July 6, 2020
Netflix’s BSC 1.7, Boy-Crazy Stacey: Other Fish in the Sea (City)
Sigh. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
It’s time to meet the Pikes! They’re even wilder than the books portray them – basically a step above feral. No wonder Mr. and Mrs. Pike want to bring two sitters with them to Sea City (just for a week, over spring break). They’re probably counting the days until these troublemakers go to college.
The plot mostly plays out the same way it does in the book. Stacey develops a crush on lifeguard Scott, who’s way too old for her, and starts neglecting her sitting duties. The normally mature, cool Stacey has no idea how to act around him. The words “holla at moi” are spoken. Stacey really should leave, put on a disguise, and come back to try again.
Mary Anne befriends Alex and Toby, who are very nice, age-appropriate guys for the girls to hang out with. In fact, when Scott accidentally humiliates Stacey and she realizes he’s way too old for her, it’s Toby who tries to salvage her feelings. He even gives Stacey her first kiss. Of course, now Stacey has a new crush to obsess over, but at least he’s her age.
Mary Anne used to think Stacey was mature and sophisticated, but after Stacey’s embarrassing crush, Mary Anne admits that that’s changed. Now she knows Stacey’s just as dorky as Mary Anne is. Their friendship is stronger because Stacey embarrassed herself. Yay?
The details:
- Claudia calls Mary Anne and Stacey’s out-of-town sitting job a “business trip.” I love it.
- Sharon gets back into the dating game with Tinder. Yikes.
- Dawn wants to Parent Trap Richard and Sharon back together, but she doesn’t try very hard, and Richard’s too smart to fall for it. The parents work things out themselves when Richard, remembering that Sharon used to call him her turtle, sends her a real turtle with a note that says, “Sorry I went back into my shell.” SO CUTE.
- Mallory barely gets any screentime. She’s very earnest and excited to hang out with Stacey and Mary Anne. You just know the actress playing her is praying for a second season so she can have a bigger role.
- Byron has a huge crush on Stacey, which helps her understand the situation with Scott. She tells Byron she values his friendship, but there’s no potential for a relationship. Byron decides he can live with that, though he wants a little space.
- Vanessa’s in her poetry phase, but she seems a little darker than in the books. She and Karen would get along well.
- Mary Anne’s suddenly more comfortable around boys, so I guess her room makeover did the trick.
- Watson describes Karen as “a lot.” No kidding.
The differences/changes:
- Book Scott definitely used Stacey and led her on, but here I interpreted the situation differently. I think he thought her crush on him was cute, and he just paid attention to her to be nice. He didn’t think it would cause any harm. He’s just a clueless teenager.
- Karen and Andrew do their steel-wool carwash here, and Kristy can’t stop them because she’s accidentally locked herself in a storage area where she was snooping into Watson’s stuff. She tries to get it fixed secretly, after contemplating just pushing it into the street and lying that a car hit it, which is very un-Kristy of her. She finally tells Watson the truth, and he’s not mad. Probably because he’s rich enough to just replace the car.
- The Pike triplets aren’t identical, which is fine. It couldn’t be easy to cast identical red-haired triplets.
July 4, 2020
Netflix’s BSC 1.3, The Truth About Stacey: How to Handle a PR Nightmare
Stacey looks like she’s running for seventh-grade class president
The BSC girls don’t yet know that Stacey has diabetes, and though they’re clearly curious about what she’s hiding, they don’t ask any questions. Stacey’s worried about losing her new friends like she lost all her old ones in New York, but the BSC girls are different. They like Stacey no matter what.
Lacy Lewis (formerly Liz; Michelle has the same name as in the book, but we never meet here here) moves in on the BSC girls’ territory with the Baby-sitters Agency, telling the girls that all’s fair in love and the free market. She also chastises them for not supporting other women. Pretty rich considering what she does to Stacey later on: After the BSC girls rat her out for ignoring Jamie during a sitting job, Lacy sends out a video someone took at her old school of Stacey going into insulin shock.
