It's iconic.
June 23, 2020 10:16 PM   Subscribe

 
I had one of those phones in highschool.
posted by PennD at 10:46 PM on June 23, 2020 [4 favorites]


Ahhhhhhh I am so excited!!!!!!!

"The Etsy shop I bought it from..." That did it for me. Self aware. Love it.
posted by Kitchen Witch at 10:50 PM on June 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


I can’t wait for the New York special!
posted by sixswitch at 10:51 PM on June 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


I'm so excited about how much less white this is than the books? It always felt so weird to me as a kid in southern California that Dawn the exotic, avocado-obsessed Californian was...just another blonde like Stacey. And for shy dorky Mary Anne (I was always Mary Anne when my friends and I played BSC, I say that with total love) to also be a babysitter of color was a delightful surprise.

My oldest is just starting second grade and we were all SO OBSESSED with the Babysitter's Club in second grade. I hope this is something I'll want to share with her.
posted by potrzebie at 12:40 AM on June 24, 2020 [15 favorites]


Oh wow! I've been diving into Babysitters' Club nostalgia lately thanks to my friend's project on teaching yourself computational text analysis using the Babysitters' Club books. One thing I didn't realise until I started poking around in what she was doing is that Australia/NZ seem not to have actually ever got all the books. At least, all the "complete sets" that my friends had when I was a kid were missing a lot of books that the Americans are familiar with. Other friends of mine from this side of the world say the same thing.

I am excited for the Netflix series. The kids seem so YOUNG though. When I read the books as a kid, the characters were older than me, and I guess I continued to think of them that way even when I got older (presumably stopping some time in my mid teens when I no longer really thought about them at all).
posted by lollusc at 12:56 AM on June 24, 2020 [6 favorites]


I'll confess I'm only familiar with the Telgemeier/Galligan adaptations, but this looks really nice! It also seems to be adapting the plots of a whole bunch of books into a single narrative, so I wish it luck.
posted by one for the books at 1:33 AM on June 24, 2020


Cher Horowitz now has kids?
posted by greenhornet at 1:49 AM on June 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


This is where I confess that this trailer made me realize, just now, that when I’ve heard Babysitter’s Club in the past I have been thinking of the Boxcar Children. Reality makes much more sense.
posted by hototogisu at 2:30 AM on June 24, 2020 [5 favorites]


I'm so excited about how much less white this is than the books?

Well, the books are set in Connecticut....(I agree this casting is good, though.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:54 AM on June 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


Am I misremembering, or is Watson bald in the books? I was hoping Cher Horowitz was going to play Dawn’s mom, but this works.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:20 AM on June 24, 2020


Well, the books are set in Connecticut....

There's a scene in the book that introduces Jessi, one of the younger members (who is Black) where she comes over to her friend Mallory's house and one of Mallory's siblings assumes she's there to clean, because the only Black people that come over to the house are the cleaners. That scene really stuck with me as a kid. I think most of the books I read at the time were very much on the we-don't-see-color-it's-not-polite spectrum and I remember being struck by how frank BSC was about the Connecticut suburb they live in being mostly white and Jessi struggling with that. I don't really know how well the books dealt with race-related issues overall, though...I think there was a fair amount of "kindness can solve any problems!" type of stuff, probably typical for the time period.

Anyway, I sure loved these books as a kid and the adaptation looks great.
posted by cpatterson at 5:23 AM on June 24, 2020 [14 favorites]


I AM SO EXCITE for this. I got into the series in middle school because I *really* wanted Sweet Valley High books but my older cousin thought they were too old for me and suggested these instead. And I remember being so excited that there was an Asian! girl as a main character!

Okay maybe I never ever want to read the words “beautiful almond shaped eyes” ever again, and ok her grandma Mimi was a bit of a stereotype, and so was her sister Janine I guess (although she got a lot more depth as the series went on) but still, Asian!!

Does anyone remember the blog “What Claudia Wore”? I’m sad that it’s no longer running and all the images are broken too. :(

The trailer gives me hope that they put in some effort in good faith to modernise it. They don’t wear shoes in Claudia’s room! Asian!!
posted by like_neon at 6:18 AM on June 24, 2020 [16 favorites]


There's also Keep Out, Claudia! about Claudia's experience with a racist family.

