Generation BSC: A Baby-Sitters Club Podcast

Episode 046: Mary Anne Misses Logan!

July 25th, 2023  |  1 hr 3 mins

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We were dreading the return of the Mary Anne and Logan ship, but it turns out Logan was kind of a non-entity considering his name is in the title, and Mary Anne is much more level headed and reasonable about missing him on their road to reconciliation. But what we missed in melodrama from Mary Anne, we made up for in spades with Cokie Mason antics, toilet monsters, group projects, and speeches in front of "famous" fake authors.

Episode 041: Mary Anne vs. Logan!

August 3rd, 2022  |  1 hr 35 secs

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Logan continues to be the worst and basically never being understanding of anything Mary Anne wants or needs and after she cools things off for a bit (which he respects for a literal day), they end up breaking up for real. We recall our prior conversations where perhaps we internalized Logan and Mary Anne being the BSC OTP because there's a whole lot of tell, not show in the series. There's some Jenny Prezzioso-related antics throughout and the BSC does their best to support Mary Anne through her tough times with Logan, including Dawn swinging back toward best BSC friend.

EM020: Emergency Meeting - Netflix Season Two, Episode Five: Mary Anne and the Great Romance!

January 11th, 2022  |  56 mins 7 secs

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Kate and Lauryn continue their discussion of Season Two of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix. We discuss Mary Anne and the Great Romance!

Re-Watch 04: Emergency Meeting - Netflix Season One, Episode Four: Mary Anne Saves the Day!

September 28th, 2021  |  41 mins

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Welcome to our end of summer re-watch of season one of the Baby-Sitters Club series on Netflix. For the next few weeks, watch along with us and revisit our thoughts on the series before season two drops in October.

We’ll be back in the fall with our own season two as well, and can’t wait to catch up with you then. In the meantime, keep your eye on our social media and don’t forget to e-mail. We love to hear from you all!

Episode 034: Mary Anne and Too Many Boys!

June 8th, 2021  |  1 hr 21 mins

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Mary Anne and Stacey are headed back to Sea City with the Pikes for two weeks to start summer break, "just like last time." (Not like last time - they went during Spring Break in Boy-Crazy Stacey.) We discuss the revisiting of a lot of the same plot points and seeing them from Mary Anne's perspective this time and quickly realize she's stretching a bit when she says there are "too many boys."

Episode 030: Mary Anne and the Great Romance!

April 27th, 2021  |  1 hr 18 mins

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Kate and Lauryn are back into the main series following their Super Special detour to a ski lodge with the big, but not so big, wedding event where Richard and Sharon tie the knot in a much more business-like fashion than we (to varying degrees) or Mary Anne would’ve liked. It’s the first of a two-parter dealing with the lead-up to and fallout from the blending of the Spier and Schafer families. We compare and contrast this wedding situation with that of Edie (aka Elizabeth if you’re not us and haven’t latched onto that nickname from Kristy’s Great Adventure) and Watson along with the various sibling and family relationships we see throughout the series (and in our own lives). This book and our discussion end up being more ridiculous than we might have anticipated, leading Lauryn to put together a WTF list while reading that we run through in one go to really emphasize the ridiculousness overall. On- and off-topic tangents include: Edie vs. Elizabeth, being indoor kids, balloon bouquets, straw hats, Laura Ashley, sundried tomatoes, Jell-o Jigglers, and Mary Anne’s boring AF board game.

Episode 025: Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger!

December 1st, 2020  |  55 mins 30 secs

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Kate and Lauryn were excited to get back to a Mary Anne book, but end up a little frustrated by how out of character she and the rest of the BSC act throughout this book. Basically, Tigger goes missing because Mary Anne can’t be bothered to take him in the house and then she (and the BSC) vacillates between frantic and lackadaisical and not using logic before Mary Anne finally figures out that Logan’s sister, Kerry, had found Tigger and was keeping him as a secret pet in her closet. We take issue with Logan and dissect the fact that our fond feelings may be as a result of the repetitive positive commentary in each book and the fact that he doesn’t actually appear in person in many books in the series. It’s a book that could’ve been great, but just missed the mark and to avoid a total pile-on, we use some of the episode to talk about larger themes and ideas in the series as a whole, in particular focusing on the difference in how Claudia’s Japanese-American heritage is treated versus how the narrators in each book approach describing Jessi as Black and looking toward more opportunities to continue that conversation in the future. We also touch on some of the real pop culture referenced in the book, including A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Baby Island, and Millions of Cats, which leads to a general discussion of other pop culture we may have missed (Madeleine L’Engel and His Dark Materials) or that does or does not hold up today (Empire Records vs. Can’t Hardly Wait) and the joys of going into something with low expectations and ending up being pleasantly surprised.

EM010: Emergency Meeting - Netflix Season One, Episode Four: Mary Anne Saves the Day!