The fallout of the original circulation of the video humiliated Stacey and led the McGills to move to Stoneybrook. Now Stacey thinks history will repeat itself. It’s especially bad because the BSC’s clients might not think she’s fit to watch their kids because she’s not in perfect health. Kristy is a PR genius and gets out ahead of any potential scandal by calling a meeting with clients to discuss the situation. Stacey even offers to resign if the parents will feel better. Dr. Johanssen puts an end to everything by admitting that she noticed Stacey’s pump long ago and has seen how she manages her illness while watching Charlotte. If Dr. Johanssen, an endocrinologist, thinks Stacey’s fine to sit, the other parents can’t disagree. Forget the BSA sitters with their later curfews and greater experience. The BSC girls have better client-relation skills.
The details:
- As any 21st century type 1 diabetic would, Stacey has an insulin pump. At first she hides it, partly because she’s desperate to keep her condition quiet and partly because her mother pressures her to. In truth, her mom just wants to protect her from going through what she went through at her old school again. After Stacey comes clean about having diabetes, she decorates the pump and stops trying to hide it.
- The girls call Mrs. Newton by her first name. It makes me itchy.
- Kristy comes up with the idea for Kid Kits in pretty much the same way as in the book.
- Kristy prepares to fight the BSA by reading The Art of War, because of course she does.
- Like in the book, Stacey falls for Sam the second she meets him. Here, he’s much more of a typical teen boy (as is Charlie) than in the books. He and Kristy talk to each other like normal siblings (“idiot,” “dummy,” etc.).
- Kristy’s mad about how marriage is tied to the patriarchy and asks her mom if she’s going to start walking behind Watson. Her mom says yes – and from now on, everyone has to call her Ofwatson. Elizabeth is awesome.
The differences/changes:
- Charlotte is Asian, and either younger than she is in the books or…not as bright. She says she’s going to “make a jewelry.” She also doesn’t seem to be as paralyzingly shy as in the books.
- The McGills don’t go back to New York to take Stacey to doctors, so Laine hasn’t been introduced yet.
January 7, 2014
BSC #130, Stacey’s Movie: The Real World: Stoneybrook
Stacey’s outfit is actually really cute
Summary: Time for another Short Takes class! Stacey’s in a film-making course, where she gets to learn about screenwriting, producing, directing, and using a video camera. She and her group mates – perennial BSC background characters Pete Black, Emily Bernstein, and Erica Blumberg – first decide to make a zombie movie, but realize it’s pretty cheesy without special effects. Then they decide to make a documentary about what it’s like to be a middle-schooler in suburban Connecticut. Wherever did they come up with that inspired idea?
Emily and Stacey conduct most of the interviews, and Emily quickly proves to be both a) a promising journalist and b) a bit of a bitca. She asks very personal questions, often using information she knows about the interviewees to dig deeper. She asks Jessi about being a minority in Stoneybrook, she asks Abby if she thinks she’s like her mother because they’re both so busy (apparently this is something Abby doesn’t want), and she asks Stacey herself if she has commitment problems because of her parents’ divorce. An interview with Cokie leads to Stacey realizing that the BSC is just as cliquey and exclusive as Cokie and her friends are.
But it’s Emily’s interview with Mary Anne that really causes problems. Mary Anne is upset because she had a fight with Sharon, and she later admits that sometimes she hates her birth mother for dying. She also says that she doesn’t consider Sharon her mother. She quickly regrets what she said and asks to have her interview removed from the movie. Stacey agrees to talk to her group about it, since she wants her interview removed, too. But her group members want everything to stay in.
What follows is a bunch of pages about artistic control and reality vs. art and editing something real vs. telling the truth. Stacey has a choice between honoring Mary Anne’s feelings and showing something dramatic and real in the movie. In the end, there’s something of a compromise: Stacey adds some footage allowing Mary Anne and herself to explain their words. And of course, the movie is good, even though it was made in two weeks by a bunch of 13-year-olds.
The B-plot is also about the class, and how Kristy and Alan are in a group together. Alan’s supposed to be the director, but Kristy can’t bring herself to let him take charge. Their group is filming kids in Stoneybrook when they do funny stuff, but thanks to Kristy and Alan’s power struggle, not much funny footage is actually getting filmed. Finally Kristy realizes that Alan has some good ideas, and that the process needs to be more democratic. I’m sure Kristy will promptly ditch that concept as soon as the class is over.
