Claudia and the Mystery of the Secret Passage
So I went back to snarking Kristy's Big Day because so many of you seemed to be in favor of my stroking out - thanks, guys! - but I was right in the middle of it when my book up and disappeared. Now, you have to understand, I have the neatest, most hyperorganized house in America and I almost never leave it, because I work from home and only socialize with the imaginary friends inside my Internet box. Losing things is just beyond my ability to comprehend. It's like when you show my dog a tennis ball and then hide it under a blanket; her tiny little brain circuits are going to flame out and die. There's the bookcase, where books live. There's the nightstand, where they camp when they're in use. There's my hand. There are no other places. The only conclusion I can draw is that my husband, weighing the effects on my brain of a lost book versus the effects on my brain of snarking Kristy's Big Fucking Day, chose the healthier option and discreetly threw it away.
So I went back to this video, because speaking of things that will cause brain circuits to flame out and die, I do not know how Claudia doesn't wander the streets, sobbing in despair and confusion.
Say hello to your friends! Straight to a theme song scene! The sitters and a couple of kids walking through the playground! Baby-sitters Club! Claudia arrives with two manila envelopes labeled "photos" and "copies" in these ridiculously fancy handwritten block letters, which makes no sense, because either the photo processing place takes the time to write shit like that, or Claudia did it and managed to spell both of those words correctly. Either way I'm not buying it.
The envelopes turn out to contain a bunch of pictures of the sitters as kids, and where normal people would pass the photos around the circle, they start grabbing at the photos and throwing them at each other while shrieking like lunatics. I am not even making that up. If you gave a manila envelope full of feces to a cage of chimps, they would handle it better than this.
For instance, rarely will the chimps eat their own feces.
"We have all the pictures we need," Claudia exposits once the theme song mercifully ends and they can go back to acting like normal people and not the sad kind of circus apes that eventually have to be put down for accidentally hurting children. Dawn adds that the library lent them some great pictures of downtown. "What are we going to call the bulletin board?" Mal asks in a smooth baritone. Uh. Has she started testosterone replacement therapy? I don't remember her sounding quite so booming before.
She's hoping the penis distracts from her face.
"Stoneybrook Through the Years," Claudia announces. "It was Dawn's idea." And then everyone actually applauds while Dawn bows. Wow, she thought of titling a bulletin board about Stoneybrook through the years "Stoneybrook Through the Years." Does the Nobel Committee know about this?
On the outside, K. Ron is smiling, but on this inside you know she is absolutely seething that someone else is getting attention for their vapid idea.
I will make her eat her own feces.
They show off a little kid picture of Kristy, which is really adorable. I love when shows or movies show a picture of the character as a kid and they use the actor's real photo.
She could have made Dawn eat her own feces even then, though.
They also show off a really unfortunate looking baby that turns out to be Mallory, of course. I'd post it, but I don't trust myself not to make a deeply inappropriate dick joke that I cannot in good conscience post next to a baby. The others say she looks like Vanessa, and Vanessa - who I thought was Karen in the opening montage and am deeply relieved is not - asks to see the photo. "Let me see. Yes, I agree. Mal looks like me, when I was maybe two or three." Ugh, never mind, maybe Karen is the lesser of two evils.
My stomach also gives a nauseated lurch to see that Vanessa is played by the little girl who played Gloria in Richie Rich, now that I know the Richie Rich curse is still alive and well. One time I was home sick from school and that movie had just come out on video - and we all know I will watch anything with Macaulay Culkin in it - so my mom bought it for me to cheer me up, but I was too sick to really enjoy it. The next time I sat down to watch it, I started thinking about how deathly sick I had been the last time, and before I knew it I was running to the bathroom to puke again. The third time, I was thinking about what a funny coincidence it was that I seemed to get sick every time I watched this movie, because I was a pretty healthy kid overall, and sure enough, I totally talked myself into throwing up all over again. My hand to god, I bet I was sick during or directly after watching Richie Rich six times in my childhood.
Anyway, just a few weeks ago it was on TV, and I chuckled to myself, thinking all the childhood sickness was psychosomatic or a ridiculous coincidence or both and watched the whole thing without incident, then woke up the next morning with a raging fever. I believe the moral is that John Laroquette's career suffered so badly as a result of this movie that it lurches out of the screen, trying to make everyone else suffer too.
On the other hand, it represented a high point for little Vanessa here.
Mal snaps at her to shut the hell up with the rhyming and everybody's like, "Aww, we don't mind" because the theme of this episode is going to be "love thy sister even though she's kind of a bitch." "Do you think Jessi looks like me?" Becca pipes up, holding up a picture of her sister to herself at such an angle that we cannot judge. They all agree that she does. "I wonder, do most sisters look alike?" Mary Anne asks. Well, I can't speak for all sisters, but I can speak for me and mine, whose parents so thoroughly melded us into one person that I once had to make a video pointing it out to them.
She's on the left; I'm on the right, three years later.
She's on the left; I'm on the right, three years later.
Oh my god, my parents were the Arnolds.
Jessi pipes up that Claudia and Janine don't look alike, and Claudia adds that they don't act alike. On the flipside, Dawn thinks it's funny that Kristy and Karen are both pissy little tyrants when they aren't even blood related. This reminds Kristy that she hasn't been a pissy tyrant for ten whole seconds already and announces that they're going to put up a BSC flyer on the bulletin board too - "It'll be good for business!" So this display about the 200-year history of their town is basically just some pictures of seven present-day preteens and an advertisement for baby-sitters. I'm seriously making Cynthia face right now.
Okay then.
Next scene! Over at the million-year-old Schafer farmhouse that looks like it was built in 1989, Claudia and Dawn bring in the pictures to put together the bulletin board. Claud asks where the board is, and Dawn cackles and says she put it in the secret passage. Uh...what?
I crammed it in my "secret passage," geddit? Geddit? My secret...oh, never mind, just tell it to Stacey, she'll get it.
Also, nice job on the "secret" passage, there, show. How friggin secret was it if it has a DOORKNOB on it? ("OMG, I found a SECRET PASSAGE in my room!" "That's a linen closet." "Well, it took me a REALLY LONG TIME TO NOTICE IT!") They climb up some stairs into what is obviously just an attic. It has a WINDOW, for god's sake! If you can see it from the outside, it's not a secret!
Later they'll have a snack in the secret kitchen, work on the bulletin board in the secret den, then Dawn will retire for a while in the secret crapper.
Claudia airy-fairys about how the secret passage is full of "friendly ghosts," except isn't Jared Mullray supposed to be kind of a dick? Or is that the other dead Jared? Maybe Jared from Subway? This lack of continuity between books and videos is really getting to me.
