netflix BSc

I could tell from the preview article and teaser that this would be a disastrous disappointment sullying--nay, stealing the good BSC name. Trying to piggyback on its success. One too many troubling keywords promised this, and the trailer confirmed it beyond a doubt. Ooh, you mentioned Etsy. How cool and hip. (Never mind that you'd eBay such an item.) Can't have a rad transparent phone (same one my family once had in the living room) without remarking that it's a couple decades old? There is less than no reason not to keep the club beginning in the 80s-90s. A "modern update" is the very last thing anybody needs--and most often a surefire way to wreck a good thing. Nothing about the series requires alteration or reworking before being brought directly to life. It's all right there. Stoneybrook and the BSC girls are entirely, realistically, timelessly relatable just as they are. There is no need whatsoever to even refer to a "landline"--just show it in action and it couldn't be more obvious even to a young viewer whose family SOMEHOW (don't ask me how) doesn't have one anymore, and who SOMEHOW inconceivably/impossibly hasn't yet seen or heard about them SOMEWHERE. It's not remotely an "old-timey" phone; it's a regular one, just more awesome. Same goes for VCRs and every other form of technology which was previously standard. How could they squander a brilliant, joyous opportunity to craft a perfect and painfully-needed-by-all time machine? You’re really gonna ruin it by starting in the present? Get bent.

And then, the casting. Ideally you'd get talented actors who look as much as possible like the book-cover images and dress them as closely as possible. Kristy, Claudia, and Stacey are...em, largely fine. Dawn and Mary Anne are not present. At least, not Schafer and Spier. You don't fundamentally change characters' traits for no reason, including the physical. Dawn is a blonde California girl with a straight father. (The real one can be confused with Stacey, this one with Claudia. Also, straight is "the default" for a painfully obvious reason.) Mary Anne is brunette while JESSI RAMSEY is black. Fully. That's the point. She and Mallory join the club 14 books in. The Ramsays are fairly unique in Stoneybrook and encounter some mild racism, but ultimately it's all good. (We didn't even see such a family in my 99%-white hometown until well after I'd aged out of the books; Stoneybrook MS had six more black students than mine.) Now what possesses you to turn your "Mary Anne" into Jessi? Especially since the latter does turn up near the end, and the pair of juniors is recruited. One can only assume they simply wanted another token or two to score points worth less than the Whose Line ones. But accuracy matters. The girls ARE much more than "diverse" enough in the ways that truly count. (And the familial structures alone are much more so than most irl ones.) Racially/ethnically (& otherwise) diverse friend/peer groups or communities are neither reality for many, nor necessary in every series or film. Diversity in itself is a neutral thing anyway. Nothing wrong with a group like this; it's in no way an improvement, merely a little different...but it's not the BSC. Hodges Soileau literally showed you some 260+ times what to look for in casting, and you just had to be obstinate purely for the sake of it.

No bonus points for all the true-to-the-books stuff; ALL of it should've gone without saying. Deduct even more for Silverstone. Watch the 1990 series--which will forever be the definitive TV version unless a more faithful one comes along--and the 1995 film. Read the books (all of them!) if you haven't. Listen to The Baby-Sitters Club Club if you have and want to relive it all with added insight and heightened awareness. Hopefully they'll be able to make this program more interesting before finishing the Friends Forevers. (At which point I aim to check out the Little Sisters, hoping those will conclude with the dozen Kids in Ms. Colman's Class.)

The books involve all kinds of different people with various issues, without being too heavy-handed and blatantly, patronizingly pandering. An eye-rolling, unidimensional checklist of forced, shoehorned, ham-fisted "woke topics" is simply that--as opposed to the relatably engaging and appealing junior-fiction series we know and love. They veered from that to "tool for projection and preaching on our current obsessions." Fine, but come up with your own characters then. Don't try to sucker fans into hearing you hijack beloved characters, or people using their names, to yammer on some more through them. That's what this pseudo-BSC is--listening to adults who should write their political views on a personal blogspot rather than sticking them in these adolescent characters whose words they are not. It came out as way more "sjw" fantasy than plausible, slice-of-life BSC. Really, is this some sort of competition? So much is inauthentic. The contemporary references and "edgy" dialog added nothing. The unsolved phantom phone-caller mystery proved thoroughly pointless. #wtf Such things as Kristy's feminism, unobjectionable in the books, feel instantly repellent here (that F-word has been so grossly corrupted in recent times.)
     Camp Mohawk becoming Camp Moosehead isn't much to grumble at, but it is a right shame that Native American words are apparently taboo all of a sudden. Even at her worst Dawn was never THIS insufferably irritating. Now let's cram a bunch of gay interracial trans(gender? vestite?) edits into these ten episodes. Inclusion and representation are all well and good, but wow, the overkill! Blew their virtue signal right out. Spread over hundreds of books, perhaps it could've felt more natural. Oh, and Mrs. Johanssen has a husband. Read Sweet Pete's character bible/Ann's guidebook. 
Don't replace or revise characters. 
The books dealt with "serious issues" plenty well enough.

