Netflix is bringing back The Baby-Sitters Club as a TV series, and I have high hopes, many thoughts and a list of wishes.
I also have quite a few questions — primarily, who is going to be cast as my number one fave Claudia Kishi and how much will I, a 30 year old woman, want her wardrobe?
Because like many millennials who grew up in the ’90s, I spent a lot of time reading The Baby-Sitters Club books (and coveting Claudia’s sense of style). I inherited the first few from my older sister, but then ravenously devoured every single book from Kristy’s Great Idea (BSC #1) to Kristy’s Worst Idea (BSC #100).
The books made me, a shy tween with very few friends and absolutely no experience with kids, want to start my own babysitting club. Mary Anne and Logan’s relationships gave me unrealistic expectations about boys and relationships, and the books made me wish more than once that I would discover a secret passageway inside my house.
More than that, they were the first series of books where I got to read about an Asian-American character, where I learned about diabetes, where I read about grief and racism and eating disorders. It was a book series that empowered young girls and gave them agency, that encouraged entrepreneurial spirit and female friendships.
It was such an incredible and formative book series for me and millions of other women and men who are now grown up enough to need babysitters for their own kids, and I’m both excited to revisit some of my favorite stories and thrilled that a new generation will get to experience the awesomeness that is The Baby-Sitters Club.
And in the hands of GLOW’s Rachel Shukert will run the show, and Broad City’s Lucia Aniello, I’m sure we’ll get some truly fantastic storytelling and I’m fully willing trust them and their vision.
Still, as a long-time fan of the series, I have hopes and dreams of my own. Here are four things on my Baby-Sitters Club wishlist that I hope are part of the brand new series.
Give me at least one mystery/supernatural storyline
I normally am not a huge fan of mysteries, but I — for whatever reason — absolutely adored The Baby-Sitters Club Mysteries spin-off series.
Maybe I was the only one, because while I absolutely loved the entrepreneurial aspects of the members running The Baby-Sitters Club, I also really enjoyed seeing the girls solve mysteries and figure out what happened to a ring that was stolen, dogs that have disappeared and a young boy that’s gone missing.
It’d be great to see the series dip into slightly different genres and tackle a more atmospheric, mystery episode.
It needn’t even be a straight up mystery — the show could adapt Mary Anne and the Secret in the Attic, which is all about Mary Anne learning about her past; or it could adapt The Ghost at Dawn’s House, which made me and probably every girl in the 90’s wish for a secret passageway in their home.
Tackle serious subjects with honesty and openness
Even in the 90’s, the town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut seemed to exist in another plane of existence, if not some fantasy world altogether.
It was a town where everyone knew everyone else, where everyone felt safe and people got along for the most part, and where serious issues could be addressed and mostly solved over the course of a hundred or so pages.
But the world that we live in now is much more complicated than that, and the teens of today have to deal with an increasingly complex world.
I’d love to see The Baby-Sitters Club approach modern issues with the same grace, openness and humor as my other favorite Netflix original, One Day at a Time. That show highlights how to present real issues without sensationalizing them, romanticizing them or turning the show into an after-school special.
The original Baby-Sitters Club book series was almost revolutionary in the ways in which it wasn’t afraid to address a wide variety of issues, including divorce, chronic illness, eating disorders, disabilities and racism.
My hope is that Netflix’s Baby-Sitters Club series will approach issues that I so often see the girls in my sixth grade classes struggling with — thing like periods and puberty, ideas about gender and sexuality, troubles with social media and social hierarchies.
I’d love for this modernized take on the beloved book series to address topics that tween and teen girls struggle with seriously and openly, without making the girls themselves a target or a punch line.
The book series always made me — a young girl — feel respected and taken seriously, and that’s exactly what I hope teens watching this new show will feel as well.
Prioritize female friendships
Listen, I love romance.
Romcoms are my favorite movie genre, I need at least a romantic subplot to stay interested in any book, and I got married at (and have been happily married since I was) 21 years old.
But as a middle school teacher, I sometimes worry about how much I see my tween and teen girls prioritizing romantic relationships over strong female friendships.
One of the fantastic things about The Baby-Sitters Club series was how much it emphasized the strong, supportive relationships between all of the girls. It never relied on drama or miscommunication to move the plot forward and never fabricated tension between the club members for its own sake.
And even though all the girls had romantic subplots and interests — and Mary Anne had a dedicated, steady boyfriend in Logan — their friendships with one another always stayed the priority.
My wish for the new series is that it maintains this emphasis on strong female friendships and healthy female support systems. So many modern teen shows rely on romantic entanglements to propel their narrative forward, but The Baby-Sitters Club should always maintain its focus on its lady club members and their friendships with one another.
A more diverse cast
Yes, one of the founding members is Claudia Kishi, who is Asian-American. And, yes, later on Jessi Ramsey, who is Black, moves to Stoneybrook from New Jersey.
But on the whole, the members of the BSC are pretty white, middle class, traditionally pretty.
I’d love to see the newer version, which promises to “contemporize the storylines” likewise update the members of the babysitter’s club.
Perhaps this would require moving The Baby-Sitters Club from small town Connecticut to some other locale, but so be it. I’d love to see The Baby-Sitters Club reflect a variety of experiences, races, lifestyles, cultures and religions.
There’s absolutely no reason why Stacey — a native New Yorker — can’t be Black or Afro-Latinx. Why Dawn, who moves to the town from California, can’t be Latinx. Honestly, there’s really no reason any of the characters really need to be white at all.
And please, do all of us BSC fandom members a solid, and make Kristy — a self-described tomboy who loves softball so much she eventually starts her own softball team — openly queer.