They try to get the bulletin board out from between two beams, but why it's jammed between two beams in the first place makes no sense, because Dawn says she just put it up there for the time being because she was tripping over it in her room. That generally means "set it right on the stairs and shut the door," not "walk all the way up there and jam it hard into some insulation."
Claudia's hand touches a piece of paper and before she even looks at it she's like "OMG I FOUND SOMETHING! MAYBE IT'S A TREASURE MAP!" No, that's actually what she says. Is that seriously the first place your mind would go before you so much as glanced at it? I have a sheet of paper taped in exactly the same place. It's instructions for my furnace.
"It's on really old paper," she says, blowing off a ton of dust. Yeah, like 1982 - '83 at the most! "Let's go into the light," Dawn suggests, dragging her over to the window of the totally hidden room.
Whoever left it here, you can be sure no one knew about - oh, hey Mrs. Newton. Yeah, we'll be down in a minute.
Claudia announces it's a letter. "This is spooky," Dawn says. "This is incredible," Claudia amends. Why? I would think it was interesting, but given that Dawn and Stacey both live in old houses that seem to be filled with crap that previous owners left behind, what's so odd or creepy about finding something else of theirs?
Next scene - Claudia's room! "You can see how old it is!" "It's probably been in the secret passage for a hundred years," Claudia intones. "Or even longer!" Dawn says. "Our house was built in the 1700s!" Uh...no. Aside from the paper not looking anywhere near that old, they obviously are paying no attention to the ink fading, penmanship, and most importantly, diction. Not to keep referencing the same book, but back in Mallory and the Mystery Diary they found an actual hundred-year-old diary very hard to read.
This looks like my shopping list from 2009.
"It looks like a kid's handwriting," Kristy announces. What? It doesn't look remotely like a kid's handwriting. Are you high. K. Ron? Whatever, I can't take you seriously while you're wearing a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat.
Maybe instead of "elementary" she meant "elementary school teacher."
She does the world's worst dramatic reading: "I didn't lose Bettina's diamond ring. Why won't she believe me? She's so mean sometimes that I'm afraid of her. I wish with all my heart I never had a big sister! I vow never...ever... to speak to her again."
I vow never, ever, to start snarking without hitting up Discount Liquor first again.
That's all it says? Why do they keep referring to this as a letter? It's not a letter. It's not written to Bettina or anyone in particular and it was obviously never sent. It's just a journal entry that was written on a piece of stationery.
Claudia worriedly wonders if they ever did speak to each other again. Yes, I'm sure a child who thought her big sister was a total meanie stuck to her convictions. Mal's like, "Maybe she found the ring and they made up!" Or maybe she didn't and it didn't really matter, because a petty sibling fight in childhood doesn't generally have a lot to do with estrangement in adulthood. "I have a feeling these sisters always had problems," Claudia says darkly. "Bettina sounds really evil." Uh...because she's pissed about little sis losing her diamond ring? Claudia, you're a sociopath.
Dawn assures them they can check out the secret passage obvious attic crawlspace when they sleep over on Friday. Kristy's all snippy, "Um, hello, this is a MEETING?" even though she was the one with the damn magnifying glass doing a monologue a second ago. Shut up, K. Ron. Mrs. Ramsey calls that second to get a sitter for Becca and Dawn's all, "I'll do it, tee hee, Becca's great!" and Jessi's like, "Blecch, if she's not your bratty little sister." Oh, good, not only is this the "learn to love thy sister" episode, this is the "learn to love thy sister even though you always did so we're going to retcon this and pretend you don't get along" episode.
"I keep wondering what happened to these sisters," Claudia says, starting to get a case of Crazy Eyes.
You'll know it when you see it.
Kristy says it doesn't matter because "they died long before any of us were born." Why do they think that? Even if the condition of the paper and the ink and the language and the - spoiler - scotch tape stuck on it weren't dead giveaways that it's not very old, they have nothing to indicate how old it actually is. Claudia doesn't care, though: "Maybe they took their fight with them to their grave!" Everybody's like "Haha, Claudia's at it again!" even though this is really more of a Dawn thing.
"I got it, I know what we can do!" Claudia says. Ooh, I know! Go down to the cemetery and look for her gravestone: "Rest in peace. Because fuck Bettina, that's why." No, silly! A séance! Right in the secret passage obvious attic crawlspace, where the ghosts are sure to be! The combined reactions of Dawn and Mary Anne to this idea nearly caused me to wet myself.
Dawn: "YOU DON'T SAY?!" Mary Anne: "...I can't."
Kristy is somewhat skeptical.
Proving how easily the moral from previous episodes is forgotten, Dawn's like, "Is a séance okay with you, Mary Anne?" and she's like, "Well, no, not really, but if the rest of you really want to - " and Dawn's like "GOOD that's settled then." Claudia's all, "I feeel the spiiirits in this very rooooom!" and then the phone rings and they squeal.
Can I just say for a second that the way Kristy talks on the phone is easily the scariest thing in this series? She always says, "Hello? Oh, hello, [name]" and then "You need a sitter for [name] at [whenever]?" which conveys the information to the audience, but to the caller's point of view, she's literally repeating everything they say: "Hi, this is Dr. Johanssen." "Hi, Dr. Johanssen." "I need a sitter for Charlotte for Thursday at 4." "You need a sitter for Charlotte for Thursday at 4?" "Quit parroting me, you freak." And considering she gets right off the phone and gives the information to everyone else again, it isn't even necessary! It's just shitty, sloppy writing. It's not even the writing basics; it's the writing sub-basics: "Don't make your character into a creep just to info dump your audience."
Just to make this even dumber, Stacey declares that Charlotte is like her little sister, because this is also the "Love thy sister even though you don't even have a sister" episode. Ugh.
Janine knocks on the door then, and Claudia, horrorstruck, says, "Janine! What are you doing here? We're in the middle of a meeting!" as if she walked in on her having a pap smear or something. If it's such a big deal, then why did you calmly say "come in" when she knocked?
"I'm aware of your organization schedule," Janine says, "but on occasion your meetings run late, and today, since it is imperative for me to be at another location at 7:00, I want to ensure that your meeting adjourns promptly, so that our math tutoring session will convene as we previously arranged." For such a "genius," her English is not wonderful. First of all, that's a fuckhell of a run-on sentence. Second of all, it lacks conciseness and clarity. And if I'm being REALLY nitpicky, she did not use "since" correctly. Also, I'm pretty sure that a real genius could get that entire sentence out without sounding like she was reading it phonetically off a cue card.
Though, unlike Claudia, I think she might actually be Japanese, so +1.
"What?" Claudia says blankly. Janine's like, "Just be on time, dumbass" and leaves. "What language does she speak? What planet does she come from?" Claudia snots once the door closes. Everyone laughs. Oh, goody gumdrops, more "people who like different things than we do deserve to be shit on" crap.
