Mary Anne and the Brunettes
I didn't mean to spam you guys with another video snark so soon, but I fucked up my back but good and I have nothing to do but lie in bed with my newly-digitized BSC tapes and enough painkillers to kill a moose. Which, let's face it, is the way the good lord intended these things to be watched.
Establishing shot: Claudia's house! Which is a similar looking, but different house than in the other episodes. I...what? Why? You only need one establishing shot to use for an entire TV series. Did the Tanners repaint their bright red front door once in eight years? Hell no! And then I found out it's black now and fell into a deep depression upon realizing that my childhood was wrapped up in the color of a fictional family's front door. Medication is a big help.
Stacey and Mary Anne race in and fall onto the bed together, having the absolute most homoerotic ticklefight outside of Hannah Does Her Sisters. They could have come in talking about school or something, but no, THIS is what the director went with. Probably the same director who came up with a close-up of a snake hanging out of a third-grader's pants.
Kristy, seething with jealousy, pointedly ignores them and continues writing in the club notebook.
No, you two finish. I'm not even here.
"Hi, I'm Kristy, president of the Baby-sitter's Club," she voice-overs. Oh, yeah, this is the first episode of the series, so we have to be properly introduced. She tells us about their "busy week" while showing us scenes of what incompetent babysitters they are.
Claudia, for example, is a "great artist" who mixes up fingerpaint with her back turned to Jenny Prezzioso, "but she never dreamed Jenny would fingerpaint all over the wall" while she wasn't looking! I think that's her tactful way of saying Claudia was born with a lump of styrofoam where most people have a cerebellum. Then again, so were the set decorators, because Jenny has a blue right hand and a clean left hand, yet the counter has a blue left handprint on it. Plus a few red and green smears when she clearly has no red or green paint.
She licked the paint off her other hand. I suspect Claudia frequently did the same as a child.
Mary Anne is the most patient person Kristy knows, she continues. When Jamie Newton won't take a nap without his new bike, she gives both of them a goodnight kiss!
More tea, Mr. Bike?
Kristy isn't so sure Dawn will ever sit for the Rodowskys again, she says as a doorknob rips off in Dawn's hand. "Do you know what it's like to be trapped in a bathroom with three freckle-faced redheads?" Because being trapped in a bathroom with three hyperactive boys would be a load of fun if they were blond? I think it's officially time for an "Ann hates gingers" tag.
Or maybe that line was meant to distract the viewer from asking: Why the HELL was she in the bathroom with three small boys with the door closed in the first place?
Stacey, the club treasurer, told Karen and Andrew they could lick the bowl of frosting...but they didn't understand she meant AFTER they frosted the cake! Oh, come on, super-prodigy Karen is plenty old enough to know what she meant. That brat clearly did it on purpose.
She looks absolutely nothing like Karen, yet somehow she has captured her hateful essence.
Jessi tries to teach some unnamed little kids to dance, but they run around instead. And Mallory takes a kid named Christopher who doesn't appear in the books to the library. I like that they both have to adhere to the only personality trait they have, and that they don't get real charges.
And as for Kristy? She got stuck sitting for this really ugly baby.
"So are you and your husband siblings, or...?"
What I really want to know is, who is Kristy telling this information to? She's supposed to be writing it in the notebook, but I kind of think the baby-sitters are already aware of their own names and stuff. Narrative sense: This makes none.
Theme song! Say hello to your friends! If I'm feeling down and out, if I'm feeling bluuuuuue! I watch these videos. They do actually have a cheering effect that can't be achieved by, for example, narcotics. They prance along, chattering and shoving as always - are they incapable of talking one at a time? - and pause under a tree to take pictures. Mary Anne squats down so Stacey can jump on her back, knocking Kristy out of the way. Does…does the director have a thing for these two? I mean, Dawn and Mary Anne would make sense, but Stacey and Mary Anne aren't even close.
Pictured left to right: Dawn, Jessi, Mallory, Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne. Taking photo: Claudia. Standing behind Claudia, not pictured: Pedobear.
Back to Claudia's room! Claudia, wearing way too much eye makeup, wants to know if she should do face painting or portraits for the middle school fair. Mary Anne sensibly says kids won't sit still long enough for portraits. Mal whispers something to Jessi with a knowing look, but it's completely inaudible, so I have no idea what this is supposed to convey.
"My sister wears too much eye makeup. People think she's a whore."
Blah blah Charlotte made Dawn some hideous necklace, blah blah the meeting is called to order, blah hey the club treasury has a surplus. "What's a surplus?" Mal asks. Superfluous out-of-character redhead hate! Like the most well-read member of the club would be the one to ask for the definition of a word and not the illiterate one. "Extra cash," Dawn supplies. I don't really know what that's supposed to mean, though - like, the point is to save some money for when you need it; at what point are you like "OMG WE HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY GET RID OF IT."
Jessi wants to have a pizza party, but Kristy's sick of pizza. So screw you and the fact that it's your money too; Kristy has spoken! Mrs. Rodowsky calls to schedule a job with Mary Anne (Dawn declines it, because she too hates redheads) and then...a call from Logan! "Ooooh!" everyone squeals. They have less chemistry than Mary Anne and Stacey have sitting all the way across the room from each other, though, because he's just calling to schedule a job for his siblings. Mary Anne agrees to take it and asks him to sit at the Rodowskys with her. Everyone ooohs about that some more - uh, okay - except Stacey, who stiltedly assures her "It's okay, Mary Anne. We're just jealous we don't have boyfriends."
Keep playing it cool and no one will ever know about us.
"Not me," boasts Kristy. She declares the boys at SMS to be the "nerdiest, creepiest, mookiest" in the country. I guess "mookie" means "stale"? Get with the lingo, screenwriters! Mary Anne steers the conversation back to the surplus and suggests buying new stuff for the Kid Kits. "I don't know," Stacey says. "Well, if you don't want to," Mary Anne says hastily. Oooh, a lover's spat!
"Don't back down, Mary Anne," Claudia snaps. God, when are you going to stop letting people bully you, you little wimp? She thinks new Kid Kits sound good too. More importantly, Kristy likes the idea. Isn't the whole point of the treasury for things like Kid Kits? So you use a special surplus to buy exactly what the regular treasury buys anyway? This is so well thought out.
"I still want pizza," Jessi insists. Good for her. "All in favor of pizza?" Kristy says sarcastically. Jessi boldly raises her hand, the lone dissenter. I do too and then yell for my husband to order me a pizza. All in favor of new Kid Kit stuff? Everyone else, including Stacey, who didn't want them a second ago. She knows where her bread is buttered.
You know what this means, Jessi. THE BOO BOX.
Next scene! Mary Anne, Kristy, and Logan are out shopping. "Mary Anne, if y'all wanna try on earrin's, I don't mind waitin'," he offers. And tonight the role of Logan will be played by James Van der Beek in Varsity Blues. She sends him ahead with Kristy to look at baseball mitts, but not before he parts with a really stilted compliment.
You'd look real purdy in a whipped cream bikini.
