Not all of these meta recap podcasts feature actors: some feature reality stars, like the moms from the hit reality TV show Dance Moms. For those of you who are blissfully unaware, Dance Moms follows a group of moms and their daughters as they navigate the competitive dance world of the 2010s. It follows one dance company, led by the surly and irascible dance teacher Abby Lee Miller, and includes all of the screaming matches and insurmountable feuds that come to be expected from Real Housewives-esque reality shows. Suffice it to say, the cast’s reputations did not emerge unscathed.
I am not what you might call a “casual fan” of Dance Moms. I have been avidly consuming episodes of the show since 2011, and although I stopped watching the new episodes around Season 6, I never stopped rewatching. I can recite every word of every Christi Lukasiak fight by heart. Thanks to obsessive annual rewatches of the first two seasons during every winter break I was in school.
For a while, I noticed something in my YouTube algorithm that abetted my continuous series of rewatches; I would watch one video about Dance Moms, and suddenly all of my recommendations were filled with nothing but Dance Moms. I could say that YouTube and its aggressive algorithm made me watch Dance Moms clips in constant rotation for years and years, but I know better than that. I made the choice myself, a conscious choice. Saying anything to the contrary would be lying. I wanted to watch Pittsburgh mothers enduring endless nonsense from their daughter’s irascible dance teacher for hours on end. Nobody needed to make me keep coming back for more.
In fact, I have been coming back for more for the last two years. Every Monday, when I’m doing the dishes and making breakfast before work, I tune into Back to the Barre, a podcast hosted by two of the titular Dance Moms, Kelly Hyland and Christi Lukasiak.
Source: Back to the Barre
If you haven’t watched the show, Christi and Kelly were absolutely fan favorites who got into some of the most infamous arguments ever seen on reality TV. Every week on Back to the Barre, Christi and Kelly give updates on their lives, recap an episode of Dance Moms, share never-before-heard behind-the-scenes gossip, and comment on their past behavior and discuss why they acted the way they did.
It would be extremely easy to say that these women do this podcast and relitigate arguments and conflicts from over 10 years ago because they haven’t moved on... That they are completely stuck in the past; a couple of contemporary Norma Desmonds sitting down to watch themselves in their glory days, wholly unwilling to accept that their era of being on TV every week, watched by millions of people, is long over.
Unlike Norma Desmond, these women don’t need their manservants to write them hundreds of fan letters every day to maintain an illusion of their notoriety. There are still hundreds of thousands of Dance Moms fans who will happily tune in to watch any video, podcast, or series that gives them more new content about this show.
The r/dancemoms subreddit is incredibly active, with fans paying close attention to everything every former cast member does on social media. It would be one thing if these women were screaming into the void, hoping for former fans to come back and care about them, but there’s nothing former about these fans. As far as I can tell, Dance Moms fans will care about Dance Moms for the rest of their lives.
There’s something very unique about reality TV show stars analyzing and recapping a show that was supposed to be a representation of their real lives. It’s evocative of pulling back the curtain to find the real Wizard of Oz. Most of us know deep down that reality TV is full of misrepresentations and lies, yet we don’t take that into consideration when judging the actions of reality TV show stars.
Nobody wants to admit that they’re easily duped by story producers and editors, but they absolutely are, and recap podcasts give cast members of extremely exploitative productions like Dance Moms (the cast made virtually no money from the show) and allows them to finally profit off of their own pain and suffering (reality TV stars don’t get residuals because it’s considered “news”). Who cares if they have 20 minutes' worth of podcast commercials to finally make money from the TV show that functionally ruined their lives? The network has profited off of it for long enough, so why shouldn’t they?
While the memories of two cast members can never be proven to be the unquestionable gospel truth, it’s much more authentic than the show itself could ever be. It’s a great example of two people fully owning their story, leaving no stone unturned in debunking lies or implied lies that have been repeated on TV for well over a decade and will continue to be constantly reposted on Lifetime’s social media for the foreseeable future.
Listening to Back to the Barre every week has taken the fun out of rewatching Dance Moms for me. Now I can see through the reality TV euphemisms (Moms saying “I came back because I’m part of the team” instead of saying “I came back because I’m contractually obligated to be on this show for X number of years”) and the strange Franken-bits (where two audio clips are mashed together to create an incredibly unconvincing new sentence) for what they really are: manipulations used to create the most interesting show possible. I always knew that “reality” TV wasn’t reality, but once the tools of the trade were stripped bare, they were impossible to ignore. My decision to stop watching Dance Moms is certainly evidence that the recap podcast industrial complex has done some good in this world.
I really don’t feel like I can judge these women for the choices they’ve made, because it is my choice to be so invested in their lives in the first place. Yes, they chose to be on TV. They chose to sign contracts without lawyers looking over them, and worst of all, they dragged their children into these underthought decisions. But I was the one who tuned in every week, feeding the reality TV monster week after week and year after year. I’m the one who is lurking on r/dancemoms, feeling the urge to defend women whom I don’t know personally from accusations of not being able to move on from their own lives. If you’re invested enough to tune into someone else’s podcast recapping incidents from their life, you’re not above them. Sure, they haven’t moved on… but we haven’t either.
