So, I realized the other day that I make a lot of references to the Babysitters Club on this blog, but I’ve never actually said anything substantial about it. And, I mean, it’s so awesome that I’m kind of surprised at myself.

See, the Babysitters Club isn’t just a series of hundreds of incredibly similar books about a group of 13-year-old babysitters who run their own business (with a crappy model – like, I don’t think they ever made any money). It’s also a series of awful Disney Channel show episodes which you can now buy on tape if you find a library that’s trying to purge itself of topically unimportant vhs tapes. And, it’s a feature-length film from 1995, starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Schuyler Fisk (you know, what’s her name’s daughter), AND Alex Mack.

Basically, the girls are 13, so they’re screechy and hysterical and loud and overly dramatic and excited about EVERYTHING and I SO wanted to be their friend when I was little.

Anyway, the books are absolutely great. Each one is written from a different girl’s perspective, in first person, and they follow the same format every time: there’s an establishing chapter; then a chapter where the girl painstakingly details the club, its inception, and each member with nauseating accuracy (which was a highly skippable chapter after you read, like, the first book, except for the fact that Ann M. Martin gave amazing clothing descriptions … I’ll get to that in a second); then the story is told interspersed with boring chapters where they talk about babysitting jobs they went on. Like, I’m reading a story about Mary Anne finally getting a boyfriend. Do I really care about the fact that a 3-year-old peed his pants and Claudia stepped on the dog, and it was such a disaster until somehow she completely saved the day by making a mural on the wall of the living room that the parents didn’t even care about?
I’m getting ahead of myself.

The babysitting wasn’t that interesting, and while it fascinated and intrigued me that these girls had basically the enitre run of the household, including the psychological development of their charges (like the time they learned all about this fat boy with wispy hair hiding food in his room, therapy-ed him, healed him, got his sister to stop making fun of him, and then didn’t even tell the parents what had went down) , I was also kind of annoyed that they were so “we’re babysitters and you’re not.” So, what I was obviously more interested in were the soap-opera-like stories that were going on between the girls. You know… Mary Anne gets a makeover and everyone hates her! Stacey gets a boyfriend and stops hanging out with the babysitters! Claudia breaks her arm and becomes terrified of children!

I thought that the Disney channel bringing the show to life was the most awesome thing ever. The girls they got to play the characters were sort of so unlike the books that it made it like an entirely different story. And the soap opera-y elements were even MORE soap opera-y (what can I say? I was watching All My Children before I was even born). Dawn and Mary Anne are caught in a love triangle! Stacey travels to New York to tell her Dad to BACK UP OFF trying to get her to move in with him! Claudia holds a seance in her attic!

Awesome.

By far, though, the best episode is Dawn Saves the Trees. The girls are supposed to be from Connecticut, and Dawn is supposed to have grown up in California, but the actress playing her has this insane midwest accent, so every time she gets hysterical (which is all the time), it sounds really funny. And she’s even more hysterical in this episode than in the one where she likes a boy who thinks he’s asking out Mary Anne on the phone and she gets totally embarrassed showing up for their date and he’s all, “You look nice. Where you headed?” Wait. I should tell you about the girls first.

That’s Dawn. She’s an environmentalist – like, an insane one that would probably grow up to blow up buildings in protest or something. And she only eats health food and she has looooooooooong, looooooooong, super light bloooooooooonde hair, and her style is “California Casual”. Whatever that means. She’s always indignant and crosses her arms a lot.

Then there’s Kristy. She’s the leader of the club, ’cause it was her idea. She’s also a bitch. And a lesbian. She coaches a softball team and is “dating” the male coach of another softball team (like, how many little league softball teams coached by 13-year-olds does one town need?). She doesn’t care about clothes! Or boys! And she doesn’t wear a bra yet! She rolls her eyes a lot, and she’s bossy and mean and doesn’t really care about other people’s feelings.