From Ann Martin's letter: The idea for Keep Out, Claudia! was suggested to me by Olivia Ford, the daughter of a publishing colleague. Olivia’s idea was for a book about prejudice and racism that centered around Claudia and the Kishis. Racism had been a topic in a number of Jessi’s books, and Olivia felt that it would be realistic if one of the other characters in the series faced this problem, too.

Looking back, I think when I was a kid I thought of 13 as way older, because now they all look like they're practically still babies. Since when do 11 year olds get to baby-sit instead of still being taken care of? All that boy-craziness seems a bit ridiculous now. lol
posted by toastyk at 7:48 AM on June 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


Who puts a crib right to a heater return vent? /pedant
posted by sacrifix at 8:27 AM on June 24, 2020


The poster is *chef's kiss* as well.

In addition to What Were 80s Parents Thinking When They Hired 11yo Me to Babysit? I hope we also get answers to more universe-specific questions like When Will Kristy Come Out Her Crush on Bart Was Never Believable and Mary Ann's Dad: VC Andrews-Level Creepy or Just Desperately In Need of Grief Counseling?
posted by Flannery Culp at 9:32 AM on June 24, 2020 [9 favorites]


"Talking to people I don't know makes my stomach fall out of my nose."

I have never read a Baby-sitters Club book (19-year-old males were not really in the target demographic when the series started hitting shelves), but that one line in the trailer make me feel very seen.
posted by hanov3r at 10:32 AM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


The poster is *chef's kiss* as well.

OMG, it's the original cover of Kristy's Great Idea, except modified to add Dawn, who wasn't a member yet in the first few books (also, Kristy didn't really look like Kristy yet -- I guess the original artist took a little while to figure her out?).
posted by naoko at 11:11 AM on June 24, 2020 [6 favorites]


My 11 year old is churning through the series in original paperback she found in my SILs childhood bedroom. She said “sometimes they are pretty bad but still better than being bored”. The movie looks great!
posted by gryphonlover at 11:12 AM on June 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


When Will Kristy Come Out Her Crush on Bart Was Never Believable

They HAVE to make one of them queer, so help me god if they don't ...

I know Kristy is the popular choice, but I also think Claudia is very queer with her oddball/cool Definitely Not for Straight Men (Boys) style and her black-sheep-ness (and of course they could BOTH be queer, it's possible to have more than one queer person in a social group on a TV show!). Also, Ann M Martin is a lesbian (something that would have been great for baby-queer me to know when I was obsessed with these books in 1987, oh well) so I have to believe all the queer coding was intentional or at least very authentic.

It's wild to me that I started babysitting when I was 11. I took a class when I was in fifth grade and then babysat almost every weekend from sixth grade through ninth or tenth grade. By my junior year of high school I was actually viewed in my community as having effectively aged out of the babysitting market. (The line was "oh, around that age we know your social life takes over" but I suspect it was also about the risk of older teenage girls bringing boys over and raiding liquor cabinets.)
posted by lunasol at 11:23 AM on June 24, 2020 [4 favorites]


Oh hey, I think some of you are thinking this is a movie. It is a TV show, which means they will do multiple plotlines - I counted at least 4 already - Kristy's Great Idea, Kristy's Big Day, Boy-Crazy Stacey, one of the camp Super Specials, etc...

Also, Alicia Silverstone is playing Kristy's mom.
posted by toastyk at 12:12 PM on June 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


I think I could be one of the moms calling BSC now, but I am stoked for this! And this looks way better than the BSC tv show that they did in the early 90s. Linked to the theme song because I've had this stuck in my head ever since I saw this post. I also have a soft spot for the BSC movie and I welcome more BSC media in my life. Somewhere in the garage of my parents, there is a box full of BSC books waiting to be reclaimed by me.

