Two Girls, One Solo

Season	Three
Episode	Twenty-Three
Air date	June 11, 2013
Viewers	1.688 million, 0.7 rating (18-49)
Episode Chronology
Previous	Boy Crazy, Mom Crazy
Next	An Apple a Day Keeps Abby Away

"Two Girls, One Solo" is the twenty-third episode of the third season of Dance Moms. It first aired on June 11, 2013.

Synopsis

Abby's decision to have Maddie and Chloe dance the exact same solo shocks the moms and promises to finally prove who is the best dancer at the Abby Lee Dance Company. After last week's big fight, Christi and Kelly come to the realization that their friendship will never be the same again. Meanwhile, the theme of this week's group number brings out painful memories for Abby and the moms.

Competition Attended

POWERHOUSE Dance Invitational Fort Wayne, Indiana, March 16

Weekly Dances

Abby Lee Dance Company
Dancer(s)	Dance Name	Dance Style	Place
Nia Brooke Paige Chloe Kendall Maddie	Living With The Ribbon	Contemporary	1st
Chloe	You Can	Lyrical	Given 1st at awards, revealed to be 2nd see trivia
Asia	Too Hot To Handle	Jazz	1st
Mackenzie	Old West	Acrobatic	2nd
Maddie	Be Anything	Lyrical	Given 2nd at awards, revealed to be 1st see trivia

Summary

Abby is happy about defeating Candy Apples in the previous episode. Brooke is placed at the top of the pyramid, Abby saying that it is about time she danced like a fifteen-year-old.

The scheduled group dance is about cancer. Melissa discusses how her mother died of cancer. Kelly says her grandparents died of it, and her father currently is facing it. A little later, Abby also mentions her father's death from cancer. The group dance begins using a ribbon, that coils around Brooke in a way to be interpreted as sinister.

Asia and Mackenzie are given different solos. Maddie and Chloe are assigned competing solos as well, but they will use identical costumes, choreography and music.

Abby brings up the fight between Christi and Kelly in front of the senior company in the previous episode, and threatens expulsion from the studio if this is repeated.

Upstairs the moms take their seats, with Christi now sitting on their own far right, Kelly taking her more usual position on their opposite left end.

Christi and Jill hold a stake-out, looking to capture Maddie at the studio training while Chloe isn't there. She finds Gianna's and Jennine's cars parked, and sneak around to capture more evidence on video.

Later, Chloe and Maddie are taught their dances in the same room. Abby does not let them watch one another, having them stand facing into a corner while the other girl performs. Christi says this reminds her of the treatment of captured victims in the horror film The Blair Witch Project.

Abby comes upstairs, refers ironically to Kelly and Christi as her two favorite moms, and orders them to go dye the white ribbon pink together. Holly hopes that doing this together will get them talking and over the fight. In a bathroom, Christi and Kelly begin staining the ribbon with nothing but silence.

Abby talks to all the moms and girls again about cancer. Everybody seems to raise their hand when asked if they know someone who has died from cancer, while Abby says there is a lack of dignity with the loss of control over one's own body. Everyone is emotionally distraught. Abby asks Asia who she knows that died of cancer, and Asia says it was a long time ago, but her father once had a dog that died of cancer. Along with confusion over what she was saying, this lightens the mood somewhat.

At the competition, Mackenzie performs her solo, Kristie wondering how long she can rely on being cute onstage. Next it is Asia's turn. Afterwards, Abby is upset with Asia for ruining her dance by lip-synching to the music.

Chloe now performs her solo. Maddie performs afterwards, falling out of a turn. Cameras change, and Maddie's smile for the judges disappears into a blank expression as she begins moving behind the curtain. Mackenzie jumps on Maddie as she approaches, wrapping her arms around her sister's neck and shoulders, Maddie stooping. Maddie lifts Mackenzie back up with her face changing with the strain, and drops Mackenzie onto her feet; then Maddie quickly gives Mackenzie a small push. Within a half second, Mackenzie has finished raising her left hand as well as swinging it to slap Maddie, a look of total delight on Mackenzie's face. Mackenzie happily follows her sister as she walks away and slaps her in the back, Maddie turns briefly to return a light slap, and then gets slapped by Mackenzie one last time. (animated gif) Melissa gives a confessional into the camera that Maddie bobbled a turn, and a camera shows Maddie telling Kendall that every single one of her turns were bad.

Paige thinks of Pappy, her grandfather, because of the group dance about cancer. Christi confesses that she loves Kelly like a sister, even though sisters fight, and then kisses Kelly on the cheek. Kelly confesses that it won't be the same, but life is too short to lose friendships.

At awards, the group finishes first. Mackenzie takes second place, Asia ahead in first. Maddie is second place, with Chloe awarded first.

