Sweeney: “The Baby-sitters Club, I’m proud to say it, was totally my idea, even though the four of us worked on it together.”
Before you even get into the series, you already know that this Kristy Thomas character is quite possibly the most annoying 7th grader in the history of middle schoolers. If nothing else, I can respect that Martin is up front about this fact.
Nugs: Yeah, couldn’t you just say, “we worked on it together?” Ass.
Sweeney: I should point out that I lost my original copy and am currently reading an updated version of the book. But these days what family is going to pay a 7th grader to watch their children? Lots of kids are still being babysat at this age.
Nugs: I was always bothered by this, too, actually. When I was twelve my parents were still hiring people to take care of me. There was no way in Justin Bieber Dance Party Hell that anyone was going to pay me money to watch their kid when I was in fucking seventh grade.
Actually, no one would be insane enough to trust me with their child now, either.
Sweeney: Anyway, in the opening pages, Kristy goes on to be a rude little brat by cheering when the bell rings at school and then explains to us that she’s either impulsive or trouble, but probably trouble because she repeats this word several times. And since she was a rude little brat, she’s in actual trouble and has to write a 100-word essay on decorum in the classroom.
Kristy hastily introduces us to some of the other people in her life – hastily, because it’s distracting from her ability to continue discussing herself. Her BFF Mary-Anne Spier is super shy, but probably just because Kristy won’t ever shut the fuck up. She’s also got a lot of brothers. Her brothers are really just there to introduce her as a tom boy, which will be pointed out to us about four hundred more times over the course of the series.
They’re also important because she has to babysit for her six-year-old brother, David Michael one night a week. Kathy, a fifteen-year-old girl, gets paid to watch him two nights a week. Kristy feels it is important to note that she doesn’t get paid to watch her little brother. Like every other older sibling in the history of ever.
Nugs: I never got paid either, and I always felt shafted. WTF, Mom and Dad? What. The F.
Sweeney: So everyone says she and Mary-Anne are good with kids (because, you know, they are children themselves) and then Kristy explains her much cooler neighbor-friend Claudia who no longer has time for them, now that she’s just so awesome.
At family dinner that evening there is a big hubub over who will sit for David Michael (why is it necessary for him to have two names?) and everyone’s busy and she has to call several people and then OH MY GOD KRISTY’S A GENIUS! GREAT IDEA ALERT!
But first she’s got to write her essay on decorum which means she has to look up the word decorum and this apparently the first time she realizes that she got in trouble for being rude. All right, I know, she’s 12.
Her essay is only 98 words, so she adds “The End.” This is probably my favorite Kristy moment ever. Why couldn’t I do that on college papers? Also, she read about Paraguay for social studies. In the 7th grade. Has education really declined that quickly? Because I’m pretty sure the only non-US topics we covered in pre-high school social studies were snippets about Europe. I’m a little impressed, Kristy. But only a little.
After her homework she starts jotting down her big plans. The idea is for the club to have planned meeting times so that parents can call and reach several sitters at once and at least one should be available, rather than having to call several people until they find one, like her poor mother just had to do.
Then there’s additional information about Kristy – her divorced parents, asshole father, mom’s current boyfriend and his kids, blah blah blah – and then we actually get to meet Claudia and her legendary clothing.
Nugs: Here’s one of the major issues I have with this series: The Claudia character is totally racist. She’s Japanese and Martin crams like, every Asian stereotype ever into her description. I mean, her last name is “Kishi.” It even sounds like “sushi.” Way to teach diversity, there.
Sweeney: Claudia volunteers her room for the meetings because SHE HAS A PHONE IN HER ROOM (another way in which the modernization is illogical for these books; most middle schoolers seem to have cell phones these days, but if they don’t, parents wouldn’t waste the money on installing their own land-line phone.)
Claudia also has a suggestion for another member. The super cool new girl from New York City (Nugs: fuck yeah, New York!), Stacey McGill, which of course makes Kristy anxious because Claudia is already clearly a lot cooler than Kristy and Mary-Anne.
When they meet, Mary-Anne is awestruck by this super awesome city girl, and poor Kristy feels like a baby and I begrudgingly start to feel sorry for her. It has to be hard when her other friends are clearly significantly more awesome than she is. Years later people are blogging about Claudia’s epic fashion. What do we have to say about you Kristy? That we wish you would shut up. That’s what.
And then she’s an awful little shit to her mom’s poor boyfriend and I just can’t seem to hold my pity. I work with middle schoolers and I get that a certain measure of brattiness comes with the territory and divorce is hard on the kids and blah blah blah, but this kid is obnoxious.
ALSO, GIRLS, IT’S ILLEGAL TO STICK THOSE FLYERS DIRECTLY IN MAILBOXES, YO. Learn about it.