Next scene! Jessi tries to leave for a sitting job but rides her bike through Becca's jump rope -why, you moron, it was right there - and they piss at each other a little bit. Dawn tries to distract Becca by asking if Jessi taught her to jump rope. Becca says no, Mal taught her - Jessi's too busy baby-sitting for other kids. "Baby-sitters don't like to baby-sit for their own sisters and brothers," she says as the wistful music plays. What? Up until recently, Mal and Jessi ONLY sat for their own brothers and sisters and are still the first choice to sit for them. And Kristy's always boasting about how she doesn't like to play favorites but her own siblings are obviously the best, because they know better than to tattle when she chains them up. This is the most hastily retconned episode ever.
Next scene, over at Johnson's Grocery! Inside, there's a woman with a microphone shouting about how every able-bodied American male should have a pistol in the nightstand.
I'm sorry, I was just looking for the Pop-Tarts. I'm not clear how I ended up a guest on Jenny Jones.
Seriously, Mom, how the hell did you decide you needed to record this talk show, grab a videotape at random, scotch tape over the tab the way you have to in order to ruin a prerecorded tape, and then realize your mistake thirty seconds later? Exactly how drunk did you spend the nineties?
Not as drunk as Dawn, I guess, because the tape switches back just as she yells, "What's this?" and shoves two carrots in her ears.
I'd like to think I missed some context, but...I doubt it.
I guess they're shopping for the party, because Claudia throws a bunch of chocolate into the cart and is like "lol the ghosts will love this." Dawns counters with two enormous bags of apples and "Everyone knows ghosts only eat health food and that's why they live so long!" For bonus points, parse everything wrong with that sentence. Anyway, given the ton of random veggies and other stuff in that cart, I hope they're just doing the shopping for Sharon and getting reimbursed for this. I mean, I might have bought myself a bag of candy from time to time, but my parents had the decency to feed me and my friends when they came over.
Claudia says they need to hurry up and get back for her tutoring with Janine, because she "mustn't be tardy." Jessi snottily asks why Janine talks like that. I don't know, Jessi, why are you such a raging bitch in the TV series when you're perfectly likeable in the books? It's a mystery. Claudia says Janine's practicing for her college entrance exams. The ones that must have taken place a couple of decades ago, I guess, because the actress playing Janine is 35 if she's a day.
Dawn delicately tells Jessi about Becca thinking Jessi doesn't pay attention to her anymore. Stacey protests, "Jobs are assigned as they come in! Becca knows that!" You mean that you're allowed to prioritize your time and the kid needs to suck it up and understand? Because both the charges and sitters in this series have such a track record of behaving rationally about that kind of thing. Jessi laments that she hasn't been home much lately. Mal and Kristy chime in that they don't sit for their own siblings anymore either.
This is the face I make when I completely believe everything this script is selling.
They stiltedly and in about two seconds come up with the idea of having a picnic for all their little sisters, so I guess the neglected little brothers can fuck off. This gives me a major case of the whatevers. Only Mallory and Jessi even have little sisters. Yes, Kristy has Karen a whopping four days out of the month (they haven't even mentioned Emily, so I don't know), Stacey has Charlotte (srsly wat), Dawn and Mary Anne have each other but neither of them is younger, and Claudia's sister is older. This includes almost no one. Why not just make it a "sibling" picnic.
They bring up the stupid letter again and Mal thinks that maybe it's a message for them to be nicer to their sisters so they don't end up murdered by Bettina or whatever the hell they think happened. "YOU REALLY THINK SO?!" Jessi yells, lunging into the frame like a rabid chicken. I don't even. The director really did not look at this and go, "Let's try it again, and maybe tone it down a notch"?
A little less rabid chicken this time, please.
Psst, hey look, guys! Over - ARGHHHH!
Come play with us, Mallory. Forever and ever and ever.
The sitters are really rude, pointing and whispering and declaring this sister-sighting "creepy." It would make sense if they meant the way the twins are dressed and walking in unison, which IS absolutely horrifying, but they mean the fact that they saw a set of sisters right after they were discussing sisters, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard considering that something like 95 percent of people on earth have at least one sibling. It'd make far more sense to point at Stacey and yell, "Look at that freak. SHE'S AN ONLY CHILD!"
Sure, K. Ron, gaping is acceptable, I'm sure they can't see or hear.
Next scene! A rare back view of Claudia's house, which...has a door on the second floor leading out onto the roof. Not onto a deck, but onto a totally unguarded section of roof. What purpose could that possibly serve?
They call it the secret porch.
Inside, Janine is leaned over a textbook mumbling, "Now, if we have this equation here, and factor this...let's try it this way…" while Claudia is sitting on the other side of the table. Which is the exact opposite of the "Kristy on the phone" problem, because Janine isn't explaining information that Claudia does need to know just because it would be boring to the viewer. What equation where? Factor what? Claudia isn't even looking at the book!
Year 13: Janine's "osmosis tutoring" trials still fail to yield positive results.
Claudia opens her book to reveal that it's hollow and full of Hershey's Kisses, and Janine snaps that she's not "being attentive." Uh, isn't the bigger problem that she's got a hollow box instead of a math book? Are we not going to address that? Claudia says she's listening just fine; she just plain doesn't understand: "If it's math, why are you using letters?" Janine starts trying to explain about variables and Claudia says it was a joke and wants to know if they're going to be done soon. Well, you'd probably be done sooner if Janine knew what the hell to teach you, because one second you're not listening, the next second you say you don't understand, then you're joking and you do understand, but Janine's doing your homework for you because you don't even have a textbook.
You create a feeling of suffering in my gluteus maximus.
For some reason Claudia thinks it's a good idea to tell Janine all about the letter and the séance, and Janine's like, "You know what, I can't help you if you are truly this stupid."
Next scene: Time for the séance!
In someone's garage, apparently.
They chant to Bettina about how her sister didn't lose her ring, then Claudia asks for a sign that Bettina heard them. A tape of the world's fakest sound effects start up, followed by some fumbling and the spirit of Bettina saying, "Shit, sorry, bumped the button. Yeah, I heard you." Oh, no, it's just Kristy with the tape recorder. Instead of letting everybody get good and scared, she cracks up in about five seconds, before anybody really has a chance to hear anything. Even Mary Anne doesn't get scared. They all shove her around in the dark and Kristy's like, "Hey, I found this conveniently placed diamond ring in some insulation just now!" They oooh about how spooky this is. Spooky that Bettina must not have looked for it very hard before declaring a blood war on her sister, maybe. Why did a child own a diamond ring, anyway?
