (Are they a couple? Is societal homophobia provoking me to ask that?) The really cute one got the flu, threw up water and quoted Madea. The other one interviewed, "We need this group number to be epic." The peak of drama happened when one kid took a trophy from another kid's hand, causing the mothers to scream at each other. So what I am saying is that this is an extremely dynamic, exciting bunch of personalities.

The only hope Dance Moms: Miami has is the 9-year-old Lucas, the franchise's first boy. A lot of individuality going on there. His relative uniqueness makes him automatically fascinating, and he seems to have the personality to back it up. (He may have been fed the line, "Duh, I need a good body for dance," when his mom "catches" him lifting weights in his room, but he at least has the panache to deliver a good reading of it.) I want to know more about his struggles, should they exist, and if they do not, I want to take solace in the world's slow shift to a place that's more accepting of boys in a supposedly female-oriented field. Don't let us down, Lucas.

His mother talks about rumors that he's given extra points because he's a boy with little competition of his own gender. I guess that's what I'm doing here, but whatever. Life is unfair. The sooner these kids learn that, the better.