August 11th, 2020  |  40 mins 29 secs

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Kate and Lauryn jump back into the episode-specific discussions for the summer mini-series to discuss episode four of the Netflix series, Mary Anne Saves the Day. The show does a good job again of hewing close to the plotline of the book of the same name, with some great updates. For example, while a 1980s babysitter might successfully evidence her maturity solely be staying calm and calling 911, a 2020s babysitter needs to do more to take agency and find her voice. Here, Mary Anne shows her maturity in standing up for and speaking on behalf of Bailey, the trans girl she’s babysitting. We go back and forth on the pros and cons of Bailey’s storyline here, ultimately coming down on the positive side – appreciating in particular that Bailey being trans isn’t presented as a “thing” for Mary Anne to learn about and get comfortable with, rather that Mary Anne is presented the opportunity to speak up for Bailey when she can’t after the medical professionals misgender her. We talk about the fight the girls have (which is focused solely on Mary Anne, rather than being a collective fight as in the book), Dawn’s introduction, ongoing awesomeness, and status as an over-sharer, the reimagining of Dawn and her mom and the greater implications of the change in their race and the dropping of Jeff as a character. We also touch on Claudia’s plaid Clueless homage, chairs with hidden candy-stashing compartments, the “Mary Anne is a Boss” playlist and its greater implications, and the fantastic sequin content of Bailey’s wardrobe and agree to disagree on just what the definition of a “meet cute” is.

EM005: Emergency Meeting - Mary Anne in Quarantine!

May 26th, 2020  |  47 mins 48 secs

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Kate and Lauryn hold their final (for now) Emergency Meeting to discuss what Mary Anne’s doing in quarantine (with some general final thoughts on the rest of the BSC and Stoneybrook in general). We agree that Mary Anne is feeling EVERYTHING and using a regimented schedule to stay focused on maintaining connections and helping others and avoiding getting bogged down by those emotions. Her dad likely kept up his rules about the phone and computer initially, but realized the need to allow more flexibility for Mary Anne to stay connected and coordinate Zoom calls with the BSC and their babysitting charges to try to maintain as much normalcy as possible. Mary Anne is likely relying a lot on Logan, the girls in the BSC, and Mimi for emotional support and an outlet for her feelings, due to her dad’s more closed-off approach to emotions. We agree Mary Anne is probably putting together her own pop culture challenges (e.g., reading every book in a series, watching the entire series of a show, or finishing all the books that have won a certain award) to give her a more passive activity that still allows her to feel like she’s accomplishing something. We ponder what the adult versions of the girls would be doing and in a roundabout way, when examining ourselves at thirteen, realize that extrapolating from thirteen years old is actually a pretty reasonable approximation of where they’ll end up as adults. We touch on Dawn (being the parent), Mallory (writing and dealing with her large family), and Jessi (ballet, ballet, ballet), discuss Lauryn’s copyright-infringing BSC flyer for her own club, ponder which house we’d want to quarantine at, confirm the abundance of BSC fanfic on the internet, and (of course) discuss what Cokie Mason is doing in quarantine (trolling the girls while secretly wanting to be their friend).

Episode 017: Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery!

May 19th, 2020  |  1 hr 10 mins

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It’s our first episode since the teaser for the new Netflix BSC series dropped, so Kate and Lauryn take a quick sidetrack to discuss their excitement and thoughts (generally and with respect to the FINALLY confirmed perfect casting of Marc Evan Jackson as Mary Anne’s dad). Then diving into the story at hand, we immediately touch on the Cokie Mason of it all (as she has made her long-awaited first appearance in the series) before getting into the bad luck mystery itself, stemming initially from a discarded chain letter Mary Anne receives, but continuing mostly due to Cokie’s scheming to help her friend Grace get Logan’s attention. We focus on the girls’ confirmation bias related to the bad luck they all experience and how they all immediately go all-in on the superstitions and witchcraft. We lament that there’s no skeptic or voice of reason like with child pageants previously, but transition into a conversation about the intended audience – specifically, how maybe that’s not necessary and generally, how well Ann M. Martin does at teaching kids how to read as they read. We do a related dive into Kate’s obsession with Kristy’s Mystery Admirer and how it and this book, when considered together, make absolutely no sense, leading to further discussion of timeline wonkiness and divergent/parallel timelines, and how the future ghostwriters may be the actual cause of all our confusion on those points. We also compare and contrast the characterizations in the books vs. the movies and find book Logan wanting, question Charlie Thomas’s life choices and wonder what a series from his perspective might look like (spoiler – likely very interesting and we want to read it so badly), and find ourselves concerned with the overly cliquishness and superiority of our BSC girls in this book. On the babysitting front specifically, Kate judges Dawn’s crafting choices and Lauryn finds the humor in her real-life nightmare, noting Claire Pike’s adorable question regarding whether a bird knows Santa Claus after it gets into her house through the chimney.