Transcript - BSFC Netflix #2.1 & 2.2: Kristy and the Snobs / Claudia and the New Girl

[00:00:00] Brooke: Welcome to The Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, you don't talk about Fight Club. Instead, you talk about the battles fought and the lessons learned in The Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin and the corresponding television show on Netflix. I'm Brooke Suchomel, an editor who's revisiting these books after 30 years and watching the second season of the Netflix show for the first time. 

[00:00:33] Kaykay: And I'm Kaykay Brady. I am therapist, and I'm new to the books, and I'm also new to the Netflix series.

[00:00:40] Brooke: And this episode and the three that follow are gonna be a little different from the episodes we've released so far. As we mentioned at the end of our last episode, we're gonna focus on the second season of the Netflix series and how it compares to the books that it is based on.

We're gonna do two episodes of the TV show at a time for the second season. That's a change from our last summer vacation. Since there's eight episodes in the second season, we're gonna cover the season in four episodes. And then we'll go back to our regular format of focusing on the books. 

So jump in with Netflix's description of the first and second episodes of the second season of The Baby-sitters Club, "Kristy and the Snobs" and "Claudia and the New Girl."

So let's start with episode 1, "Kristy and the Snobs," which was book 11 in the series. And I quote, "After moving in with Watson, Kristy navigates a not-so-warm neighborly welcome. The Baby-sitters Club helps Mary Anne define her post- camp relationship status." So that's not back cover copy. 

[00:01:44] Kaykay: Short and sweet.

[00:01:45] Brooke: Yeah. What else did we get in this episode?

[00:01:48] Kaykay: There was so much in this episode. Louie. 

[00:01:51] Brooke: Louie dies, but he doesn't die in the episode. The book was all about Louie really being sick. You see him get ill and how they cope with the process over the course of, of the book. In the episode, it has already happened that he has died of cancer. And so you see them dealing with that. 

[00:02:12] Kaykay: Yeah. It just starts, the episode starts with that. She and David Michael are sort of talking about it and processing it. And yeah, they, the main plot is that there's a snotty neighbor that they, that Kristy starts socializing with and engaging with. And they come to understand, yes, the neighbors are snotty and awful, and they also like dogs.

[00:02:34] Brooke: Right. 

[00:02:34] Kaykay: So right up our alley. 

[00:02:36] Brooke: Can you imagine, just the constant warfare humans would be in if we were not bonded by our mutual level of animals? Yeah. It'd be rough. 

[00:02:46] Kaykay: And we get the new puppy, baby Bernese Mountain Dog, Shannon, who in this show is named after the mom, not the girl. It's like the mom of the snobby girl.

[00:02:59] Brooke: So there's no Shannon Kilbourne in this version. So Amanda Delaney, who we see is really the snob in this, Amanda Delaney and her mom. And it turns out that her mom is named Shannon. And so that's why we get the dog at the end being named Shannon because they adopt it from sort of like a, a fundraiser, an adoptathon that she's throwing. 

[00:03:24] Kaykay: A charity event. 

[00:03:25] Brooke: A charity event.

[00:03:25] Kaykay: It'd be nice if they called it a fundraiser, but no, they called it a charity event. 

[00:03:28] Brooke: A charity event in her yard. And it turns out it's like an adoptathon, which is nice. Cuz in the book it's very much like, well bred dogs, you know, the purebred. 

[00:03:37] Kaykay: Yes. And no, this one was saved from a puppy mill. 

[00:03:39] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:03:39] Kaykay: Which, okay, great. I'm glad your heart is so open, but you gonna have some serious vet bills, y'all. 

[00:03:44] Brooke: Well, they can afford it.

[00:03:45] Kaykay: Right, Watson don't give a shit. Buy that dog some new hips, there you go. 

[00:03:49] Brooke: So we don't get the sort of pile on that Kristy experiences in the book with like the Delaneys and Shannon Kilborne, and Shannon Kilborne being, you know, the 13 year old. Not Shannon Delaney, the mother, pulling pranks on her and all of that.

There's a big difference there between how it was handled in the book and how it was handled in the TV show, but there's, you know, there's themes that they pick up on throughout. 

[00:04:18] Kaykay: Yeah, they pack much more into these episodes. They pack multiple books usually, which is interesting. Um, it's almost hard sometimes to kind of wrap my brain around, like, what book are they pulling this from? Oh, right. Oh, right. 

Because they kinda naturally just yank a whole bunch of plot threads and let them kind of develop over time rather than just, okay. This is the topic of this, next week is the topic of that. It all kind of, you know, blends together. 

[00:04:42] Brooke: Yeah. You could kind of say that there were, there were snippets of book 10, Logan likes Mary Anne, in this as well.

[00:04:51] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:04:51] Brooke: Just with the focus that they have on Logan and Mary Anne's sort of, I wanna say their relation- 

[00:04:57] Kaykay: Still in a will they, won't they. 

[00:04:59] Brooke: Right, where it's like, it feels a little bit more accurate. 

[00:05:02] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:05:02] Brooke: You know, where it's like, you have this crush on this boy that you like, haven't spoken to in three weeks, because what do you do? You know, the pressure about how to approach somebody, it can feel pretty overwhelming at that age. 

[00:05:15] Kaykay: Yeah, I think that's true. And also the idea of, um, they're all talking about it and the only person in the room that suggests that Mary Anne directly talk to Logan and sort of, yes, be honest with him, is Kristy. And everyone else is like, are you out of your mind?

[00:05:31] Brooke: I loved Kristy for just being like, all of the back and forth of like, what you should do, and so they're gonna, I have this as one of my modern moments, but it's like, do a photo shoot on Instagram, which Claudia calls "the world's locker." 

[00:05:47] Kaykay: Yeah, I have that too. 

[00:05:47] Brooke: And yeah, Kristy is just like, why is this so hard for you all? Just do it. 

[00:05:52] Kaykay: I feel like this is Kristy's strongest two episodes. 

[00:05:56] Brooke: Mm. 

[00:05:57] Kaykay: Kristy is such a baller in both of these episodes. She's, you know, so direct, she's so smart. She's always just kind of taking care of business. I was just blown away by Kristy in these two episodes. 

[00:06:10] Brooke: Yeah. You can tell that the show writers and producers, they love all of these girls, but they really love Kristy. 

[00:06:18] Kaykay: They really love Kristy. 

[00:06:19] Brooke: In a way, in the book that like, Kristy's the character that seems like there can be some resentment from the author sometimes, you know? 

[00:06:27] Kaykay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:28] Brooke: Maybe it's just like, hits a little bit too close to home or something. I don't know. But in the TV show, there's just so much fondness for this character that comes through that I really like. 

[00:06:38] Kaykay: Yes, fondness is a great way to put it. And I would also add in this show, the character really knows who she is. 

[00:06:45] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:46] Kaykay: I mean, it's like rock solid. This person knows who she is and just doesn't waver for a second. And in the book I've always noticed there's sort of a lack of consistency book to book. Sometimes it feels like Kristy, and then sometimes I'm like, this isn't Kristy. Who is this character? 