What's commendable? There are certainly examples of good humor, lines, scenes, characterization, acting. Karen and Andrew are almost as delightful, precocious, and funny as in the Little Sister books. The Pikes, likewise. Watson is...surprising. Not THE Watson, to be sure, of course, but I must admit that this version is very likable in his own right. Janine was about 98% awesome, ignoring her final line. Their "Morbidda Destiny" was kinda cool (especially with her little meeting circle there), and hopefully hasn't spoiled the very-AU Karen's illusion too early. Witchiness is rad. ;] "Kristy-getting-the-curse" was fine, but probably would've had some more impact if this were the actual Baby-Sitters Club. You meet Laine--aiight. The camp situation resolved nicely and it ended on a semi-recreation of the second Super Special cover--nice touch.

The BSC means a lot to me. My identification with Mallory Pike was often shockingly strong. (In the end, it's probably for the best that this series didn't go past her & Jessi's induction. The blown-out hair at both Sea City & camp was curious. At least they got the redheadedness. She also played over-the-top at first with the "omg look I am a mature almost-adult-ish girl, not a dumb baby, plz notice and make me one of you" kinda thing. Almost would've preferred Best Sitter to have been omitted, although her busting out with "Into the Woods" at the same moment I did was literally the best and most outrageously appropriate part of the entire ten episodes, hands down. So there's that.) Mal generally rocks & rules the hardest in the most ways. Of course everyone had times where you'd wanna knock 'em upside the head or when they'd act uncharacteristically/confusingly, but still, overall easiest pick ever. I've always identified as her, appearance-wise and otherwise, though I'm simultaneously some personality combo of the whole book crew. Couple fair-sized scoops of Kristy in there, cool lil' dollops of Dawn & Claud added, etc. An avid reader from an early age, I collected the series (including the Little Sisters) alongside Goosebumps, The Boxcar Children, some Sweet Valley (mainly the "Kids" and "Twins," a couple SVUs, etc.)--plus numerous smaller and/or younger ones. Each week at PathMark, a new book with that glorious cover art. What I wouldn't do for a time machine. 

Anyway, my NJ town is much like Stoneybrook (a thoroughly lovely place to grow up), and I was able to relate well to the series, despite the girls supposedly being much too unrealistically young for their supposed activities (at least they looked considerably older on those dreamy covers.) Exaggeration, idealism and wish fulfillment, particularly as fantasized by adolescent girls, very frequently overrode realism. It's larger than life while still feeling plausible enough to remain grounded--and overall many times more believable than, say, the teen soap opera saga of Sweet Valley. ;p Heck, my and my brothers' only real babysitters were my grandma and uncle (and I only ever babysat my brothers), yet nonetheless I could easily place myself in the girls' shoes even where things were matched up more to a dream-life than real-life. I'm an eternal kid myself, but with an exception, don't even really like children--would my sitting style be a little more Vicky from Fairly Oddparents, perhaps? ;p Well, anyway...the odd fixation on sitting and kids was simply a framework--a thread, a theme, a through-line for the series to give it a more unique title and identity, as opposed to just "Seven Besties" or whatever. They were also a club that was a business. So, yeah... Films/series about adolescents and young adults always seem to erroneously think that that period is consumed by crushes and dating—which IS NOT my (crystal-clear-as-day) recollection AT ALL. (Further, I feel as if I’ve never even left that period.) At least with the BSC, testes take a backseat to besties. And babies.x-p

Turned out this series wasn't without its merits, but a perfect screen treatment of the actual books and their characters would be priceless.

Read the graphic novels at the library...cute enough, but a cartoony/non-serious little depiction. See the "Logan Likes Mary Anne" cover now, though, and...black Logan? Yeah, no. Sorry not sorry. Hate to break it to ya, but Logan is white. Mary Anne is white. There's nothing wrong with being white. Racially and ethnically homogeneous places, YOU ARE FUCKING VALID AF. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.