Over at the makeup counter, oh, shit, it's THE BRUNETTES! My favorite BSC villains, and they never even appear in the books. Marci, the ringleader, asks which of the horrific 80's blue eyeshadow looks better. Is "neither" an option? Patti thinks midnight blue looks better with her skin. "What's wrong with my skin?" she snaps. "N-nothing!" Patti stammers. Which is especially funny to me, because Marci's skin has always bugged the HELL out of me in this video. She looks deep-fried. It doesn't look that bad in screencaps, but on a decent-sized TV, it looks like she was hired for the part, went "I'm gonna be on TV, better hit the tanning bed!" and then showed up looking like a leather handbag.
Marce, we gotta be honest…you look like a potato.
They exposit about how they're going as hippies to some costume party after the fair, then Marci spots Logan and basically swoons off her chair.
Marci's favorite movie is Varsity Blues.
She and Patti bicker about whether she can get Logan to dump Mary Anne for her, while Kathi, the third Brunette, applies blush for about three straight minutes. Thank god there's no actual makeup on that brush or she'd look like Bozo.
Over in baseball mitts, Logan is aching over some long-fingered beauty that Kristy will eventually give away to a poor kid. It's a Mookie Wilson, he tells us admiringly. Wait, so it sucks? Didn't Kristy just make up "mookie" to use as a pejorative one scene ago? What bizarre screenwriting. Kristy looks at the price tag and informs him it's fifty bucks. Fifty bucks? Her millionaire parents wouldn't give her ONE SINGLE PRESENT for Christmas that cost fifty bucks? What, did they have to take out a loan to buy her a bike or something?
Kristy takes off to look at bats and Marci spots an opportunity to swoop in and latch herself to Logan's arm, lamprey-like. Tee hee! Won't he help her pick out a pair of roller skates? He insists he doesn't know a thing about roller skates, his name isn't Logan, and in fact doesn't even speak English, but she insists he HAS to help her.
Over in jewelry, the other baby-sitters peer into the camera while trying on earrings. Claudia likes a tame silver pair of stars, to which Stacey scoffs, "Where are you going to wear them? School?" Yeah, at SMS you can't be seen in earrings made of anything less than hot glue and your own baby teeth or you'll be laughed out of gym class. Mallory shoves them aside to announce she hates her nose.
Yes, Mal. If it weren't for your nose you'd be Miss America.
Mary Anne likes a pair of pierced earrings, but doesn't have pierced ears. No, she won't get them pierced. No, she won't ask her dad's permission. No, she doesn't really want the earrings anyway. This is supposed to illustrate that Mary Anne is meek, but all it really illustrates to me is that her friends are kind of bullying assholes who never lay off her about anything.
Off in the corner, Kristy swings a bat and overhears Marci say in the flattest affect possible, "Oh, nuts. I can't do it." Can't...do what? "Would you mind, Logan? You can get them really tight." Is she pretending she doesn't know how to tie her shoes? There's a damsel in distress ploy I've never seen before. Look, I'm shit at a lot of dumb stereotypical things - changing tires, killing large insects*, ordering my own pizzas - but I hope like hell that no dude finds it sexy that a woman can't do something she should have mastered by first grade.
*Actually I now do not ask other people to kill insects for me, because of a story I desperately want to tell someone but promised I wouldn't write a blog post about. So I'm telling it here instead, where the interested parties will never see it. A couple of months ago, my parents were here visiting and took us out to eat, and afterwards my husband retired to the bathroom with an upset stomach. My parents and I were chatting in the living room for a while, when, desperately needing to pee and tired of waiting, I went down to our basement bathroom, which I never use because there are always creatures lurking in it. Sure enough, there was a HUGE ASS SPIDER right on the toilet lid, waving at me menacingly, and I came tearing back to the living room crying, "There's a spider in the bathroom! Kill it! Kill it!" Now, I may be a grown woman, but my daddy is still my daddy, so he takes off his loafer, ready to do battle. What I am unaware of is that he thinks my husband is in the den and that I mean the main bathroom. So my father, bless him, heroically busts in on my husband sitting on the toilet, waving his shoe like a lunatic; yelling "I'LL KILL YOOOOOUUU." I was standing behind him in stark horror as my father lowered his shoe, cleared his throat, and said, "Oh. Pardon me." My husband did not even flick his eyes away from his game of Bejeweled. "No problem." I decided it would be better if I dealt with my own bugs from now on.
Speaking of watching people drop a load, Kristy tiptoes over and hides behind a canoe while Marci simperingly tells Logan she doesn't know how she'd have gotten her skates on without him. Are you seriously saying you cannot get shoes on without a man's help. Is that what you are saying. Just checking. I mean, I used to be a figure skater and figure skates are a bitch to get fitted and laced correctly but it's still easier to do yourself than for someone else to do it.
Kristy makes various shock faces and sneaks in closer as Marci tries to talk Logan into coming to the costume party with her. Logan stalls and says he may have to baby-sit. "You can baby-sit anytime!" Marci protests. I don't think she understands how baby-sitting works. Logan's like, "Thanks for asking, but, uh...no." Kristy chooses that moment to stand up and knock over a display of beach balls. And I was thisclose to praising how well they'd behaved in a store for a change, too.
Next scene - roller skating! Marci isn't even wearing her new skates; she's got on rentals. I'm beginning to think they were nothing but a big ploy to get Logan's attention.
Over on the bench, Kristy says she has to tell Mary Anne something: Marci asked Logan out to the costume party. "Did he say he'd go?" Mary Anne asks. "Well, he didn't say no," Kristy says matter-of-factly. What? YES HE DID! You liar! First he said he had to babysit, then when she pressured him he explicitly said no! I have it on tape! I think Kristy is just trying to break them up so she can have Mary Anne to herself.
"She has a right to ask him," Mary Anne says. "Mary Anne, he's YOUR boyfriend!" Kristy protests. Well, that doesn't negate Marci's right to ask him out. That only makes Logan an asshole if he says yes. Which he didn't. Mary Anne, remarkably level-headed, agrees with me: "I know. That's why I'm not worried...Everybody knows Marci's a flirt." She skates away, satisfied.
Oh, but Kristy's not satisfied. Not until Mary Anne is aaaall hers. She's all, "I THOUGHT you'd want to know." Mary Anne is like, "So did anything else happen?" and Kristy's all, "Well, they looked reeeeeally close." Kristy! YOU ARE SUCH A LIAR! He looked obviously anxious and uncomfortable and was trying to get away! Mary Anne still doesn't think anything of it until she skates away and Marci comes up to her and says, "Have you seen Logan? He was supposed to meet me here at two!" And here comes the pensive look. Now: Don't you think she would have dismissed that bullshit from Marci if Kristy hadn't filled her head with garbage first?
Marci skates over to Patti and Kathi, all giggles, to the annoyance of Stacey, Claudia, and Dawn. Stacey's all, "Oooh, it's the Logan Bruno fan club" and Dawn squeals, "Bruno's Brunettes!" Claudia says, "That's perfect! The Brunettes!" Is…is that supposed to be an insult? I gotta say, I've heard better.
They call you the Braindamaged Bimbos.
