Dawn has her eye set on Jamie, a soccer-playing boy with a middle-part bowl cut — the epitome of 90’s Teen Beat cool. So she decides to get him to invite her to The Sweetheart Dance.

He just so happens to be a soccer coach for one of the kids they babysit for. Mary-Anne invites Dawn to come along on her baby-sitting gig, so she can help pick the kid up from practice. But Dawn is all like nah, I have a dentist appointment. I mean, I’m all for dental hygiene but like…this girl needs a date to The Sweetheart Dance, so can’t she reschedule???

So Mary-Anne goes alone but tries to talk Dawn up anyway. “She’s the really pretty blonde with blue eyes and beautiful skin.” She also calls her a “star babysitter” and says that “Dawn is really great with kids.” Ugh Mary-Anne you’re trying to get Dawn a date to the dance not married-off on the Oregon trail.

But here’s what happens when you go to the dentist instead of talking to your crush. Your crush crushes on the pretty girl who DID talk to him. A very devastating moment occurs when Jamie calls their house to ask Mary-Anne for a date. Dawn answers the phone and this dummy doesn’t even check to make sure he has the right sister. So Dawn gets all ready for her big date only to realize when Jamie comes to pick her up that she isn’t who he was expecting.

Ugh. This is rough. This is hard to watch, guys.

So Dawn freezes out Mary-Anne because she’s somehow convinced that Mary-Anne likes Jamie and somehow orchestrated this whole thing. But like to what end, Dawn??? To embarrass you?? Mary-Anne is the sweetest person in the whole world. Plus, she has to see you at the baby-sitters club AND at home and we know ya’ll don’t do anything else in your lives, so why would she want to destroy you and make her life miserable when she has to deal with you 24/7?

Eventually, they aren’t speaking to each other at all. They’re decorating for the dance (which they’ve also somehow volunteered their baby-sitting wards for) and asking the children to communicate between them. That’s messed up.

But then they transition to sickening sweet passive-aggression, which is much, much worse. Kristy intervenes and tells them to put the situation on ice until after they finish the decorations, at which point she’s going to have “an emergency meeting of the baby-sitters club.”

OH MY.

Kristy makes them each tell their side of the story without interrupting each other. Mary-Anne tells Dawn that she loves her and she loves Logan so she’s not trying to cheat on his ass or hurt her sister. OBVIOUSLY. This resolves everything in 30 seconds and the BSC decides to all go to the dance together.

Jamie asks Dawn to dance and she agrees. And this is truly something to behold. We watch them awkward dance to 90’s Muzak for much too long. I tried to find a clip because I wanted you all to suffer like I did, but this picture will have to suffice instead:

Very Special Lesson: Look, I’m mad at this episode because Dawn was very much the crazy paranoid jealous girl trope. So just like. Don’t be that trope. For the sake of feminism. Please.