Sunday, August 30, 2015

BSC TV Series Episode # 10: The Babysitters and the Boysitters

Memory Reaction           
I didn’t think I’d seen this one before, but there were two scenes that made me flashback to seeing them the first time, so I guess I must have seen the whole thing.  The first is a scene where Jackie spills milk on the table, and Pete Black proceeds to crack on egg on the table, dip bread in it the mixture, and make French toast.  It’s how I learned what ingredients go into making French toast.
The other’s a scene where Lagan and Mary Anne were studying, and Logan pulls her up to start dancing. At the time I thought they seemed older than they were supposed to in that scene.  Now, I think the actors are all clearly older than 13 so they all seem too old in every scene.
Revisited Reaction
Logan has to cancel a sitting job and all the other girls are already busy.  Alan Gray and Pete Black offer to help out with some jobs.  Kristy doesn’t like this idea at all, but the other girls convince her it will work.  They “train” the boys and let them take a couple jobs.  At first they think it goes okay, because the kids liked them, so the BSC votes to let the boys keep serving as back up.  Kristy’s the only one still against it.
Then the girls realize that Alan taught Becca and Charlotte to play poker and let them eat lots of candy.  They also find out that Pete taught Shea and Jackie Rodowski to climb trees, a skill the kids later use to climb on the roof.  So, the BSC tries to tell the boys they shouldn’t have done those things, and Alan and Pete say no one got hurt, so what’s the big deal?  They walk out of the meeting and say they’re going to start their own baby-sitters club.  They apparently follow through with this to some degree, because Stacey sees Alan and Pete sitting for Becca and Charlotte, where they’re taking the girls to see a scary movie.  Stacey also finds out that Alan and Pete are taking Becca, Charlotte, and the Rodowski boys to the Game Center on Saturday. 
Kristy thinks this is crazy, because the Game Center’s filled with video games and play areas for kids, and is always super crowded on Saturdays. The other girls think they should tell the boys it’s a bad idea, but Kristy decides they should let them do it so they learn how unprepared they are to really deal with kids.  The BSC shows up at the Game Center to watch it all go down.
Alan and Pete turn their backs on the kids to play a video game, and when they turn back the kids have disappeared. The boys run all over looking for the kids but can’t find them, probably because the kids are deliberately hiding when they see Alan or Pete.  The BSC’s watching the kids though, and see Charlotte, Becca, and Archie getting their picture taken in one of those things where you put your face in the hole over a picture of a clown (or whatever), so it looks like your head is on someone else’s body.  The BSC takes a couple of the pictures and drop them in front of Alan and Pete, so the boys see where the kids are.  They find them, but then Charlotte runs off and Becca goes to the bathroom and doesn’t come out.  At this point, the BSC shows themselves and starts helping out with the kids.  The boys admit they don’t know everything about kids.  Kristy suddenly turns very mature and tells them no one could handle the kids at the Game Center and that doing things different from her isn’t necessarily wrong.  It is so different than how she was acting all episode so it was kind of weird to see.  But I guess these always end with the BSC doing the right thing.
High/Lowlights