[00:07:01] Brooke: Yeah. And that's why I think it's great with one of the things that you get with a TV show is like, you've got eight episodes that need a tell a cohesive story in this season. You don't have time to be going back and forth in trying to figure out who this character is. You have to know. 

[00:07:17] Kaykay: Truth. 

[00:07:18] Brooke: And there are times where in the books, I feel like the author doesn't really know how to portray Kristy in a way. And it always comes back to, for me, it's the way that I think Kristy is very explicitly queer coded.

[00:07:36] Kaykay: Yep. 

[00:07:36] Brooke: In a time, when there's a part about writing for Kristy, where you couldn't actually fully express what you wanted her to do. Like there's this sort of like, you're being pulled back from really going full force with what you wanna say about Kristy and what you want Kristy to do. You have to keep everything sort of tampered down a bit and here she's, she's not tampered down.

[00:07:59] Kaykay: Yes. And I would even take that further. I'm gonna go deep with the psychology lens and say, for me, Kristy is also represented the parts of the author's psyche that she's actually not processed or worked through yet. And so sometimes it's like, you can't locate, you can't track that person. It just feels like that person hasn't been totally understood.

[00:08:20] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:21] Kaykay: And I'm thinking specifically about the fact that Kristy may not want to dress femininely or, you know, have a sort of feminine presentation is often clocked as well. She's just young, or like she hasn't figured it out yet, or like, she feels bad about herself and that's why she's not doing it right.

Instead of what a modern audience might accept more readily, which is this person does not have a feminine presentation and is most comfortable moving through the world that way. 

[00:08:54] Brooke: Right. And like, that's fine. That eighties were so focused on assimilation that being different was like, it's like you were being difficult.

[00:09:06] Kaykay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:07] Brooke: You know, like if you weren't just going along with what was expected of you, why are you being difficult? 

[00:09:12] Kaykay: Oh, something was definitely wrong with you. 

[00:09:13] Brooke: Yeah. Or you were just like antisocial somehow, because like, this is what girls are supposed to do. And it's like, Well, maybe you are being anti person in the fact that you expect everybody to be the same way.

Hey society, maybe that's a you thing and not, you know, not Kristy's problem. But it seems like it's always a problem. 

[00:09:35] Kaykay: Yes. And I agree with you that it's just, it's a pleasure. It's such a pleasure to see the Netflix show because you get to just revel in Kristy's Kristyness. 

[00:09:44] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:09:45] Kaykay: And there's nothing wrong with her and nobody's judging her. 

And the fashion. Oh my gosh, the fashion, Brooke. I had all of those rugby shirts. 

[00:09:53] Brooke: Of course! 

[00:09:54] Kaykay: Kristy's wearing these dope ass rugby shirts. She's wearing a Speedo at the pool party! 

[00:10:00] Brooke: Speedo swimsuit. 

[00:10:00] Kaykay: I was like, yes, I wore the same fucking thing. 

[00:10:03] Brooke: I was like, oh, I love that suit. I was like, that's a great suit. And then Mallory at the end shows up and like has the same- people who might think of Speedo as like, when I was a kid, Speedo was shorthand for like a male bottom, like a sort of bikini cut bottom. Um, but this is, she's wearing like a full one piece swimsuit, you know? 

[00:10:26] Kaykay: Right. Like a, like a woman's athletic Speedo. So that's what somebody might wear on the swim team. 

[00:10:31] Brooke: Exactly. 

[00:10:31] Kaykay: It's a lot of coverage. It's a lot of coverage, goes very high on the neck. It's a very sporty suit. Your boobs are not gonna go flying out in a wave, no way. 

[00:10:39] Brooke: No, this is an athletic swimsuit that she's wearing. And what's cute at the end- so "Kristy and the Snobs" brings in like, there's pieces of Hello, Mallory that get brought into both this episode and then also the next episode, with "Claudia and the New Girl." They're integrating Mallory and Jessi into the club in these first two episodes that we see.

[00:11:05] Kaykay: Oh, Brooke, I'm so glad you're here because I would never be able to pull these from these books. I don't know how you do it. I just live in my like Pisces miasma of, of feelings and good times, but it's so nice. I have Brooke to come in with actual facts and information. So just wanna say, I appreciate you, friend.

[00:11:23] Brooke: Oh, you're so welcome. I, I, this is the kind of shit where I'm just like, oh my anal retentiveness, I can use it for good. 

[00:11:29] Kaykay: Use that power for good. 

[00:11:32] Brooke: Yeah. So they're incorporating that, and you see Kristy is feeling very insecure in her new environment, which is the same as it was in the book. So when we talked about this book, we said that what they were fighting was basically Kristy reckons with death, I think, was your, uh, your line or what they were fighting.

And then also class conflict, specifically very, very heavily on Shannon Kilbourne, and then also they're like judging her dying dog. Like these assholes in the book are just like, it's very difficult to, uh, forgive these characters for the way that they treat Kristy in the book. They're terrible. 

[00:12:15] Kaykay: They're terrible.

[00:12:16] Brooke: Like, the Delaneys that we see in the TV show, they're not great. Amanda delaney is shady as hell. Sees that Kristy has a bath towel at the pool and asks if she was born in a barn or in New Jersey. 

[00:12:32] Kaykay: Or New Jersey! I was like, one of those writers is from New Jersey. 

[00:12:38] Brooke: Kaykay is doing a little dance. You know, she's very familiar with the, uh, tri-state rivalry that you would get in the New York suburbs and the shade.

[00:12:48] Kaykay: This reminds me, wait, I just- such shade! But it reminds me of such a wonderful line from Kimmy Schmidt where Jane [Krakowski] is looking at an apartment that overlooks New Jersey. And she says, "I can't take this apartment. It looks over and you can see New Jersey, which means New Jersey can see me!"

I just, I don't know. I, I don't have a personal dog in the fight of shading New Jersey, but I just still find it really funny. 

[00:13:17] Brooke: I mean, it is reflective of that area, right? Like a rich person in Connecticut, I am sure- 

[00:13:24] Kaykay: Thinks New Jersey is trash. 

[00:13:26] Brooke: Right, right. And makes it very clear. 

[00:13:28] Kaykay: But the funny thing about Jersey is that Jersey is huge and there's parts of New Jersey that are just like Connecticut. It's just funny. 

[00:13:35] Brooke: What's interesting though, too, is that Kristy is kind of like, it's like the first time she's encountered New Jersey shade. They're going to start revealing their stereotypes to you in a way that you would not have experienced before. Welcome to the upper crust! A lot of times they suck. Not all the time, but a lot of times. 

So you get to see that and just sort of the pressure that she's feeling about like not fitting in. And then that is reflected in the insecurity that you see Mallory feeling. Like, Mallory really wants to fit in to The Baby-sitters Club. 

[00:14:12] Kaykay: Yeah, she's almost desperate. 

[00:14:13] Brooke: She's a fan girl. Like she is a fan girl of Kristy. And everybody's so cool, you know, and that felt true to me too. Like, if you're a sixth grader being invited to join a club of eighth graders? 

[00:14:28] Kaykay: That's a big deal. 

[00:14:29] Brooke: Holy shit, that's a huge deal.

[00:14:31] Kaykay: That's a really big deal. 