Oh, hey, there's Logan! He steps onto the rink and waves. Mary Anne waves back, unaware that Marci is standing right behind her waving too - or at least until Marci physically shoves her aside to throw herself into Logan's waiting arms. Logan does one of the most hilarious smiling-to-OMGWTF transition faces ever.
Hey there, hot stuff...
OH GOD IT'S A MONET ABORT ABORT
Mary Anne merely stands there looking upset. Did she utterly miss that Logan crapped his pants in fear when Marci approached? For a bright and sensitive person, she's missing a lot of context clues here.
Next scene! "Come on, Emma, you can do it!" Kristy coaches what is clearly a little boy coming down the slide on the playground. Was there ever an Emma in the books? Why isn't this Emily Michelle, since it's a toddler Asian kid? I thought maybe it was, except they're also with a white girl about the same age whose name they keep mumbling, but I think it's Zoe, and a baby with no name. I don't know who these randoms are.
Kristy is only half paying attention to her charges, since she's busy bending Dawn's ear about the Mary Anne thing. Dawn thinks she's "jumping to conclusions" (I think she's LYING) and wants to let Mary Anne deal with her own shit. "What are friends for?" Kristy insists. Huh. What ARE friends for, if not to poke around in your personal business when you've asked them not to. Except...everything else. She reminds Dawn about the time Claudia broke her leg and Mary Anne snuck Tigger into the hospital for a visit. "It's not the same," Dawn says. "Yes it is," Kristy says. Oh my god, NO IT ISN'T. Dawn is convinced, though, because Mary Anne is such a good friend that they should help her against her will.
They play I Spy with the kids and Kristy says, "That's IT! I spy, you spy, we all spy!" They have to spy on Logan! Never let him out of their sight! Dawn begrudgingly says okay - "As long as we don't end up looking really silly." Right, that would be terrible. If you looked silly. Not if you seriously invaded the privacy of someone who probably considered you his friend. Kristy's all, "Hurr, I never look silly!" and then finds the kids have buried her up to the ankles in sand. This is supposed to be funny, but I suspect this was their desperate attempt to bury her alive.
Next scene: SMS! Marci and Logan study together in the library while Claudia, Stacey, and Kristy stand right next to them and talk in normal voices: "What are they doing?" "Reading!"
The only way they haven't been spotted is if Logan and Marci are both unconscious.
Marci's all, "Oh, NOW I get it! You're such a good teacher! And I'm such a dumb little woman!" and Logan's like mumble mumble. Claudia yells, "What did he say?!" Subtle. Kristy hastily tries to replace the books, but knocks them all off the shelf, causing Logan and Marci to turn around and stare at them. She whispers, "Shoot" and cringes, as if they aren't looking right at her.
Chemistry! Dawn is pouring some chemicals from one beaker to another, with no gloves or goggles on or anything. I mean, it's obviously just baking soda and colored water, but nice lab safety standards, SMS. Her lab partner Kristy nudges her to look at Marci and Logan working together, causing their chemicals to foam and spill all over.
It ate through the lab table and most of the first floor before it could be contained.
Anyway, my favorite part is that when this happens, Dawn lets out the most disproportionately epic gasp and it sounds like she's sucking hot ashes though a tailpipe.
"We're only trying to help you, Mary Anne," Kristy says as they tromp out of school at the end of the day. She appreciates that, but doesn't know what they want her to do about it. They urge her to come out and ask Logan what's going on. Well, yes, that's sound advice, but they didn't need to spy on him first. She says she trusts him, and that why she likes him - because she can trust him. They're like, "Well how come he's taking Marci to the party, HUH?" Seriously, what in the HELL, Kristy. He said no. And if somehow you missed him saying no, he definitely did not say yes. But Mary Anne doesn't know that, because her best friend is a LYING LIAR who wants to rile her up. She's like, "Fine, I'll deal with this shit. But I'll deal with it my way."
The rest of you, go burn your outfits in the interest of public decency.
At home that night, Mary Anne practices her various confrontation styles in the mirror. She deems them all wrong, even though the first one (firm and a little angry) and the last one (calm and rational) both sound good to me. The middle one sounds exactly like the opening to a porno, though. Dawn comes in to ask if she's all right and is the first one to act like a decent, rational human being, for once - telling her to say whatever she wants, or nothing if she prefers, and that Logan's not worth shit if he'd cheat on her anyway. THANK you, Dawn. And fuck you, Kristy, for crapping on her confidence and trying to force her to do things she isn't comfortable with.
Next scene: The middle school fair! Logan blows up balloons outside and tries to say hello to Mary Anne, who blows him off. What's wrong? Are you mad or something? She does the best "I'm not mad!" snarl and pissyface combo I've ever seen.
Why would I be mad, you scum-sucking bastard?
He's like, "So, uh, what's the plan for this afternoon?" and she's like, "The costume party, duh." He says he thought they were babysitting at the Rodowskys together. She's like, "I don't need you to come" and he's like, "Well I know, but I thought" and she's like "DON'T COME JUST FUCK OFF TO THE PARTY OKAY." Her critical thinking is really not on high alert if she can't tell he was obviously planning to baby-sit with her. How did she think he was going to the party with Marci if he was baby-sitting at the same time? Poor Logan is left standing alone, confused, playing with his balloon in a truly awkward manner.
Sir, we're going to have to ask you to do that no less than 500 meters away from the school grounds.
Inside, the fair is underway. Who is this aimed at? Does "Middle School Fair" mean a fair for middle schoolers, or a fair put on by middle schoolers for younger kids? Because it appears to be entirely middle schoolers, plus Jackie Rodowsky. Who does look menacingly older in this scene, for some reason.
Wanna know how I got these scars?
Tug of war! Baby-sitters versus Brunettes (and a couple of randoms, to make it fair). Who will win the battle of the Most Dramatic Tugface?
Will it be Stacey, who looks like a mangy and underfed lion going in for the kill?
Will it be Marci, who appears to be having her baby forcibly taken from her by a man named Juan Cuistidor on a Spanish-language soap opera?
Who will be the ultimate Dramatic Tugface Champion?
And the winner is...
...
...
Jessi, who appears to be suffering a prolapsed rectum! Congrats, Jessi.
Marci gets them back by winning the three-legged race with Logan, though, while Mary Anne and Jackie crash and burn. Well no shit, his whole body is the height of her leg.
Next is some perverted-ass looking game like Suck and Blow, except you pass an apple back and forth under your chin. Stacey passes it to Mallory with this little undulating move that makes me want to take a scalding shower for the rest of my life.
The fanfic writes itself.
Logan and Marci, of course, pass the apple, while Mary Anne and Claudia look on in annoyance. Claudia appears to be eating her apple. I'd make fun of her for eating her game piece, but this horror must be stopped.
Ooooh, a pie-throwing booth! And who do you think is the sucker in the pie-throwing booth?
Ann had to be talked out of making it a flamethrowing booth.
Kristy misses a throw so short I'm pretty sure my dead grandmother could have made it, then Mary Anne steps up for her turn. "Hey Mary Anne!" Marci yells, as if she's been waiting all afternoon for this moment. "You never told me Logan was such a good kisser!" You've been waiting all afternoon to insult someone while they were holding a pie?