Thoughts: “Tombs and mummies are so cool.” I think Mary Anne broke.
“It never occurred to me that [Jessi] might think of us as white kids.” Uh-oh, someone forgot to tell Stacey she’s white. How awkward.
Cokie: “Boys are pretty much the most important thing in the life of a middle school girl.” And that might be the most middle school thing ever said.
If all students in a group are getting graded on a film, shouldn’t they all get a vote on the content and see the final product before it’s submitted? If I were getting graded on a group project, I would want to be involved in the whole project.
October 15, 2013
BSC #124, Stacey McGill…Matchmaker?: Stacey’s Mom Really Does Have It Going On
Mrs. McGill looks younger than Stacey
Summary: There’s a new family in Stoneybrook, the Brookes, and Stacey’s the first of the BSC girls to sit for them. The kids, Joni and Ewan, are sweet but sad; their mother has ditched them to become a reporter in Atlanta, so the kids are in Stoneybrook alone with their dad, John. He’s a writer and usually needs a sitter to watch the kids while he works. Stacey finds him nice and cute.
So does Stacey’s mother. When she and John meet, they quickly hit it off. Stacey’s thrilled, since her mom hasn’t dated since her divorce, and she likes that Mrs. McGill has fallen for such a great guy. Joni, however, is unhappy. She hasn’t come to terms with her parents’ divorce, so she doesn’t want her father to get involved with another woman. Totally understandable, right? Unfortunately, no one handles the situation well.
Joni is a brat to Stacey, since she’s the one who introduced their parents, and gets Ewan to be bratty to her, too. She’s also a little jerk to the other BSC girls, since they’re Stacey’s friends. Stacey lets John know how the kids are acting, and he talks to them about it, but Joni doesn’t listen and continues to be a little jerk. She also figures that if John can’t write during the day, he’ll have to skip dates with Mrs. McGill and write at night, so she messes with his computer to keep him from working.
The McGills and Brookes spend some time together, and Joni continues to be a brat, but John is almost as annoying. He just yells at her to get in line, punishing her in front of Stacey and Mrs. McGill. Mrs. McGill has started to cool on John, having learned more about him and realized that they have a lot of differences in ideologies. (I’d think she’s also a little turned off by his lack of sympathy for his daughter.) Stacey, however, still wants them to date.
John suggests that the two families have Thanksgiving together, and it’s a disaster. Joni is in full-on brat mode, and when her father yells at her yet again, she reaches her breaking point and runs off to hide in Stacey’s room. Stacey goes after her and finally shows the girl some compassion, assuring her that her parents love her and all that. Joni sobs heartbreakingly, unable to deal with her parents’ divorce. But Stacey helps her feel a little better, and Joni calms down.
Mrs. McGill decides to break up with John, which Stacey disapproves of. She plans to warn him, but when she goes to New York to visit her father and Ethan, she cools off about it. Ethan gets her to see that Mrs. McGill, as an adult, gets to make her own decisions. Stacey and her mom are also reading Pride and Prejudice, and the book helps Stacey realize that Mrs. McGill deserves a Mr. Darcy, not just any old guy.
There’s not really a B-plot, but there’s talk of how Mallory is still struggling at school after her disastrous student-teaching gig. She hates going to SMS so much that she’s considering going to boarding school in Massachusetts. The BSC girls are sad at the possibility of her leaving, and Jessi’s really upset. More on that in future books.
Thoughts: According to Stacey, people still use word processors in 1998. Poor dear. They have computers now. Smartphones are really going to blow your mind.
“I was never sure if Dad’s girlfriends liked me or if they were only pretending to like me because of Dad.” Richard had girlfriends before he married Sharon? Multiple girlfriends? Richard Spier? I call bull.
Okay, Mallory has officially been bullied out of SMS. WHY IS THE ADMINISTRATION NOT DOING ANYTHING? I can’t believe her parents haven’t gone down there and demanded that the school do something about the way Mal’s being treated.