Mary Anne is Kristy’s best friend, and she’s the sappiest because her mother died when she was little, and her father, in this creepy move, made her wear her hair in braids forever (because that will keep her from liking … boys? I don’t know), but then he eased up, and now she’s getting more interested in clothes and Kristy feels left out! She cries a lot, and she’s soft-spoken to the point of frustration and she wears a lot of frumpy jumper dresses. She’s also the only one with a boyfriend, which is kind of strange.

Except for the fact that Logan, her boyfriend, is totally gay. He’s from Kentucky, and Ann M. Martin loved to write out his speech phonetically so we could all understand what a Southern accent sounded like. “Mayuh Ree Ayun.” Something like that. He’s super sensitive as well and also loves to babysit, so they let him babysit sometimes, even though Kristy gave him a super-feminist hard time about it. Like, get with the times, Kristy! Isn’t making babysitting a job that’s only appropriate for girls the last thing you want to do? He’s also a dog and starts macking on Mary Anne and ordering for her in restaurants to the point where she has to break up with him. But, they get back together, like, four books later.

Claudia is the “artist” of the group, which means she’s dumb. She can’t spell, she doesn’t like school, she’s probably got some kind of borderline mental deficiency, but she can paint, so nobody cares. Except for her parents, who are militant about school and hate the fact that she reads Nancy Drew books. I mean, she’s reading, which seems like a battle won, but I guess that’s not how they look at things. And she hides candy around her room. But, she’s Japanese-American which (I guess) gives her perfect skin. Or something. And she wears ridiculous clothes. Like, leggings under sweatpants, with an oversized shirt with a parrot on it, and her hair in three braids on side and loose on the other side, and a big giant parrot earring in one ear. But, she’s an artist. An artist!

And then Claudia’s best friend is Stacey, and they’re best friends because they’re both sophisticated and they’re not big fat babies like Mary Anne and Kristy, or weird vegans like Dawn. Stacey’s from New York (the BIG APPLE!) and she knows all about getting cabs by herself and taking the Statue of Liberty tour, and her style is so sohpisticated that she gets her blonde hair permed into a big fluffy mess. She also wears awful clothes, like big sweater dresses over leggings with ankle boots. Although, now that I think about it, that’s kind of a current style.

Jessie and Mallory totally never count ’cause they’re only 11, and no one cares about 11-year-olds. Jessie’s a dancer, and they make this big deal out of the fact that she’s black and has cocoa-colored skin, and Mallory’s white and she has … white-colored skin, but they’re still best friends. Also, Jessie’s kind of a bitch, too, but they blame it on her being “sassy” and Mallory’s totally a lesbian. Their books are boring. Like, Jessie learns sign language to deal with a deaf kid, and Mallory hates boys and gym! Big deal.

Anyway, now that you know who’s in the story, here’s the gist of it.

The show always starts out with the girls screaming about something over which plays the awful theme song (“say hello to your friends/babysitters club/say hello to the people who care”) , and in this episode they’re at the awkwardly named Flat Rock Brook Park with a whole crapload of kids. They’re tying peanuts to the trees and Claudia says, “A feast for the birds!” But, then you can hear Jessie going, “Will the birds eat that?” except you can’t see her and you don’t know what she’s talking about, besides the peanuts, and … obviously they’ll eat the peanuts, otherwise, why are they wasting their time?

Then one of the little kids says in this super calm voice, “Hey, everyone, look at this,” and they all come racing over, like he broke his leg and noticed the bone coming through the skin or something. He found a bird with a broken wing, and they all stand around and look at it, and it’s hilarious because all the little kids are upset and are all like, “What do we do? Do we call the hospital??” and the babysitters are totally ROLLING their EYES and talking in these exasperated voices, like the last thing they want to do is figure out how to help this baby bird that can’t move. Bitches! Later, Dawn says she called the park and told them where the bird is and she just seems totally annoyed that she even exerted that much energy.

Then they all get up to leave and it looks like they’re walking right on the bird. Good job, guys.

