Review: Your Mama Don’t Dance on Lifetime

Last week, I predicted that Your Mama Don’t Dance would suck, and I have to say that I think I was 100% on the nose with that one. Worst piece of so-called entertainment I’ve seen in conscious memory. It would have been better if it were somehow offensive. This is just plain crappy television.

Here’s how the episode went:

1. Wide shot of host Ian Ziering in an ugly studio.
2. Zoom in on Ian, who looks like he’s had some plastic surgery.
3. Ian talks uncomfortably for about 30 seconds before falling into a smile that’s supposed to be warm but is just unsettling. Ian scoots out of the shot as we move to canned footage of the dancer and, this week, her father.
4. Dancer and father both shed tears as they lament her wasted childhood and express delight at the opportunity to strengthen their relationship by becoming big losers together on national television.
5. Show the end of a dancer’s audition when her dad is revealed as her partner.
6. Bring the dancers out on stage but WAIT — they don’t dance yet. They come out from opposite sides of a big video screen and hug before joining Ian for more mindless babbling.
7. Finally dance. The dads are embarassingly bad (when they’re actually moving around rather than just standing there like props, that is, which is also bad), but the girls are great, of course.
8. Listen to judges’ inane comments, which invariably include the phrase “You’ve already won, you’ve already won.”
9. Repeat 5 times.
10. Reveal the anticlimactic results at the end, which we already know because each couple gets a numerical score along the way and it’s pretty easy to figure out who had the lowest score because we already know the score.

See what I mean (and this was the GOOD dad):

I programmed my DVR to record next week’s episode, too, where male dancers will be paired with their moms, but I can’t bear the thought of sitting through another hour of this. It’s awful. Don’t waste your time, really.

Don’t forget: Enter to win more than $100 in prizes from your favorite women’s health blog.

Contents © Copyright 2008 Kristen King

Tags: womens health blog, womens health, entertainment, lifetime, lifetime television for women, ian ziering, your mama don’t dance, review, new television series, new series, lively women, kristen king