They wish they all could be...

The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #5: California Girls!

So in honor of today's delightful weather (almost 60 degrees! Almost May! Way to be global warming! Oh, wait. Not.)let's travel with the girls as they visit California, someplace I've, sadly, never been.

So the BSC has won 10 grand on a lottery ticket, and apparently, there are no taxes in the state of Connecticut, so that works out to $1428.57 each, according to Dawn. They have one of their never-explained random two-week breaks from school, and decide to blow their wad on a trip out to Cali to visit Dawn's dad and Jeff (yay, Jeff!) in someplace called Palo City, which I guess is near LA, but not anywhere near San Diego (Dawn totally rips on Jessi for making that mistake) and I guess not by San Fran like I first thought (I guess that's Palo Alto? Where Stanford is?) Forgive me, I have no concept of California geography. If someone would like to pay for me to take a trip out there for BSC research purposes, I'd be happy to correct myself, but for now, I'm just going to assume it's somewhere LA-ish.

And another thing, all the BSC parents are okay with this? I mean, have any of them ever even met Mr. Schafer? And I'd wager a strong bet that none of them even really know who Carol (Mr. S's new girlfriend) is. My parents certainly wouldn't let me go galivanting across the freaking country to stay with some dude they'd never met, even if he was my friend's father. And spending all their winnings on it? The same Richard Spier who in book 1 wouldn't let his daughter spend $3.00 of her baby-sitting money on pizza is letting her blow $1500 on a trip to California to visit his new wife's ex? Seriously, people? Seriously?

Misgivings aside, the BSC is in Cali. Let's see how they fare, shall we?

Dawn: Spends most of the book bitching about her father's new girlfriend, who actually seems pretty awesome to me. Then I realized that I am much, much closer to Carol's age than Dawn's. Crap. I'm old. Also, my parents have been married for almost 30 years, so I have no experience with parental significant others. I have to say though, that I thought Dawn's vitriol towards Carol was interesting, given that she seems to have come to terms quite easily with Richard Spier as her stepfather. I guess it's that Richard tends to act like he's 92, rather than in his mid-forties, and Dawn thinks Carol acts too young and tries to be too "friendly" with the BSC. I honestly don't see it. Anyway, so Dawn spends most of her time playing tour guide for her friends and being rude to Carol, until the end when Carol acts like an adult during an emergency situation and Dawn realizes that she's actually pretty cool and gives her father permission to marry her if he wants. He's all "Uh, thanks, but I'm not going to rush into anything" although I have to say, if he's found a woman who's willing to spend two weeks chauferring his rude-ass daughter and her friends around, being nice to them when they're bitches to her, and not losing her temper, he really should marry her, because he's not going to do any better.

Stacey: So that emergency sitch I alluded to above with Carol? That would be Stacey getting into a car accident with her new high-school age surfing buddies. Wouldn't it have been cool if they were like, Bruce Patman or someone from Sweet Valley High? That would have been an AWESOME crossover!! Instead, they're just some loser high-schoolers named things like Rosemary and Beau. Beau drives like a maniac multiple times, but Stacey is so obsessed with her newfound love of surfing that she keeps riding to the beach with him, even though she knows it's dangerous. The crap hits the fan when Beau causes a major accident on the freeway. No one is hurt but everyone, including Stace, is taken to the ER to be checked out (wouldn't it have been awesome if her doctor were like, Michael Mancini or Kimberly Shaw from Melrose Place? So much potential for AWESOME crossovers!!) Stace is forced to call Dawn's house from the ER and is happy when Carol answers the phone and comes to get her, because she thinks Carol is her friend and will keep it a secret. Carol (who brings Dawn to the hospital with her) gives her a hug but is all "Think again, sister!" She makes Stacey 'fess up to Mr. S, and then Mr. S makes her call her parents. Stace is kind of pissed but she knows she was asking for it, and Dawn is happy to see that Carol is a real adult, so... win-win-win, I guess?

Jessi: Considers quitting ballet. But doesn't. Same as ever. Seriously, I would loooove to see her get a new storyline. I don't hate her the way I hate Mal, but geez is her life ever repetitive. Basically, she calls up Derek Masters, the kid from Stoneybrook who's on some sitcom, and he invites her to the set for a day. She gets chosen to be an extra in a crowd scene, and decides that maybe she'd rather be an actress than a ballerina. Derek encourages her to go to a few auditions and get an agent while she's in LA and I am falling off my couch laughing because YEAH, RIGHT. It's that easy. There aren't thousands and thousands of people who MOVE to LA trying to make those things happen, but Jessi just happens to be visiting and some 8 year old is like "I think you have talent. Let's make it happen." Good lord but these people do not live in the real world. Anyway, it doesn't matter because after much "soul-searching" (assuming Jessi has a soul and is not just a cardboard cut-out black ballerina, as I'm starting to suspect) Jessi decides (say it with me) ballet is her one true love. Yawn.