So, as they’re leaving the park, they see some surveyors, who are just standing in the field, minding their own business, looking through that little surveyor tool they have. You should hear the babysitters! They freak out!! “What are they doing?” “Who are THEY?” “What could be going on?” “I’ve never seen THEM before!”

So, Dawn marches up and asks them what’s going on, and comes back with frustrated tears in her eyes to announce an impending road RIGHT THROUGH THE PARK! Everyone gasps and wonders if all the birds in the park will die now, and Dawn starts to stomp off in the kind of huff that only a 13-year-old girl can produce:

Mary Anne calms her down with the promise of finding out more information (and also, presumably, to stop her from freaking out all the kids they’re babysitting).

But, see, Dawn’s crazy, so when they go to the town hall and are told that 12 trees will be cut down to make room for an “access road”, and then give her (GIVE HER!) about 100 sheets of paper pertaining to the proposal, she says they’re just trying to stall her so they can vote yes on the road before her tiny 8th grade mind has read past the first page, and then she throws out the paper.

Wait. I don’t think you heard that. Dawn. The environmentalist. The girl CRYING over the prospect of 12 trees being cut down, THROWS OUT A HUNDRED SHEETS OF PAPER. And nobody bats an eye. WHAT??

Well, anyway, for a split second in this episode, she kind of acts like a normal 13-year-old when she spots Logan walking up with a guy she thinks is cute.

Of course, she yells in her harsh midwestern accent, “Who’s THAT???” within earshot. And who is it?

Yup. It’s Zach Braff. At his most awkward, too, which is saying a TON where ZB is concerned. He’s Logan’s baseball buddy, it turns out, and I think he likes Dawn as much as she likes him. Can you tell? No? Well, they’re not very good actors. Anyway, ZB is from New Jersey, and that’s where this show was filmed, so this could perhaps have been his first big acting job, which is pretty hilarious. And he’s got some fantasticly large hair.

Anyway, Dawn suddenly recovers from normalcy and realizes that there’s no time for crushes when there’s a planet to save, so the girls organize an emergency action team, composed of the girls in the babysitters club and some children they babysit. Effective.

They’re all making posters at Dawn’s house (slave labor!) and then Jessie just sort of wanders in from out of nowhere to make them play a game with her. Which is awesome. They play Mother May I which is a terrible game. Worse than Red Rover. How about kickball or tag or, ooh! Freeze Tag! Anyway, Jessie puts on her sassiest sass face and voice…

…before Dawn shows up to ruin the “fun” by making everyone start working on their useless project again.

Apropos of nothing, Mallory “accidentally” lands in the same chair as Claudia, who looks back at the camera for no reason with this “get this lesbian OUTTA here!” look on her face.

Then, Dawn tries to bully Little Pete into wearing a tree costume at the rally tomorrow and gets mad at him when he doesn’t want to. Then, Kristy and Mary Anne come tearing up the deck, fanny packs-a-flyin’ and Dawn gets mad at them for being late.

She’s so annoying! She’s all, This is super serious, guys! Which, you’re thirteen, Dawn! Stop being such a mother.

Anwyay, Kristy and Mary Anne apparantly had to stand in a long line at the copy center, which Dawn doesn’t even give them a break on, and then she gets even more bent out of shape when it turns out that they made a double date for the movies. When she tells them they don’t have time for dates, and Kristy says, “We don’t have to do this every second of the day,” Dawn ACTUALLY says, “Yes, we do!” Is she kidding?

Anyway, then Kristy gets all Jane Austen and says that it’s not just a double date, it’s a triple date, because “David Cummings asked specifically for you!” Did he also mention how much he has a year and then ask her father’s permission to marry her? Finally, Dawn cools down for another half a second at the thought of getting some ass.

Cut to Dawn getting ready in her room. She’s put on white leggings and a giant cranberry sweater, and is deciding on earrings. But, it’s funny because Kristy’s still wearing her striped shirt and fanny pack, and Mary Anne’s still wearing her the oversized plaid jumper she borrowed from her home ec teacher, so I don’t know what Dawn’s getting so bent out of shape about.

