The name of the TV game is rivalry

Dance competitions are all the rage on TV these days, but “LA Clippers Dance Squad” stands out: It combines the dance element with other attention-calling factors, including sports, sexy women determined to become stellar performers, and (simmering under the surface most of the time) rough, ready and raw competition and rivalry.

This competition is definitely not for sweet, girly girls, but for women who know what they want—and are prepared to do most anything to get it!

The back story on this reality TV tilt on E! is that the LA Clippers have come under new management, so its Clippers Spirit dance squad is being drastically revamped and reenergized.

Auditions are held, 20 members of the new dance group are selected by new creative director, Petra Pope, and the show now focuses on seven of the “preliminary winners” in detail, to see who among them will “survive” the rehearsal period and perform in the new group’s first show.

We’re surprised to learn that their first public exposure is only less than two weeks away! So they all have to work really hard to get the new suite of half-time intermission dance numbers down pat in only a few days’ time!

The pressure turns out to be too much for some of the new members—who expectedly have the emotional and physical “meltdowns” that TV talent and endurance tilts love to showcase!

Ironically, one of the “weaker links” turns out to be the loveliest competitor—she looks like a beauty queen, but relies too much on her “perfect” looks to get by.

Well, that’s definitely not enough for the new squad’s “pumped-up” requirements, so the show’s first telecast ends with a warning that she could be the first to go!

However, we have a sneaky suspicion that she won’t get kicked out just yet, because the show needs her for “eye candy.”

In fact, it could very well be that she will get “transformed” in the course of the unfolding series, so the tilt’s resident “beautiful but listless duckling” may end up as its most exciting “dancing swan!”

For now, however, she’s being given a really hard time—as are some of the other squad members, who definitely have stressful personal problems of their own to contend with.

Aside from difficult dance routines to master practically overnight, some of them are bullied by more fiercely ambitious rivals who want to eliminate the perceivably less viciously determined competition.

Since rivalry is the name of the TV game, these and other nasty gambits are to be expected.

But, we hope that the show will also make sure that its focus on backstage intramurals and backstabbing won’t adversely affect the quality of its dance numbers, which have thus turned out to be too feisty and frantic to be truly entertaining.

These are beautiful women who know how to dance, so why limit them to grungy hip-hop moves that don’t show them off to seductive and exciting advantage?