Claudia: “Mrs. McGill loves kids who are a pain. She loves Stacey.” Nice best friend you got there, Stace.
June 26, 2013
BSC #119, Stacey’s Ex-Boyfriend: Help Me If You Can, I’m Feeling Down
The next problem Stacey needs to solve is her hairstyle
Summary: Stacey and Robert haven’t been close since they broke up, but she’s noticed (and heard from his friends) that something’s wrong with him. He’s alienated himself from his friends, not paying much attention in class, and uninterested in baseball. She decides to check up on him, and he’s appreciative of the fact that she still cares about him, but he just says he’s bored with his friends and life in general.
Things are worse than he lets on, though: Robert’s having trouble in school and shocks everyone by quitting the baseball team. He gets grounded because of his grades, so Stacey offers to tutor him in math. They start spending time together, leading everyone to think they’re back together. Stacey’s a little concerned because she thinks Robert does want to get back together, and she hasn’t mentioned to him that she’s dating Ethan. Fortunately, he just wants to stay friends.
Unfortunately, all the time Stacey’s spending with Robert hasn’t made much of a difference. And the BSC girls are kind of rude about how she keeps hanging out with him. I forgot that there’s a contract they sign when they join the club, saying they’ll spend all their free time with each other, even if one of their outside friends is having a tough time and needs help. Stacey tries to compromise by inviting Robert to hang out with the BSC girls, but it doesn’t go well. She then convinces Robert to rejoin the baseball team, but he skips the first practice and ticks off the coach.
Out of ideas, Stacey calls a radio show to ask advice from a psychologist. The doctor thinks she needs to ask an adult for help – Robert’s problem is too big for a teenager to handle. Stacey tells Robert about this, but he’s mad that she talked to someone about his problems. Stacey then talks to her mom, who thinks they should tell Robert’s parents what’s going on. Stacey balks, since Robert’s already mad enough.
That night, Robert shows up at the McGills’, really upset. He’s crying and tells Stacey that he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. (This part really got to me.) She encourages him to call an adult he can talk to, so he calls his coach. From there, the adults take over, making sure Robert will get help. Stacey realizes that all the stress of the situation has made her physically sick, and she was right to ask for help.
Stupid B-plot: Stoneybrook has another popular small business, Strawberry Fields Forever, where you can pick your own strawberries. Everyone in town goes, picks tons of berries, and gets sick of them. Kristy throws a strawberry festival, because of course she does.
Thoughts: Claudia’s lost her mind – she wears a zebra-print leotard, leopard-print overall shorts (which would be awful enough on their own), a tiger-stripe scarf, a lizard-print scrunchie, and giraffe earrings.
Stacey buys jelly sandals with heels. Ew.
The strawberry plot means two things: 1) The writers have run out of ideas, and 2) Kristy has finally exhausted every kind of festival she could possibly organize.
At the festival, Mary Anne and Logan run a game where people have to guess how many strawberries are in a basket, and the winner gets all the berries. No one guesses because they already have too many berries at home and don’t want any more. Hee.
The Kilbournes make strawberry shortcake – “parents had to ask Shannon and her sisters to set a two-cake limit so that their kids wouldn’t make themselves sick eating so many.” Uh, how about you actually parent your kids so Shannon doesn’t have to be the bad guy?
May 1, 2013
BSC Mystery #33, Stacey and the Stolen Hearts: The Usual Suspects
Stacey looks frighteningly like my childhood best friend
Summary: For Valentine’s Day, Stacey and Pete Black organize a fundraiser for the eighth-grade class involving valentine-grams. A bunch of the middle schoolers buy valentines for their boyfriends and girlfriends, some write them for crushes, and some send joke valentines to get people’s hopes up, because that’s what middle schoolers do. Then the valentines disappear, and notes surface commenting on what people wrote.