I did not think through my cunning plan.
Next scene: The Rodowskys' house! Also not the same Rodowsky house as in later episodes. Nor the same Shea. I guess they moved house and left that kid behind as an amenity. The boys are wrestling and screaming as the doorbell rings and there's the sound effect of a door opening, which is hilarious because the front door is standing wide open and Logan walks right in. Just...wow. This show deserves record-breaking numbers of Emmys. Logan picks up Jackie and dumps him on the couch, to which Mary Anne snaps that he just had a big snack. He was running in circles and jumping on the couch a second ago, Mary Anne, I think he'll be fine.
Logan says he didn't know and Mary Anne's all, "Well BARGE IN and DON'T ASK DUMBASS." Logan would really like to know what crawled up her ass and died. Nothing, she continues to insist unconvincingly, just go to the damn party. Why the hell are you pissed at him for going to the party with Marci when the party is going on right now and he is not there and obviously has no plans to be. This is the dumbest Mary Anne has ever been. Finally Logan has had enough of her shit - seriously, good for him; she's acting like a psycho - and is like, "Fine, I'll go to the party. Bruno out."
Jackie doesn't understand what he just saw - he thought Mary Anne and Logan liked each other.
Why so serious?
As the sappy music plays, Mary Anne explains that she doesn't want Logan to go to the costume party with Marci. It's kind of inappropriate to drag a seven-year-old into your relationship problems, Mary Anne. But Jackie, wise beyond his years, says she should just tell Logan that. Or you could have left it alone entirely and not TOLD him to go to the party with Marci, which he never had any intention of doing in the first place. That would have worked too.
Back at the costume party! The Brunettes, looking groovy in their sixties wear, happen upon the sitters in huddle dressed as football players. "Lovely," Marcy snots. "At least we're in costume," Kristy snaps, smirking like she got in some sick burn. Is...is that another insult? I guess they really have something against hippies, but again I gotta say, I've heard better.
They call you the Buffalo Bills.
"So immature," Marci sniffs. "So phony," Kristy shoots back. The sitters cackle and high-five. Good one, Holden. "Where's Logan?" Kristy wants to know. Marci bluffs that Logan is meeting her later because he wanted to be with her alone. Kristy laughs that he must be embarrassed to be seen with her. OR HE WAS NEVER GOING WITH HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU DUMBFUCK.
Over at the Rodowskys', Mary Anne tries fruitlessly to call Logan's house. He just SAID he was going to the party, stupid.
Things are getting real at the costume party, with Kristy taking off her helmet to get in Marci's face about not talking behind Mary Anne's back. Marci says if Mary Anne wasn't such a wimp, she'd stick up for her own self instead of letting Kristy do it. She...kind of has a point. Kristy calls her a creep for stealing Mary Anne's boyfriend. I loathe the phrase "stole" a boyfriend. People are not property. They cannot be stolen. And other people can't make them do anything they don't want to do, so if he left you for her, try blaming him for being a jackhole instead of her as if she broke into your house and swiped him out of the safe. God.
Anyway, Marci claims that she didn't steal him: "He came to me." "Then where is he?" Kristy demands. Yes, Kristy, where is he? YOU'RE the one who just accused Marci of stealing Logan, then you point out that she doesn't seem to have him, so which is it? Marci bluffs he's meeting her later at their "secret place," blah blah, face it: "He doesn't like your drippy little friend anymore!"
"Who you calling drippy?" Kristy says. "YOU'RE the only drip around here!" And promptly turns a hose on them.
Vigilante justice.
Seriously, what. The same group nails a girl with a pie and sprays her down with a hose at a school event and they get in NO TROUBLE? That's some serious-ass bullying! I don't care what she did with some chick's boyfriend, that is not acceptable! Somebody start handing out some goddamn detentions!
Over at the Rodowskys', Logan actually rings the doorbell for real this time and waits to be let in by Jackie. He just missed Mary Anne, though. Where was he all this time? He wasn't baby-sitting and he wasn't at home and he wasn't at the party. Maybe he really was waiting at Marci's, uh...secret place.
The sitters tromp toward the Rodowskys' to find Mary Anne themselves, still in football gear. Mallory walks like Igor.
Find Mary Aaaaaaaanne. Yesssss, Masssster.
Mary Anne, meanwhile, has gone to the party to find Logan. "Is Logan here?" she asks a mystery person bent over with a towel over their head. Seriously, you're surrounded by classmates, and you ask one complete stranger? God alone knows who's under that -
ARGGGHHHH
"LOGAN?" Marci snarls. "That jerk? He backed out. Stood me up at the last minute." Wait, what? HE NEVER SAID HE'D GO WITH YOU. I feel like I'm screaming into a sightless, sucking void here, but it's on the damn video, he said no! Mary Anne barely suppresses her smile, but that also makes no sense, because Marci just implied her steady boyfriend agreed to go out with someone else in the first place. On the list of things that make me jump with glee, I'd say "Your asshole husband didn't show up for our date" ranks somewhere near "We don't know yet if the tumor is benign."
The baby-sitters get to the Rodowskys', also having just missed Mary Anne. Jackie doesn't even question the way they're dressed, probably because he's used to Kristy by now.
Finally Logan and Mary Anne run into one another, symbolically meeting in the middle.
It's like there was a wall between them, get it? Also, Mary Anne walks like Frankenstein's monster.
They walk and talk and she comes clean over the sappy music - she thought Logan didn't like her anymore because of Marci. Logan assures her they're doing a science project together, that's all. "Why'd you say you'd go to the party with her?" "I didn't," he says. He admits he liked all the attention, though. Well, then he's an exceptionally bad actor, because he was acting like a pissy cat every time Marci got near him. Mary Anne apologizes for acting mean. "Yur never mean, Mary Anne. That's wah ah lahck yoo," James Van der Beek says.
He doesn't want your life. He will take your virginity, though.
They schmoop about how they should always discuss their feelings with each other and Marci's just not ~special~ like Mary Anne.
Oh, good, here comes the BSC galumphing up the drive. Not one of them walks normally, I swear. They're like, "Mary Anne, we have to tell you what an asshole Logan is! ...Logan! What are you doing here? We thought you were with Marci!" No you didn't! You knew he wasn't at the party and you taunted her when she said they were meeting later! This makes no sense at all. Logan laughs and says they're great baby-sitters but rotten detectives. That speaks volumes about the later detective series, I feel.
Kristy brightens and says, "You mean you stood her up?" "I never even told her I'd go!" Logan says. Instead of apologizing for their mistake, the sitters burst into spontaneous laughter.
Oh, you. Totally crushing your best friend's feelings and confidence and almost destroying her relationship for literally no reason. You're such a character.
They decide to go inside and eat, because Claudia "didn't get a chance to eat at the party," which is a total lie, because she ate the apple she was supposed to be playing a game with. I think she's part goat. Mary Anne and Logan remain on the porch, gazing at each other and grinning in freeze frame as the credits start to roll.