Next morning! Dawn and Claudia come down for breakfast in…Claudia's house? Or else Janine routinely lets herself into the Schafer kitchen. Okay. Sure.
They chatter to each other about how the séance totally worked - they found the ring, and the fact that the band was broken only proves that Bettina lost it herself and then blamed it on her sister! As you know, Bob. "I bet this piece of paper is over 200 years old," Claudia declares again, and Janine barely glances at it on her way out before saying witheringly, "Two hundred? Claudia, really, when do you think they invented transparent tape?"
Claudia rolls her eyes and mocks her: "Miss Know-It-All. Claudia, when do you think they invented transparent tape?" Um, Claudia? Honey? WHEN DO YOU THINK THEY INVENTED TRANSPARENT TAPE. THINK, NOW. Dawn all but smacks her on the forehead and says, "The tape is a clue!" Claudia does not look nearly embarrassed enough about this.
Next scene! Downtown, Mal, Jessi, Becca, and Vanessa look at the Stoneybrook Through the Years (TM Dawn) bulletin board.
Little-known fact: Stoneybrook was founded in 1785 by Kristy Thomas.
Claudia and Dawn come out of the library (not without a snide remark from Jessi about Claudia willingly reading...GOD, Jessi, what is your problem) and Claudia, hefting an armload of books, reads aloud that transparent tape was invented in 1930. Sometimes I'm driving in the car and I say, "Siri, when was transparent tape invented?" not because I want to know, but just so I can feel waves of superiority wash over me when I think about the research people used to have to do just to find out facts like this. My husband has asked me to stop calling him Siri, though.
The other sitters don't understand the significance until they point out that there was tape on the letter and the sisters could still be alive. "If we find Bettina I could give her the ring!" Dawn says. Aww, that's sweet. "And we could end their feud!" Claudia adds. And that's...not. There's no feud, because they are not still fighting about this, and if they actually are estranged for some other reason, then it's none of your business. Good god, y'all.
"How do we find them?" Claudia wonders. How hard can it be to find former owners of Dawn's house? Ah, Dawn actually has the same idea - but it's going to take six weeks for that paperwork to go through, the clerk informs them. Six weeks? Dude, six weeks is long enough when you live in a world where time actually passes; in Stoneybrook, that's basically a death sentence. They search all the yearbooks for Bettinas too, with no luck.
They leave the library, dejected, when Vanessa spies the bulletin board and has the idea to go to old jewelry stores to see if anyone remembers the ring. Why is this a thing that shows up in movies all the time? Why would jewelers and watchmakers and the like remember each and every item they sold and who they sold them to over their whole career? You don't go into Wal-Mart and plunk down a half-used box of tampons and go, "I need to know who you sold this Tampax to. It was sometime in the last year." Shit, I edit books - as in, I read them several times and come know them pretty intimately over the course of a project - but after they leave my desk, they're gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Pretty recently I got a second edition of a book and railed at some length at what a crappy job had been done on the first edition and who was that hack editor before I got some paperwork and discovered...yep, it had been mine. Granted, it was only like my second book at the time and I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but it was still really embarrassing. Probably about as embarrassing as it's going to be to the jeweler who sees the old diamond ring he sold and discovers its band was so shitty it just snapped right off.
Or as embarrassing as Claudia's spelling of "jewelry" is to the town of Stoneybrook at large.
The "old-time" photo of the jewelry store fades into the present-day shot of the same jewelry store, which is a really bad directorial decision, because all it does is make it obvious that the fake old-time photo was taken the same day this episode was shot. A sign in 1925 generally wouldn't advertise that they'd been open "since 1925," for one thing, plus the storefront, the tree, and the sidewalk are exactly the same, and if you look closely, you can see that apparently neither Pacicco's nor the place next door have updated their window display since Coolidge was in office.
For christ's sake, you couldn't have even MOVED THE BICYCLE?
Sweet! I've been looking for that bike for seventy years!
Inside, the jeweler examines the ring, which turns out to be an enormous piece of crap. He should really deny selling it even if he did. He tells them they sold a lot of those piece of crap rings back in the fifties and it isn't worth anything. They ask if he kept records of who they sold them to. Nope! Does he remember two little girls who lived on Burnt Hill Road? Nope!
Whose colon did you retrieve this from? That might provide a clue.
He's all, "Ladies, I'm a very busy man, I'm the process of aging here" and they're all, "It's very important! One of the girls was named Bettina!" He's like, "Well, that's a horse of a different color! Bettina Trono lived on Burnt Hill Road!" Didn't you just say you didn't remember any girls on Burnt Hill Road, you old fuck? They ask what ever happened to her and he says she married the grocer's son. He remembers because lots of people bought their wedding presents from him.
I run a sex toy shop out of the back.
Which grocer? Johnson. He remembers because it's a penis innuendo. "We were just there yesterday!" Stacey says. Oh, yeah, that's where Jenny Jones is taped. "What about the sister?" Dawn wants to know. "Flora," the jeweler says in this wistful faraway voice that know, you just know, says that he tried to bone her and blew his wad prematurely and was so humiliated he never called her again. "I don't know what happened to Flora. It's like she just disappeared," he bluffs.
And if you do happen to see her, tell her I got this numbing gel and I can go for hours now.
The sitters look at each other worriedly and the music turns ominous, because when you lose touch with someone you vaguely knew forty years ago the only possible conclusion is that they met some horrifying end.
Next scene - over at Johnson's Market, the sitters harass the new owner about Johnson. They discover he's dead now and New Owner bought the market from his widow, who opened a flower shop. What about her sister? Oh my god, why would this guy know anything about the sister of the widow of the man whose grocery store he bought. Just get her address and go ask her yourself, freaks. Ominously, New Owner says he met a lot of her family, but he doesn't remember any sister. More ominous looks. Yes, it's SO WEIRD that two people don't know anything about a relative of a woman they barely knew in the first place. It's so hard thinking about stuff.
Next scene - the sitters tromp down the sidewalk, wearily declaring this the "last flower shop in the phone book." What? Why didn't they look for Bettina Johnson in the phone book? Or ask the grocer what the name of her flower shop was? I hate that the writers try to make them seem like awesome detectives by making them jump through hoops to find things, like it's the mark of great investigating to take the least expedient route. (Screenwriter: "I know he could Google this in 0.0002 seconds, but wouldn't it look cooler if he frantically searches the Library of Congress while the bomb ticks down?")
Also, I wear Birkenstocks a good 95 percent of the time, but not with shorts or a skirt under any circumstances. If I were escaping my burning house in a skirt, I would stop to look for flip flips before I would put those shoes on. Naturally, Dawn and Mary Anne are wearing matching Birkenstocks with skirts.
They don't deserve to have feet.
