Knowing our time is limited, knowing we are down to our final 28 minutes, I want to say some parting words as we stand on the precipice of goodbye.
They say nothing lasts forever. And you, a 2020-21 TV series about Connecticut middle schoolers running a successful child care enterprise, and me are no exception. Knowing our time is limited, knowing we are down to our final 28 minutes, I want to say some parting words as we stand on the precipice of goodbye.
When I began watching you at the start of this semester, I thought I was safe from any attachment. And not just because I am a 28-year-old woman, and you are a peak-pandemic Netflix show geared toward viewers who are later-end “Zoomers” or squarely Generation Alphas.
Having never read your source material as a child, I don’t know why I stumbled upon you now all these years later. (When you first premiered, I was in an on-again, off-again relationship with “Emily in Paris.” Suffice it to say that 2020 was a dark time.) The start doesn’t matter because we are now where we were always headed: the end.
Looking back, I can’t deny how naive I was. I told myself you would just be background noise to accompany my morning bowl of granola. I told myself you would just be a good way to keep up my French if I dubbed your audio en français with English subtitles. I told myself you would just be like all the other shows I had strictly casual dalliances with before. But these boundaries didn’t work. I fell for you. I fell hard.
Without meaning to, I crossed that line, dividing viewers from fleeting to engaged. An episode turned into a season. A morning-multitasking watch turned into a focused Friday night watch. Soon thereafter, the emotions got involved and there was no turning back.
I identified with Kristy (and not just because she’s the subtly queer one) because she was bossy and I channeled her (and her visor) when I needed to be assertive. I participated in conversations (with myself) explaining why I felt frustrated with Dawn’s activism throughout the show, appreciating the nuanced and elusive distinction between necessary and performative social action. I searched for terracotta jumpsuits to buy like the one Claudia wore before a cooler head (read: insecurities) prevailed before purchase. I was upset with (but also slightly afraid of) those teenage girls who stole the BSC’s idea with their meretricious copycat “The Baby-Sitter’s Agency.” And, perhaps most telling, I just used “BSC” in a sentence without any intended irony.
Looking back, I am not proud of how I treated you. Like when a classmate or teaching assistant would see you on a tab, and I would act like I didn’t know how you got there. Like how — with the exception of my friend from Smith College who loved your books growing up and actually met Ann M. Martin in real life — I would make up something age-appropriate and brooding when people asked if I was watching anything good lately. Like when I shared songs with my friends from your soundtrack (which were very well-received, by the way,) and passed them off as my own cool, sad girl finds.
We both knew our time would run out eventually. (I looked it up around episode three, and you got canceled in 2022 despite “universal acclaim.”) We both knew there were other shows I also watched on the side. But, for two seasons totaling 18 episodes, we navigated fictional, impeccably dressed multi-character coming-of-age milestones. I will miss your company, but I must leave you behind in Stoneybrook.
But, before I do, I need to say something I’ve never told another show before: You were worth it. You were worth the plans I said no to (read: none) to watch you. You were worth whatever French oral comprehension I didn’t learn when I switched back to English audio so I could hear the characters in their original voices. And, believe me when I tell you this, you were worth the effects already experienced on Netflix’s algorithm for future suggestions “Because You Watched ‘The Baby-Sitter’s Club.’”
Because you weren’t just any other show. Because your presence will be felt after the credits roll. Because when I run out of episodes, I will be left with an aspiration I will never outgrow: to forge friendships and find friends like those entrepreneur adolescents did, especially ones that know where to buy terracotta jumpsuits.
Goodbye and thank you for everything, BSC. And with that, I hit play on “Kristy and the Baby Parade.”
