I firmly believe that the quintessential mid-2000s reality show Dance Moms is truly a must-watch. This show has been one of my favorite shows for a while simply because of how unhinged it is. I have decided to rank some of my favorite and most iconic moments from this show.
- The girl with the bad haircut
To begin the list, I chose a very minor moment in Dance Moms history. It remains one of my favorites because it’s just so funny to me. In this episode, the ALDC (Abby Lee Dance Company) is holding tryouts for new members. During the tryouts, Abby Lee Miller, the brutally honest dance coach exclaims “The girl with the bad haircut, get out here!” during the rehearsal, and a girl with very aggressively crimped short hair steps forward. The best part of this whole situation is that the girl immediately knew it was her and stepped forward with no hesitation after only hearing the words “girl with the bad haircut.” Abby proceeds to tell the girl’s mother that her hair is limiting her opportunities in the real world. This scene is a must-search on YouTube because I promise that this girl’s haircut is probably worse than you’re imagining.
- “Where does she go?”
This moment is also very minor, but it is one of fellow staff writer Sheyla O’Donnell and I’s favorites. It comes from an interview with sisters Maddie and Mackenzie Ziegler. Mackenzie asks Maddie what she thinks Abby does when she’s not busy at the studio. Maddie responds by telling her sister that Abby is “probably at McDonalds.” Mackenzie takes that as a mean joke and tells Maddie that she can’t say that on live TV, but a confused Maddie clears the air and tells Mackenzie in full seriousness that “It’s literally where she goes.”
- Kelly’s knowledge (or lack thereof) of Anne Frank
In this interesting episode, Abby assigns Brooke a dance about Anne Frank and the Holocaust. Kelly, Brooke’s mother, later reveals to the other dance moms that she has “no idea of the story” of Anne Frank, and to this, the other moms are left shocked. Kelly then defends herself with the hilarious “I don’t really know much about Anne Frank, but what I do know is that I don’t think she was doing cartwheels.” This theme of dance is honestly random compared to the other dances they do in the ALDC, so Kelly had a point in saying what we were all thinking.
- “I cut my finger on my mom’s ring”
This moment is probably one of the most well-known from the series. It features the ALDC’s dance rival company Candy Apples. Their instructor Cathy makes a deal to her six-year-old daughter Vivi that if she puts effort into dance then she will get a puppy. After she has this talk with Vivi, she goes to give her a pinky promise. By doing that, Vivi’s finger is barely cut by one of Cathy’s rings, leading her to say the iconic quote “I cut my finger on my mom’s ring. I hope I can still dance.” For those concerned, she was in fact able to dance after that life-altering injury.
- Abby yelling at Jojo
I’m sure that everyone has heard the name “Jojo Siwa” at least once in their life. What some don’t know is that the YouTuber got her start on Dance Moms. While to this day, she remains one of Abby’s favorites, that used to not be the case at all. In this scene, Abby is in the middle of a conversation with coach Gia when Jojo innocently interrupts their conversation by asking Gia if she knows the order of the solos at the competition that they are at. Abby responds to this by screaming “JOJO! Have you learned nothing!” This shrill scream SILENCED the room. Jojo looked genuinely confused and Abby proceeded with more shrill screaming, now to Gia: “Do not address her until she learns to say excuse me when two adults are speaking!”. This scene gets me every time because the screaming was so unnecessary and the reactions are genuinely so funny.
- Brooke is back
The oldest member of the ALDC competition team, Brooke, had decided to take a break from dance to give cheer a try. Abby was pretty mad about this decision and decided to temporarily replace Brooke with a girl the same age named Peyton. Peyton and her mother are well known for being bratty at times,. During the very brief time that Peyton was in Brooke’s place, she continued to have a bad attitude and didn’t exactly bring the energy that Abby needed to the team. After the weekend’s competition, Abby decides to stir up drama at the pyramid. For those who don’t know, the pyramid is Abby’s way of ranking the girls based on the weekend’s competition. Whoever ends up on the top of the pyramid, did the best overall in the previous competition. Abby reveals everyone’s standings on the pyramid for the week, and it is to be assumed that Peyton had landed in first place because there was only one name left to reveal and she had not been ranked yet. When Abby tears away the paper to reveal the top of the pyramid, it turns out to be Brooke, signifying her return to dance after a cheerleading trial run. This obviously upsets Payton and her mother Leslie, and they do not return to the team. In the words of Abby Lee Miller: “Everyone’s replaceable.”
