Recap
The title of this episode’s kind of misleading. It’s called Dawn and the Haunted House but is
really about Dawn thinking some old woman’s a witch. Witches are not the same as ghosts, and
ghosts are who haunt things. It starts
with the girls are on their bikes, we see them go past a house that Mrs. Slade,
this older woman, lives. Dawn thinks
she’s a witch because….she’s old, I guess?
Gives off a creepy vibe? It’s not really elaborated on.
The girls get a sitting job for a new client thatlives
next-door to Mrs. Slade. Dawn and Stacey
both go on the first job, because apparently on the TV show they send two
sitters for 3 kids. While sitting, the little boy that lives there says he
thinks Mrs. Slade’s creepy. Stacey and
Dawn take this as some kind of evidence or something. Then they see a “weird” rock garden in the
woods behind her house and think it’s an animal graveyard or something.
Meanwhile, Claudia failed a test at school and her parents
are insisting she buckle down and get better, otherwise she’ll have to quit the
BSC. She doesn’t tell the rest of the
club. But her parents to get her a tutor
to help. We don’t hear who the tutor is, but it is obviously
going to turn out to be Mrs. Slade.
At the second job at the Slade’s, Mary Anne sand Stacey see
Claudia inside Mrs. Slade’s house. They
think she’s been kidnapped or something, so they come up with a plan to “save”
her. Stacey calls Mrs. Slade to say she
saw a hurt dog outside, and Mrs. Slade goes to look for it, since animals are
her thing. Then the rest of the club goes
into her house to get Claudia. Claud’s
all, “guys, she’s my tutor. She’s really nice.”
Then Dawn and everyone else feels guilty and they go to find Mrs. Slade
so she doesn’t spend all night looking for the imaginary hurt dog. They apologize and Claudia kind of insults
them when telling Mrs. Slade they thought she was a witch. And Claudia aces her science test so she gets
to stay in the club.
High/Lowlights
- These girls use “KL5” in the poster they put up for the BSC. Isn’t that a bit….dated?
- For the record the full number is KL5-3231.
- It occurred to me that it’s kind of creepy for 13-year-olds to just go to the house of someone they never met to baby-sit. It could be some pervert who just wants to lure young girls to their house. Perverts must have had some way of finding young girls before the Internet. If I had kids I wouldn’t let them sit for people I didn’t know.
- When biking at the beginning, Kristy says they shouldn’t do it because it’s creepy. They should have given Mary Anne that line, Kristy was never one to get creeped out easily.
- Claud’s house is white with blue shutters. That isn’t how I pictured it.
- At the BSC meeting the girls ask Claudia how she did on her test, and she’s all, “yeah, I did fine.” Then two minutes later someone notices she looks upset and asks if she’s sick. Seriously, girls, learn to pick up some cues. She was obviously lying about being sick. Maybe the script called for Claudia to be a better liar than the actress could pull off.
- For some reason I had thought this episode was about Dawn’s secret passage, and that she found old letters in it. I don’t know if I am thinking of another episode, or if I made it up.
- Someone really studied their BSC history in this episode. Someone asks if Mal ever had the chicken pox (I guess the kid she’s sitting for had them), and she points out she had them twice.
- The new clients want two sitters because they have a baby and two little kids but so did the Perkins and the Papadakises. They never needed two sitters. It’s obviously because they wanted the girls to be able to talk to each other (they can’t have an inner monologue like in the books), but they should come up with a better excuse.
- If the Kishi’s hate junk food why do they have a full cookie jar in their kitchen?
- Another piece of continuity with the books….Mrs. Kishi mentions she talked to Mr. Kingbridge at school, which was definitely the name of the Vice Principal in the books.
- These writers are even good with continuity on the show. They talk about the treasury being low because they just spent money on kid kits, which they totally did in the last episode. But in that episode, they had a surplus, so they should be even now, unless they overspent.
- The girls are buying supplies for a sleepover, which includes flashlights and candles to make it “spooky.” Okay, that’s weird enough. (Not the wanting spookiness, but wasting money on flashlights when your parents must have them at home). But then we have Stacey say she loves hardware stores. Which just seems so counter to everything we know about her.
- When Dawn’s talking about Mrs. Slade being creepy, she mentions a shovel. I guess she thinks she uses the shovel to dig her pet cemetery? I don’t know, but when Claudia suggests it’s for gardening, Dawn calls her dumb. Dawn does not come off very well in this episode.
- It seems like anytime Claudia got a tutor or spent extra time studying, she did well on tests. Not to sound all parent-y but she should have just done that all the time. Don’t just stop using a tutor after one test.
- Is it me, or is this episode practically the same plot as the first Little Sister book?