[00:14:32] Brooke: And at the end, she shows up, Kristy has all of her friends in The Baby-sitters Club over for a pool party at the end. And Mallory shows up wearing the exact same swimsuit that Kristy is wearing, which I thought was a nice little nod.

[00:14:46] Kaykay: Yeah, good touch. 

[00:14:48] Brooke: It was nice. And then Logan shows up, finally. So all of the back and forth about, well, how can Mary Anne find out, like what's going on with Logan? Like, how can she get his interest, whatever. Kristy's like, fuck this. I'm inviting all my friends over, and I will text Logan and just be like, just show up.

And it works. Imagine that, being direct pays dividends. 

[00:15:10] Kaykay: Good old Kristy. 

[00:15:12] Brooke: Did you have anything particular for what they were fighting in this episode before we go on to talking about the next episode and then sort of bringing it all together? 

[00:15:22] Kaykay: I kind of looked for a theme across both episodes, and I felt like in both episodes they were fighting to connect and be liked.

[00:15:29] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:15:30] Kaykay: Which it makes so much sense for this age group, the topic, but yeah, through, throughout it's, it's sort of just a constant dance of connecting with people and being seen as likable by the people that you admire. 

[00:15:47] Brooke: Yeah. I had the same. I had something very similar. In this episode, I had that they were fighting isolation, alienation and loss. You know, we find out that the girls had been separated, most of them, for the summer for various reasons. Kristy has now moved into Watson's. 

I thought it was a little, I wrote down "rim shot," so we have a new actress playing Dawn in season two than we did in season one, because the actress who played Dawn in season one got a gig with Marvel. She's in like the Dr. Strange movie that's out right now, so she wasn't able to return to film. 

[00:16:22] Kaykay: Good for her. 

[00:16:23] Brooke: So they recast Dawn. And they're having their first post-summer Baby-sitters Club meeting, and Dawn says, oh my three weeks in California, just so much sun, I just feel like a whole new person. Bah-dum-dum. You know? So there's a little, there's a little wink and a nod to the recast there.

[00:16:44] Kaykay: Very clever. 

[00:16:45] Brooke: Yeah. So I had, you know, the isolation, alienation, and then also loss. Cuz just like they were in the book grappling with the impending death of Louie and then the aftermath of that, we do see them coping with the aftermath of losing Louie and then also losing, you know, the space that they had inhabited for their entire life and are now being picked up and plopped down in a new environment that feels hostile to them.

And not just Kristy, which I thought was good, but also to Kristy's mom. In Kristy and the Snobs, like you don't really see Kristy's mom being judged by the neighbors, but you get that in this one where the whole reason Amanda Delaney comes over, where we meet her in the first place is because she brings over an invitation to tea for Kristy's mom and for Kristy.

And they sit there in the kind of cold, stark Delaney, um, household and Kristy- 

[00:17:48] Kaykay: That's what I would call a Connecticut living room. They sit there in the worst ring of hell, which is a Connecticut living room. I've been in so many baby showers in Connecticut living rooms. 

[00:17:57] Brooke: Yeah. Did it hurt to watch that scene?

[00:18:00] Kaykay: Yes. I'm just imagining myself in some painful Laura Ashley dress that I just wanna burn, sitting stiffly on the couch drinking some white wine. 

[00:18:10] Brooke: Oh, I'm sorry. Condolences. Condolences. I'm trying to picture you in a dress drinking white wine, and I can't. Oh Kaykay! 

[00:18:20] Kaykay: Suffice it to say- 

[00:18:21] Brooke: Oh, that's so sad! 

[00:18:24] Kaykay: It's just, there couldn't be anything more opposite of, of what I wanna be doing, you know? 

[00:18:30] Brooke: Right. Definitely. Definitely. Um, yeah. So, so Kristy's mom gets to bear the brunt of that, being judged for like having a job, you know. Where it's like, oh, so you met Watson because you worked for him? Because she says that she met him while he was looking for a new office, and she helped him find an office. And it's like, oh, you worked for him.

She's like, well, I worked with him, and then Mrs. Delaney says, oh, so you really won the lottery. And then that just pisses Kristy's mom right the fuck off.

[00:19:04] Kaykay: Sure. 

[00:19:05] Brooke: And you get that throughout. 

[00:19:05] Kaykay: I mean, that's shade. That's shade. That's, that's straight up shade. And I was a little like, eh, you know, that feels a little too aggressive for Connecticut snobbery.

[00:19:14] Brooke: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:15] Kaykay: You know, like usually in Connecticut, they're not just gonna go for your jugular like that. Maybe after five glasses of wine with their friends behind your back, but like, to your face? Unlikely. Very unlikely. You might pick that energy up in the ether, but they're not gonna say it to you. That would be way too gauche. 

[00:19:31] Brooke: You would get, instead, what you get from Karen at the breakfast table, where she says, "Amanda Delaney is a social climber with no ability to speak to people." 

[00:19:43] Kaykay: Yeah. Damn. Dumped. 

[00:19:45] Brooke: Karen is gonna be a savage Connecticut socialite. 

[00:19:49] Kaykay: Yes. They really, I never read Karen this way, but in the series, she's really coming across that way. 

[00:19:56] Brooke: Yeah. Like she, she is comfortable. She is a creepy, comfortable rich kid. I think it kind of makes sense, you know? 

[00:20:06] Kaykay: Yes. Yes. 

[00:20:07] Brooke: She makes sure that Liz knows that in the future, she would like her cantaloupe to be cut into wedges, not cubes. Karen comes from privilege, for sure. 

[00:20:19] Kaykay: You definitely also see the, in the Netflix show, I think you see more of the class conflict within the family, even. I don't know, in the book it's either glossed over or I don't remember it that much, but in this, I don't know.

Maybe it's just the watching them physically trying to navigate these new spaces and these new relationships, it comes across more. They also have Watson be a little more clueless in a sense in the Netflix show. At one point he says, oh, I just signed us up for this charity event. And I just thought you wouldn't even mind it because I was playing mixed doubles with them.

I don't know. He just, he just seems really oblivious and again, like maybe privileged and entitled in a way in the show that maybe I didn't pick up in the book. 

[00:21:01] Brooke: Yeah. Clueless in a sense, like he doesn't mean to cause harm, you know, he, he just doesn't know any differently. 

[00:21:09] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:21:09] Brooke: Because this world of privilege is literally all he's ever known.

[00:21:13] Kaykay: Yes.

[00:21:13] Brooke: And the same for his kids. And then that manifests in like very elaborate spreads for breakfast on the weekend, when Kristy is like, well, deep down, like, all I wanna do is be able to eat cereal out of the box and, you know, put my feet up. This one was funny, the pancakes that he makes. 

[00:21:33] Kaykay: Three different kinds! 

[00:21:34] Brooke: Three different kinds, and then he does like, for David Michael, he does a D and an M and a T for David Michael Thomas. And then he's like, and if you wanna arrange it to make it a true monogram, you would need to have the T in the middle. And I'm like, there's several mentions of monogramming, which I'm sorry, never encountered a monogram like in my life. And he's very focused on monograms. 

[00:21:59] Kaykay: There's a lot of monograms in Connecticut. That's true. 