- Diablo
In a scene that was supposed to be touching, Abby is talking to the girls about dealing with the loss of her dad due to cancer because they are doing a tribute dance to raise awareness for it. Some of the girls end up crying, including one of the younger members, Asia. Abby notices Asia crying and asks her if she has also had a cancer-related loss in her life. Asia responds with the fact that her dad’s dog Diablo died BEFORE she was even born and it was “just so hard for him.” Asia is almost sobbing at this point, but everyone else is having a hard time keeping it together because to be completely honest, that had nothing to do with what Abby was talking about AT ALL, but nobody was going to say anything because she was very upset about this dog that she had never even met.
- “My little Kendall”
In this episode, it is announced that the girls will be doing a dance about civil rights activist Rosa Parks. The choice of who would be playing Rosa Parks is pretty obvious since Nia is the only African American dancer in the group AND she landed on top of the pyramid that week. Abby decides to stir the pot anyway and claims that she has “no idea” who will be playing Rosa Parks because she wanted Nia to prove herself and “give it her all” before she handed her the role. Kendall’s mom Jill sees this as an opportunity to butter Abby up to get Kendall the role of Rosa Parks. The other moms are absolutely appalled that Jill even asked Abby to consider Kendall for the role of Rosa Parks and basically force Jill to go down to tell Abby that she believes that Nia completely deserves the role, which she ultimately does. This is one of the most iconic Dance Moms moments ever.
- Abby wheels away
This moment takes place during one of the later seasons of the show and it NEVER fails to make me laugh. By this point, Abby had very unfortunately gone through a severe health scare and was now paralyzed. Because of this, she now got around with an electric wheelchair. This seems beyond the point, but this will matter later. When Abby sat in the audience of a competition, she was on her phone during another studio’s number. The owner of the studio currently performing approaches Abby with “You preach theater etiquette to my kids, put your phone away.” Abby is so taken aback by this that she wordlessly backs her wheelchair out of the performance area while looking as if she’s giving the thousand-yard stare and tells someone that she thinks she is going to go to Baskin Robbins. The camera cuts to a scene that is reminiscent of a police chase as the cameramen try to chase Abby down in her ridiculously fast wheelchair. The camera operator even tells the crew that they are going to have to speed up a little in order to catch her. As it turns out, Abby was not going to Baskin Robbins, she was actually rapidly wheeling to the nearest police station to file a police report for verbal assault…
1.“Get your finger out of my face”
Finally, this is one of the most intense fight scenes in the show. It begins with talk of longtime member Brooke being replaced with new member Kalani in a dance. Brooke’s mother Kelly confronts Abby about this and Abby is annoyed that Brooke did not speak up for herself at the grown age of fifteen and tells her to grow up. Kelly is offended by this comment towards her kid, tells Abby to shut up, and threatens that both of her daughters will leave the competition and not come back. After Kelly makes that threat, Abby and the other moms make some effort to get them to stay, but Kelly is not having it and snaps at Abby. She tells Abby that since she had claimed that Brooke “looked miserable,” then maybe they should just put Kalani in Brooke’s place. When Abby claims that she never said that, Kelly insists that she did, to which Abby responds “No I didn’t dingbat, listen!” while pointing her finger aggressively in Kelly’s face. In retaliation, Kelly also points her finger in Abby’s face and Abby proceeds to attempt to bite Kelly’s finger that is currently in her face. Personally, I would love to know why Abby’s first instinct was to bite, but that’s beside the point. Kelly also manages to grab ahold of Abby’s hair and yank it, causing the other moms to rush the girls out of the room, so they wouldn’t see what exactly was going down. This was one of very few physical altercations throughout the show, so it was a very shocking event to watch. Abby walks out completely unharmed, yet still calls the police on Kelly. This becomes a whole production as Kelly and her daughters are removed from the building and from the competition itself, and the cops show up and go as far as asking Abby if she needs the ambulance to check her out.
While this list covers the most iconic Dance Moms moments, there are simply too many good moments to be able to include them all. After reading this list, hopefully you were inspired to start watching Dance Moms because I can almost guarantee that there is never a dull moment with that show.
