Back to the Barre

“All of those things that we said, it was really nothing. It was just us being us,” says Christi of the exchange between herself and Kelly that would become a viral sensation on TikTok more than a decade later. Christi’s daughter Clara would repeat the meme to Christi in the car, not realizing she was quoting her own mother. In this episode of Dance Moms, the competition takes place in Miami. Paige has surgery for her plantar warts and doesn’t know if she will recover in time enough to compete. So naturally, Abby chooses this week to give Paige a special part in the dance whereas normally Paige is left out, and Abby makes her rehearse it on sore feet instead of just letting her observe. Normally, Abby just harasses the girls verbally and psychologically to keep them off of the top of the pyramid.In another change from the norm, Abby takes a break from screaming at Kelly and Christi and screams at Holly, who, normally quiet and reserved, screams right back. In fact, according to Christi that fight was much longer and much uglier than what was shown on TV, even causing the girls to hide and cry in the bathroom. Meanwhile, in Ohio, Cathy gently and constructively corrects Kendall’s technique in a way Abby never has.Everyone spends the day at the beach before the competition and Abby is the only one who wasn’t forced to wear a bathing suit on camera. She is, however, much more orange than anyone else. Nia has a dramatic moment on stage. Quotes“They show Chloe and Nia doing ‘The Swim’ and they're laughing and having fun and I think, ‘More of this! More of this!’ It’s cute!” (19:56-20:05 | Christi)“Why did two kids have three dances and other kids didn't have one? It's not fair to the kids who don't have the dance, but then it's also too hard on the kids that do. There is a balance: give each kid two dances a week. And then they're not out. They don't forget, and then people don't feel bad. And guess what? Everyone watching the show has different favorites that they want to see.” (21:37: 22:07 | Christi)“Abby tells us she wants to take the girls back to the era of innocence. I mean, I think after having them be naked show girls, innocence is great.” (27:04-27:12 | Christi) “Abby and Holly are down there screaming and they cut to us upstairs. I'm texting with one hand on my phone, drinking my coffee, (air quotes) with the other hand, you're kind of staring off into space, Melissa's glazed over. We're not even fazed at that point that they're screaming. They're screaming at the top of their lungs and we're just sitting there thinking, ‘Thank God it's not me.’” (34:38-35:02 | Christi)“Then we have one of the most iconic scenes ever to come out of Dance Moms. You and I are sitting upstairs and I say, ‘And then there were two. Nobody likes us. The two bitches are left.’ That's so funny. I mean, who would have thought something as stupid as that would get so popular?” (38:34- 39:03 | Christi and Kelly) “You can't replace us and we can't leave, either. So we're all screwed.” (41:44-41:51 | Kelly)“Holly looks like she wants to shoot herself. I know. I've been in that position. You know you have to go back. And producers make you be the idiot– not Abby calling and asking me to come back. It has to be us begging please. Take her. Please, please.” (49:14-49:32 | Kelly)“Abby clearly got a spray tan for Miami because she's aggressively orange. She's so aggressively orange.” (59:45-59:54 | Christi) Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

12 Joulu 20221h 25min

“We should be in prison for ever being part of this episode,” says Christi of the “lost” episode of Dance Moms titled, shockingly, ‘Topless Dancers,’ in which Abby has the girls perform in costumes that give the illusion of nudity. Needless to say, the Moms were shocked and fought hard with the producers not to film this. Even by Abby’s standards, which have seen the girls perform themes of teen suicide, guns, and childbirth, this was too much. Audiences clearly agreed, and the show only aired only once. A fan sent a link to Christi and Kelly and here they react to it in real time.  If Chloe wasn’t humiliated enough by her dance costume, she is also participating in a commercial for Cathy’s husband’s beef jerky startup. This involves her being covered in sausages, a takeoff of the infamous meatsuit that Lady Gaga wore around the time of filming.  Things are so absurd that even Holly speaks up, and though it will be lost forever to time, she is even seen wearing a sexy sheer top in place of her usual conservative attire.  Quotes “We fought pretty hard against this. And I again, I can't say much, but let's just say it was strongly advised that we keep our mouths shut.” (5:08-5:15 | Christi) “I can't with Abby's necklace. I can't. It's like a barbed wire fence. It looks like what they put at the top of a prison fence.” (17:08-17:15 | Christi and Kelly) “I do look like an Oscar trophy, With my my yellow hair and my gold shirt. Yeah, I'm an Oscar.  And the Academy Award goes to us for pretending like Melissa's not getting married.” (30:42-30:57 Kelly and Christi) “I remember the girls standing in the hallway, and they did not want to walk in that room. They were so mortified and upset standing there.” (52:27-52:42 | Christi and Kelly) “The funniest thing is this was aired one time. One time. You can't even find this episode. Do you know how often I'm asked about the beef jerky thing? I'm asked everywhere I go.” (1:06:28-1:06:41 | Christi) “No wonder people watch this because nobody can believe that we actually did this stuff, that this was real. No one could believe their eyes.” (1:07:05-1:07:13 | Christi and Kelly)    Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w    Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