"This is getting really weird," Mary Anne says. "Nobody knows what happened to Flora!" "And in the letter Flora says she was afraid of Bettina," Claudia adds. "You guys, I'm scared," Stacey says. I want to snark on her delivery of this line, but Lawrence Olivier couldn't have made it sound convincing. They are standing on the sidewalk in broad daylight in front of a florist. They speculate that Bettina might have really done something to Flora. Okay, let's pretend for a second that this isn't the stupidest line of reasoning ever - don't you think that the murder or disappearance of a little girl in a quiet little town like Stoneybrook in the 1950s would have made big damn news at the time? It would have made it into town lore; they'd probably know. I know every detail of the one big murder that ever happened in my little town way before I was born. And the jeweler certainly wouldn't have said, "Yeah, dunno whatever happened to her"; he'd have been like, "Flora Trono? Murdered back in '58. It was crazy."
"What if we find her and she thinks we know too much?" Stacey wants to know. Oh my god, Stacey, sure, you know too much, but I guess her parents and everyone else who ever knew both of them didn't suspect a damn thing. How do you remember to breathe in and out. "Just remember," Claudia instructs them as they prepare to enter, "she could be dangerous."
I'm sure she'll be too stunned that Kristy came into her store with no pants on to react.
"HEY YOU GUYS," Kristy yells, snatching a photo off the counter. "This must be Bettina and Flora!" How subtle.
This is supposed to be a photo from the '50s. Maybe the props people thought it meant the 1850s?
For reference, this what an actual photo from the 1950s looks like. Less "Party like it's the Spanish-American War," more "It's Howdy-Doody Time."
A woman walks in, menacing a pair of pruning shears all "Yes, I'm Bettina...no, Flora's not here right now but I'll take care of you HAHAHA - oh hey, there's Flora, maybe she can explain why you're screaming like lunatics." Dawn's like, "FLORA! YOU'RE NOT DEAD! Uh, I mean, hey, I found your ring." What? It's Bettina's ring. That was the whole damn point.
Instead of saying, "What the hell are you on about," Flora's like, "That old fucker?" Emily Gilmore, guuuuurl, what are you doing slumming it in this piece of crap series? You were already in Dirty Dancing by now, don't debase yourself this way!
She ended up having to hock the ring to pay for her granddaughter's private school.
Bettina's like, "There's that ring you lost!" and Flora's like, "It's BROKEN, you idiot, it obviously fell off your finger" and Bettina's like "HDU I NEVER LOSE THINGS" and Flora's like "But it's BROKEN you GERIATRIC GOAT" and Bettina hilariously flings her gardening shears in Claudia's face to gesture at her sister. I can't wait until my sisters and I get so old that our fistfights start involving canes and walkers. Finally Flora's like "whatever, I don't care /drive by finger" and asks how the sitters found them, anyway. They all start talking excitedly at once, except you can hear Kristy yell "CLAUDIA HAD A SÉANCE!" Uh. If I asked someone how they got my address and the first words out of their mouth involved "séance" I'd be politely asking them to leave. Particularly if that person had no pants on.
Next scene! Claudia comes into the kitchen where Janine is cooking and tells her they solved the mystery and found the sisters thanks to Janine's clue. Janine is way too happy about this considering she was being really snotty about the whole thing last time they talked. Janine asks if they really didn't "converse - talk - again." Claudia says no, they own the store together: "They're like you and me. They're really different, but they get along." It's exceedingly nice of Janine to accept this sisterly moment without yelling at Claudia for dunking her finger in the bowl of frosting, licking it off, and sticking it in the bowl again. Gross, Claudia, jeez.
Janine's making cupcakes for the sister picnic, of course, and asks Claudia to help decorate them. That’s probably to make sure they look scary enough that no one will try to eat them, now that Claudia's stuck her finger in them. Claudia reacts to this by using the spatula to eat batter. Ugh.
Now I have to throw out this entire batch, you assclown.
Anyway, once again their "explanation" just points out plot holes you could fly a jet through. If Bettina and Flora get along well enough to own a store together right in town, why does everyone know Bettina but have no idea Flora even exists? Why would the grocer have met her whole family and been aware she was opening a flower shop but not heard of her sister, who was a partner in said shop? How in the world could the jeweler have been involved in Bettina's wedding and never even crossed paths with Flora? Why weren't they in any yearbooks if they never left Stoneybrook? I mean, jeez, take a stab at it, say they went away to boarding school and had a feud for a while but recently moved back to town and made up or something.
Final scene - ugh, the sister picnic. Two little ginger girls run off with a basket of flowers. Who the hell were they? Margo and Claire, maybe? Have the TV people even looked at a COVER of a BSC book before? Margo and Claire are on tons of them. You can tell because all the Pike kids except for Mallory are brunettes.
Claudia unloads a picnic basket with Bettina and raves about all the really expensive flower arrangements they apparently made for this thing for free. They did wreaths, you see: "Her idea was, wreaths are circles, like my ring!" And that's a joincidence with a c.
The sisters all put wreaths on each other's heads and Claudia makes them join hands and close their eyes in a "circle of love." "A ring of love," Flora says. "A wreath of love," Janine says. "A circle of sisters," Becca says. I'm pretty sure I saw a porno that started this way. Vanessa declares them a giant ring around the rosy, so they do, and for some reason this is shot in slow motion like it's Chariots of Fire.
Dunnn dun dun dun dunnnnnn dunnnnnn...
Yes, screenwriters, yes. I have bought into this completely. I want to put on a wreath and dance with you; I'm so overcome with emotion right now.
Obviously.
So I went back to this video, because speaking of things that will cause brain circuits to flame out and die, I do not know how Claudia doesn't wander the streets, sobbing in despair and confusion.
Say hello to your friends! Straight to a theme song scene! The sitters and a couple of kids walking through the playground! Baby-sitters Club! Claudia arrives with two manila envelopes labeled "photos" and "copies" in these ridiculously fancy handwritten block letters, which makes no sense, because either the photo processing place takes the time to write shit like that, or Claudia did it and managed to spell both of those words correctly. Either way I'm not buying it.
The envelopes turn out to contain a bunch of pictures of the sitters as kids, and where normal people would pass the photos around the circle, they start grabbing at the photos and throwing them at each other while shrieking like lunatics. I am not even making that up. If you gave a manila envelope full of feces to a cage of chimps, they would handle it better than this.
For instance, rarely will the chimps eat their own feces.
"We have all the pictures we need," Claudia exposits once the theme song mercifully ends and they can go back to acting like normal people and not the sad kind of circus apes that eventually have to be put down for accidentally hurting children. Dawn adds that the library lent them some great pictures of downtown. "What are we going to call the bulletin board?" Mal asks in a smooth baritone. Uh. Has she started testosterone replacement therapy? I don't remember her sounding quite so booming before.