[00:22:02] Brooke: I bet. I bet. 

[00:22:03] Kaykay: There's a lot of mixed doubles and a lot of monograms, that is true. 

[00:22:06] Brooke: Two things where I'm like, mixed doubles? Is that like a double like rum and Coke or something like that? 

[00:22:12] Kaykay: I think it means, uh- 

[00:22:14] Brooke: It's tennis.

[00:22:15] Kaykay: Two genders. 

[00:22:16] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:22:17] Kaykay: Mixed genders. You're mixing the genders, not just the ladies and the gentlemen sporting together, can you imagine! We're so progressive. 

[00:22:28] Brooke: Oh my God. Yeah. So he goes to all of this effort, but he doesn't know that David Michael actually hates pancakes. Like, fancy doesn't equal good, necessarily, if that's not what the person wants.

They said normally they would take the pancakes and feed it to Louie under the table, but Louie isn't there. And so when Watson isn't looking, she eats the pancakes on David Michael's behalf. She's very sweet with David Michael in this. 

[00:22:58] Kaykay: Yes. And David Michael seems a lot more stable, I just wanna say. He seems a lot more stable in the Netflix series.

[00:23:04] Brooke: He was a bit of a sad sack in the books. 

[00:23:07] Kaykay: Sad sack is, is exactly right. Yeah. 

[00:23:09] Brooke: Poor David Michael. Well, and he gets picked on pretty aggressively in Kristy and the Snobs, the book, where you don't really see that happening in the TV show version. 

[00:23:20] Kaykay: Yeah, none of that. 

[00:23:21] Brooke: He's actually sort of the bridge between Kristy and Amanda. Kristy brings Amanda over to her place, and David Michael is there, and he's holding Louie's dog bed on the couch. And Amanda asks about it, and he talks about how he likes to hold onto his dog's dog bed, because it still smells like him. And so that then is an opening, and they start to talk and that's what bridges the gap. 

So that's what I had for the tool that they used was, just like you said, it was that connection with others. Even just an attempted connection with others to like find the confidence in yourself, to at least try that. That's what helps. 

And you see that too with Kristy. Kristy is the one that facilitates that connection between Mary Anne and Logan, you know, cuz she's like, just be confident enough to try.

And there are always a lot of good lessons, like good one liners that you hear. But the one that came at the end of this, which I thought was a good lead in to the next episode, which I think you had mentioned when you talked about how you saw the common theme was Kristy says, "The best way to feel like you belong is to start acting like you do," and "There's more to people than meets the eye." 

That's how this episode ends. And that takes us into the second episode, which is "Claudia and the New Girl." Claudia and the New Girl was book 12 in the series. So just like it immediately follows Kristy and the Snobs in the book series, it immediately follows "Kristy in the snobs" in the TV show.

And then the rest of the season, it's gonna jump all around books. Like, the very next episode after this is "Stacey's Emergency," which is book 43. We haven't even covered it yet. You don't get the kind of sequential consistency that we got in season one, so we're not always gonna be able to reference, "here's how we discuss this in previous episodes," because we're not going to have discussed it yet. 

[00:25:29] Kaykay: Especially, even the things we have discussed, Kaykay will have forgotten. So you get what you get. It's just a, a fresh baby, every time. 

[00:25:37] Brooke: To be fair, it's been like a year and a half since we covered these. Our episodes 11 and 12 came out in like February of 2021. It's been a minute. So the Netflix description of "Claudia and the New Girl," episode two of season two, is, "A slumber party quiz sparks intrigue, uncertainty, and an awkward beginning for Claudia and Mallory. Elsewhere, Kristy learns to let go of control." 

This is again, bringing in a hybrid with a lot of things from Hello, Mallory in this, which is where they give Mallory and Jessi like tests to prove their mettle as babysitters, and she is sort of tested under the tutelage of Claudia. And so you do get that in this book, but how would you describe what you saw in this episode? What jumps out at you that might be missing?

[00:26:35] Kaykay: Well, Ashley Wyeth! 

[00:26:37] Brooke: The new girl. Well, I guess, who's the new girl? If you didn't know any different and you didn't know that the new girl in the book is Ashley Wyeth, who is very different in the book than what you get in the TV show. Book Ashley is Claudia's age. She's a girl who has just transferred to Stoneybrook Middle School from Chicago. 

[00:26:59] Kaykay: She's got 5 million Instagram followers.

[00:27:01] Brooke: Yeah, so that's what you get in the TV show. She's an influencer who's in high school, who is like the coolest girl in Stoneybrook. And she's hanging out with Janine, and Claudia's like, what the actual fuck. 

[00:27:15] Kaykay: WTF. 

[00:27:15] Brooke: Yeah. You don't get that in the book. The book is completely different. 

[00:27:19] Kaykay: Yeah, I loved the way they handled Ashley. I thought that was so cool that Ashley's older, she's friends with Janine. Although, am I clocking where this is going? Maybe more than friends? 

[00:27:31] Brooke: Tell me about how you picked up on that vibe.

[00:27:35] Kaykay: Well, there was just a look. Ashley gives Janine a look at one point and I was like, oh yeah. It was just that one look. And then I was like, I know that there is some queer stuff in this season two. And I was like, I wonder if it's Janine, that would make a lot of sense. And also might be a really cool reframe on her anti-ness. 

You know, she has sort of, even, even in Netflix, she has a real anti-ness, like I do my own thing. I know what I wanna be doing. Fuck everybody else. It would be a nice reframe. Like, she's just doing her own thing. She's a queer character, um, that doesn't feel compelled to be in straight culture. 

[00:28:17] Brooke: Right. 

[00:28:18] Kaykay: So I was like, that would be cool, and that would make sense, and also would be really interesting to see how the babysitters process it. 

[00:28:26] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:27] Kaykay: Like, how does the show, if that winds up being true, how does the show process someone that age, you know, is it like a no big deal type of thing? Do they have to actually process it? I don't know, but I'm wondering if that's where they're going with this.

[00:28:40] Brooke: Well, and at the very end of the episode too, what Claudia said to Janine where she was like, "I just want you to know if there's ever anything that you wanna tell me, I'm here." 

[00:28:53] Kaykay: Ah, right, yes! And what does Janine say? She doesn't really... 

[00:28:56] Brooke: "Okay." And she goes upstairs. 

[00:28:58] Kaykay: Yeah, she goes, "Okay," and she leaves. Ah, which, you're right, that would perfectly set it up for next episode of like, oh, there is something I wanted to tell you. 

[00:29:05] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:29:05] Kaykay: So I thought that was cool. And then the other thing that happens in this episode is Kristy gets sick and Kristy decides that Dawn should actually take over. 

[00:29:19] Brooke: I love this nod because Dawn is the alternate officer. So that is her title, right? Like, she's supposed to take over. 

[00:29:27] Kaykay: Yeah! 

[00:29:27] Brooke: And this comes up in the books a lot, where Dawn is like, I've never gotten to take over the role of president though, because Kristy has never missed a meeting. Like that's something that comes up explicitly in the books. And so you get to see Dawn like living her presidential fantasy in the TV show. 

