The Baby-Sitter's Club

Hello Interwebs!

On July 3^rd Netflix released a new TV show called The Baby-Sitter’s Club. When I was a kid, The Baby-Sitter’s Club was the absolute best book series by Ann M Martin. I had all the books, plus the specials, plus the monthly club where I got new books. The Baby-Sitter’s Club is the first book series that made me really fall in love with reading and I wanted desperately to be as bold as Kristy, as cool as Claudia, as sophisticated as Stacey, as solid as Mary Anne and as California surfer girl as Dawn. As an adult I recognize that I am 100% Mary Anne down to the fact that my longtime partner, like Mary Anne’s longtime boyfriend, is a man that I’ve known since I was twelve. So, I binge watched the series like a grown up. The series takes the first eight books plus one of the specials in a 10-episode first season.

Book One and Episode One: Kristy’s Great Idea. Kristy Thomas watches her mother make phone call after phone call looking for a sitter for Kristy’s younger brother when Kristy has a great idea. Why not make a club where parents can call one number and reach a bunch of babysitters at once. With her best friend Mary Anne and their other friend Claudia and Claudia’s best friend Stacey the baby-sitters club is born. The book and the show are pretty similar in this episode with some updates. The landline phone they use is a vintage clear one (like the ones that were popular when I was growing up in the 90s) from an Etsy shop and they talk about Postmates to get pizza. 

Book Two and Episode Two: Claudia and the Phantom PhoneCalls. This book was about a phantom phone caller who isn’t there when you pick up. In the book the baby-sitters get mysterious phone calls while on the job. It turns out that it is a boy who is trying to ask Kristy to a dance. Another boy is doing the same to try to ask Claudia out. In the show Kristy gets mysterious phone calls and it turns out that it’s a grounded Mary Anne who is apologizing to Kristy. The dance subplot still exists but in this case Claudia can only go if she passes her math test which she doesn’t and the boy who calls her is relegated to a small role as the boy she likes in her art class. 

Book Three and Episode Three: The Truth About Stacey. This book is primarily about Stacey who has diabetes and is hiding it from her friends. This was my first real experience in diabetes outside of my grandmother, with someone my own age. It deals with the illness and the stigma illness has in kids. In the show it incorporates how social media can be used to hurt people when a video of Stacey having a seizure because of her diabetes is sent around to the parents with a viral video. After the video is released the girls call a meeting with the parents where Stacey explains what’s wrong with her and why she had the seizure. A parent who is an endocrinologist explains what she’s witnessed with her being a babysitter for her daughter and her maturity level. 

 Book Four and Episode Four: Mary Anne Saves the Day. Mary Anne acknowledges that she’s the least cool member of the Baby-Sitter’s Club, it has Mary Anne hanging out with Claudia’s grandmother Mimi while Mimi tells her about her mother who died when Mary Anne was 18 months old. Her single father babies her and she is very submissive in her personal life which is why she’s the bossy Kristy’s best friend. Mary Anne’s dad decides the friends are bullying her when she asks for advice in being more assertive and while they’re mad at her she meets the new girl Dawn. Dawn is changed from blonde California girl to Latina which is fine by me as everything is better with more diversity. In the show Dawn’s parents divorced because her father is gay, and the kid Mary Anne babysits is a transgirl. It’s a very natural and unforced way to bring the series to the modern day. Dawn’s aunt is pagan and as a pagan myself I loved the inclusion of a witch and how not concerning it was to most people. I love how Dawn rolls with the punches and just accepts Mary Anne the way she is. Then the little girl Mary Anne is babysitting for gets sick with a high fever and no one picks up the phone and her friends are still mad at her so Mary Anne calls 911 and handles everything herself, including dressing down the nurse and doctor who address Bailey as a boy instead of the girl she is. Her father shows up to see her standing up to them and realizes she’s more capable than he thought. Her experience gives her confidence to talk to her dad and to stand up for herself with her friends. The plot is similar to the book but with the trans storyline update. 

 Book Five and Episode Five: Dawn and the Impossible Three. Dawn and Mary Anne’s parents, who were high school sweethearts are dating again which makes both girls pretty excited. Dawn gets pushback from Kristy about joining the club, so she gets roped into babysitting for the newly divorced Ms. Barrett and her three out of control children. The mom comes home to a straightened-out house and better-behaved children and takes advantage of Dawn’s kindness. The Barrett boy, Buddy goes missing while the mother is gone and unreachable. Dawn calls the police and her mom, and it turns out that the father picked him up for swim class while the mother didn’t mention it. Dawn and Kristy become reluctant friends after Kristy helps her with the missing child and reveals it’s because her own dad is gone while all the other kids from separated homes have involved dads. This story is very much like I remembered but I really liked how this storyline dealt with the different ways families are and how they all work the best they can. 

