BSC TV Series Episode # 6: Claudia and the Missing Jewels

Memory Reaction

This episode has a special place in my memory.  I think I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid I had a BSC-themed birthday party.  One of the games we played was this BSC version of those mystery games where everyone plays a part and then tries to guess the killer (or in this case thief).  My mom used the “mystery” in this video as a set up for it and wrote a whole script for us to act out.  So that it would be fair, she changed the person who took the earrings.   We acted out a bunch of scenes, guessed who did it, then read the conclusion.  We even gave out sunglasses to my friends so they could wear them to match the “disguises” the girls wore in the video.

Revisited Reaction

Claudia’s selling some jewelry she made at a craft show/flea market.  A woman who owns a store shows up and says she wants to buy a bunch to sell in her store.  She gives Claudia a $50 down payment for the order of 6 earrings. Claudia brings the finished earrings to Kristy’s house when she has a sitting job for Karen. Kristy’s around later and they look at the earrings with Karen, then they leave them in a box on Kristy’s dresser.  A couple days later the girls are ready to bring the earrings to Miss Olga (the store owner), when they find the box empty.  Rather than ask the other people in the house who was messing with her stuff, Kristy does the logical thing….she calls a BSC meeting.

Kristy says that the only people around when she left the earrings in the box were Karen and Julie. Julie is some kind of maid that Kristy’s family has hired to help out.  Kristy hates her for no real reason that I can see.  But we did see Julie looking at the earrings when she was putting away laundry in Kristy’s room, so we are clearly supposed to suspect her.  Anyway, the girls follow Julie around town all day, and eventually see that she’s wearing Claudia’s earrings.  At home, Kristy wants to confront Julie, but Karen tells her she’s gone for the day.  Then Karen tells Kristy she wants to show her a “treasure tree.”  Kristy’s annoyed and says she doesn’t have time for that.  Karen looks sad.  I actually feel bad for her, even if she’s really annoying in this episode.  Kristy snaps at her a lot.

Eventually, Kristy does confront Julie who tells her that Karen gave her the earrings for her birthday.  When Kristy talks to Karen, Karen tells her she was going to give them back and tried to tell Kristy, but she kept ignoring her.  Kristy apologizes for not having time for her, but does tell her how wrong it was to take things.  Karen then brings Kristy to her treasure tree and returns the rest of the earrings.  Later Kristy and the rest of the BSC throw Julie a birthday party to make up for accusing her of being a thief.

High/Lowlights

• When they are setting Claudia’s table up at the flea market, I was admiring how pretty the top was.  It had this nice star pattern on it.  And then they just cover it up with two different table clothes.  Such a waste.

• Claudia’s earrings are kind of ugly, but I guess they might have been fashionable in the early 1990s.

• Miss Olga describes a “village shop” where she wants to sell the earrings.  That seems like a weird thing to say if the shop is just in Stoneybrook.

• I don’t totally get what Julie’s job is supposed to be.  Apparently they still need a baby-sitter when she’s in the house, so she’s not a nanny.  Kristy also tells us she doesn’t cook.  We only see her do laundry, but I guess she’s some kind of maid?

• Miss Olga gives Claudia a $50 down payment without discussing actual total cost.  That seems unprofessional.

• The girls are at Claudia’s and Kristy answers the phone “Baby-Sitters Club.”  Then later she calls the meeting to order. Why answer the phone like that if it wasn’t 5:30 yet?

• We see the outside of Kristy’s house. It definitely looks big, but I wouldn’t call it a mansion.  Definitely not like I pictured it.

• It’s really weird that so many scenes take place in Kristy’s house and the only other people we see are Karen and Julie.  Ten people live in that place. This show clearly had a low budget.

• Kristy snaps at Karen because Karen’s being loud when Kristy’s doing homework.  Karen explains to Julie that Kristy’s in a bad mood and thinks she talks too much.  Julie’s all, I don’t believe in bad moods and there’s nothing wrong with talking if you have something to say.  Now, I get that she wanted Karen to feel better, but how do you not believe in bad moods? People have different moods, some of them are going to be bad.  And maybe tell Karen it’s okay to talk, but maybe consider your surroundings.

• I really like that they have Karen wearing pink glasses, because that’s a very specific thing I remember from the Little Sister books.

• Claudia does let Karen try on a pair of earrings.  So…are these clip-ons? Or does Karen have pierced ears?  If they are clip-ons, I am surprised someone would want to sell them in a store.   And I’m surprised if Karen has pierced ears, because even though I had pierced ears at her age, the BSC always acted like you needed to be really old to do that.

• Claudia’s baby-sitting for Karen.  Kristy’s home, but had to do a book report and couldn’t sit.  Claudia and Karen are sitting on a bed paying Go Fish, in what I assumed was Karen’s room.  But when Kristy shows up later we see that it’s her room.  So, why would Claudia and Karen be hanging out in Kristy’s room without her?  There’s a zillion other rooms in that house.

• Kristy makes a point of saying Julie and Karen were the only ones in the house the last time she saw the earrings.  But since this was several days before she noticed they were gone, I’m not sure why that matters.

• There’s this weird moment where Jessi and Mallory check out this girl walking past them.  They are talking on a pay phone in their lovely sunglasses disguise.  This girl walks by and they both pull off their glasses to gawk at her.  I feel like I must be missing something.

• Mary Anne, Dawn, and Stacey are following Julie, and decide to “shoot” to see who has to get close to her for something.  I was wondering how they did that with three people, but apparently there is a way to do that.  I also never knew there was a name for that “game,” but Wikipedia tells me it’s called Morra.  I do wonder why they never called who got odds/even, even if they were playing the multi-person version they would have needed to do that when they got down to two people.

• If Kristy really thought Julie stole the earrings, why not mention it to her parents?  Also, if something disappeared from my room, I would assume my brother or parents moved it.  And Kristy has a lot more siblings than I do, I don’t get why she wouldn’t consider that one of them took it.  Or that Julie moved it accidentally.

• In case you were wondering, in my birthday party version of this mystery, the culprit was Charlotte. She thought that the earrings were Stacey’s and that selling them meant she wouldn’t have time to baby-sit anymore.  Then when she found out she was wrong, she gave the earrings to Jamie because he was worried about Claudia not having time to sit.  And he gave the earrings to Julie for her birthday, because she worked at his house too.  Jamie wasn’t even in this episode, and Charlotte barely was, so I must have actually explained who the character was to my mother for her to write all that.  It was really dedicated of her. (And for the record, I didn’t actually remember all that about the plot, I had to go looking in my mom’s old photo albums where she stuck a copy of the script.  I just remember everyone wearing sunglasses while we read it).