Mal: Oh, Mal, Mal, Mal, Mal, Mal. You know, Mal is the spanish word for "bad." Fitting? I think so. Mal decides she wants to be a "real California girl" which to her means being a blonde. So she cons Carol into driving them to this huge mall, where she goes off by herself and spends ALL OF HER MONEY on hair dye and make-up. What the hell did she buy? Let's think this through, shall we? She had almost $1500 dollars from the lottery. A plane ticket might have been, say, $600? And I think that's being generous. This was one of their first days in CA. So she spent $900 on make-up and hair-dye? The hell did she do, dye her hair with real goddamn platinum? Did her eyeshadow have gold flakes in it? Seriously, people! She notes that she only has $6 remaining after she buys all this crap, and she spends the rest of the trip borrowing money from Jessi and annoying everyone else by being obsessed with her looks. While we're on the topic of money, are these girls paying Mr. Schafer anything for all of his food and hospitality he's providing? They should be! Anyway, Mal goes with Jessi to visit Derek on set another time, and Mal is sure she will be chosen to be an extra, but she's not because the director says she doesn't have the right look, and she's all "But I'm a real California girl! I'm blonde!" and everyone else in the world is like "Shut your stereotyping yap, girlfriend. What does that even mean?!" So finally she decides to go back to being regular Mal, but the hair dye won't wash out so she has to dye her hair red again, and because she's not allowed to wear make-up and her parents will freak if they find out she blew all her money on stuff she's not allowed to use, Stacey and Claud agree to buy all her make-up from her, which, again, the hell? So blond-haired, blue-eyed Stacey and Japanese Claudia are going to buy $900 dollars worth of make-up recommended for a red-haired, freckled 11-year-old? Oh, yeah, that sounds like an excellent plan. Just let her go home and get busted, you guys. That way, maybe next time you take a trip, she won't be allowed to come!

Claudia: Also spends the trip trying to be something she's not, namely, Janine. Who ever would have thought that Claudia would try to become more like Janine to attract a boy? And a really annoying, probably gay, boy at that? Claud meets this annoying kid named Terry at the beach and goes on a few dates with him, but Terry is all about discussing global issues and eating escargot at restaurants where the menu is all in French. For some reason, though, Claud thinks he's awesome, and when Carol tries to tell her not to change herself for a boy, Claud (and Dawn) totally misinterpret the advice and think she is saying to go for it. So after some total awkwardness and Claud feeling really bad about herself, she finally comes clean to Terry that she likes Ring-dings, Nancy Drew, and movies that are in English. Terry decides he likes her anyway, they kiss, they promise to write to each other, and we never hear from him again. Didn't the exact same thing happen when they went to summer camp? No wonder Claud has a low sense of her own self-worth. Not to be a total downer, but I worry that she's going to end up in an emotionally abusive relationship one day.

Mary Anne: MA baby-sits for a motherless girl named Stephie whose father has a lot of rules. MA and Stephie of course hit it off right away, even though MA is constantly freaking out over Stephie's asthma, which if I were Stephie, would totally piss me off. Have these girls seriously never dealt with asthma before? I would have been around Stephie's age, and asthma was not unusual. Tons of kids in my class had it to varying degrees, and Stephie's doesn't seem to be all that acute. Of course, the one thing that sets off Stephie's asthma is MA having to leave Cali, so she has an attack during MA's last sitting job, but MA handles it like a pro (seriously, she has to hand the kid her inhalor and make her sit on the couch. Not to make light of asthma, but this is not brain surgery.) Stephie wishes MA could be her mother (Really, Stephie? You could do better) and they promise to write. To my knowledge, we never hear of Stephie again either.

Kristy: Gets into a small tiff with the members of the We <3 Kids club. Kristy takes on a sitting job with some boys that the W <3 K club thinks are wild, but Kristy is sure that she, Exalted High Grand Master of Baby-sitting, can handle it without their suggestions, thank you very much. She gets permission to take Erick and Ryan to Universal Studios with the whole group (MA invites Stephie along to. Gotta say, if I were Mr. Schafer, I'd be pissed that I had to take a bunch of random kids, as well as my son, daughter, and her annoying friends with no tact or sense of boundaries, but he handles it like a champ. Ten bucks says he spends the month after the BSC leaves self medicating with gin.) The boys are a handful but really don't seem any worse than any of the kids in Stoneybrook. In the end, Kristy decides that maybe she doesn't know EVERYTHING there is to know about baby-sitting and that she should have graciously accepted the advice of the W <3 K club. It was boring. You know what a much, much more intersting storyline for Kristy would have been? We are told a couple of times, most notably in Kristy's Great Idea, that when Kristy's dad walked out on her family, he moved to California and got married again. Now that Kristy's visiting CA, wouldn't it have been interesting to see her struggle with whether she should visit her dad? Or even mention that she's going to be on the same coast with him? I get that CA is big and he might not live anywhere near Mr. S, but it would have been really neat to see it at least acknowledged. Jeff: I know, I know, but I adore Jeff, so he get's a little paragraph of his own. Jeff spends two weeks hanging around with his sister and her friends and Carol. Sometimes he invites his friend Rob to come along on their outings, but then he can't because he and Rob get in a fight over, are you ready for this, which of them is the bigger Deadhead! 8-year-old Jeff and his best friend Rob are Grateful Dead fans! Why is that so hilarious to me? All in all, not a bad one. Fun and fluffy, just like a BSC Super-Special should be. Really makes me want to take a California vacation of my own. Who's in?