Later in the dressing room, the competition's announcer arrives, and tells everyone that Chloe's score was miscalculated, receiving a higher sub-score than possible from one of the judges, and that this would mean that Maddie would have been first. Abby had already discussed this with the people running the competition, while Christi wonders what the odds are that Chloe would have been the one person with an incorrectly calculated score.

Dialogue

Abby: Heeeeey. Congratulations.

Competition Director: [entering room] We had a goof. One of our judges, they gave Chloe a ninety nine ten, she actually had a ninety six six. Because they gave her twenty seven five in a category that only had twenty five points. That means that the overall winner would have been Maddie.

Christi: Are you kidding me? That it just so happened that Chloe and Maddie's scores were the only ones out of the entire competition with eighty-some routines that were incorrect. Are you kidding?

Jill: So Abby, how did you discover the discrepancy between the thirty point and the twenty-five point...

Abby: I didn't, it came to me. I guess the judges said, "There's a problem. We have a problem."

Competition Director: [re-entering room] I'm sorry. You okay? I stole your scoresheets. I kept them with me. And I wanted to say, once-you-know (???), it doesn't happen that often at all, but I wanted to say, [to Abby] thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Abby: Oh.

Trivia

• Pyramid:
  • Top: Brooke
  • Middle: Maddie, Chloe, Mackenzie
  • Bottom: Paige, Kendall, Nia, Asia
• Additional footage from this event and its controversies appears in Abby's "So Far This Season...".
• Chloe initially was awarded first, but Ethan Birch, the director of Powerhouse Dance, enters the dressing room and states that her score was miscalculated, and "that means that the overall winner would have been Maddie."
• Prior to the use of the similarly In10sity-linked Masters of Dance Arts in the earlier Boy Crazy, Mom Crazy, Abby had privately denounced that competition for not really existing, disliking their business terms and treatment of her studio, and blaming the Collins Avenue producers for the competition's use; this, according to private communications later uploaded by Diane Pent in 2015. (Pent is a bitter enemy of Abby, and Pent's motive in publishing the documents appears to have been creating friction between Abby and Collins Avenue producers.) More publicly, Abby had also complained of Masters of Dance Arts's age categories on Twitter prior to Candy Apple Showdown. Ticket sales for Masters of Dance Arts were already handled by In10sity at the time of these complaints, in the same manner as Powerhouse here.
• The day after the show, Christi indicated on Twitter that people were incorrect to think the episode was "scripted," and that her daughter's emotions were real. Melissa tweeted that the episode was "crazy," reminding people that Dance Moms is a reality show, and "sometimes things are edited to look a certain way."
• On the Friday after this episode was first broadcast, a YouTube video was uploaded by someone self-identified as "Dance Mom." The video gives the impression of amateur quality, with Abby speaking loudly through an amplified microphone to the cast assembled nearby; statements by Abby internal to the video would indicate it was filmed on Wednesday, with the topics concerning preparations for the upcoming ALDC Showcase (and corresponding episode.) Onstage with the rest of the cast, Abby states that Paige had declined an opportunity at pyramid to learn a new solo on short notice, and asks for volunteers to perform a solo new to the show, but with no one volunteering. Abby suggests that Jill do her ballroom routine from Dancing with the Celebrities of Pittsburgh; and that Maddie should do her "Survivor" routine. Later the filmed conversation returns to this topic again, and Kelly objects that drafting a volunteer is not what "dance teachers do"; Abby responds that they also don't put mothers onstage, that it's a TV show, and tells her to "Wake up!" At one point, footage seems deliberately edited, then Abby asking for volunteers again, this time Maddie raising her hand. At this, Kelly yells into the mostly empty audience: "This is a set-up... See how scripted the show is? See how scripted it is? Maddie did not volunteer, and now they're having her volunteer. Doing it again, to have Maddie volunteer. Scripted!" After some further arguing, footage shows Abby giving orders for the police to be called, and to have Kelly removed.
• This episode marks the first time Asia and Mackenzie have competed against each other.
• Christi and Jill discover Maddie and Mackenzie do have "secret" privates.
• This is the second score misplacing error, the first being Kendall and Maddie's duet actually coming in second in Liar Liar Dance Mom on Fire!.
• Mackenzie's solo costume is reused from her ALDC mini group dance "Cotton Eyed Joe".
• Like other Category:Powerhouse competitions, ticket sales were handled through in10sity-dance.ticketleap.com.

Photo Gallery

To view the photo gallery for "Two Girls, One Solo," click here.

Videos

To view the video gallery for "Two Girls, One Solo," visit subpage Two Girls, One Solo/Videos.

Polls

(See Past Polls for previous results from a similar question asked June 12, 2013 through May 28, 2014)