She's hoping the penis distracts from her face.
"Stoneybrook Through the Years," Claudia announces. "It was Dawn's idea." And then everyone actually applauds while Dawn bows. Wow, she thought of titling a bulletin board about Stoneybrook through the years "Stoneybrook Through the Years." Does the Nobel Committee know about this?
On the outside, K. Ron is smiling, but on this inside you know she is absolutely seething that someone else is getting attention for their vapid idea.
I will make her eat her own feces.
They show off a little kid picture of Kristy, which is really adorable. I love when shows or movies show a picture of the character as a kid and they use the actor's real photo.
She could have made Dawn eat her own feces even then, though.
They also show off a really unfortunate looking baby that turns out to be Mallory, of course. I'd post it, but I don't trust myself not to make a deeply inappropriate dick joke that I cannot in good conscience post next to a baby. The others say she looks like Vanessa, and Vanessa - who I thought was Karen in the opening montage and am deeply relieved is not - asks to see the photo. "Let me see. Yes, I agree. Mal looks like me, when I was maybe two or three." Ugh, never mind, maybe Karen is the lesser of two evils.
My stomach also gives a nauseated lurch to see that Vanessa is played by the little girl who played Gloria in Richie Rich, now that I know the Richie Rich curse is still alive and well. One time I was home sick from school and that movie had just come out on video - and we all know I will watch anything with Macaulay Culkin in it - so my mom bought it for me to cheer me up, but I was too sick to really enjoy it. The next time I sat down to watch it, I started thinking about how deathly sick I had been the last time, and before I knew it I was running to the bathroom to puke again. The third time, I was thinking about what a funny coincidence it was that I seemed to get sick every time I watched this movie, because I was a pretty healthy kid overall, and sure enough, I totally talked myself into throwing up all over again. My hand to god, I bet I was sick during or directly after watching Richie Rich six times in my childhood.
Anyway, just a few weeks ago it was on TV, and I chuckled to myself, thinking all the childhood sickness was psychosomatic or a ridiculous coincidence or both and watched the whole thing without incident, then woke up the next morning with a raging fever. I believe the moral is that John Laroquette's career suffered so badly as a result of this movie that it lurches out of the screen, trying to make everyone else suffer too.
On the other hand, it represented a high point for little Vanessa here.
Mal snaps at her to shut the hell up with the rhyming and everybody's like, "Aww, we don't mind" because the theme of this episode is going to be "love thy sister even though she's kind of a bitch." "Do you think Jessi looks like me?" Becca pipes up, holding up a picture of her sister to herself at such an angle that we cannot judge. They all agree that she does. "I wonder, do most sisters look alike?" Mary Anne asks. Well, I can't speak for all sisters, but I can speak for me and mine, whose parents so thoroughly melded us into one person that I once had to make a video pointing it out to them.
Click to view She's on the left; I'm on the right, three years later.
She's on the left; I'm on the right, three years later.
Oh my god, my parents were the Arnolds.
Jessi pipes up that Claudia and Janine don't look alike, and Claudia adds that they don't act alike. On the flipside, Dawn thinks it's funny that Kristy and Karen are both pissy little tyrants when they aren't even blood related. This reminds Kristy that she hasn't been a pissy tyrant for ten whole seconds already and announces that they're going to put up a BSC flyer on the bulletin board too - "It'll be good for business!" So this display about the 200-year history of their town is basically just some pictures of seven present-day preteens and an advertisement for baby-sitters. I'm seriously making Cynthia face right now.
Okay then.
Next scene! Over at the million-year-old Schafer farmhouse that looks like it was built in 1989, Claudia and Dawn bring in the pictures to put together the bulletin board. Claud asks where the board is, and Dawn cackles and says she put it in the secret passage. Uh...what?
I crammed it in my "secret passage," geddit? Geddit? My secret...oh, never mind, just tell it to Stacey, she'll get it.
Also, nice job on the "secret" passage, there, show. How friggin secret was it if it has a DOORKNOB on it? ("OMG, I found a SECRET PASSAGE in my room!" "That's a linen closet." "Well, it took me a REALLY LONG TIME TO NOTICE IT!") They climb up some stairs into what is obviously just an attic. It has a WINDOW, for god's sake! If you can see it from the outside, it's not a secret!
Later they'll have a snack in the secret kitchen, work on the bulletin board in the secret den, then Dawn will retire for a while in the secret crapper.
Claudia airy-fairys about how the secret passage is full of "friendly ghosts," except isn't Jared Mullray supposed to be kind of a dick? Or is that the other dead Jared? Maybe Jared from Subway? This lack of continuity between books and videos is really getting to me.
They try to get the bulletin board out from between two beams, but why it's jammed between two beams in the first place makes no sense, because Dawn says she just put it up there for the time being because she was tripping over it in her room. That generally means "set it right on the stairs and shut the door," not "walk all the way up there and jam it hard into some insulation."
Claudia's hand touches a piece of paper and before she even looks at it she's like "OMG I FOUND SOMETHING! MAYBE IT'S A TREASURE MAP!" No, that's actually what she says. Is that seriously the first place your mind would go before you so much as glanced at it? I have a sheet of paper taped in exactly the same place. It's instructions for my furnace.
"It's on really old paper," she says, blowing off a ton of dust. Yeah, like 1982 - '83 at the most! "Let's go into the light," Dawn suggests, dragging her over to the window of the totally hidden room.
Whoever left it here, you can be sure no one knew about - oh, hey Mrs. Newton. Yeah, we'll be down in a minute.
Claudia announces it's a letter. "This is spooky," Dawn says. "This is incredible," Claudia amends. Why? I would think it was interesting, but given that Dawn and Stacey both live in old houses that seem to be filled with crap that previous owners left behind, what's so odd or creepy about finding something else of theirs?
Next scene - Claudia's room! "You can see how old it is!" "It's probably been in the secret passage for a hundred years," Claudia intones. "Or even longer!" Dawn says. "Our house was built in the 1700s!" Uh...no. Aside from the paper not looking anywhere near that old, they obviously are paying no attention to the ink fading, penmanship, and most importantly, diction. Not to keep referencing the same book, but back in Mallory and the Mystery Diary they found an actual hundred-year-old diary very hard to read.
This looks like my shopping list from 2009.
"It looks like a kid's handwriting," Kristy announces. What? It doesn't look remotely like a kid's handwriting. Are you high. K. Ron? Whatever, I can't take you seriously while you're wearing a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat.
Maybe instead of "elementary" she meant "elementary school teacher."
She does the world's worst dramatic reading: "I didn't lose Bettina's diamond ring. Why won't she believe me? She's so mean sometimes that I'm afraid of her. I wish with all my heart I never had a big sister! I vow never...ever... to speak to her again."