Sometimes I feel a little guilty for berating a fictional 7th grader, but Claudia’s genius fifteen-year-old sister is incredibly obnoxious. Her brilliance seems pretty useless when her social skills are nonexistent. And I hope that Kristy throws an epic temper tantrum that ends in maiming her.
Nugs: That would be amazing. Do you think they can vlog that?
Sweeney: So after illegal flyer distribution and paying for an ad in the paper, they have their first meeting. It lasts several pages in which every single ring of the phone is documented and there are tragically several wrong numbers, looking for a Mr. Jim Bartolini. Which makes me want pasta. Also, while you might hope it would be a setup for something excellent down the line, it turns out, after several pages, to be a prank by Kristy’s wily older brothers. Everyone laughs but Kristy, because she’s a whiny bitch who runs home to tattle but her mom agrees that she’s a whiny bitch. JK, they fight and then they both get punished. But I bet her mom agrees anyway.
Also, her mom calls to get Kristy to babysit for the boyfriend’s kids, but Kristy has Mary-Anne do it, because she’s too busy being a giant brat and refuses to meet the kids or do anything but be completely rude to the boyfriend.
Kristy’s only glimmer of hope is that on Wednesday she will have her first official BSC babysitting job with new clients, Pinky and Buffy. Oh gee, I wonder how this will turn out. OH RIGHT, THEY’RE DOGS. Somehow, Kristy didn’t guess this.
She has a brief squabble with the dogs, but it all turns out fine. Not fine enough to spare us a bitchfest of course. But it does give Kristy her next great idea and we know it’s important because Kristy tells us so and nobody will ever think Kristy is a great as Kristy thinks she is. She decides that BSC members will keep a notebook documenting their experiences to help each other out. Which is actually a legit good idea, as much as I hate to give this annoying little twat any credit.
When Stacey babysits for David Michael, she and Kristy’s brother Sam fall in lurve. Also in the editor’s modernization efforts they left in the term “gorgeous hunk.” I’m really not sure how/where they drew the line.
As we near the end of the book, the BSC wants to have a big celebration. However, everybody but Kristy has to back out because Kristy’s life is just catastrophically unfair like that (word. being 12 is hard.) and to top it all off, Watson (mom’s boyfriend) has a babysitting EMERGENCY leaving Kristy the only one available to babysit which is obviously the worst thing to happen in the history of ever.
But then it turns out that she likes the kids, even though she still hates Watson. BUT SURPRISE, KRISTY, THEY’RE ENGAGED NOOWWWW. And at their big future family dinner at his house they eat fondue with rules and so it basically reads like a big family drinking game. The family that plays Ring Of Fire together, stays together. Or gets separated by social services. But Kristy has to kiss Watson’s cheek in this fondue game and now she’s totally chill with him. So. There’s that…
Nugs: They later introduced a spin-off series, Baby-Sitter’s Little Sister, about Kristy’s seven-year-old stepsister, Karen. Karen is probably the most insolent, annoying, pretentious little kid I’ve ever wished-were-real-so-I-could-punch-in-the-face in my life.
Sweeney: Back in actual BSC land: In addition to clearly being the most awesome member of the club (sorry Claudia), Stacey is also very mysterious. She is always declining the junk food Claudia keeps stashed about her room, claiming to be on a diet, and often has unexplained places that she has to be. Eventually, she gets caught lying about where she was and Kristy pitches a big fit about being lied to and Claudia defends Stacey and Mary-Anne cries and the BSC is on bad terms for a rough couple pages. Then they kiss and make up and have a slumber party where Stacey admits her big secret: she’s diabetic.
And they reflect on how the club has already made them grow as people in its two weeks of existence and Kristy is finally happy and not bitching for several consecutive pages and it’s a fucking miracle.
And now all I want is a Snark Squad slumber party where we play the fondue game. But with vodka.
Next time on The Baby-sitter’s Club: Claudia gets some creepy phone calls, except the part where they are creepy. Find out who the non-creepy creep is in BSC #2 – Claudia and the Phantom Calls.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm Nugs, the resident In-House Snark Squad Organizational Psychotic, or as Lor, calls it, "Prodigy." I cover the BSC along with Sweeney, Goosebumps, and whatever else I occasionally sneak into. I'm a native New Yorker stuck in LA, so my first language is Brooklynese, with a smattering of colloquial English. I'm a total sci-fi and comic book geek, which the Ladies have fostered by adding to my "impressive" collection of robots and action figures, even though they claim to be afraid of me. Also, if Ryan Gosling ever happens to accidentally stumble upon my posts I will probably be arrested. Oh haaaai.
