Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition, season 2 episode 8 recap

This week's show had a country/western/YAYAMERICA theme, with a focus on jumping. The initial challenge posed a tough prize: the mom of the winner would be allowed to save one of the dancers from the bottom three.

Cut to Trinity's mom Trina, sitting in the stands and looking suddenly nauseous. After her nerve-wracking experience the last time she "won" the right to choose the bottom three dancers, can you blame her? Then Trinity won after a brutal secondary showdown where she jumped the most times in a row, and Tina's fate was sealed.

This week's theme inspired Abby to walk around tossing out country/western-isms, most of which she mangled. We're talking Sarah Palin-level vocabulary mix-ups here.

At one point Abby addressed the dancers as "slowpokes" when I'm pretty sure she meant "cowpokes." When she announced the secondary showdown, she explained that it would run "until your horse gives up." (That's not a thing. I Googled it.) And later she explained that "I'm the only sheriff in town." (Also not a thing. Googled that one, too.) Not to mention her threat to "send you both to the stable."

And for bonus points, during her review of the final performances, Abby exclaimed that Trinity gave "a hundred and [pause] plus percent." (The word you're looking for is "ten," Abby. "A hundred and ten percent" is what humans say in this situation.)

The camera crew caught a lot of moms giving each other the side eye in the stands during the initial challenge, and when it came to the inevitable Arts And Crafts Room Showdown, things got nasty. Gianna's mother Cindy and JoJo's mother Jessalynn went at it, with multiple words having to be bleeped, and accusations of "fatty" flying back and forth.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. There are far worse things you can call someone than fat. Step it up, moms! I felt their performances here were lacking. I need to see more commitment. And on the technical side, Cindy, when you peer over the tops of your glasses, it makes you look a thousand years old, so let's work on that for next time.

In the practice sessions, Trinity and JoJo wrestled with their dance ribbons, which showed an alarming propensity to get snarled. But Jessalynn wasn't worried, since she was confident that she had Tina in her pocket, so to speak, and she was certain that JoJo's charm could camouflage any potential ribbon malfunctions.

Travis and McKaylee struggled with their height difference, and Kalani worried about flinging her lasso properly while her mother (as always) sat on the couch staring blankly ahead, looking like she is at risk of literally dying from boredom. (Kalani's mother has formerly referred to the experience of rehearsal time as "Dance Jail.")

Performance night rolled around. Richy's outfit this week included a straw cowboy hat and a vest decorated with pink boa feathers at the shoulders. (Not pink; coral. Salmon? Coral.)

The first routine of the night featured JoJo and Trinity in a jazz duet called American Spirit.

The music for this routine, and I am not kidding about this even the slightest little bit, was a house/dance remix of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The only term I can think of to describe this remix is "ill-conceived."

Trinity killed it, and JoJo did her best to keep up. Everything was going great right up until the very last moment, when JoJo's ribbon got tangled up with Trinity's, in a way that literally could not have been more obvious. The look of frozen terror on JoJo's face would have been classic if it wasn't so heartbreaking.

In the second routine, Kalani danced a high-energy street jazz solo called "Rhinestone Cowgirl" which featured both a saddle and a lasso, and yet managed to be not the least bit country/western. Kalani really threw herself into the dance, and for once all the judges were thrilled with her performance.

The third performance of the night put the height-mismatched McKaylee and Travis in a routine so strange that it could qualify as "performance art." It was called "Wild West Showdown," and featured the dancers in standard cowboy garb (chaps; cowskin patterns) performing a story about a gunslinger showdown with hip hop moves, all set to a song that was a knockoff of the instrumental theme song to "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly."

Nothing about this routine's music or choreography fit together at all, but both McKaylee and Travis performed their hearts out nevertheless. McKaylee brought the right amount of sauciness to her performance, and Travis finally did a somewhat convincing job hitting his hip hop moves.

The final routine of the night was called "Nashville's Sweetheart," a lyrical solo featuring Gianna in a flowing gauzy skirt dancing with a sparkly guitar. It was meant to be a story about a country/western ingénue along the lines of (I guess) LeeAnn Rimes or Kellie Pickler. But it succeeded only in being nauseatingly saccharine. Not Gianna's fault at all, and as with the other dancers, she did the best she could with it.

With only six dancers left, it starts getting hard to decide who's the worst. The judges finally chose Gianna, Travis and JoJo as the bottom three. After looking like she wanted to puke or die or puke and then die, Tina chose to save Gianna. The judges decided to send Travis home, and now we're down to five.

Image copyright Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition/Lifetime