Mild spoilers ahead.
"The Baby-Sitters Club" is back in my life again. I read a good chunk of the book series, about a group of junior high girls who run a baby-sitting business, when it was first being released in the '80s and '90s. Now the books being re-released as graphic novels has sparked a new wave of interest. I decided to take a look at the Netflix "Baby-Sitters Club" series, which ran for two seasons, and racked up a slew of good notices. I'd never seen any of the "Baby-Sitters" adaptations from the 90s, so all I had to compare it to were the books.
The first season consists of ten half-hours, each episode loosely based on one of the books in the series. Enterprising Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace) has the great idea to start a baby-sitting business, and invites her friends Mary Anne Spier (Malia Baker) and Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada) to join. Soon new girls Stacy McGill (Shay Rudolph) and Dawn Schafer (Xochitl Gomez) are added to the roster. The girls work through friendship troubles, family spats, and school worries together, while bringing in the childcare money. There's a lot of emphasis on the supporting adults in many of these stories, including Kristy's strong-minded mother Elizabeth (Alicia Silverstone) her boyfriend Watson (Mark Feuerstein), Claudia's beloved grandmother Mimi (Takayo Fischer), Mary Anne's strict father Richard (Mark Evan Jackson), and Dawn's free-spirited mother Sharon (Jessica Elaina Eason).
The show is great. I love that it's for an age group that doesn't get enough media - preteen girls who are too old for kids' series but too young for the more adult ones. I love that the old stories have retained their basic shapes, but have been updated for the 2020s (no texting on the job). The young actresses are excellent, and the characters are just as memorably imperfect and loveable as I remember. I like some of the changes, like cutting down the romances and putting them into more appropriate context. I'm cooler on some of the others, like adding a lot more drama. For instance, the "Kristy's Big Day" wedding episode sees Kristy get into a fight with her mother over a dress, reconcile at the last minute before the honeymoon, and experience her first period. None of these things happen in the book, "Kristy's Big Day," where the big crisis was Kristy having to rally the club to babysit fourteen kids on short notice.
It's a little ironic that the first thing cut out of most of these "Baby-Sitters Club" stories is the babysitting. I was surprised that the show never really addresses how babysitting has changed since the 80s, except for acknowledging online apps and much higher fees. The focus stays almost entirely on the girls navigating relationships with each other and their parents. To be fair, that was a big part of the fun of the books - there were always mild soap opera dramatics going on between babysitting gigs. The series just turns up the juice a little more and speeds things up, so Mary Anne's father and Dawn's mother date, break up, and get back together over the course of about six episodes. When Claudia's grandmother has her stroke, it also involves flashbacks to her time in an internment camp during WWII. The season ends with a big two-parter where everyone spends summer vacation together, based on one of the periodic "Baby-Sitters Club: Super Special" books for big event stories.
So, as a fan of the books, I can fully endorse the series. Would today's kids connect with it though? I don't see why not. As much as I like some of the adult performers, the show is at its best when it's sticking to the POVs of the girls. They're a good collection of personality types, from sheltered Mary Anne to boy-crazy Stacey to activist Dawn to artsy Claudia, who will always be the coolest. Sophia Grace, however, is definitely the strongest performer as Kristy, who is going through the roughest transition out of everyone, and best embodies all the woes of a thirteen-year-old who is ready to take on the world - but still can't stay up late on school nights.
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