5 Joulu 20221h 40min

Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w  Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

28 Marras 20223min

“This is only episode 8 of Season 2 and Jill’s already walked out,” says Christi of this latest episode of Dance Moms. This week, Nia is at the top of the pyramid and she’ll be dancing a solo to a bridal theme. It’s inspired by Melissa’s engagement, despite Melissa trying hard to keep it a secret. Christi finds this hilarious considering Melissa will openly tell everyone other private things they’d rather not know about. The Moms go wedding dress shopping, and we find out an intimate detail about Kelly. Meanwhile, Jill has left Abby’s studio in a huff and enrolled Kendall at Candy Apples, putting Kendall in direct competition with her friends. By the end of the episode, Dance Moms' greatest rivalry has begun. Not between Cathy and Abby, but Cathy and Jill.  Christi talks about her husband’s refusal to appear on the show. He worked at a children’s hospital and the show was still considered controversial, with Abby being emotionally and verbally abusive toward children including his own daughter. They tell a story that explains why everyone in Pittsburgh hates Abby.  Quotes “You know, the best thing I can do if I'm not in a good place emotionally is go rehash the worst days of my life. I like it. Exactly.  It makes this time of our lives good.” (7:04-7:12 | Christi) “In Abby's interview, did you notice how her hair looked like she had a helmet on? It was teased but then it was perfectly smooth. We're getting into the Delta Burke hair era.” (13:49-14:06 | Christi)  “And Abby knows something's going on with Melissa. She has a secret. But my secret is Abby looks like a sea witch in this interview.” (22:46-22:55 | Kelly and Christi) “Melissa doesn't wear a ring; you don't wear undies. Noted.” (36:29-36:33 | Christi) SM Quote “Melissa will tell you anything about any body part you want to know, but don't ask about that ring.” (50:29-50:34 | Christi)   Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w  Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

21 Marras 20221h 17min

“The whole thing made me sick,” says Christi of a key moment in this episode of Dance Moms. For Kelly, it’s the moment where her relationship to Abby began to change. The two discuss how, more than a decade later, they feel physically ill watching it, and still need to reassure themselves that their now grown children are OK. Which isn’t to say there isn’t plenty to laugh about, as always. Jill’s latest attempt to suck up to Abby only proves that she and Kendall don’t know Abby at all. Jill repeatedly frustrates everyone so much that Christi’s voice squeaks, Holly lets out a rare eye roll, while Kelly says nothing but gets blamed for it all. Christi and Kelly give themselves long overdue credit for their makeup skills and discuss their failed personal beauty attempts over the years. Quotes“Guns! Guns!! Because that’s what every nine to eleven year old should be playing with on the stage.” (10:50-10:58 | Christi and Kelly)“I want to know what is up with Jill constantly harping on Holly not being there. I don't remember that in real life. I don't remember that being a point that was brought up over and over at all. And I kind of wish that I had remembered it, because I definitely would have jumped on that argument.” (26:29-26:47 | Christi)“Abby is doing the exact same thing to Paige, with her being on top of the pyramid, that she did with Chloe the week she was at the top of the pyramid. She's going to torture them until they can't stand it because she's pissed that they're at the top.” (40:24-40:38 | Christi)“Someone asked when did my relationship with Abby start changing? This is what it is: my kids look at me saying, ‘Help me.’ There's nothing worse than your child to look at you with that look, and you not being able to do anything about it. I just can't even explain the feeling that you have when that happens. (42:21-42:42 | Kelly)“For all the moms listening: What would you do in that situation? I either let my daughter be in there looking up at me like, ‘Mom, please come and save me’ and my daughter in tears. Or I go down and they get her out, but then she's afraid to go in because I got her in trouble.” (46:44-47:03 | Kelly)“Chloe's home today. She came home for the weekend and she was sleeping on my couch when I was watching this. And the entire time I was watching I was so upset for Chloe, I kept going over to her on the couch just touching her foot while she was sleeping and thinking, ‘Okay, you're okay. It still makes you feel like an actual physical reaction all these years later.” (49:27-49:55 | Christi)I'm gonna start using all these tips and tricks that I learned back in the day on myself when I go to the beach. I'm painting my abs on, and I'll be good. I just can't go in the water because it will wash all off. But I mean, why don't we apply our skills to ourselves?” (1:08:45-1:09:01 | Christi and Kelly)“What's rude about that though, is every week we let those little bitches look great on national television. We did their hair and makeup. They didn’t trust us, but they always looked fabulous. We did it.” (1:10:15-1:10:25 | Christi and Kelly) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

