Stuck in Stoneybrook: A Baby-Sitters Club Podcast

We all get hit with all the feels in the episode. Love Mimi. Love Janine. Love sisters. Hate transphobia about Louie the collie—let him (Or her? Or them?) be! Also, we create a “BSC Big Five” personality assessment to help a listener figure out which baby-sitter(s) she is, and Anne goes on a both a long junk food rant (of course) and into a fanfic wormhole (more Janine… and Charlie Thomas! Steamy!).

We attempt to resolve one of the great contradictions of Esme’s life: hating make-up and other feminizing societal constraints and also being obsessed with weddings: Em blames Kristy. So many questions abound in this episode: How heteronormative *IS* this book? Why does Watson have three toaster ovens? Also is Stacey’s mom… Stacy’s Mom?

Emily cries a lot because her childhood memory of herself as Dawn is even more accurate than expected. Oh, the emotional labor! We are fired up about a lot of things in this episode, including the white washing of 1700s Connecticut and class wars in Stoneybrook (spoiler: they’re between rich white people). And hey, was Dawn hinting at global climate change, or just being a Californian?

Braids and penny loafers begone! Mary Anne steps up and out in her debut. Has her dad’s sexual frustration been contributing to her imprisonment? Maybe, but it’s probably just the patriarchy, flourishing like it does best: in Reagan-era suburban Connecticut. Anne blames Claudia for the pettiness, and Dawn finally shows up.

We were all three dehydrated from happy tears after watching nearly five hours of the Netflix "Baby-sitters Club" series. Here’s what we thought about it all. Spoilers abound! Not a spoiler: we frickin’ LOVED IT.

Bad girls and good girls—pitting us against each other just lets the men win, ladies. Fad doctors, intrigue, stealing Charlie and Sam Thomas’s cassette tapes, and the complex emotions of one Kristin Amanda Thomas. Stacey’s debut is a freaking delight. But white chocolate? Why?!?

In which Emily defends the Phantom Phone Caller and demands his freedom, we unpack whether or not boys really do tease girls they like (and if they should), and Anne leans on both her professional training as a writer and her Japanese heritage to write Claudia a haiku as Trevor Sandborne.

Let’s ease back into Stoneybrook as we try to figure out why Jamie Newton’s cousin hates girls so much, which wealth signifiers are most relevant (fondue?), and which mid-eighties bands the baby-sitters would be fans of.

Who are we? Why should you care? And what fresh takes can we bring to the child care champions of Western Connecticut? Join a pop culture writer, a feminist political theorist, and an adolescent clinical psychologist as they discover what only their adult eyes can see in 1980s Stoneybrook. Also, two of us have been best friends for 35 years and two of us are related.