Which only leaves the question...seriously, why the hell was Marci angry at Logan when she knew he wasn't coming? Did she delude herself into believing they had a relationship? That seems exceptionally crazy.
And these are the eyes of a sane person.
Establishing shot: Claudia's house! Which is a similar looking, but different house than in the other episodes. I...what? Why? You only need one establishing shot to use for an entire TV series. Did the Tanners repaint their bright red front door once in eight years? Hell no! And then I found out it's black now and fell into a deep depression upon realizing that my childhood was wrapped up in the color of a fictional family's front door. Medication is a big help.
Stacey and Mary Anne race in and fall onto the bed together, having the absolute most homoerotic ticklefight outside of Hannah Does Her Sisters. They could have come in talking about school or something, but no, THIS is what the director went with. Probably the same director who came up with a close-up of a snake hanging out of a third-grader's pants.
Kristy, seething with jealousy, pointedly ignores them and continues writing in the club notebook.
No, you two finish. I'm not even here.
"Hi, I'm Kristy, president of the Baby-sitter's Club," she voice-overs. Oh, yeah, this is the first episode of the series, so we have to be properly introduced. She tells us about their "busy week" while showing us scenes of what incompetent babysitters they are.
Claudia, for example, is a "great artist" who mixes up fingerpaint with her back turned to Jenny Prezzioso, "but she never dreamed Jenny would fingerpaint all over the wall" while she wasn't looking! I think that's her tactful way of saying Claudia was born with a lump of styrofoam where most people have a cerebellum. Then again, so were the set decorators, because Jenny has a blue right hand and a clean left hand, yet the counter has a blue left handprint on it. Plus a few red and green smears when she clearly has no red or green paint.
She licked the paint off her other hand. I suspect Claudia frequently did the same as a child.
Mary Anne is the most patient person Kristy knows, she continues. When Jamie Newton won't take a nap without his new bike, she gives both of them a goodnight kiss!
More tea, Mr. Bike?
Kristy isn't so sure Dawn will ever sit for the Rodowskys again, she says as a doorknob rips off in Dawn's hand. "Do you know what it's like to be trapped in a bathroom with three freckle-faced redheads?" Because being trapped in a bathroom with three hyperactive boys would be a load of fun if they were blond? I think it's officially time for an "Ann hates gingers" tag.
Or maybe that line was meant to distract the viewer from asking: Why the HELL was she in the bathroom with three small boys with the door closed in the first place?
Stacey, the club treasurer, told Karen and Andrew they could lick the bowl of frosting...but they didn't understand she meant AFTER they frosted the cake! Oh, come on, super-prodigy Karen is plenty old enough to know what she meant. That brat clearly did it on purpose.
She looks absolutely nothing like Karen, yet somehow she has captured her hateful essence.
Jessi tries to teach some unnamed little kids to dance, but they run around instead. And Mallory takes a kid named Christopher who doesn't appear in the books to the library. I like that they both have to adhere to the only personality trait they have, and that they don't get real charges.
And as for Kristy? She got stuck sitting for this really ugly baby.
"So are you and your husband siblings, or...?"
What I really want to know is, who is Kristy telling this information to? She's supposed to be writing it in the notebook, but I kind of think the baby-sitters are already aware of their own names and stuff. Narrative sense: This makes none.
Theme song! Say hello to your friends! If I'm feeling down and out, if I'm feeling bluuuuuue! I watch these videos. They do actually have a cheering effect that can't be achieved by, for example, narcotics. They prance along, chattering and shoving as always - are they incapable of talking one at a time? - and pause under a tree to take pictures. Mary Anne squats down so Stacey can jump on her back, knocking Kristy out of the way. Does…does the director have a thing for these two? I mean, Dawn and Mary Anne would make sense, but Stacey and Mary Anne aren't even close.
Pictured left to right: Dawn, Jessi, Mallory, Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne. Taking photo: Claudia. Standing behind Claudia, not pictured: Pedobear.
Back to Claudia's room! Claudia, wearing way too much eye makeup, wants to know if she should do face painting or portraits for the middle school fair. Mary Anne sensibly says kids won't sit still long enough for portraits. Mal whispers something to Jessi with a knowing look, but it's completely inaudible, so I have no idea what this is supposed to convey.
"My sister wears too much eye makeup. People think she's a whore."
Blah blah Charlotte made Dawn some hideous necklace, blah blah the meeting is called to order, blah hey the club treasury has a surplus. "What's a surplus?" Mal asks. Superfluous out-of-character redhead hate! Like the most well-read member of the club would be the one to ask for the definition of a word and not the illiterate one. "Extra cash," Dawn supplies. I don't really know what that's supposed to mean, though - like, the point is to save some money for when you need it; at what point are you like "OMG WE HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY GET RID OF IT."
Jessi wants to have a pizza party, but Kristy's sick of pizza. So screw you and the fact that it's your money too; Kristy has spoken! Mrs. Rodowsky calls to schedule a job with Mary Anne (Dawn declines it, because she too hates redheads) and then...a call from Logan! "Ooooh!" everyone squeals. They have less chemistry than Mary Anne and Stacey have sitting all the way across the room from each other, though, because he's just calling to schedule a job for his siblings. Mary Anne agrees to take it and asks him to sit at the Rodowskys with her. Everyone ooohs about that some more - uh, okay - except Stacey, who stiltedly assures her "It's okay, Mary Anne. We're just jealous we don't have boyfriends."
Keep playing it cool and no one will ever know about us.
"Not me," boasts Kristy. She declares the boys at SMS to be the "nerdiest, creepiest, mookiest" in the country. I guess "mookie" means "stale"? Get with the lingo, screenwriters! Mary Anne steers the conversation back to the surplus and suggests buying new stuff for the Kid Kits. "I don't know," Stacey says. "Well, if you don't want to," Mary Anne says hastily. Oooh, a lover's spat!
"Don't back down, Mary Anne," Claudia snaps. God, when are you going to stop letting people bully you, you little wimp? She thinks new Kid Kits sound good too. More importantly, Kristy likes the idea. Isn't the whole point of the treasury for things like Kid Kits? So you use a special surplus to buy exactly what the regular treasury buys anyway? This is so well thought out.
"I still want pizza," Jessi insists. Good for her. "All in favor of pizza?" Kristy says sarcastically. Jessi boldly raises her hand, the lone dissenter. I do too and then yell for my husband to order me a pizza. All in favor of new Kid Kit stuff? Everyone else, including Stacey, who didn't want them a second ago. She knows where her bread is buttered.
You know what this means, Jessi. THE BOO BOX.
Next scene! Mary Anne, Kristy, and Logan are out shopping. "Mary Anne, if y'all wanna try on earrin's, I don't mind waitin'," he offers. And tonight the role of Logan will be played by James Van der Beek in Varsity Blues. She sends him ahead with Kristy to look at baseball mitts, but not before he parts with a really stilted compliment.
You'd look real purdy in a whipped cream bikini.
