On last night's Dance Moms, 21st century carnival barker/dance instructor Abby Lee Miller had her student Maddie perform "an old routine that was undefeated, that was absolutely beautiful": Helen Keller. Seriously, she had a child gracefully flit around the stage and do an aerial over a doll while working in some wild flailing and scrambling a la Keller via Patty Duke. This is interpretive dance at its least sensory.

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.

Lifetime, the TV network that "celebrates, entertains, and supports women," has finally pushed its schadenfreude reality programming too far. After airing an extraordinarily child-sexualizing episode of Dance Moms once, the network pulled the episode from rotation and scrubbed it from the internet. The episode in question? "Topless Showgirls," in which a troop of 8- to 13-year-old girls simulate toplessness and perform a burlesque.