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.
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.
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.
The Very Special Blog 