Over at the makeup counter, oh, shit, it's THE BRUNETTES! My favorite BSC villains, and they never even appear in the books. Marci, the ringleader, asks which of the horrific 80's blue eyeshadow looks better. Is "neither" an option? Patti thinks midnight blue looks better with her skin. "What's wrong with my skin?" she snaps. "N-nothing!" Patti stammers. Which is especially funny to me, because Marci's skin has always bugged the HELL out of me in this video. She looks deep-fried. It doesn't look that bad in screencaps, but on a decent-sized TV, it looks like she was hired for the part, went "I'm gonna be on TV, better hit the tanning bed!" and then showed up looking like a leather handbag.
Marce, we gotta be honest…you look like a potato.
They exposit about how they're going as hippies to some costume party after the fair, then Marci spots Logan and basically swoons off her chair.
Marci's favorite movie is Varsity Blues.
She and Patti bicker about whether she can get Logan to dump Mary Anne for her, while Kathi, the third Brunette, applies blush for about three straight minutes. Thank god there's no actual makeup on that brush or she'd look like Bozo.
Over in baseball mitts, Logan is aching over some long-fingered beauty that Kristy will eventually give away to a poor kid. It's a Mookie Wilson, he tells us admiringly. Wait, so it sucks? Didn't Kristy just make up "mookie" to use as a pejorative one scene ago? What bizarre screenwriting. Kristy looks at the price tag and informs him it's fifty bucks. Fifty bucks? Her millionaire parents wouldn't give her ONE SINGLE PRESENT for Christmas that cost fifty bucks? What, did they have to take out a loan to buy her a bike or something?
Kristy takes off to look at bats and Marci spots an opportunity to swoop in and latch herself to Logan's arm, lamprey-like. Tee hee! Won't he help her pick out a pair of roller skates? He insists he doesn't know a thing about roller skates, his name isn't Logan, and in fact doesn't even speak English, but she insists he HAS to help her.
Over in jewelry, the other baby-sitters peer into the camera while trying on earrings. Claudia likes a tame silver pair of stars, to which Stacey scoffs, "Where are you going to wear them? School?" Yeah, at SMS you can't be seen in earrings made of anything less than hot glue and your own baby teeth or you'll be laughed out of gym class. Mallory shoves them aside to announce she hates her nose.
Yes, Mal. If it weren't for your nose you'd be Miss America.
Mary Anne likes a pair of pierced earrings, but doesn't have pierced ears. No, she won't get them pierced. No, she won't ask her dad's permission. No, she doesn't really want the earrings anyway. This is supposed to illustrate that Mary Anne is meek, but all it really illustrates to me is that her friends are kind of bullying assholes who never lay off her about anything.
Off in the corner, Kristy swings a bat and overhears Marci say in the flattest affect possible, "Oh, nuts. I can't do it." Can't...do what? "Would you mind, Logan? You can get them really tight." Is she pretending she doesn't know how to tie her shoes? There's a damsel in distress ploy I've never seen before. Look, I'm shit at a lot of dumb stereotypical things - changing tires, killing large insects*, ordering my own pizzas - but I hope like hell that no dude finds it sexy that a woman can't do something she should have mastered by first grade.
*Actually I now do not ask other people to kill insects for me, because of a story I desperately want to tell someone but promised I wouldn't write a blog post about. So I'm telling it here instead, where the interested parties will never see it. A couple of months ago, my parents were here visiting and took us out to eat, and afterwards my husband retired to the bathroom with an upset stomach. My parents and I were chatting in the living room for a while, when, desperately needing to pee and tired of waiting, I went down to our basement bathroom, which I never use because there are always creatures lurking in it. Sure enough, there was a HUGE ASS SPIDER right on the toilet lid, waving at me menacingly, and I came tearing back to the living room crying, "There's a spider in the bathroom! Kill it! Kill it!" Now, I may be a grown woman, but my daddy is still my daddy, so he takes off his loafer, ready to do battle. What I am unaware of is that he thinks my husband is in the den and that I mean the main bathroom. So my father, bless him, heroically busts in on my husband sitting on the toilet, waving his shoe like a lunatic; yelling "I'LL KILL YOOOOOUUU." I was standing behind him in stark horror as my father lowered his shoe, cleared his throat, and said, "Oh. Pardon me." My husband did not even flick his eyes away from his game of Bejeweled. "No problem." I decided it would be better if I dealt with my own bugs from now on.
Speaking of watching people drop a load, Kristy tiptoes over and hides behind a canoe while Marci simperingly tells Logan she doesn't know how she'd have gotten her skates on without him. Are you seriously saying you cannot get shoes on without a man's help. Is that what you are saying. Just checking. I mean, I used to be a figure skater and figure skates are a bitch to get fitted and laced correctly but it's still easier to do yourself than for someone else to do it.
Kristy makes various shock faces and sneaks in closer as Marci tries to talk Logan into coming to the costume party with her. Logan stalls and says he may have to baby-sit. "You can baby-sit anytime!" Marci protests. I don't think she understands how baby-sitting works. Logan's like, "Thanks for asking, but, uh...no." Kristy chooses that moment to stand up and knock over a display of beach balls. And I was thisclose to praising how well they'd behaved in a store for a change, too.
Next scene - roller skating! Marci isn't even wearing her new skates; she's got on rentals. I'm beginning to think they were nothing but a big ploy to get Logan's attention.
Over on the bench, Kristy says she has to tell Mary Anne something: Marci asked Logan out to the costume party. "Did he say he'd go?" Mary Anne asks. "Well, he didn't say no," Kristy says matter-of-factly. What? YES HE DID! You liar! First he said he had to babysit, then when she pressured him he explicitly said no! I have it on tape! I think Kristy is just trying to break them up so she can have Mary Anne to herself.
"She has a right to ask him," Mary Anne says. "Mary Anne, he's YOUR boyfriend!" Kristy protests. Well, that doesn't negate Marci's right to ask him out. That only makes Logan an asshole if he says yes. Which he didn't. Mary Anne, remarkably level-headed, agrees with me: "I know. That's why I'm not worried...Everybody knows Marci's a flirt." She skates away, satisfied.
Oh, but Kristy's not satisfied. Not until Mary Anne is aaaall hers. She's all, "I THOUGHT you'd want to know." Mary Anne is like, "So did anything else happen?" and Kristy's all, "Well, they looked reeeeeally close." Kristy! YOU ARE SUCH A LIAR! He looked obviously anxious and uncomfortable and was trying to get away! Mary Anne still doesn't think anything of it until she skates away and Marci comes up to her and says, "Have you seen Logan? He was supposed to meet me here at two!" And here comes the pensive look. Now: Don't you think she would have dismissed that bullshit from Marci if Kristy hadn't filled her head with garbage first?
Marci skates over to Patti and Kathi, all giggles, to the annoyance of Stacey, Claudia, and Dawn. Stacey's all, "Oooh, it's the Logan Bruno fan club" and Dawn squeals, "Bruno's Brunettes!" Claudia says, "That's perfect! The Brunettes!" Is…is that supposed to be an insult? I gotta say, I've heard better.
They call you the Braindamaged Bimbos.
Oh, hey, there's Logan! He steps onto the rink and waves. Mary Anne waves back, unaware that Marci is standing right behind her waving too - or at least until Marci physically shoves her aside to throw herself into Logan's waiting arms. Logan does one of the most hilarious smiling-to-OMGWTF transition faces ever.