14 Marras 20221h 40min

“This one was a no-drinker for me; this one was easy,” Christi says of the latest Back to the Barre recap. Probably because Jill does all the heavy lifting in this Dance Moms episode. Jill doesn’t shut up, she can’t follow the rules, particularly when it comes to the assignment for this week’s costume, and she ends up throwing a chair across a dressing room in Texas.Maddie falls while competing on the slick gym floor and the show presents it in the most melodramatic way possible, despite the previous scene in which Abby tells Nia that dancers power through their pain. In fact, Paige broke her foot backstage and wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital until she finished dancing. And still, according to Abby, she and the rest of the girls are lazy slugs. Find out what Abby does that Christi considers the scariest thing ever, and the infamous clause in the ALDC contract that Abby makes her most successful students sign, with a major (ahem) cash-only penalty. Quotes“Abby's disappointed because the energy level could have been higher. And you can't have a bunch of slugs on stage. Slugs. Meanwhile, she would lay in bed in the morning while those slugs were in school all day, waiting to film. Yeah. And then let somebody come and do her makeup while she was laying in bed.” (11:52-12:17 | Christi and Kelly) “These kids should be like diamonds at this point with all the pressure. Well, they are diamonds, they are. Every one of them.” (14:10-14:17 | Christi) “Jill says that she's tired of rules, and her actions dictating Kendall’s experience. Well, hm. That's the whole premise of the show. So I don't know what you signed up for. “(20:50-21:03 | Christi)“There was a part of her contract that said–because she had somebody burn her, I won't say who, I'll tell you later—if you were a title winner, if you renege on your title or back out or whatever, you have to pay her $100,000 in cash. Within seven days. Why does it have to be cash? Hmm. So she doesn't have to show it.” (21:18-21:42 | Christi and Kelly)“I'm just glad that you told Jill to shut up. She was so offended by me telling her that, but she never stopped talking!” (26:58-27:05 | Kelly)“We see Abby at the desk, and she answers the phone and a guy asks for Abby Lee Miller. And she's so nervous. And I'm thinking, you would have thought if a guy was calling and asking for her, she’d be excited. Yeah. She knew it wasn't for that.” (35:32-35:48 | Christi and Kelly)“Holly comes into the audience and she's telling us what's going on with Nia. But Kelly, you are picking your teeth. Probably after lunch, I'm surprised I didn't have dental floss. That’s just like me shoving the cracker, the food, in my car because you forget that you're on camera and you're being a normal human. Put it on national television. Why wouldn't they edit that out?I swear they look for that kind of stuff. (50:36-51:23 | Christi and Kelly)“Jill’s running down the hall yelling, ‘Kendall, honey, baby, do a front aerial right here honey, please. You need to stay stretched.’ And Kendall just throws in a side aerial but Jill’s running, saying, ‘K, just you know, honey…’ and I'm thinking, ‘We are psychotic. We're literally psychotic.” (54:15-54:31 | Christi)“Abby's really happy because now everyone in Texas knows her name because of the girls’ talent and our costuming.” (1:02:52-1:03:01 | Christi) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

