In case you haven’t heard, The Baby-Sitters Club are back in business.
No, not the 1995 movie. Or the 1990 TV series. Or the long-running books.
But the totally charming reboot from Netflix, which landed on the streaming service earlier this month.
Based on the books of the same name, which were published from 1986 until 2000, it follows the friendship and adventures of Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace), Mary-Anne Spier (Malia Baker), Claudia Kishi (Momona Tamada), Stacey McGill (Shay Rudolph), and Dawn Schafer (Xochitl Gomez) – middle-schoolers who start their babysitting business in the town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.
And in good news for fans who were wondering how the iconic series would be brought into 2020, it turns out that the show is just like the books.
No, really.
The creative team behind the Netflix series packed each episode with nostalgic nods to the beloved books by Martin, with Rachel Shukert — the executive producer and showrunner — telling Entertainment Tonight that they were “really the text to adapt”.
“It’s truly based on the books more than it is on either of the adaptations,” she said of the series. “The ’90s series goes off in their own direction and the movie has its own storyline that doesn’t really appear in the initial books. For me, The Baby-Sitters Club is the books. It’s not the HBO series and it’s not the movie, so it felt like that was really the text to adapt.”
And they do it absolutely perfectly.
So, while we’re keeping our fingers crossed that a season two announcement is on the way soon (pretty please?), here are 6 Easter eggs you might have missed while watching Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club.
It’s the *exact* same phone from the books.
First seen in 1986’s Kristy’s Great Idea, you couldn’t really have The Baby-Sitters Club reboot without that see-through phone, could you?
Most definitely not.
The landline itself was set up as part of Claudia’s sister’s high-speed internet package, with the phone being bought from Etsy. And yeah, we definitely want one for ourselves.
….and so is the handwriting at the start of the credits.
Each one of The Baby-Sitters Club books began with a handwritten piece – like a diary entry, or a letter – from one of the members of the club.
The Netflix series starts off each episode the same way, with the member of the club at the centre of the story appearing to take over writing the opening credits. And yeah, Stacey’s handwriting still has the i’s dotted with little hearts.
The episode titles.
But it turns out that the throwbacks to the books begin before the episodes even start.
Eight out of the ten episodes titles have been taken from the books, including Claudia and Mean Janine, Kristy’s Big Day, and The Truth about Stacey.
The Clueless reference.
We don’t know about you, but we were totally buggin’ when we saw this.
Alicia Silverstone stars as Kristy’s mom Liz in the series, and the two of them end up having a heart-to-heart about her engagement to Watson Brewer at the end of the premiere.
“My mom might have weird taste in men. But when it came to life, I guess she wasn’t totally clueless,” Kristy remarks.
Mary-Anne and Kristy’s flashlight code.
Yes, one of the easiest ways to communicated nowadays is via text.
So it was particularly delightful to see Mary-Anne and Kristy bring back their old form of communication, the flashlight code, for the series — even if it only happened after one of them got their cell phone taken away…
Paris Magic.
In the two-part season finale, The Baby-Sitters Club head to Camp Moosehead — where Mary-Anne decides she’s going to put on a play, Paris Magic.
And while it isn’t a play in the real world, it’s something that fans of the books may recognise.
“In the final two episodes, Paris Magic, which is the play they do at camp, is mentioned by Stacey as a show that’s playing on Broadway that she wants to go see,” Shukert told Entertainment TonightEntertainment Tonight. “It’s not a real play, but it’s in the world.”
