Okay, so a LOT is happening in this episode. First of all, the BSC is trying to put together “a major Baby-Sitters Club production” of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Secondly, Stacey’s gotten some work as a model for a local department store fashion show!
This is the look her friends convince her to wear to the shoot. I’m not sure even 1990 can be used as an excuse for this:
Meanwhile, Kristy tries to bully a small boy into wearing tights as part of his “Grumpy” the dwarf costume. Then she yells at the children for not listening to her (she’s the director). Like what is the purpose of this? Why don’t these girls just go to the mall like every other group 90’s teens? Why are they choosing to corral a bunch of kindergarteners into a play that most of them seem like they do NOT want to participate in?
Yo, but this was like my ideal party dress in the early-90’s and I feel like Stacey, at least, is living her best life:
But sadly, she can’t eat pizza with the rest of the girls because some a-hole grown up at the photoshoot told her to lose ten pounds. To make matters worse, one of the kids she babysits for is all pissed off at her because she missed play rehearsal. But it’s FINE because that kid is rehearsing with Dawn now, so just move on with your new fabulous life, Stacey!
Now Stacey is mad at Dawn for rehearsing with her favorite kid. Okay, dude, you guys NEED to get out more. Thankfully, Stacey rage eats some pizza so we don’t have to worry about her starving herself.
Stacey wins the department store fashion competition and blessedly looks much better than she did when she went to that first photo shoot. I would probably wear this outfit now. It’s classic retro-chic.
I gotta be honest, I was very sus of this whole situation. I thought Stacey was going to complain about being overwhelmed with the department’s store modeling gig and I was all prepared to be like “GOSH, STACEY IT’S JUST CATALOG WORK!” However things really start to take off for her. She’s about to shoot a commercial and take a trip to LA when she decides that she’s missing too much of The Baby-Sitters Club.
I mean she *claims* that she just wants to be a kid, but she rushes back to the BSC to coach that little girl through her stilted performance of Snow White. So it seems more like she just wants to be a mom.
Ordinarily, I would be CHEERING for a young girl who decided that the entertainment industry was not for her. But instead I’m like, “Where are this child’s parents?!? Why are they not concerned that her only hobby is babysitting??”
So we watch Stacey observing the play and throwing away her own career aspirations to take care of a child that isn’t even her own, in what I assume is presumably meant to be a happy ending. And eventually, she will grow up and be part of the pay equity problem.
Very Special Lesson: I’m starting to wonder if The BSC may possess some cult-like characteristics. If there’s anything I learned from 90’s television, it’s that cults can be found in many deceptive forms.
Things start off ominously in this episode of The Baby-Sitters Club. There’s a sketchy haunted house and Claudia is being super cryptic about something. Actually, it turns out she’s failing out of middle school. Her mom’s set her up with a tutor but she’s going to have to miss out on some BSC meetings. No big deal though, she can just explain the situation to her friends.
So the baby-sitters decide to take the kids outside to investigate. Yep, that’s right, the people you trust to keep your children safe while you are at the mall are taking them on a literal witch hunt. They evacuate the woods when they find a sick looking dog and a hear strange noises coming from the general vicinity of Ms. Slade’s house.
Dawn, Jessi, and Kristy enter the house for the rescue mission. They make Mallory wait outside and watch the door. Claudia hears them poking around and tells them that Mrs. Slade is definitely not a witch. She’s a former vet who is now tutoring Claudia in biology. So now the BSC has sent a veterinarian out looking for a hurt dog and Claudia is basically like you jerks, she will stay out there all night.
Mary Anne asks Logan to babysit with her and all of the girls ooh and ah like it’s a “date,” which for them it probably is because I love The BSC but they’re not exactly the coolest bunch of middle schoolers. Kristy complains about how every boy at school is gross, but this isn’t shocking because I’m 99.99% sure that she’s in the closet.
Kristy observes this and makes a big deal about it to Mary Anne, who just like doesn’t really care. She completely trusts Logan…that is until Marci comes up to her at the skate park and says she’s looking for Logan. She says he promised to meet her there. The rest of the BSC decides to spy on Logan so they can figure out what’s really going on. But Mary Anne still trusts him and tells them all to chill.
Hm. So this is interesting. She didn’t confront him. But she also like pushed him away when he asked her if she still wanted him to babysit with her. She was all like “You go have fun at the party. I’ll be fine alone.” MARY ANNE. NO. ugh.
When she finally talks to him she realizes that he never agreed to go to the party with Marci. They’re lab partners and Marci just decided to tell everyone they were dating. Creepy. Then Logan and Mary Anne promise each other that they’ll always talk to each other if something bothers them. Omg. So freaking adorable.
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?
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.
The Very Special Blog 