[00:29:44] Kaykay: Her presidential fantasy. 

[00:29:47] Brooke: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:48] Kaykay: Yeah. So Dawn just is on fire with ideas of how she wants to change things to make it, you know, more socially just. Um, and I would say that Dawn has a lot of ideas, but no real ability to enact them or like make them into a plan. So when Kristy comes back, Kristy then takes all those ideas and actually makes them actionable and viable within the context of, of the business. 

Which is another, again, Kristy rockstar moment where Kristy displays fantastic leadership, right? The show explicitly talks about this at the end. Real leadership is not, you know, espousing the right thing to do. Real leadership is just bringing together really good minds and listening to them. 

[00:30:38] Brooke: Right. And finding the through line. 

[00:30:40] Kaykay: Yes. So like you, you're basically listening to them and then taking pieces from everyone and developing a plan and then, you know, enacting that plan and Kristy does it beautifully. She, she takes sort of the pie in the sky ideas from Dawn and just kind of shapes them a little bit, makes them a little more pragmatic so that they can actually enact them. 

[00:31:03] Brooke: Yeah. Because the slumber party quiz that was mentioned in the description, which is very different from the slumber party quizzes that, I don't know what your experience was if you ever had these. But like when I was a kid, you would take like, YM. So YM would have these quizzes in it. 

[00:31:23] Kaykay: I'm really frightened. 

[00:31:24] Brooke: A lot of it was like, how popular are you? 

[00:31:27] Kaykay: Oh, no. 

[00:31:30] Brooke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:31:30] Kaykay: Are you kidding me? 

[00:31:31] Brooke: Hmm-mm. I wish. 

[00:31:36] Kaykay: "How popular are you?" 

[00:31:38] Brooke: All of the magazines, the teen magazines, back in the day, your Seventeen, your Teen, your celebrity focused ones like Big Bopper and Teen Beat and all of that, and then like your YMs, they all had their own little flavor, their own little spin on things. 

[00:31:58] Kaykay: They all had their own, uh, maladaptive, cognitions. 

[00:32:02] Brooke: Yes. They all had their own toxic energy that they were bringing into your life, and YM was very focused on popularity and sex. YM was not so much about a saging out assuaging your fears as it was about accelerating your fears.

[00:32:22] Kaykay: Exploiting them. 

[00:32:24] Brooke: Yeah. The focus on how can you be more popular? And what is expected of you sexually when you get older? It was very, um, it was, it was pretty profound. 

[00:32:41] Kaykay: So here's where I was. I benefited cuz I was exclusively reading Mad and Cracked magazine. That was the only magazines, maybe uh, sports magazines. That was all you could get me to read. 

[00:32:52] Brooke: Yeah. I think it was better for your psyche, Kaykay, for sure. I mean, teen magazines now, like Teen Vogue is lit. 

[00:33:00] Kaykay: Oh, it's super lit. 

[00:33:01] Brooke: Teen Vogue is great. It's so political and feminist and life affirming. We did not have that in our day. I guess you could say Sassy. Sassy could bring that, sometimes Seventeen on a really, really good day could bring some of that in with the bullshit. Seventeen was more like a preppy girl's YM. It was more refined. 

[00:33:27] Kaykay: Yes, my sister read Seventeen. 

[00:33:29] Brooke: Seventeen is what girls in Kristy's new neighborhood would read. So those were the kind of quizzes that we were taking when we were at slumber parties. The quiz that we see the girls taking- 

[00:33:41] Kaykay: They're taking Myers-Briggs.

[00:33:44] Brooke: Exactly. They're finding out if they're an ENFT-J or whatever the fuck it is. 

[00:33:50] Kaykay: And they even give it this explicit corporate berth where they're like, oh, Watson does this at his company and he's a Cheerleader. And so we should do it for our company to like improve our corporate synergy. 

[00:34:02] Brooke: She literally uses the phrase "corporate synergy." And they're doing it because now that Mallory and Jessi have entered the club, you know, they wanna find, she wants to find out what everybody's roles are so that she can structure things in the best way. 

What's funny is that, well, first of all, what was great is that that gives Dawn an immediate jumping off point to rail against corporations talking about how, oh, corporations, you know, how they don't have to pay taxes. They just hoard wealth until they're bailed out by the disappearing middle class. 

[00:34:37] Kaykay: Yep. 

[00:34:38] Brooke: Coming off of "Kristy and the Snobs" too, I was like, Dawn, I love you so much. 

[00:34:42] Kaykay: God love ya. 

[00:34:43] Brooke: I love ya! 

[00:34:44] Kaykay: Dawn really is your, uh, I feel that Dawn is your inner Brooke spirit, for sure. 

[00:34:50] Brooke: Completely. Dawn is me inside, Kristy is me outside.

[00:34:54] Kaykay: Huh. 

[00:34:55] Brooke: It's a tough combination, I have to say. It's a little rough sometimes. 

[00:35:01] Kaykay: Yeah, must really be a war. 

[00:35:04] Brooke: It sure is. Sure is. 

[00:35:07] Kaykay: You're like, that's an understatement, girl. 

[00:35:09] Brooke: Yeah. Um, also Ashley is cool as fuck in that regard. 

[00:35:14] Kaykay: Yes. 

[00:35:14] Brooke: I just mentioned Teen Vogue. That's one of the things that they say is that she even published an article in Teen Vogue about the politics of radical empathy.

[00:35:24] Kaykay: Yes. 

[00:35:25] Brooke: These are the coolest people. 

[00:35:27] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:35:28] Brooke: Her speech at the March for Our Lives went viral. Like I'm just like, can we clone the characters in this, uh, in this series, but you see them all taking these personality tests and all of the girls have a different, you know, have a different role that they come out with.

Kristy is the captain. Dawn is the revolutionary and Claudia is the individualist. Like those are some that immediately that I can recall off the top of my head. But Mallory is undetermined because she feels this pressure to like answer correctly. And so she just doesn't answer a lot of the questions.

And so what just struck me is that in the book Claudia and the New Girl, the new girl is Ashley Wyeth. 

[00:36:17] Kaykay: Yes. 

[00:36:18] Brooke: The new girl in this episode, I would say, is Mallory. 

[00:36:22] Kaykay: That's what I thought. 

[00:36:23] Brooke: Which was a nice twist on it, I think. 

[00:36:26] Kaykay: Especially because, uh, you know, Mallory's desperation to fit in and be liked, that feels very in line with the new girl energy. 

[00:36:35] Brooke: Completely. And, um, you know, she is very desperate to be liked. And, um, just like in the book, Mallory to me has always kind of been the character that is most able to get on my nerves, she- 

[00:36:52] Kaykay: She's pretty annoying in this show. 

[00:36:54] Brooke: She's pretty annoying in this show. 

[00:36:56] Kaykay: And I was a little confused that, um, she's so annoying, and then Claudia finally is just like, dude, you're annoying. And then Claudia's the bad guy? I was just, I was a little struck by the lesson there where I was like, well, I mean, she was being annoying and like, sometimes you get called on it when you're being annoying and it's okay. 

[00:37:16] Brooke: And she didn't even say you're annoying.

[00:37:19] Kaykay: You're being annoying, yeah. 