Book Seven and Episode Six: Claudia and the Mean Janine. Claudia designs a new room for Mary Anne and is chosen to be featured in a special art show. Janine, Claudia’s sister is cold and a genius and Claudia’s complete opposite. During a game of trivial pursuit while Claudia and Janine are arguing their grandmother Mimi has a stroke and ends up in the intensive care unit. Claudia is an outsider in the family with all their smarts and her art, but Mimi always understands. But in the hospital Mimi can’t talk very well and it scares Claudia how nothing is the same and its not the Mimi she knows. Then Claudia’s art show doesn’t go well. The things she knows that she’s good at art and Mimi understands her aren’t so clear. Janine and Claudia bond over Mimi’s injury and the fact that Claudia’s drawings of what Mimi says gets Mimi talking in Japanese to Janine about Manzanar and she begins her road back to her family and who she was before the stroke. In the book, Claudia must choose between art and the club when her grades slip, and Janine helps her. I liked how they worked in Claudia’s family’s history in the US as Japanese Americans and the sisters bonding over that instead. It adds depth to not only Claudia as a main character but also her sister and Mimi as secondary ones. 

Book Eight and Episode Seven: Boy-Crazy Stacey. Mary Anne and Stacey accompany the Pike family to the beach for a week to help babysit. Stacey falls in love with a much older lifeguard on the beach, ditching Mary Anne with the kids. Mary Anne makes friends with a pair of age appropriate boys and tries to get Stacey to hang out with them. Stacey keeps blowing Mary Anne off and abandoning her with the kids and cancelling their plans to hang out during their down time. Stacey gets a present for the older boy while she’s hanging out with Mary Anne and the two boys their age but sees her crush kissing his girlfriend and runs off humiliated. Mary Anne comforts her and Stacey spends the last day of their trip hanging out with her friend and the other two boys. This is pretty true to how I remember the book. 

Book Six and Episode Eight: Kristy’s Big Day. Kristy’s mom finally gets married. Kristy’s new stepdad is wealthy, and it causes clashes with Kirsty’s single mom with multiple kids without much money. The day of the wedding Kristy and her mother have an argument when Kristy is wearing a different dress than the one originally picked out as a bridesmaid and its revealed that Watson, her mom’s fiancée, bought Kristy a new dress since the old one made her look like a banana and the replacement dress was $800. Kristy gets mad in return since her mother is having a big princess wedding that costs a fortune and let Watson buy Kristy’s older brother a brand-new car. The wedding goes off without a hitch and Kristy tries to find the opportunity to talk to her mom and apologize but it never seems to be the right time. As Watson and Kristy’s mom drive away, they stop, and her mom runs back to talk to her before she leaves. The entire episode has a definite theme of how things change but the really important things stay the same. Even though Kristy’s family is changing, she’s adding a stepdad and two step-siblings to it, and she’s getting a new house and even growing up physically with the start of her period but at the same time she and her mom are still there for each other like they always have been. 

Episodes 9 and 10: Hello, Camp Moosehead! Super Special #2Baby-sitter’s Summer Vacation. This is based off one of the super special books which were at least twice as long as others. The girls are split up among cabins. Kristy can’t be in charge at camp, Mary Anne becomes friends with Stacey’s ex-best friend Lane as they put on a musical, and Claudia and Dawn take on income inequality at the camp with the arts and crafts. Claudia ends up being put under house arrest in her cabin for running an unsanctioned art class. Dawn stages a lie-in to protest Claudia’s house arrest. Stacey and Lane end up in the infirmary together with poison ivy after a fight and end up making up. Then Mary Anne takes over the leading role in her play and Kristy’s younger stepsister disappears. This two-part episode also introduced Mallory and Jessi who become junior members of the club. This also gives the best first look at Mary Anne and Logan and their longtime relationship in the books. The session at camp ends with the girls being promoted from campers to counselors-in-training and having the best summer. To be honest I don’t remember much about the book, but I liked the episodes a lot. 

In conclusion, The Baby-Sitter’s Club is everything I wanted from a TV series based on the books that made my childhood. There are updates due to it being based in 2020 rather than the 90s when I originally watched it. I still love the characters and they still feel like my best friends. The fact that instead of a group of white girls with Jessi as the token black girl and Claudia as the quirky Asian girl, we have a biracial Mary Anne and a Latina Dawn. I love that they babysit for a transgirl, that characters are gay, and there’s variation. At the heart of the story they still use a landline in Claudia’s room, Claudia still hides junk food in her room, they still use flyers and all the girls look and act like 12/13-year-old girls. I still love this series and I will watch every episode of the show they put on Netflix. I also have a burning desire to reread all these books.

Happy Watching (and Reading)!

Richelle and Emma