There are a number of suspects: Alan, Cokie, Cary, Stacey’s ex Robert, and even Pete. Their motives aren’t known, so the BSC girls start investigating. They find out that Pete has a crush on Emily Bernstein and sent her a valentine, but it’s possible he stole them all back so she wouldn’t see it. (Though why wouldn’t he just take his own back?) Cokie and her boyfriend are having trouble; she sent him a bunch of valentines but he didn’t send her any. Robert has been acting so weird that Andi, the girl he almost cheated on Stacey with, asks her to talk to him. (He’s not the thief, he’s just depressed.)
Cary looks more and more like the thief, especially after the girls see a striped sleeve photocopied with one of the valentine-grams, then see him wearing a striped shirt the next day. Stacey asks him if he had anything to do with the theft, but he has an alibi, since he was at the dentist. Then Stacey realizes that he gave his alibi before he knew the timeframe she was trying to nail down.
Cary says he isn’t the thief, but he knows who it is – someone who was about to receive a joke valentine from a girl he had a crush on. Stacey puts together that he’s talking about Alan. She questions him, but she feels so bad for him that she gives him the chance to return the valentines with no punishment. He does, and everyone’s satisfied.
In the B-plot, the BSC girls throw a “Valentine’s festival” for their charges. It’s not a festival, it’s a lame party. They just ask the kids what they want so everyone’s happy.
Thoughts: I wish Alan hadn’t been the culprit. The thief should have turned out to be someone completely unexpected, and Cary shouldn’t have been involved at all. It was too obvious.
Kristy wonders if the Hobarts know about Valentine’s Day. Kristy, they lived in Australia, not on the moon. Also, they’ve been in the series for, like, nine Valentine’s Days already.
Abby wants to “check out” Cary and “keep an eye on him.” That’s my girl.
Mary Anne calls Pete shy, but since when? He’s the class president, and they don’t tend to be shy.
The BSC runs a focus group for their Valentine’s party. Kristy has officially lost her mind.
I’ve never Xeroxed a sleeve, so I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure stripes wouldn’t show up on the copy.
When Stacey questions Cary, he’s in the school basement, chilling in an armchair. It’s like he’s in a secret lair. I love it.
January 9, 2013
BSC #111, Stacey’s Secret Friend: Don’t Make Me Over
Tess just raided Mallory’s closet, that’s all
Summary: Stacey meets a new girl at SMS, Tess Swinhart, who’s nice but seems a little weird. Stacey thinks she just needs a makeover; she always wears pink, she never wears makeup, and her hair isn’t styled like anyone else’s. Due to the pink thing, Tess’ slightly porcine nose, and the fact that the first part of her last name almost contains the word “swine,” Alan gets everyone at school to start calling Tess “Swine-heart” behind her back. Tess is pretty oblivious and doesn’t get it when people start oinking at her. There’s also a comic book circulating about Swine-heart the Destroyer. Stacey decides not to tell Tess anything because…well, good question.
Since makeovers fix everything, Stacey tries to take Tess on as her project (a la Cher and Tai). She gets her to read some magazines, puts some makeup on her, and encourages her to wear something other than pink. Tess humors her a little but clearly couldn’t care less about whether or not her clothes are trendy or “in.” Most of the time, she just ignores Stacey, which is smart, because Stacey gets super-annoying. She also keeps saying she’s not Tess’ friend, since no one likes Tess and I guess, as Cher would say, Stacey’s “stock would plummet.”
At a football game, the students vote on a new mascot by applauding when Stacey and other students hold up signs with pictures of their choices. Stacey holds up a pig and everyone goes wild. She doesn’t realize until it’s too late that the pig picture has been replaced by a drawing of Swine-heart the Destroyer. Tess is so shocked at the reaction that she falls off the bleachers and breaks her ankle. She’s furious with Stacey and orders her to leave her alone.
Even though everyone knows Stacey would never switch the pictures, a bunch of people tell her that she wasn’t much of a friend to Tess. She just thought of Tess as a project and didn’t tell her what people were saying about her behind her back. Though, in Stacey’s defense, she did warn Tess not to trust a guy named Clarence King who asked her out, since Stacey thought it was some sort of scheme. But anyway, Stacey feels bad about everything and apologizes to Tess. While at Tess’ house, Stacey discovers that Tess lived in France, and her wardrobe is in style there. So suddenly Tess is cool.