[00:37:20] Brooke: Which I think Kristy would have said, potentially. At least book Kristy would have said. 

[00:37:24] Kaykay: Definitely. 

[00:37:25] Brooke: Maybe not so much show Kristy, but you know, this is when they're babysitting Lucy Newton. Instead of like making Mallory draw a detailed diagram of the digestive system, as they did in the book, and like how old is a baby when they lose their first teeth and all of this shit, she's just shadowing, right? And she won't shut up talking about her writing. Like she's there, she's always writing stuff down. 

You see it in the previous episode too, while they're all together at the slumber party, she's like writing down what everybody has said. So she just wants to write when she's babysitting and she wants Claudia to read her stories while they're babysitting. And she is just really requiring Claudia to focus a lot of her attention on Mallory and not the attention on the very young baby that they're sitting. 

And Claudia just says, "I'm supposed to be babysitting Lucy, and I feel like I'm babysitting you." To a girl of Mallory's age, who is like trying to prove that she is able to take on this additional responsibility, that's probably like a knife to the gut in that way. Where it's like, "but I wanna be the babysitter." So to be told that I am like the kid being babysat is just really, really harsh.

And she takes it harshly, even though Claudia doesn't mean it that way, she's just being, she's being real. She's like, "In this moment, I can't be focused on you. I need to be focused on the child." 

[00:39:03] Kaykay: And in fact, it's great feedback because what she's really saying with this is, "It's not about you right now." Like "it has to be about the client right now." 

[00:39:11] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:39:12] Kaykay: Which is totally valid feedback. 

[00:39:15] Brooke: And I think is really hard for somebody who's 11. You wanna have all of the benefits of, you get to take on the responsibility and then you'll get the respect that's associated with it. Right? You don't think about the fact of like, people aren't gonna be caring for you in the same way that you're used to.

So there is a trade off of being like, well, I wanna be the grown one. I wanna be mature. I want to be respected as a leader, somebody with authority. And it's like, okay, well then if you're gonna take on this role of authority, you have to realize that you're not gonna be the one who's being catered to. Are you okay with that?

And frankly, I'm just thinking about this. Now there's so much about like corporations and, you know, leadership, leader roles, et cetera. I can think of a hell of a lot of people that I have encountered in my professional career who still haven't reconciled that. Who may be in positions of authority and still want to be, they wanna be catered too.

[00:40:19] Kaykay: Most people. I would say most people. 

[00:40:21] Brooke: As opposed to being like, this is a responsibility. I have to give things up. If you want that power, you know, you wanna be the one who's like steering the ship. Great. And that comes back at the end where Kristy says- Kristy, who's been the Captain, she says, "You can't be a captain without a crew." 

[00:40:42] Kaykay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:40:43] Brooke: And so you see that realization come in and ultimately you see Claudia and Mallory bridge their gap by being like, okay, you know, Mallory wants to be seen and respected as this writer. And then Claudia's like, well, what if we like collaborate together? You can give me your stories. I'll illustrate them that they can be equals in that space, but it's a separate space from their roles as caretakers. 

[00:41:15] Kaykay: Yes. 

[00:41:16] Brooke: So it's like, I will meet this need that you have in another way. When you are babysitting, it's not about you. 

[00:41:26] Kaykay: Yeah, it's gotta be about the clients. 

[00:41:27] Brooke: Right. And they don't say it explicitly, but I think, you know, they come to a good place at the end. 

[00:41:34] Kaykay: Yes. And the book definitely, well, the show, the show definitely seems to be expressing something about, you know, Mallory really needed to be seen. 

[00:41:44] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:41:45] Kaykay: You know, and like part of her kind of like, look at me, look at me, blah blah blah blah blah, you know, like little, little brother, little sister annoyingness was sort of an insecurity about not being seen by Claudia. And so, you know, once Claudia sort of sees that that's actually what Mallory needs, Claudia can give that to her in an appropriate context. And then they can sort of take it out of the workspace and the workspace can, can be about the clients.

[00:42:14] Brooke: Yeah. That's reflected in how Claudia is like a little deer in the headlights with Ashley. Ashley is the older cooler girl. Ashley is the aspirational figure to her much in the same way that, you know, Claudia and Kristy are the aspirational figures for Mallory. You know, Claudia says, no one takes me seriously.

Claudia says that, cuz she feels that way when Kristy chooses Dawn to take her place, even though Dawn is right that it's her job. Like that's what the alternate officer is supposed to do, but Claudia's like, well, I'm the vice president. Like I should be doing this. And so Claudia feels disrespected and not seen and, you know, says straight up, no one takes me seriously.

And so I think that she can kind of see that where Mallory is coming from. 

[00:43:10] Kaykay: Yeah. And it also ties back to Ashley's radical empathy. 

[00:43:13] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:43:14] Kaykay: Right? Being able to, even though you might be personally being irritated by something, you know, having that stance of radical empathy to really see where someone else is coming from and the sort of power of that. You know, the way that people sort of thrive in that, and their need for that. 

You're right, there's a great mirroring happening between Ashley and Claudia. And Ashley's really modeling for Claudia a wonderful way to do it, right? Ashley is really seeing Claudia. There's really no missteps that we see in this episode. There's just a lot of like care and attention and radical empathy. 

[00:43:53] Brooke: I love the fact that that happens in her own home, too. Ashley helps Claudia look at Janine in a completely different way, cuz she's like, why the fuck is the coolest girl in school-

[00:44:10] Kaykay: Is this, the coolest person I've ever met- 

[00:44:12] Brooke: Hanging out- 

[00:44:13] Kaykay: Hanging with my sis? 

[00:44:14] Brooke: She talks to Ashley about that, and Ashley says how Janine makes things more interesting. And that she is who she is, which is the epitome of cool in Ashley's eyes. And then there's also, that's also sort of mirrored when you see Mimi talking about her zoom book club that she goes to, and she says that she likes to encounter new ideas and that the new ideas make her feel younger.

And so she's in this space with these women that are encouraging her to encounter new ideas, new perspectives, to look at things in a different way. And she does that, like, ultimately she says at the end, that being an individualist means respecting what makes each of us unique. So she was classified as the individualist on the quiz that they took.

And so she's learning more about what that means. And she says that she failed to lead because she failed to listen. And she realizes that Ashley is saying how, you know, she encounters the same Janine that Claudia does. And while Claudia is like, we are so different, I can't relate to her and is basically, you know, implying that she just sort of like shuts out what Janine is saying, because she doesn't understand it.

So it's like, just shut it out. That's why she's like, oh, well, if Ashley finds what Janine has to say, interesting, then maybe there's something there for me to find interesting. And so that's why she reaches out at the end with like, if there's something you have to tell me, I'll listen. The way that it's delivered sounded very much, like I know you're queer.

And if you wanna come out to me, I'm super open to that. And it's funny that we're talking about this because I don't know if you remember this, but the book we found very queer. 

[00:46:15] Kaykay: Yeah. I do remember this. 

[00:46:17] Brooke: Ashley and Claudia. 

[00:46:18] Kaykay: Right, yes. Yes. Especially cuz there was all this drama around the friends being like you're spending too much time with her. Like why are you obsessed with her? That kind of, you know, really intense interpersonal energy between the two of them. 

