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The cover art alone on this TV-on-DVD set lets you know what you're getting yourself into....
A&E / 546 Minutes / 2011 / Unrated / Street Date: August 7, 2012
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Dance Moms: Season One is appropriately named, first of all. This reality series' first go-round delivers on what it states: it's a show about dancing children and the moms that push them to the limits of their capacity. As a premise, it's the kind of setup John Waters might love - sensitive, bratty ballerina babies being barked at by their obsessed, fame-hungry guardians - but as programming, it's pretty dull and repetitive.
Yes, some of the mothers who send their babies to the weird-ass dance boot camp are nutso with delusions of grandeur (there can be no denying that Dance Moms might fill a certain guilty pleasure status for some viewers), but like so much reality TV fare, one has trouble figuring out what the point of the whole thing is. There are always going to be TV lovers who want to tune in to people behaving badly - and there are a lot of jerks on Dance Moms - but I simply can't imagine many people watching the thing more than once on this DVD edition.
If you want to watch overworked children cry as their overbearing mothers crack the whip, then rush toward this Season One DVD edition. But I would say that even the camp-curious would be better off finding a rerun here or there on Lifetime rather than investing any time or money into this set. I will say this, though: reality TV continues to leave me dazed - where will it take us next...?