Don't you love that I haven't written on this thing in more than a year and The Baby-Sitters Club is what brings me back 😅? I just unabashedly love this show. Just in general-- and this was true of Season One, as well-- I love how the series is faithful to the spirit of the books and uses individual books as the inspiration for specific episodes, but doesn't treat the books as gospel. With that in mind, we get roommate problems between Mary Anne and Dawn, but they happen when Mary Anne and her dad are just staying with the Shafers for a week instead of after they become stepsisters, and we get Derek Masters, the child star who gets Jessi thinking about giving up ballet, as an online sensation rather than as a TV actor, among other changes.
One especially well-done episode was the one where Mimi dies. As a kid, I remember putting reading off that book for a really long time because I knew it would be sad. The episode was obviously also sad, but really well-done. Claudia spends most of the episode trying to distract herself from her grief. Mary Anne is the one who finally gets through to her, reminding her of a time when she broke a bone, and how if she had just ignored it, it would have only gotten worse, but since she dealt with it and got help, it healed correctly. She says that grief is the same, and she has to face and deal with her pain in order to get through it. I thought that was a really good way of putting it. Also, how weird was it when Karen told Claudia that Mimi and Old Ben Brewer were together in the afterlife like literally the day after Mimi dies? And literally no one tells Karen that was inappropriate. To an extent, I think it's great that the Thomas/Brewer family lets Karen be weird, but wow. Finally, when Janine announced that she was in love with Ashley, I literally blurted out, "Oh, shit!" I did NOT see that coming, I guess because it didn't happen in the books (Ashley Wyeth was a character, but she was an artist who briefly distracts Claudia from the Baby-Sitters Club). But it was pretty awesome.
I also was fairly impressed with Watson's little speech about how the Thomas kids' dad is a piece of shit (obviously he didn't use that kind of language, but you know) and that they all needed to just stop letting him disappoint them and let him (Watson) be their real dad. I also liked how Dawn and Mary Anne jumped in to back him up, with Dawn saying that even though her parents are divorced and she doesn't get to see her dad much, he is NOT absent in the way that Kristy's dad is. I don't really remember having strong opinions on Watson one way or another in the series, but I appreciate that the show is portraying him as a big dork who tries too hard but a really, really good guy.
I also really appreciate Kristy on the show, and I like that the other girls seem to really appreciate Kristy, too. There is one episode where Kristy is sick and Dawn, as Alternate Officer, takes over; Dawn has a lot of good ideas, but no real plan to execute them. Kristy comes back and is very quickly and efficiently like, "Great ideas, Dawn. Here's how we're going to implement them." I appreciate that she didn't take glee in the fact that things were kind of chaotic without her or shoot down Dawn's ideas, but actually saw the good in them and figured out how to make them work. Along with that, I also like how even though sometimes the girls disagree or get annoyed with each other, they are fundamentally good friends who accept each other for who they are. Their families, for the most part, are like that, too. There is one episode where Stacey asks them to help with a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and Kristy firmly says she'll participate, but will NOT wear a dress; they're all just like, "Yeah, cool." In the Valentine's Day episode, Karen asks Kristy if anyone gave her a flower for Valentine's Day, and Kristy's just like, "No, thank God"; Karen's just like, "Hmm. Cool, now let's talk about how our house is haunted," or whatever. They all know when to call each other out or challenge each other, but they don't make A Thing out of every little thing.
The stuff with Mary Anne and Logan's relationship was kind of weird. The two become a couple and Mary Anne is overwhelmed with how much things change; they get invited to sit in the "couples lounge" at lunch, Logan gets kind of peer pressured into taking Mary Anne on a really fancy date for Valentine's Day, and Mary Anne's friends stop inviting her to some things because they assume she'd rather hang out with him. Mary Anne's dad eventually has a talk with her and tells her that she and Logan don't have to be a couple, they can just be friends who like each other, which is good advice, I guess, but I feel like another option was that they could still be a couple, just not LIKE THAT. That's basically what they wind up doing, but junior high relationships weren't really like that anyway, were they? Hmm.
I also really appreciated how Jessi's mom was just like, "Oh, you are NOT giving up ballet just because you didn't get the lead in one show." I think what happened there was Jessi went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond, which happens to everyone sooner or later, and it's probably good that Jessi got that experience out of the way so young.
Finally, I'm sure I mentioned this in my first season review, but how brilliant was it of them to cast Alicia Silverstone as Kristy's mom? She was like ICONIC to us 90s teens.
Anyway, can't wait for season three! Great job, show!
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