I vow never, ever, to start snarking without hitting up Discount Liquor first again.
That's all it says? Why do they keep referring to this as a letter? It's not a letter. It's not written to Bettina or anyone in particular and it was obviously never sent. It's just a journal entry that was written on a piece of stationery.
Claudia worriedly wonders if they ever did speak to each other again. Yes, I'm sure a child who thought her big sister was a total meanie stuck to her convictions. Mal's like, "Maybe she found the ring and they made up!" Or maybe she didn't and it didn't really matter, because a petty sibling fight in childhood doesn't generally have a lot to do with estrangement in adulthood. "I have a feeling these sisters always had problems," Claudia says darkly. "Bettina sounds really evil." Uh...because she's pissed about little sis losing her diamond ring? Claudia, you're a sociopath.
Dawn assures them they can check out the secret passage obvious attic crawlspace when they sleep over on Friday. Kristy's all snippy, "Um, hello, this is a MEETING?" even though she was the one with the damn magnifying glass doing a monologue a second ago. Shut up, K. Ron. Mrs. Ramsey calls that second to get a sitter for Becca and Dawn's all, "I'll do it, tee hee, Becca's great!" and Jessi's like, "Blecch, if she's not your bratty little sister." Oh, good, not only is this the "learn to love thy sister" episode, this is the "learn to love thy sister even though you always did so we're going to retcon this and pretend you don't get along" episode.
"I keep wondering what happened to these sisters," Claudia says, starting to get a case of Crazy Eyes.
You'll know it when you see it.
Kristy says it doesn't matter because "they died long before any of us were born." Why do they think that? Even if the condition of the paper and the ink and the language and the - spoiler - scotch tape stuck on it weren't dead giveaways that it's not very old, they have nothing to indicate how old it actually is. Claudia doesn't care, though: "Maybe they took their fight with them to their grave!" Everybody's like "Haha, Claudia's at it again!" even though this is really more of a Dawn thing.
"I got it, I know what we can do!" Claudia says. Ooh, I know! Go down to the cemetery and look for her gravestone: "Rest in peace. Because fuck Bettina, that's why." No, silly! A séance! Right in the secret passage obvious attic crawlspace, where the ghosts are sure to be! The combined reactions of Dawn and Mary Anne to this idea nearly caused me to wet myself.
Dawn: "YOU DON'T SAY?!" Mary Anne: "...I can't."
Kristy is somewhat skeptical.
Proving how easily the moral from previous episodes is forgotten, Dawn's like, "Is a séance okay with you, Mary Anne?" and she's like, "Well, no, not really, but if the rest of you really want to - " and Dawn's like "GOOD that's settled then." Claudia's all, "I feeel the spiiirits in this very rooooom!" and then the phone rings and they squeal.
Can I just say for a second that the way Kristy talks on the phone is easily the scariest thing in this series? She always says, "Hello? Oh, hello, [name]" and then "You need a sitter for [name] at [whenever]?" which conveys the information to the audience, but to the caller's point of view, she's literally repeating everything they say: "Hi, this is Dr. Johanssen." "Hi, Dr. Johanssen." "I need a sitter for Charlotte for Thursday at 4." "You need a sitter for Charlotte for Thursday at 4?" "Quit parroting me, you freak." And considering she gets right off the phone and gives the information to everyone else again, it isn't even necessary! It's just shitty, sloppy writing. It's not even the writing basics; it's the writing sub-basics: "Don't make your character into a creep just to info dump your audience."
Just to make this even dumber, Stacey declares that Charlotte is like her little sister, because this is also the "Love thy sister even though you don't even have a sister" episode. Ugh.
Janine knocks on the door then, and Claudia, horrorstruck, says, "Janine! What are you doing here? We're in the middle of a meeting!" as if she walked in on her having a pap smear or something. If it's such a big deal, then why did you calmly say "come in" when she knocked?
"I'm aware of your organization schedule," Janine says, "but on occasion your meetings run late, and today, since it is imperative for me to be at another location at 7:00, I want to ensure that your meeting adjourns promptly, so that our math tutoring session will convene as we previously arranged." For such a "genius," her English is not wonderful. First of all, that's a fuckhell of a run-on sentence. Second of all, it lacks conciseness and clarity. And if I'm being REALLY nitpicky, she did not use "since" correctly. Also, I'm pretty sure that a real genius could get that entire sentence out without sounding like she was reading it phonetically off a cue card.
Though, unlike Claudia, I think she might actually be Japanese, so +1.
"What?" Claudia says blankly. Janine's like, "Just be on time, dumbass" and leaves. "What language does she speak? What planet does she come from?" Claudia snots once the door closes. Everyone laughs. Oh, goody gumdrops, more "people who like different things than we do deserve to be shit on" crap.
Next scene! Jessi tries to leave for a sitting job but rides her bike through Becca's jump rope -why, you moron, it was right there - and they piss at each other a little bit. Dawn tries to distract Becca by asking if Jessi taught her to jump rope. Becca says no, Mal taught her - Jessi's too busy baby-sitting for other kids. "Baby-sitters don't like to baby-sit for their own sisters and brothers," she says as the wistful music plays. What? Up until recently, Mal and Jessi ONLY sat for their own brothers and sisters and are still the first choice to sit for them. And Kristy's always boasting about how she doesn't like to play favorites but her own siblings are obviously the best, because they know better than to tattle when she chains them up. This is the most hastily retconned episode ever.
Next scene, over at Johnson's Grocery! Inside, there's a woman with a microphone shouting about how every able-bodied American male should have a pistol in the nightstand.
I'm sorry, I was just looking for the Pop-Tarts. I'm not clear how I ended up a guest on Jenny Jones.
Seriously, Mom, how the hell did you decide you needed to record this talk show, grab a videotape at random, scotch tape over the tab the way you have to in order to ruin a prerecorded tape, and then realize your mistake thirty seconds later? Exactly how drunk did you spend the nineties?
Not as drunk as Dawn, I guess, because the tape switches back just as she yells, "What's this?" and shoves two carrots in her ears.
I'd like to think I missed some context, but...I doubt it.
I guess they're shopping for the party, because Claudia throws a bunch of chocolate into the cart and is like "lol the ghosts will love this." Dawns counters with two enormous bags of apples and "Everyone knows ghosts only eat health food and that's why they live so long!" For bonus points, parse everything wrong with that sentence. Anyway, given the ton of random veggies and other stuff in that cart, I hope they're just doing the shopping for Sharon and getting reimbursed for this. I mean, I might have bought myself a bag of candy from time to time, but my parents had the decency to feed me and my friends when they came over.