Anyway, Kristy and Mary Anne have this banter where they’re playing up ZB by saying things like, “Logan says he’s a greeeeat baseball player!” and “He’s in my class and he’s reeeeeeally smart!” and “I heard he has a greeeeeeat sense of humour” and “Dawn doesn’t care if they’re smart, as long as they’re soooooooo cute!” I mean, replace some of those words, and you’d be watching an episode of Sex and the City. It’s weird. And plus, they keep overenunciating everything, which makes it seem even more like they’re all double entendres.

But, Dawn starts in again about how important trees are (I think they make a joke about them at some point – something like “As long as he’s dressed like a tree…”), and Mary Anne and Kristy are totally done with her whining.

I mean, seriously. They’re going on a date! Mary Anne just wants to hold Logan’s hand, and Kristy just wants to “accidentally” grab Mary Anne’s boob, and then they were probably hoping that Dawn would shut up once she got a little from ZB, and Dawn’s making it so hard!

And to make things even worse, Dawn has her hair up in this kind of matronly meets prom queen style when they start the scene, right?

And then Mary Anne says that she likes Dawn’s hair down ’cause it’s so pretty, so Dawn FLIPS OUT and pulls half of her hair down, leaving this little tiny bun on top.

And, of course, she blames Mary Anne, who’s, like, already forgotten she said anything about her hair and leaves the room all clapping and saying, “Yay, Logan’s at the door!” leaving Dawn to brush out her dry messy hair through frustrated tears.

Ten hours later, when she finally comes down and is ready to leave, ZB gives a slight look of disappointment as she decends the stairs, but has, in the meantime, discovered her posters and poorly made petition about the trees and asks about it. She starts in on her spiel and then when ZB expresses an opposing opinion, she starts screeching at him.

And that’s when she discovers that he’s not just Logan’s baseball buddy. He also happens to be the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works’ son. He is so for the park improvement plan that it’s not even funny, and Dawn basically wants to punch Commiss-lette in the face. There will be no triple date tonight.

So, moving on, there’s a picket line and, again, a bunch of babysittees doing all the work (why are their parents letting 7-year-olds get involved in this?), and all these cars are driving by and honking, and the drivers look like their flipping them off.

Which is awesome. And then there’s a reporter and a photographer covering the story, who both look like they’ll kill their editor if they get sent on another story like this again.

Plus, they hilariously smack down Kristy when she starts to babble on about the Babysitters Club, because this is neither the time nor place to promote your side business, dope.

They’re all excitedly reading the article and congratulating themselves when Dawn tells them once again that it is not time for fun, and that they should be gearing themselves up for the next fight. They tell her to calm down a bit, and she gets even more mad, and when they say that she should ask ZB for help since he’ll know more about what’s going down than they do, she yells that “he’s on the other side!” Just like a social protester.

The next day, they head to the meeting, and get ready to kick some DPW ass.

The Commissioner, aka ZB’s mom, has some crazy Jersey hair. She’s also probably actually somebody’s mom or actually the Commissioner of the town they filmed the show in because she speaks in this weird, whispery, halting voice. Like this: “We have spent… many months… looking at various proposals, uh… in order to find theeeee… best use of the wooded area in… theeeee… Flat Rock Brook Park.” She gives Dawn a condescending little smile of “let’s see where this goes” when Dawn steps up to the mic.

But, not long after, she. Gets. Pissed.

Dawn hasn’t prepared a speech and is just screaming (literally, screaming into the microphone) about how cutting down trees is wrong, and how dare they tell kids to take showers instead of baths when they’re going to cut down trees and make every single animal in the park extinct.

The Commissioner is all, “Look. You didn’t even read the proposal, and if you had, you’d realize that it’s not a road for cars. It’s a road for wheelchairs. Jerk.”

So, Dawn’s got no legs to stand on anymore, because she can’t deny that people in wheelchairs should be able to go to the park, but she also kind of thinks that people in wheelchairs shouldn’t be going to the park, ’cause they’re dirty and will create pollution and garbage which will deplete the ozone layer and cause acid rain.