  • Kristy throws out a line about how Shannon Kilbourne’s out of town so that we don’t wonder why the girls aren’t calling her when they’re so backed up.
  • While training Alan and Pete, the BSC makes them practice diapering a doll and feeding a baby (Mallory role playing). Which seems kind of unnecessary, considering the jobs they had lined up were for older kids.
  • At the beginning, it seems like Pete’s a bigger foil/adversary with Kristy than Alan, which is definitely not the case in the books.  Pete always seemed like the nice one. But Alan gets more screen time at the end, so maybe that was just to balance out their time.
  • Charlotte and Becca make Alan dress up like a baby, and he lets them.  Which isn’t something you’d expect based on what you hear about him in the books.
  • Wow, we see all three Rodowski boys in this episode.  I guess they had a budget increase or something.
  • Becca and Charlotte tell Stacey they want to play poker instead of go fish.  When Stacey starts asking how to play, Becca and Charlotte look at each other like it’s an impossible task and suggest doing something else.  I guess they thought she wasn’t smart enough?
  • I actually don’t think it’s bad to teach kids to play poker, I learned how to play when I was little. As long as they’re not really gambling or anything.  But what is weird is that Charlotte and Becca both have acquired visors to look like dealers or something.  Maybe Alan has them in his Kid Kit?
  • Jackie and Shea climb onto the roof while Kristy’s sitting for them, and tell Kristy that Pete taught them how to do it.  Pete says he only taught them how to climb a tree and didn’t leave them alone while they were doing it.  I’m on his side here, isn’t Pete’s fault the boys got it in their heads to climb onto the roof. This is Jackie we’re talking about.
  • What’s weird is that Jackie and Shea use a rope to climb on the roof.  So…do the Rodowskis’ just have a rope hanging down from their roof? Because if they boys could have climbed up to hang the rope, they wouldn’t have needed the rope in the first place.
  • Would Dr. Johanssen really hire Alan and Pete instead of the BSC after one job with them?
  •  The BSC drops these pictures in from of Alan and Pete, and the boys see the kids are by the clowns.  They assume the kids are the ones who dropped the pictures.  But if the kids dropped them wouldn’t that have meant the kids had left the clown area?
  • Alan brings some of the kids to the snack bar and asks what they want.  Becca says ice cream, Archie says hot dogs, and Charlotte says popcorn.  So Alan buys three of each.  Which seems to be a bit much….. why not just give each of them the one thing they asked for? But anyway,  it doesn’t matter because then Becca has to go to the bathroom, and Alan leaves all the food on a table while he walks off to take her.  So wasteful.
  • At the beginning, the BSC’s practicing for field day, an upcoming event at school.  Alan and Pete laugh at them for falling, which leads to Kristy and Pete making a bet about who will win.  The episode ends at field day, but we don’t see who wins.  It’s kind of annoying.  It actually looks like Kristy ends up partnering with Alan, so maybe it’s a moot point.  Maybe that was supposed to show they all matured, but they had reaffirmed the bet towards the end of the episode.  It made kind of a weird transition.
  • Isn’t it kind of weird to refer to Alan and Pete as the “boysitters” in the title of the episode?  If “babysitters” describes how the girls watch little kids, “boysitters” should be people who watch boys.  At least when used in the same sentence. 