7 Marras 20221h 7min

“This surprise just made me want to puke, I don't know about you,” Kelly says about this episode which refers to Jill gifting Abby a massage as a way to get into Abby’s good graces and move Kendall to the front of the group performance. As gross as Kelly and Christi find the whole thing, they tell the story of the time they had their own (semi) naked ‘couples’ massage. Jill will do anything to get ‘my little Kendall’ ahead (this Dance Moms episode marks the debut of the infamous phrase), while Melissa does the same for her kids, but tries to deny it. Kelly and Christi continue to be team players and Abby continues to punish them for it. Jill continues to feel entitled to special treatment for Kendall despite being with the ALDC for five minutes, and Leslie, who hasn’t been there much longer, expects the same for Peyton. Brooke is back, having chosen dance over cheerleading (which never really happened and Brooke just stayed home for a week). Abby guilt trips Brooke and burns her pom poms in the parking lot, (in a scene which didn’t air) but still gives her a solo in which she portrays an alien.Christi and Kelly walk us through Abby’s ‘scariest pep talk ever,’ tell us which producer always had his eye on what medication everyone was taking, and the time a fan handed Christi drugs. Quotes“It needs to be addressed that the place where they took the child to talk to the dance teacher is called Flowers in the Attic. ‘Flowers in the Attic’ was the book that’s all about incest and child abuse and murder!” (7:02-7:15 | Christi)“This is the episode—they didn't show it–but Abby set Brooke’s pom poms on fire in the parking lot.” (26:20-26:28 | Christi)“Jill always turned things to Kendall, always. It was on the show, but I don't even know if she was encouraged to do that. She just naturally did it.” (27:49-28:05 | Christi)“Melissa was very smart about what she did on camera. She would do stuff off-camera, and then when we confronted her on camera, it always made it look like we were just mean and jealous.” (39:13-39:27 | Christi)“I can almost respect Jill more because she just says, ‘Yeah, I'm going to do what I need to get my kid ahead,’ but Melissa denied it. And that's where I thought, ‘Just own up to it.’ And she would always deflect and say it was Abby.” (46:51-47:04 | Christi)“Melissa's kids are clearly successful. So maybe I should have been more like her. But I also feel that I've really stuck by what I thought was morally right. So yeah, you know, whatever.” (48:01-48:17 | Christi)“So now is the second time in this episode we learned that Abby Lee Miller is not put on this Earth to make our kids feel special. But Abby Lee Miller is put on this Earth to give GPS directions.” (1:28:22-1:28:34 | Kelly) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

31 Loka 20221h 37min

“It’s ironic that Abby chooses bullying given her method of teaching,” Christi says about the theme of this episode’s dance. Abby has it out for almost everyone this week. She’s upset that Chloe is at the top of the pyramid instead of Maddie, and is determined to throw Chloe off of her game before the next competition. She’s mad at Paige for her error in last week’s number, so removes Paige from her place in the “sacred trio” and humiliates her for hours at the studio. And there’s her usual bag of tricks: hurling nasty insults, taking out on the girls her issues with their mothers because she is too cowardly to confront the moms directly, and punishing everyone for doing exactly what she asked them to do. Only this week her voice is somehow extra creepy. Joining the dance is Peyton, whose mom Leslie demonstrates why she earned her place as one of the biggest bullies in Dance Moms history. She grills Christi and Kelly at lunch about why they choose to keep bringing their kids to Abby’s studio if she treats them so badly. Holly, as the principal of a prestigious school, has a zero tolerance policy for bullying. She also isn’t comfortable with the stereotype being perpetuated by having Nia perform the role of the bully in the dance, and so removes her.Kelly and Christi admit to taking low blows at Abby’s body, but they say that given the things Abby has said to their kids over the years (which the audience hasn’t heard a fraction of) they are justified. Quotes“I want to point out that when Peyton comes in, our kids are the nicest damn children. They run to her. They jump on her. They hug her. They're so excited. Our kids are never jerks to anybody who comes into the studio, ever.” (22:24-22:38 | Christi)“One thing I can say, Chloe's 21, she has been through 150 years of school. She's had 7000 teachers. I have never heard a teacher say anything except that she's the nicest kid. And here's this asshole.” (29:46-39:55 | Christi and Kelly)“I love how Leslie always brings up that she's been there for four years. Like she deserves to be there because she's been there for four years. I'm thinking of myself. Four years?! I've been here for like 36!” (33:18-33:31 | Kelly)“I could have cared less about them having a trio and Paige not being in it. It was the fact that she was rubbing it in her face. Yes, Abby was rubbing it in her face and torturing the child.” (35:28-35:39 | Kelly)“I just wonder, since she and Abby are so close, I wonder how Abby would feel to know that Leslie's trying to get rid of some of her paying customers.” (40:31-40:39 | Christi)“We've been to so many places because every weekend we went somewhere different on the show. And my kids don't even know half the places we went. Because you know what? You never saw anything. You got there. You went to the competition and you left like so. We saw some mediocre hotel rooms, is what we saw. Two stars.” (43:18-43:37 | Kelly and Christi) “Abby always made it that she was the star and the rest of us were just minions. And I think, these kids have a name, too.’ And she says, ‘No, Christi. When they're on stage, people think, ‘Those are Abby Lee's kids.’” (56:20-56:40 | Christi) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

24 Loka 20221h 10min