Meanwhile, ZB weeps terribly to himself in the back of the room.

Commissioner smacks Dawn down again saying that the proposal included something like more garbage cans, which is better for the park, so Dawn has to sit down all defeated, punctuating her last moment in the spotlight by giving out a weak, “Well, I still think it’s not right to cut down trees.” And the Commissioner just goes, “Well, thank you.” And then takes a vote and approves the plan anyway.

After the meeting, Dawn feels like a failure, and the other girls are so fed up with her. They tell her she was rude to ZB, that he was nodding (and crying) at a lot of her points at the meeting, and that she should figure out a way to compromise. She says compromising is giving up. She’s such a whacko. I’m surprised she hasn’t set fire to the park in protest.

Anyway, she invites ZB to her house and tries to make him do origami. And when he doesn’t know how and tosses the paper across the table angrily, she calls herself a jerk and sits on the table all “let’s play doctor”, and tells him she’s got a plan that she needs his help with.

She and the other babysitters have gotten their degrees in architectural landscaping and have come up with an incredible packed-dirt-road plan that won’t disclude the cripples and won’t warrant cutting down the trees. They’ve also made the road only wide enough for one wheelchair to pass at a time, so I don’t know what happens if two old women in jazzies are trying to enter and leave the park at once, but I guess that’s not really her problem.

Of course, her plan doesn’t include facilites for garbage, so I don’t know how she’ll possibly reduce the waste in the park. ZB loves it and loves her and wants to have sex with her on the new packed dirt road and says that he’s in on ambushing his mother before the first saw hits the first tree.

So, they sort of trick her into coming to the park so Dawn can reveal her plan, but it kind of all seems like Dawn and ZB were really revealing a pregnancy and impending marriage. Anyway, Commissioner’s all, “I… don’t know… what… is going on here… but… I really have to say, I really don’t appreciate being tricked into coming here! Now… what is… going on?”

ZB shows off his best north Jersey accent when he says they couldn’t do it any other way, and Dawn shows off her proposal, which is so unprofessional.

I mean, she showed ZB this at her house:

I mean, I don’t really see what the bottom has to do with the top, because the road’s supposed to wind around the trees, and the top paper seems like a straight line. But, anyway, it’s a lot better looking than this:

This is what she gives to the Commissioner. It’s more artsy and doesn’t really get the point across, and it’s not in any kind of scale, like the first ones are. And who cares about the pond? It has nothing to do with anything! And why are there pictures of turtles everywhere? So ridiculous.

Anyway, Commissioner is breathlessly impressed and will call the committee together to rethink the proposal the next day! Of course, about twenty seconds later, ZB goes, “So, Ma, what do you think?” Didn’t she just tell you?
Then they eat chicken and laugh and laugh.
The next day, at a BSC meeting, the Commissioner calls up Dawn, who fakes everyone out by looking upset, and says that the trees won’t be cut down and Dawn is going to head up a youth committee on the environment. Oh, sure, that’s just what she needs to get the head swelling down. And, plus, everyone’s telling her how, trees aside, at least she’s got a guy interested in her (one that’s not under the false impression that she’s someone else, that is), and she gets all red-faced and embarrassed because the girls are teasing her. But, they don’t do a very good job of it, because half of them are going, “Daaaaaaaaaawn!” and the other half are going, “Daviiiiiiiiiiiid!” so it just sounds really stupid.

Then, in a story everyone forgot about, because it’s been a week-and-a-half since they found the bird, everyone’s back in the park to watch what looks to be an actual park ranger let the bird with its repaired wing fly away, like suddenly they all care when originally they could give a crap about a dying bird.

And Kristy creeps everyone out by leaning her head against Claudia’s neck, who does her best to ignore her and push her away at the same time. Even Jessie’s little sister over on the right looks weirded out.

Best episode ever. And don’t worry. There are 11 more to recap.