This post was originally posted in September of 2014.
Once upon a time in the ‘90’s, there was this little gem of a show based on Ann M. Martin’s classic book series about a group of middle school girls who spend their free time in a club devoted to babysitting. This show must have been filmed at Astoria Studios because even Dawn, who is supposed to be from California, sounds like she’s from the tri-state region. If you were a girl child of the ’90’s you could not escape this book series. There was bossy Kristy, artsy Claudia, fashionista Stacey, California Casual Dawn, good-girl Mary Anne, ballerina Jesse, and Mallory who had red hair, wore glasses, and other than that had no defining features. I hated this episode as a kid because I thought it was a flashback episode full of clips from episodes I had never seen. As it turns out, it’s a clip show full of new material. I guess these were ideas Ann M. Martin had but never felt like turning into a full length book, and the TV show decided that these random clips would make the best series finale, which just goes to show you that not all very special episodes are about terrible topics. It’s the last day of school and the BSC is having a slumber party. Jessie is nervous about going to dance camp, Kristy is excited about going to softball camp, and Mary-Anne is totally bummed that she see won’t see her friends every day for two months. All of these thoughts about their impending separation lead the girls to reminisce about how they first began the club.
Cue Memory #1 in which Kristy is wearing this bizarre jersey that says Sport Shack in some seriously old school lettering. She gets in trouble for cheering when the last bell rings, and some hard-ass teacher makes her write one hundred words about the importance of decorum. Meanwhile, Kristy’s mom is stressing because she can never find a sitter. Most thirteen year-olds would totally ignore this because it’s not really their problem, but like two and a half seconds after talking to her mom, Kristy’s eyes get wild and she casts aside her homework to plot out her magnum opus: The Baby-Stitters Club. She tells everyone how she didn’t think she would survive her first job, in which the mom meets here at the front door and describes how she must keep her rambunctious three year-old twins locked in the laundry room until it’s time to “go out.” Kristy can’t resist the promise of some cold hard cash, so she doesn’t run screaming from this house of apparent child abuse. Luckily, the twins turn out to be two dogs instead of toddlers.
Memory#2: The girls head downstairs for snacks and Claudia finds her dead grandmother’s teacup, so the girls reminisce about that relationship for while. Kristy does a really offensive fake Japanese accent which all of the girls find funny except for Claudia who is too lost in her thoughts to call Kristy out for being such an insensitive loser. Truly, the best part of all of this is that the very next scene is a flashback with Mimi (Claudia’s grandmother) and she has no accent whatsoever. This is a truly rare very special episode because it doesn’t involve any drugs or pregnancy and includes a racist joke. Also, in this scene Mallory ends up being the only baby-sitter with lucky steam rising from her tea. They had to throw her a bone because Mallory never has anything else going for her. Memory #3: The baby-sitters share a creepy memory about “staging a ceremony” before Kristy’s mom’s wedding. This ceremony turns out to be a full on mock wedding between two of Kristy’s younger siblings, which has clearly been orchestrated by the baby-sitters club. They make everyone attend and the they make the two young siblings exchange wedding vows. Luckily, the little boy runs away when they tell him to kiss the bride,so no almost-incest was committed.
Finally, all of the baby-sitters get sleepy after a night of reminiscing and fall asleep at midnight in what must be the tamest slumber party ever imagined. Note: I didn’t include all of them memories. Some of them were really boring.
Very Special Lesson: You don’t always have to have a very special lesson to have a very special episode. Or maybe friendship…friendship was the lesson.
P.S. This set came from Ikea before everyone shopped there:
First of all, 
Stacey tries to reason through this very difficult decision with the shortest pros and cons list of all time. It’s NYC: 1. Dad 2. Museums; StoneyBrook: 1. Mom 2. The Baby-Sitters Club! She calls the club from her Dad’s, so they all head to NYC for the day to cheer her up. They rent boats in central park (this is legit filmed on location btw). I love this episode. It is so sweet and they’re such a nice group of friends.
Stacey decides to talk to both of her parents. She explains how she’s constantly keeping things from one parent or another because she’s afraid of hurting one of them. She also asks them to stop shit-talking each other in front of her. She hasn’t even invited her dad to attend a special Father’s Day event that the BSC is putting together in Stoneybrook. But luckily, her mom comes through and invites him at the last-minute. He agrees to back off on the moving to New York thing and also to make a better effort to get over to Stoneybrook more often. I mean people literally commute from CT to NYC daily, so yeah he needs to get his shit together.