Kid me loved Claudia Kishi since she was the only Asian girl I could really identify with since I couldn't really find any other Asian girl characters in books that spoke to me. TV, at least, I had Shelby Woo for two seasons so that was cool. I wonder if there could be a chance of a reboot? Ahem Nickelodeon or Netflix? Heh, I recall a time in which I tried to dress like Claudia, but not having an artistic eye or style, the results were...not great. Fortunately, no photographic evidence exists.
posted by later, paladudes at 7:42 PM on June 24, 2020


The poster is *chef's kiss* as well.

AHHHHH the poster is giving me so many feeeeeelings!

- Not one but THREE POC. I hadn't really clocked in the trailer that it was Dawn and she was no longer the "blonde blue eyed Cali babe" as written in the books, but she still looks very plausibly Californian.
- Just as in the original books, I am devouring their outfits and I have to say it all seems on point. Stacey still gives me Big City girl vibes with her leopard leggings and biker jacket and chelsea boots. Dawn with her camo jacket and red pants feels very Cali casual to me. Kristy gets her baseball cap, yes yes yes. Mary Ann, conservative as true to her home life but still pretty cute with the sneakers! And Claudia... *mic drop*.
- My only niggle is they are wearing shoes (and shoes on the BED *clutches chest*) and I was promised no shoes in Claudia's asian household. But Claudia is rocking some fierce gold boots, which I bet she snagged at some second hand shop and then spray painted them herself. I am torn.
posted by like_neon at 1:35 AM on June 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


So who's gonna set up the Fanfare posts. Someone is gonna set up the Fanfare posts right? Is it me? Do I need to set up a reminder to make Fanfare posts?

I just informed my husband that we are consuming this as soon as it is released. He proceeded to ask some very dumb questions like:

Is this a kid's show? I don't care.

No, I mean, who is it aimed for? ME
posted by like_neon at 1:38 AM on June 25, 2020 [9 favorites]


My kids are 7 and 8 and LOVE the graphic novel adaptations of BSC. We were lucky enough to have checked out a whole bunch from the library just before the world closed down, so they are well versed in the plots of books 1 (Kristy's Great Idea) through 7 (Boy-Crazy Stacey). This looks like it'll be really great - the kids look like kids, there's good POC representation, I could see snippets of at least three of the books they already know. I really hope they love it.
posted by SeedStitch at 6:17 AM on June 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Ok, I think this is going to make us all cry. What we're going to look forward to:

There are, however, some pointed updates to the canon. Dawn, for one, is no longer a blond flower child but a Latina budding activist who attends new moon “sharemonies” with her crystal-loving mother (Jessica Elaina Eason). Mary-Anne learns to use her voice when her new babysitting charge, a young transgender girl, goes to the hospital only to have her harried doctors carelessly misgender her. (The way in which Mary-Anne comes to understand who she is and immediately goes to bat for her simply because comforting a child is the right thing to do makes it one of the season’s best episodes.) And Claudia —who, when Martin first introduced her, was an instantly iconic Japanese American character at a time when vanishingly few existed in young adult literature — has to contend with the fact that her beloved grandmother Mimi (Takayo Fischer) has been quietly carrying the trauma of being in an internment camp since she was a child. Each actor, a young teen herself, carries each storyline with dual innocence and gravitas, a deceptively tricky task.


posted by toastyk at 2:36 PM on June 29, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh, Mimi. Who's cutting onions in here?

Has anyone tried Netflix Watch Party with a group? This might warrant a virtual meetup.
posted by Flannery Culp at 2:42 PM on June 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


Considering the great job Netflix did with "Anne with an E", I'm excited for this.

And yeah, they're sooo young!
posted by luckynerd at 6:04 PM on June 29, 2020


Ok, I think this is going to make us all cry. What we're going to look forward to:

There are, however, some pointed updates to the canon...


I am speechless and grinning from ear to ear. It's like Teen Vogue coming at us with police divestment toolkits for teens.

I did not expect this evolution for our future generation and I AM HERE FOR IT.
posted by like_neon at 2:17 AM on June 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


I started a Fanfare post.
posted by toastyk at 7:14 AM on July 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I just finished it last night and came in to make the Fanfare but yay it's been done, thanks!
posted by like_neon at 1:43 AM on July 6, 2020


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