Hey there, hot stuff...
OH GOD IT'S A MONET ABORT ABORT
Mary Anne merely stands there looking upset. Did she utterly miss that Logan crapped his pants in fear when Marci approached? For a bright and sensitive person, she's missing a lot of context clues here.
Next scene! "Come on, Emma, you can do it!" Kristy coaches what is clearly a little boy coming down the slide on the playground. Was there ever an Emma in the books? Why isn't this Emily Michelle, since it's a toddler Asian kid? I thought maybe it was, except they're also with a white girl about the same age whose name they keep mumbling, but I think it's Zoe, and a baby with no name. I don't know who these randoms are.
Kristy is only half paying attention to her charges, since she's busy bending Dawn's ear about the Mary Anne thing. Dawn thinks she's "jumping to conclusions" (I think she's LYING) and wants to let Mary Anne deal with her own shit. "What are friends for?" Kristy insists. Huh. What ARE friends for, if not to poke around in your personal business when you've asked them not to. Except...everything else. She reminds Dawn about the time Claudia broke her leg and Mary Anne snuck Tigger into the hospital for a visit. "It's not the same," Dawn says. "Yes it is," Kristy says. Oh my god, NO IT ISN'T. Dawn is convinced, though, because Mary Anne is such a good friend that they should help her against her will.
They play I Spy with the kids and Kristy says, "That's IT! I spy, you spy, we all spy!" They have to spy on Logan! Never let him out of their sight! Dawn begrudgingly says okay - "As long as we don't end up looking really silly." Right, that would be terrible. If you looked silly. Not if you seriously invaded the privacy of someone who probably considered you his friend. Kristy's all, "Hurr, I never look silly!" and then finds the kids have buried her up to the ankles in sand. This is supposed to be funny, but I suspect this was their desperate attempt to bury her alive.
Next scene: SMS! Marci and Logan study together in the library while Claudia, Stacey, and Kristy stand right next to them and talk in normal voices: "What are they doing?" "Reading!"
The only way they haven't been spotted is if Logan and Marci are both unconscious.
Marci's all, "Oh, NOW I get it! You're such a good teacher! And I'm such a dumb little woman!" and Logan's like mumble mumble. Claudia yells, "What did he say?!" Subtle. Kristy hastily tries to replace the books, but knocks them all off the shelf, causing Logan and Marci to turn around and stare at them. She whispers, "Shoot" and cringes, as if they aren't looking right at her.
Chemistry! Dawn is pouring some chemicals from one beaker to another, with no gloves or goggles on or anything. I mean, it's obviously just baking soda and colored water, but nice lab safety standards, SMS. Her lab partner Kristy nudges her to look at Marci and Logan working together, causing their chemicals to foam and spill all over.
It ate through the lab table and most of the first floor before it could be contained.
Anyway, my favorite part is that when this happens, Dawn lets out the most disproportionately epic gasp and it sounds like she's sucking hot ashes though a tailpipe.
"We're only trying to help you, Mary Anne," Kristy says as they tromp out of school at the end of the day. She appreciates that, but doesn't know what they want her to do about it. They urge her to come out and ask Logan what's going on. Well, yes, that's sound advice, but they didn't need to spy on him first. She says she trusts him, and that why she likes him - because she can trust him. They're like, "Well how come he's taking Marci to the party, HUH?" Seriously, what in the HELL, Kristy. He said no. And if somehow you missed him saying no, he definitely did not say yes. But Mary Anne doesn't know that, because her best friend is a LYING LIAR who wants to rile her up. She's like, "Fine, I'll deal with this shit. But I'll deal with it my way."
The rest of you, go burn your outfits in the interest of public decency.
At home that night, Mary Anne practices her various confrontation styles in the mirror. She deems them all wrong, even though the first one (firm and a little angry) and the last one (calm and rational) both sound good to me. The middle one sounds exactly like the opening to a porno, though. Dawn comes in to ask if she's all right and is the first one to act like a decent, rational human being, for once - telling her to say whatever she wants, or nothing if she prefers, and that Logan's not worth shit if he'd cheat on her anyway. THANK you, Dawn. And fuck you, Kristy, for crapping on her confidence and trying to force her to do things she isn't comfortable with.
Next scene: The middle school fair! Logan blows up balloons outside and tries to say hello to Mary Anne, who blows him off. What's wrong? Are you mad or something? She does the best "I'm not mad!" snarl and pissyface combo I've ever seen.
Why would I be mad, you scum-sucking bastard?
He's like, "So, uh, what's the plan for this afternoon?" and she's like, "The costume party, duh." He says he thought they were babysitting at the Rodowskys together. She's like, "I don't need you to come" and he's like, "Well I know, but I thought" and she's like "DON'T COME JUST FUCK OFF TO THE PARTY OKAY." Her critical thinking is really not on high alert if she can't tell he was obviously planning to baby-sit with her. How did she think he was going to the party with Marci if he was baby-sitting at the same time? Poor Logan is left standing alone, confused, playing with his balloon in a truly awkward manner.
Sir, we're going to have to ask you to do that no less than 500 meters away from the school grounds.
Inside, the fair is underway. Who is this aimed at? Does "Middle School Fair" mean a fair for middle schoolers, or a fair put on by middle schoolers for younger kids? Because it appears to be entirely middle schoolers, plus Jackie Rodowsky. Who does look menacingly older in this scene, for some reason.
Wanna know how I got these scars?
Tug of war! Baby-sitters versus Brunettes (and a couple of randoms, to make it fair). Who will win the battle of the Most Dramatic Tugface?
Will it be Stacey, who looks like a mangy and underfed lion going in for the kill?
Will it be Marci, who appears to be having her baby forcibly taken from her by a man named Juan Cuistidor on a Spanish-language soap opera?
Who will be the ultimate Dramatic Tugface Champion?
And the winner is...
...
...
Jessi, who appears to be suffering a prolapsed rectum! Congrats, Jessi.
Marci gets them back by winning the three-legged race with Logan, though, while Mary Anne and Jackie crash and burn. Well no shit, his whole body is the height of her leg.
Next is some perverted-ass looking game like Suck and Blow, except you pass an apple back and forth under your chin. Stacey passes it to Mallory with this little undulating move that makes me want to take a scalding shower for the rest of my life.
The fanfic writes itself.
Logan and Marci, of course, pass the apple, while Mary Anne and Claudia look on in annoyance. Claudia appears to be eating her apple. I'd make fun of her for eating her game piece, but this horror must be stopped.
Ooooh, a pie-throwing booth! And who do you think is the sucker in the pie-throwing booth?
Ann had to be talked out of making it a flamethrowing booth.
Kristy misses a throw so short I'm pretty sure my dead grandmother could have made it, then Mary Anne steps up for her turn. "Hey Mary Anne!" Marci yells, as if she's been waiting all afternoon for this moment. "You never told me Logan was such a good kisser!" You've been waiting all afternoon to insult someone while they were holding a pie?
I did not think through my cunning plan.