The baby-sitters take the kids for a picnic by a brook. (Woah, do you think this is THE Stoney Brook??)
So Dawn goes to the hearing and tells everyone it’s wrong to cut down trees. And Zach Braff’s mom is all like um sounds like you didn’t even read the plans because we’re going to build an access road so elderly people and those who can’t trek over rocks like you and your friends can enjoy this park and also we’re building recycling facilities there so that people don’t throw their trash in the water. I guess Dawn wants to save face because she still tries to tell them they’re ruining everything, but it is just embarrassing at this point.
Logan, as you may recall, is both Mary-Anne’s boyfriend and a BSC associate member, meaning he babysits occasionally but isn’t really in the club. When the official club members are all booked out and Logan can’t help, Mary-Anne suggests that they extend affiliate membership to more boys.
The two boysitters loose the kids and they panic. It’s totally heart-wrenching to watch. Honestly, I’m not sure that two BSC members could have done any better. They probably have enough experience at this point to have a better sitter:child ratio and it’s sketchy and cruel that they set less-experienced sitters up to fail.
After searching Claudia’s bedroom for a bug, like normal-average paranoid teenagers, they realize that they’ve all been super careless with the BSC notebook – a binder where they write down everything that’s going on with the kids, so they’re all informed when they switch sitters. Most of the members admit to leaving the kids alone with the notebook, where they could have easily read it.
But during the meeting with the kids, they realize that the deaf child can actually read lips. So he didn’t realize when Jessi was talking on the phone that it was a secret because she just assumed he couldn’t understand and didn’t take any extra care to conceal her conversation from him.
This episode starts off with the BSC looking at baby photos of themselves and remarking on whether or not they look like their siblings. “Do most sisters look-alike,” Mary Anne queries. I’m concerned about the quality of education they’re getting at Stony Brook Middle School…
The séance is pretty lame, but Kristy tries to spook everyone with a tape recording of ghost noises, which is kinda cool. Then the wind blows their candles out and Kristy tries to hide the tape recorder in the insulation before anyone can catch her red-handed. That’s when she finds the missing ring! The band is broken, so it probs just fell off in the passageway many years ago.
After the mall, the sitters head on over to the hospital to throw a Christmas party for the kids. Everyone has markers and big pads of paper except for Mallory who gets the bitch job of sorting out the paper chain. Dawn wants to make Christmas cookies when she and Stacey babysit some obnoxious little boys, including little Pete from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Dawn gets all self-conscious when she realizes that she’s totally disregarded Stacey’s diabetes. I don’t know how she forgot since Stacey mentions it like every other sentence.
Of course, Stacey ends up on the hospital because all she has eaten in the past day is cookies and chocolate. I knew (of) a couple of diabetic kids growing up and once they were old enough to realize that sugar could literally kill them, I never remember any of them tempted to gorge themselves on it, so I can only assume that this is some kind of risky adolescent rebellion on Stacey’s part. Drugs seem pretty hard to come by in Stonybrook, so it looks like everyone has to settle for a sugar high. Otherwise, this seems like a pretty serious cry for help. Why aren’t we talking about Stacey’s clearly self-destructive tendencies, instead of being all like “lay off the cookies, Stace.” Everything turns out okay though because Stacey gets to come to the party with all of the other children…which makes me wonder why the babysitters are only throwing a party for young children. Wouldn’t it suck to be thirteen and stuck in the hospital? I’m thinking that these girls don’t actually interact with their peers outside of this club. Would they even be friends if they weren’t also business associates?
So then a bunch of thirteen-year old girls swarm this little eight year-old’s house chanting her new campaign slogan “Count on Court!” Kristy micromanages the whole process. (Oh btw she’s supposed to be BABY-SITTING THIS KID not turning her into the Manchurian Candidate). It isn’t long before they’re taking this poor girl to the mall for a makeover.
But even the other sitters know that Kristy is cray. She overrides Mary Anne when she gives Courtney permission to play with a friend after-school before practicing her speech. It seriously feels like middle-school involvement in elementary-school elections should be banned. This has good to be the grade school equivalent of a foreign campaign contribution.
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