Sunday, August 9, 2015

BSC TV Series Episode # 9: Jessi and the Mystery of the Stolen Secrets

Memory Reaction
All I remember from this is how we find out Matt Braddock’s learning to lip read.  After I saw this episode, I kept waiting for them to reference this in one of the books and I don’t think they ever did.  I guess book to TV continuity is easier for them than TV to book continuity.  Ann M. Martin and her ghostwriters probably never watched the series, while I’m sure the TV writers familiarized themselves with the books.
Revisited Reaction
At the beginning, the whole BSC’s at a Krushers’ practice helping out.  We find out that Charlotte has a crush on Buddy Barret and has only told Stacey about it.  But then later, Jackie Rodowski starts teasing her about it.  Charlotte gets mad at Stacey for telling people, even though Stacey swears she didn’t.
Later, Jessi’s sitting for Matt Braddock at her house when she gets a call from Mrs. Masters in Hollywood.  Derek’s going to be in town for the weekend and needs a sitter, but it needs to be kept a secret so no reporters show up.  But at the sitting job, of course reporters show up and try and take pictures of Derek.  Mrs. Masters blames Jessi for this and threatens not to use the club again.
The BSC decides that since none of them told either secret, someone must be reading the BSC notebook, where both Charlotte’s crush and the Derek thing were mentioned.  The girls identify three kids that had an opportunity to read it recently – Vanessa, Karen, and Jackie.  They try and set up each of them with a chance to read the notebook again to see if they snoop.  Vanessa doesn’t look and criticizes Mallory and Jessi for acting silly in the library (trying to set her up).  Karen doesn’t look either, and tells Kristy and Dawn they should have a lock on the book if it’s so private.  Jackie doesn’t look, but wants to when he finds out the BSC has a book where they write about him.  He wants to see what they said about him. Jackie tells all the other kids and they also get upset about the sitters writing about them behind their backs.
When the kids try and confront Jessi and Dawn about the notebook, Matt Braddock’s there.  Jessi realizes that he’s following the conversation even though people had forgotten to sign, which is when we find out he’s learning to lip-read.  He was nearby when Stacey and Charlotte were talking about Buddy and was there when Jessi was on the phone with Mrs. Masters.  He didn’t know that these things were secrets and that people would be upset if he repeated them.  He mentioned Charlotte liking Buddy to some other kids and told his uncle (a reporter) about Derek. Jessi talks to him about this and how he needs to be careful.  And Dawn manages to calm the rest of the kids down by comparing the club notebook to doctors’ or teachers’ records.  So all is well.
High/Lowlights
  • At the Krushers’ practice, we see all the kids wearing purple shirts with white letters of the team name.  I know in the books they wore white with black letters.  I can’t imagine all the boys being okay with purple.
  • Kristy does have red letters on her shirt, which matches the books, but the fact that it’s on purple make it almost impossible to read.
  • I like that they remembered Jessi had the special relationship with Derek, and that’s why Mrs. Masters called her directly.  Sometimes they forgot things like that in the books so that they could feature certain characters.  It used to really annoy me.
  • It seems kind of weird that the Masterses would come all the way from California for a weekend and then not let Derek leave the house the whole time. 
  • Derek comes off nerdy than I remember in the books.  Wasn’t there a whole thing because his character wore glasses but he didn’t and it surprised everyone? But he has glasses on here.  And I’m not saying glasses makes a person nerdy, the kid just seems nerdy.
  • Dawn says that Karen had access to the notebook when she (Dawn) went to get ice cream at a Krusher’s game.  Since when does Dawn eat ice cream?  Maybe she was getting it for Karen, but then wouldn’t Karen have gone with her?  What kind of sitter leaves the sittee alone like that anyway?
  • I don’t know why the girls didn’t just ask Jackie who told him about Charlotte’s crush.  It would have been much easier than spy stuff.
  • This show must have a really small budget.  Whenever they have the girls on a sitting job for a kid with siblings, there is just one kid there with a quick explanation that the others are somewhere else.  We also hardly see any adults. 
  • There’s an article in the town paper about Derek being in town, with the subheading , “Baby-sitter denies press access.”  It’s kind of hilarious. Like….did the paper call Jessi and get a comment from her about that? Also, the paper would know she didn’t tip them off, and even if they don’t want to reveal their source it seems silly for them to talk about how they got access. 
  • Charlotte and Stacey have a heart to heart where Stacey apologizes about the Buddy thing getting out.  She says she wrote about it in the club notebook, and Charlotte’s pissed because she only wanted Stacey to know, not the rest of the club.  But she forgives Stacey.
  • Matt claims he didn’t know Charlotte would get upset if he told people she had a crush on Buddy.  Now….really? I think it’s completely realistic for a little kid to spread gossip like that, but did he really not realize people would tease her? And did he really see every word of Jessi’s conversation with Mrs. Masters EXCEPT the part where she said it was secret? And why was he keeping the lip reading a secret anyway? Jessi was probably a little too forgiving of him there.
  • The actress playing Jessi is the only one of the main girls I remember seeing in something else.  She was Clarissa’s friend in an episode or two of Clarissa Explains It All, which I also totally loved as a kid.
  • The title of this episode makes me realize that Mallory’s the only girl in the club to not get an episode with her name in it.  Poor Mallory.