Next scene: The Rodowskys' house! Also not the same Rodowsky house as in later episodes. Nor the same Shea. I guess they moved house and left that kid behind as an amenity. The boys are wrestling and screaming as the doorbell rings and there's the sound effect of a door opening, which is hilarious because the front door is standing wide open and Logan walks right in. Just...wow. This show deserves record-breaking numbers of Emmys. Logan picks up Jackie and dumps him on the couch, to which Mary Anne snaps that he just had a big snack. He was running in circles and jumping on the couch a second ago, Mary Anne, I think he'll be fine.
Logan says he didn't know and Mary Anne's all, "Well BARGE IN and DON'T ASK DUMBASS." Logan would really like to know what crawled up her ass and died. Nothing, she continues to insist unconvincingly, just go to the damn party. Why the hell are you pissed at him for going to the party with Marci when the party is going on right now and he is not there and obviously has no plans to be. This is the dumbest Mary Anne has ever been. Finally Logan has had enough of her shit - seriously, good for him; she's acting like a psycho - and is like, "Fine, I'll go to the party. Bruno out."
Jackie doesn't understand what he just saw - he thought Mary Anne and Logan liked each other.
Why so serious?
As the sappy music plays, Mary Anne explains that she doesn't want Logan to go to the costume party with Marci. It's kind of inappropriate to drag a seven-year-old into your relationship problems, Mary Anne. But Jackie, wise beyond his years, says she should just tell Logan that. Or you could have left it alone entirely and not TOLD him to go to the party with Marci, which he never had any intention of doing in the first place. That would have worked too.
Back at the costume party! The Brunettes, looking groovy in their sixties wear, happen upon the sitters in huddle dressed as football players. "Lovely," Marcy snots. "At least we're in costume," Kristy snaps, smirking like she got in some sick burn. Is...is that another insult? I guess they really have something against hippies, but again I gotta say, I've heard better.
They call you the Buffalo Bills.
"So immature," Marci sniffs. "So phony," Kristy shoots back. The sitters cackle and high-five. Good one, Holden. "Where's Logan?" Kristy wants to know. Marci bluffs that Logan is meeting her later because he wanted to be with her alone. Kristy laughs that he must be embarrassed to be seen with her. OR HE WAS NEVER GOING WITH HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU DUMBFUCK.
Over at the Rodowskys', Mary Anne tries fruitlessly to call Logan's house. He just SAID he was going to the party, stupid.
Things are getting real at the costume party, with Kristy taking off her helmet to get in Marci's face about not talking behind Mary Anne's back. Marci says if Mary Anne wasn't such a wimp, she'd stick up for her own self instead of letting Kristy do it. She...kind of has a point. Kristy calls her a creep for stealing Mary Anne's boyfriend. I loathe the phrase "stole" a boyfriend. People are not property. They cannot be stolen. And other people can't make them do anything they don't want to do, so if he left you for her, try blaming him for being a jackhole instead of her as if she broke into your house and swiped him out of the safe. God.
Anyway, Marci claims that she didn't steal him: "He came to me." "Then where is he?" Kristy demands. Yes, Kristy, where is he? YOU'RE the one who just accused Marci of stealing Logan, then you point out that she doesn't seem to have him, so which is it? Marci bluffs he's meeting her later at their "secret place," blah blah, face it: "He doesn't like your drippy little friend anymore!"
"Who you calling drippy?" Kristy says. "YOU'RE the only drip around here!" And promptly turns a hose on them.
Vigilante justice.
Seriously, what. The same group nails a girl with a pie and sprays her down with a hose at a school event and they get in NO TROUBLE? That's some serious-ass bullying! I don't care what she did with some chick's boyfriend, that is not acceptable! Somebody start handing out some goddamn detentions!
Over at the Rodowskys', Logan actually rings the doorbell for real this time and waits to be let in by Jackie. He just missed Mary Anne, though. Where was he all this time? He wasn't baby-sitting and he wasn't at home and he wasn't at the party. Maybe he really was waiting at Marci's, uh...secret place.
The sitters tromp toward the Rodowskys' to find Mary Anne themselves, still in football gear. Mallory walks like Igor.
Find Mary Aaaaaaaanne. Yesssss, Masssster.
Mary Anne, meanwhile, has gone to the party to find Logan. "Is Logan here?" she asks a mystery person bent over with a towel over their head. Seriously, you're surrounded by classmates, and you ask one complete stranger? God alone knows who's under that -
ARGGGHHHH
"LOGAN?" Marci snarls. "That jerk? He backed out. Stood me up at the last minute." Wait, what? HE NEVER SAID HE'D GO WITH YOU. I feel like I'm screaming into a sightless, sucking void here, but it's on the damn video, he said no! Mary Anne barely suppresses her smile, but that also makes no sense, because Marci just implied her steady boyfriend agreed to go out with someone else in the first place. On the list of things that make me jump with glee, I'd say "Your asshole husband didn't show up for our date" ranks somewhere near "We don't know yet if the tumor is benign."
The baby-sitters get to the Rodowskys', also having just missed Mary Anne. Jackie doesn't even question the way they're dressed, probably because he's used to Kristy by now.
Finally Logan and Mary Anne run into one another, symbolically meeting in the middle.
It's like there was a wall between them, get it? Also, Mary Anne walks like Frankenstein's monster.
They walk and talk and she comes clean over the sappy music - she thought Logan didn't like her anymore because of Marci. Logan assures her they're doing a science project together, that's all. "Why'd you say you'd go to the party with her?" "I didn't," he says. He admits he liked all the attention, though. Well, then he's an exceptionally bad actor, because he was acting like a pissy cat every time Marci got near him. Mary Anne apologizes for acting mean. "Yur never mean, Mary Anne. That's wah ah lahck yoo," James Van der Beek says.
He doesn't want your life. He will take your virginity, though.
They schmoop about how they should always discuss their feelings with each other and Marci's just not ~special~ like Mary Anne.
Oh, good, here comes the BSC galumphing up the drive. Not one of them walks normally, I swear. They're like, "Mary Anne, we have to tell you what an asshole Logan is! ...Logan! What are you doing here? We thought you were with Marci!" No you didn't! You knew he wasn't at the party and you taunted her when she said they were meeting later! This makes no sense at all. Logan laughs and says they're great baby-sitters but rotten detectives. That speaks volumes about the later detective series, I feel.
Kristy brightens and says, "You mean you stood her up?" "I never even told her I'd go!" Logan says. Instead of apologizing for their mistake, the sitters burst into spontaneous laughter.
Oh, you. Totally crushing your best friend's feelings and confidence and almost destroying her relationship for literally no reason. You're such a character.
They decide to go inside and eat, because Claudia "didn't get a chance to eat at the party," which is a total lie, because she ate the apple she was supposed to be playing a game with. I think she's part goat. Mary Anne and Logan remain on the porch, gazing at each other and grinning in freeze frame as the credits start to roll.
Which only leaves the question...seriously, why the hell was Marci angry at Logan when she knew he wasn't coming? Did she delude herself into believing they had a relationship? That seems exceptionally crazy.
And these are the eyes of a sane person.