The BSC girls band together with Tess and another girl, Barbara (who was best friends with Amelia and has become good friends with Tess), to enact some stupid 13-year-old revenge on Clarence. They mess up Clarence’s clothes and take pictures, then threaten to share them with everyone at school if Clarence and Alan don’t leave Tess alone. And then I don’t think Tess is ever mentioned in the series again.
The B-plot is kind of clever: Jackie Rodowsky and Nicky Pike have been acting weird. In fact, Nicky seems overly protective of Jackie. Eventually Abby learns that some kids were hassling Jackie, so he hired Nicky to be his bodyguard. I guess Nicky is intimidating or something? Why not hire the triplets?
Thoughts: This book brings up an interesting question: If you knew someone was being mocked behind her back, would you tell her? I think I would, because if I were the person being mocked, I’d want to know.
Stacey says that Alan has no sense of humor about himself, but aren’t a lot of his jokes at his own expense?
Tess and her friends once carved a bunch of ducks, painted them to look realistic, and put them in a river to confuse people. I’d rather hang out with that group than the BSC girls.
Nicky, up in a tree with Jackie: “We were practicing invisibility.” Claudia: “Well, practice visibility and come down from there.” That cracked me up, for some reason.
Moral of the story: Solve your problems with blackmail.
October 2, 2012
BSC Mystery #29, Stacey and the Fashion Victim: Model Misbehavior
This may be the first time Claudia has ever been dressed better than Stacey
Summary: Apparently Stoneybrook has a Fashion Week. Who knew? They’re having some runway shows and shooting a catalog at Bellair’s, and Stacey’s hired to be one of the models (who are all teens, for some reason). Cokie is also hired but manages to not be all that annoying in this book. Stacey thinks there’s a mystery afoot when one of the models, Harmony, drinks tea that makes her sick. Everyone starts freaking out that she’s been poisoned, but no one even takes her to a doctor or calls the police, so it’s pretty dumb.
Then some clothes are ruined and weird notes start turning up, so the BSC girls start playing detective. No one seems to specifically be a target, even after Stacey and Harmony fall off the roof (onto a lower level of roof) during a shoot. There are a ton of suspects (the other models, the heir to Bellair’s, a photographer) but there are so many characters that it’s impossible to figure out anyone’s motive. In fact, it’s hard to even remember which model is which.
But somehow, Stacey figures out that Harmony is the culprit. Her mother is a typical stage mom who keeps pushing Harmony to model even though Harmony doesn’t like it. She poisoned herself, wrote the notes, and loosened the railing in hopes that she would have an excuse to drop out of Fashion Week. Stacey and the other BSC girls tell her to, you know, talk to her mother instead of putting people’s lives in danger.
In the B-plot, a bunch of the BSC’s charges are tired of their parents smoking, so they organize a play on the Great American Smokeout called the Great Stoneybrook Smokeout. It’s a good message for the book’s younger audience, but since we’ve never heard about these people smoking before, it’s not that affecting.
Thoughts: Not only are there too many suspects to keep track of, the whole plot is anticlimactic. Stacey basically has an epiphany, then sets Harmony up to get caught writing a message. There’s a teeny confrontation and Harmony agrees to stop doing stuff. That’s…it.
The models have seven minutes to change looks during their first show. That must be the longest runway show ever.
Why do the models keep talking about “assignments”? The girls are walking a runway. They’re not competing in challenges or doing projects. They’re putting on clothes and trying not to trip.
Not that I object to anti-smoking education, but it’s not really a sitter’s place to lecture kids about it. They need to let the parents parent.
Stacey wears a pink jumper. Did she raid Mallory’s closet?
August 13, 2012
BSC #105, Stacey the Math Whiz: Murder By Numbers
My worst nightmare
Summary: Stacey joins the Mathletes, because math is cool, you guys! It’s not dorky at all! She’s awesome at it, becoming one of the highest scorers in the state. Her father loses his job and starts visiting her a lot, which she enjoys but which annoys her mom. He’s very Disneyland Dad, as Dawn would say. Between his activities and the Mathletes, Stacey’s schedule is pretty full.