[00:46:34] Brooke: Right. And I mean, this is the one where Ashley says that she would sculpt love with quote gentle curves and tender feelings. 

[00:46:42] Kaykay: Right, this was gentle curves, tender feelings. 

[00:46:45] Brooke: It's not even really subtext there. That's pretty, that's as about as close as we can get to text. But you know, we had that, they were grappling with identities and like competing identities and responsibilities. Like she is really trying to figure out who she was and, and her place in the world. 

And what does this sort of draw to Ashley, what does that mean for her? Both as a person, as a friend and also as an artist? Like her artistic identity was really questioned through her work with Ashley, you know, Ashley is like let's sculpt fire hydrants, which is just like blew her mind. Like we can, I thought we could only sculpt eagles and hands.

Um, but Ashley was really the first person that Claudia was ever impressed by in Stoneybrook. So that was a really interesting one. What did you have for what they were fighting in the show? 

[00:47:39] Kaykay: Yeah, so I had fighting to connect and to be liked, for both shows.

[00:47:45] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:47:46] Kaykay: I saw the big overarching theme for both of 'em.

[00:47:49] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:47:50] Kaykay: How about you? 

[00:47:51] Brooke: Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely see that as a theme throughout. I mean, I think that's probably a theme for the entire series. I love how this series is so focused on the girls inner lives and emotional development. 

I had, in this show specifically, fighting sort of rigidity of roles, both roles within the club, and then also you get the, the roles of like how their personality tests to find them, and then even roles within like Janine's role in Claudia's life is, you know, strange older sister that she can't imagine. 

[00:48:31] Kaykay: Strange nerd. 

[00:48:32] Brooke: Yeah. And so she's gotta like kind of break out of that. And then perceptions of self and others. They worked through it by listening and being open to new ideas.

So she says at the end, "We all have strengths, things to say." That's sort of the lesson. I think that was explicitly stated, which has a through line to "There's more to people that meets the eye," that we got from Kristy in the previous episode. 

[00:49:02] Kaykay: Very nice, very nice. 

[00:49:04] Brooke: It's consistent. 

[00:49:06] Kaykay: Yeah. I also realize as we're talking about it, that, um, I think they're fighting in this episode specifically to be seen and to be heard. 

[00:49:15] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:16] Kaykay: Like everybody is, and you know, Kristy is cuz she's sick, she can't join. It's like a literal not seen and heard. Claudia is trying to be seen and heard by Ashley. Um, you know, obviously Mallory is desperate to be seen and heard by, by Claudia. It's kind of cool how the lesson at the end explicitly references listening, you know, as like a key part of leadership.

[00:49:43] Brooke: Yep. 

[00:49:43] Kaykay: Because that's the crazy thing is that, you know, if you've ever managed people, you kind of realize that people just wanna be seen and heard and feel cared for by their boss, right? And like beyond that, almost nothing matters. 

[00:50:00] Brooke: Oh yeah. Cuz if, if you don't have that, you don't have anything. That's the foundation.

[00:50:03] Kaykay: Right. And also it's so rare. Like it's so rare to actually feel it from your boss. That if you do have it, you'll have loyal people forever. 

[00:50:12] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah, it just makes me so sad that that is something that's rare. It, I mean, it, it should be- 

[00:50:17] Kaykay: Well, and, and I also will say that, um, you know, not to make it too explicitly gendered, but I think this is something women do much more naturally.

And also it's, it's partially how we've been cultivated by society to be, right? Like we always are supposed to be taking it into account other people's feelings. And that's the wonderful thing about it. That's why women make amazing leaders and can make amazing leaders. And this is why I love, I love this sort of new way people are looking at work. 

You know, traditionally it's always been sort of like male values and patriarchal values, like speak up, be aggressive, don't put soft words in your emails. And I love this new line of thinking that's coming in that's like, wait, maybe all of that shit needs to be changed. And maybe women shouldn't try to be like men more, maybe businesses need to celebrate what we bring to the table. 

[00:51:16] Brooke: Oh yeah. I'm sorry, maybe men should be more like women. Maybe if we're gonna have to pick a stereotypical- 

[00:51:21] Kaykay: Not to put too fine a point on it, fuck yes! 

[00:51:23] Brooke: Maybe if we need to pick one way to be a leader and we need to go with the gendered version of that, hey, how about we go with the feminine version of leadership? Because the male version of leadership fucking sucks for everyone who isn't the leader. Sorry, but it's true. 

[00:51:38] Kaykay: Yeah, and it also, we've talked about this before, how it sucks too, just for the organization. Because the most successful organizations have the best flow from the ground up. And the information needs to flow from the ground up because up is by definition disconnected.

[00:51:55] Brooke: Right. 

[00:51:56] Kaykay: And so if you're not listening, you're gonna drive it off the cliff. 

[00:52:01] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, trickle down leadership is as effective as trickle down economics, which is to say not effective at all. Throw it in the trash, start from scratch. 

[00:52:11] Kaykay: So the show is just such a good example of, you know, the way leadership can be different.

[00:52:17] Brooke: Yeah. I definitely want Kristy Thomas being not just the captain of The Baby-sitters Club, I want her to be the captain of the fucking world. 

[00:52:27] Kaykay: She's gonna have some dope ass policies. You know what I mean? 

[00:52:30] Brooke: Oh, I'm telling you, Kristy's Elizabeth Warren. To me, she's Elizabeth Warren through and through. Through and through. I love it. 

[00:52:37] Kaykay: I also just gotta say, I love this actor. I think she's so great. She's so good. I mean, they cast her so beautifully. She just has this like chutzpah and spirit that's so believable and so fun to watch, and funny at the same time. 

[00:52:53] Brooke: Yeah, I see big things for a lot of these actresses. They are very good. And authentic, like you believe them as the age that they're playing. Like they're not playing older like you normally see, you know, where it's like being sassy teen or something like that. Like they really feel like 13 year old girls who are grappling with the things that 13 year old girls and frankly 40 year old women deal with still.

[00:53:22] Kaykay: They're definitely portraying a genuineness that is very skillful. It's very skillful. It's really impressive. 

[00:53:32] Brooke: And big props to the entire team that worked on this, for the writers for giving them genuine characters to play. Although Ashley Wyeth is a little bit, Ashley Wyeth is kind of a dream character, you know?

[00:53:47] Kaykay: Yeah. It's a little unrealistic, especially because she's so perfect. 

[00:53:52] Brooke: Yeah, she's genuinely the coolest person that you can imagine. 

[00:53:56] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:53:56] Brooke: But you know, besides that. And the director for making it possible for these girls to play girls and not women. It's really refreshing. 

[00:54:07] Kaykay: I totally agree with that. And the, and the things that they're struggling with, they also manage to demonstrate very age appropriate struggles and in a way that's like interesting to all ages. It feels simple watching it, but thinking about what goes into developing something like this, it could have been such a pile of diarrhea. 

[00:54:28] Brooke: At some point, Kaykay, we will have to go back and watch some episodes of the 1990 TV show- 

[00:54:33] Kaykay: Which is a pile of diarrhea? 