Inevitably, the two worlds collide: Mr. McGill wants to take Stacey to a concert the same night as one of the state championships. Instead of just explaining the situation, she decides family is more important than the competition and agrees to go to the concert. Then she changes her mind and decides being there for the team is more important. Of course, her father agrees and supports the decision.
The night of the first of the three state championships, the Stoneybrook team wins, and a bunch of people decide to go out to celebrate. Stacey goes off with her parents, learning that her father has a new job, and winds up not making it to meet with her friends. Then she thinks they’re all mad at her for ditching them. She’s really just projecting because she’s mad at her father for not being able to make the second meet. She’s also mad when it looks like he won’t make it to the third meet. But he does, and they win, and everyone’s happy, yay.
The B-plots involve Claudia tutoring Lindsey DeWitt in math (no, seriously) and some math fair at the elementary school, but seriously, an entire book about math makes me itchy, so I don’t want to go into it.
Thoughts: I know this book is supposed to show that math is cool, but I will never, ever fall for that.
Here’s an idea for the Barrett/DeWitts: Hire a real tutor for Lindsey, not a babysitter.
It’s ironic that Mrs. McGill complains about Mr. McGill’s spending when one of the things they used to fight about was her spending.
There don’t appear to be any parents at the elementary school’s fair, so…way to support your kids, adults of Stoneybrook.
The final question of the final state-championship meet is the same brain teaser Lisa couldn’t solve on The Simpsons.
May 3, 2012
BSC #99, Stacey’s Broken Heart: When One Door Closes, Another (Hotter) One Opens
Like Stacey would date a guy who wore those pants
Summary: The Walkers, Stacey’s favorite clients in New York, ask her to come visit for the week and look after their kids while they put together an art show. Stacey agrees but is sad to leave Robert, who’s been acting kind of funny. For example, he’ll say he’s playing basketball with his friends, then wind up doing something else. Andi, one of the bad girls, is hanging around him a lot, too. Someone sees him out with another girl and lets Stacey know, so Stacey and Claudia stalk him but don’t see anything particularly incriminating.
While Stacey’s in New York, Claudia calls to let her know that Robert’s been hanging out with Andi. Well, not just hanging out. Making out. Stacey’s surprised to find herself less upset than she’d expected. It may have something to do with Ethan, a guy who’s been working with the Walkers and hanging out with her and the kids while she babysits. Ethan and Stacey have more in common than Stacey and Robert did anyway. (Sounds like he’s hotter, too.)
When Stacey gets back to Stoneybrook, Andi’s waiting for her, wanting to tell her about the cheating. Stacey tell her she already knows, adding that Robert isn’t hers to control, so if they want to be together, they can. She then tells Robert that they’re done, obviously. He pulls that “I hope we can still be friends” crap, but fortunately, Stacey isn’t ready for that. She’s totally ready for some Ethan lovin’, though.
In other storylines, Kristy’s off to Hawaii with her family, and Abby’s the acting president. She wants to throw a big Mexican festival to benefit an orphanage, but she’s not as organized as Kristy and doesn’t do well with the budgeting aspects of the event. The other BSC girls try valiantly to help out, but things barely come together. Because, you know, Kristy is the best at everything, so don’t even pretend you’re better than her.
Thoughts: Someone majorly screwed up – in Dawn Schafer, Undercover Baby-sitter, Kristy had just left for Hawaii. At the beginning of this book, she’s about to leave. But Dawn isn’t in this book, and in the previous one, there was no mention of Stacey and Kristy being gone at the same time. So it’s like the two books are set in the same time period, but none of the events are the same.
Freaking A, this summer just WILL NOT END.
I guess unicorns, like sheep, are in, because that’s what Claudia has on her shirt.
I love this exchange:
Henry (five years old): “The Rice Krispies fell on the floor and I spilled the milk.”
Stacey: “Bummer. What did your mom do?”
Henry: “She looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Give me strength!’ How could the ceiling give her strength?”
Grace (three years old): “Cereal is not heavy.”
Ghostwriter, it’s 1996. It’s time for Stacey to stop getting perms.
'90s Flashback 