[00:54:35] Brooke: It's, it's, um, let's just say the bar was not set super high with the original.

[00:54:42] Kaykay: Oh, that's gonna be so fun if we do that. 

[00:54:45] Brooke: Oh man. I have a fondness for it from a nostalgic perspective, you know, where it takes me back. 

[00:54:52] Kaykay: Sure. 

[00:54:52] Brooke: But it's like, there are some problematic shit. 

[00:54:56] Kaykay: Oh, I think that would be a real blast if we did that. We gotta put it on the agenda. 

[00:55:02] Brooke: On the flip side of the 1990 version though, was there anything that jumped out at you as like, oh man, this is a super modern moment. 

[00:55:11] Kaykay: They had an amazing explicit, modern moment where they said, "It's not the eighties anymore. Coolness and cruelness are no longer synonymous," or something like that. 

[00:55:21] Brooke: Dawn says it, too. Again, God damnit Dawn is just the best.

Dawn says, "It's not like an eighties movie. Coolness and cruelty are no longer synonymous." I wrote it down because I also, I loved it. Like, I paused, I was like, whoa, whoa, stop. That's good. Gotta write this down.

[00:55:36] Kaykay: I mean, that to me is a modern moment and an explicitly called out modern moment by, by the writers.

[00:55:44] Brooke: Yeah. I look forward to a time when, uh, power and cruelty are no longer synonymous, but, um, in the meantime, I'll take coolness and cruelty as, uh, as a crumb. 

[00:55:53] Kaykay: It's getting there. 

[00:55:54] Brooke: Well, I hope so. Janine too is into crypto and Twitch, which seems right. 

[00:56:00] Kaykay: Crypto! 

[00:56:02] Brooke: Seems right. 

[00:56:03] Kaykay: Although, I don't know. Do you really think Janine's into crypto? I think she's way too smart for that. 

[00:56:08] Brooke: No, no, no, no, no. Janine is running one of the scams. She knows it's a scam. She hundred percent knows it's a scam. 

[00:56:16] Kaykay: All right, you fixed it for me. You, you, you made it made sense for me. Thank you. Cuz I was like, Janine is not investing in crypto. What? 

[00:56:25] Brooke: Oh, no, she's not investing. Her crypto is being invested in. 

[00:56:29] Kaykay: She's a billionaire. 

[00:56:30] Brooke: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:31] Kaykay: This is why Ashley's hanging out with her.

[00:56:33] Brooke: Right, this might be why Ashley has gotten some of these, uh, prime placements in national magazines and such, because Janine is using her crypto money for some PR. There were so many, I feel like they amped it up a little bit in terms of the modern moments. Like I was so happy to see the record book is now an iPad calendar. Did you notice that? So where it used to be, okay, we'll call you back. We'll hang up. We'll discuss, who's gonna take this job and then we'll call you back.

You know, you just have Kristy rattling off what the job is. And then Mary Anne is listening, pulls it up and is just like, okay, in real time, here's who gets the job. Yeah. I was like, Ugh. Finally, thank you. 

[00:57:13] Kaykay: That makes so much sense. 

[00:57:15] Brooke: It does. And then also this is just a tiny, tiny, tiny little thing, but it did jump out at me.

So Stacey, who is still your prototypical cool girl, just as she is a cool girl in the eighties and the nineties, she's a cool girl today. Like, you know, the circles, like she is what you think of as a popular girl who would probably be homecoming queen or some shit. But she's got a pink streak in her hair. And in our day that would not have been done.

So the cool, like the cool girls who were sort of rebellious would do that. That was a sign of rebel. That was a sign of like, fuck your expectations. 

[00:57:57] Kaykay: Yeah. 

[00:57:57] Brooke: And that would've been incredibly scandalous. Like the kids I knew that used to dye their hair with Kool-Aid, you know, it was a way of being like two middle fingers up to society.

And Stacey is very much like, definition of society girl, and she's got that pink streak in her hair. Just little things like that where you're like, oh yeah, I guess we did let go of that part of judgment. I guess we are letting people express themselves a little differently. 

[00:58:26] Kaykay: Yeah, be a little more creative with themselves.

I feel the same about tattoos. When we were younger, it was like, Ooh tattoos were, that was a real fucking statement. It was a real lifestyle statement. 

[00:58:38] Brooke: Oh, and you would not, if you were in certain classes, you would not have been allowed to really associate with people that had tattoos. 

[00:58:45] Kaykay: Yes, of course. 

[00:58:46] Brooke: In the same way that you would not have been able to associate with people who had pink streaks in their hair.

[00:58:51] Kaykay: Exactly. 

[00:58:52] Brooke: But now that pink streak is on Stacey, so her class can't exactly say "you're not one of us" because she is the definition of "one of us." 

And she's also able, speaking of Stacey, she's able to have syrup because now she can use- 

[00:59:08] Kaykay: She has modern technology. 

[00:59:10] Brooke: She has modern medicine and she can give herself a little boost of insulin so that she can have syrup.

[00:59:16] Kaykay: I know, as a, you know, deep sugar lover, you must have been like, ah, yes. 

[00:59:20] Brooke: Ugh, yeah. 

[00:59:20] Kaykay: You must have been so relieved for Stacey.

[00:59:23] Brooke: Well, cuz I was always so sad for Stacey. 

[00:59:25] Kaykay: Sure, you're like, no sugar? What kind of life is this? 

[00:59:29] Brooke: Right, how do you go on? That's the one area where Dawn and I differ. Give me all of your junk food. I may, I may be a revolutionary, but not when it comes to junk food. 

So the next episode, we are going to discuss two books, one of which we have read, and one of which we have not, cuz again, they jump all over the place. So the next episode is gonna focus on Stacey's Emergency, which is book 43. So one that we haven't covered yet. And Jessi and the Superbrat, which is book 27, which we did cover. This is where the celebrity comes to town. 

[01:00:06] Kaykay: I was gonna say, I even remember that one. All right! 

[01:00:09] Brooke: Yeah! So I am looking forward to digging into two more episodes of this with you in our next episode, which will drop in two weeks, Kaykay. 

[01:00:19] Kaykay: Oh, I can't wait. And I gotta say, I love taking a break and doing these Netflix with you. It's our true summer vacation. We just get to watch a fucking show. Just talk nonsense about a TV show. It's cool. 

[01:00:32] Brooke: Right, watch TV with your friends and talk about it. 

[01:00:34] Kaykay: Yeah! 

[01:00:35] Brooke: That's an eighties kid summer. 

[01:00:36] Kaykay: Summer vacation, yes. 

[01:00:38] Brooke: For sure. For sure. 

[01:00:39] Kaykay: Bye, books! Chucking that out the window. See ya.

[01:00:42] Brooke: I mean, I did that too. 

[01:00:43] Kaykay: Terminator II, every day.

[01:00:48] Brooke: Oh man. Well, I'm excited to dig into that with you next time, Kaykay. 

[01:00:52] Kaykay: Me too. 

[01:00:53] Brooke: But until then... 

[01:00:56] Kaykay: Just keep sittin'! [theme] The ladies and the gentlemen, sporting together!