Claudia says they need to hurry up and get back for her tutoring with Janine, because she "mustn't be tardy." Jessi snottily asks why Janine talks like that. I don't know, Jessi, why are you such a raging bitch in the TV series when you're perfectly likeable in the books? It's a mystery. Claudia says Janine's practicing for her college entrance exams. The ones that must have taken place a couple of decades ago, I guess, because the actress playing Janine is 35 if she's a day.
Dawn delicately tells Jessi about Becca thinking Jessi doesn't pay attention to her anymore. Stacey protests, "Jobs are assigned as they come in! Becca knows that!" You mean that you're allowed to prioritize your time and the kid needs to suck it up and understand? Because both the charges and sitters in this series have such a track record of behaving rationally about that kind of thing. Jessi laments that she hasn't been home much lately. Mal and Kristy chime in that they don't sit for their own siblings anymore either.
This is the face I make when I completely believe everything this script is selling.
They stiltedly and in about two seconds come up with the idea of having a picnic for all their little sisters, so I guess the neglected little brothers can fuck off. This gives me a major case of the whatevers. Only Mallory and Jessi even have little sisters. Yes, Kristy has Karen a whopping four days out of the month (they haven't even mentioned Emily, so I don't know), Stacey has Charlotte (srsly wat), Dawn and Mary Anne have each other but neither of them is younger, and Claudia's sister is older. This includes almost no one. Why not just make it a "sibling" picnic.
They bring up the stupid letter again and Mal thinks that maybe it's a message for them to be nicer to their sisters so they don't end up murdered by Bettina or whatever the hell they think happened. "YOU REALLY THINK SO?!" Jessi yells, lunging into the frame like a rabid chicken. I don't even. The director really did not look at this and go, "Let's try it again, and maybe tone it down a notch"?
A little less rabid chicken this time, please.
Psst, hey look, guys! Over - ARGHHHH!
Come play with us, Mallory. Forever and ever and ever.
The sitters are really rude, pointing and whispering and declaring this sister-sighting "creepy." It would make sense if they meant the way the twins are dressed and walking in unison, which IS absolutely horrifying, but they mean the fact that they saw a set of sisters right after they were discussing sisters, which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard considering that something like 95 percent of people on earth have at least one sibling. It'd make far more sense to point at Stacey and yell, "Look at that freak. SHE'S AN ONLY CHILD!"
Sure, K. Ron, gaping is acceptable, I'm sure they can't see or hear.
Next scene! A rare back view of Claudia's house, which...has a door on the second floor leading out onto the roof. Not onto a deck, but onto a totally unguarded section of roof. What purpose could that possibly serve?
They call it the secret porch.
Inside, Janine is leaned over a textbook mumbling, "Now, if we have this equation here, and factor this...let's try it this way…" while Claudia is sitting on the other side of the table. Which is the exact opposite of the "Kristy on the phone" problem, because Janine isn't explaining information that Claudia does need to know just because it would be boring to the viewer. What equation where? Factor what? Claudia isn't even looking at the book!
Year 13: Janine's "osmosis tutoring" trials still fail to yield positive results.
Claudia opens her book to reveal that it's hollow and full of Hershey's Kisses, and Janine snaps that she's not "being attentive." Uh, isn't the bigger problem that she's got a hollow box instead of a math book? Are we not going to address that? Claudia says she's listening just fine; she just plain doesn't understand: "If it's math, why are you using letters?" Janine starts trying to explain about variables and Claudia says it was a joke and wants to know if they're going to be done soon. Well, you'd probably be done sooner if Janine knew what the hell to teach you, because one second you're not listening, the next second you say you don't understand, then you're joking and you do understand, but Janine's doing your homework for you because you don't even have a textbook.
You create a feeling of suffering in my gluteus maximus.
For some reason Claudia thinks it's a good idea to tell Janine all about the letter and the séance, and Janine's like, "You know what, I can't help you if you are truly this stupid."
Next scene: Time for the séance!
In someone's garage, apparently.
They chant to Bettina about how her sister didn't lose her ring, then Claudia asks for a sign that Bettina heard them. A tape of the world's fakest sound effects start up, followed by some fumbling and the spirit of Bettina saying, "Shit, sorry, bumped the button. Yeah, I heard you." Oh, no, it's just Kristy with the tape recorder. Instead of letting everybody get good and scared, she cracks up in about five seconds, before anybody really has a chance to hear anything. Even Mary Anne doesn't get scared. They all shove her around in the dark and Kristy's like, "Hey, I found this conveniently placed diamond ring in some insulation just now!" They oooh about how spooky this is. Spooky that Bettina must not have looked for it very hard before declaring a blood war on her sister, maybe. Why did a child own a diamond ring, anyway?
Next morning! Dawn and Claudia come down for breakfast in…Claudia's house? Or else Janine routinely lets herself into the Schafer kitchen. Okay. Sure.
They chatter to each other about how the séance totally worked - they found the ring, and the fact that the band was broken only proves that Bettina lost it herself and then blamed it on her sister! As you know, Bob. "I bet this piece of paper is over 200 years old," Claudia declares again, and Janine barely glances at it on her way out before saying witheringly, "Two hundred? Claudia, really, when do you think they invented transparent tape?"
Claudia rolls her eyes and mocks her: "Miss Know-It-All. Claudia, when do you think they invented transparent tape?" Um, Claudia? Honey? WHEN DO YOU THINK THEY INVENTED TRANSPARENT TAPE. THINK, NOW. Dawn all but smacks her on the forehead and says, "The tape is a clue!" Claudia does not look nearly embarrassed enough about this.
Next scene! Downtown, Mal, Jessi, Becca, and Vanessa look at the Stoneybrook Through the Years (TM Dawn) bulletin board.
Little-known fact: Stoneybrook was founded in 1785 by Kristy Thomas.
Claudia and Dawn come out of the library (not without a snide remark from Jessi about Claudia willingly reading...GOD, Jessi, what is your problem) and Claudia, hefting an armload of books, reads aloud that transparent tape was invented in 1930. Sometimes I'm driving in the car and I say, "Siri, when was transparent tape invented?" not because I want to know, but just so I can feel waves of superiority wash over me when I think about the research people used to have to do just to find out facts like this. My husband has asked me to stop calling him Siri, though.
The other sitters don't understand the significance until they point out that there was tape on the letter and the sisters could still be alive. "If we find Bettina I could give her the ring!" Dawn says. Aww, that's sweet. "And we could end their feud!" Claudia adds. And that's...not. There's no feud, because they are not still fighting about this, and if they actually are estranged for some other reason, then it's none of your business. Good god, y'all.
"How do we find them?" Claudia wonders. How hard can it be to find former owners of Dawn's house? Ah, Dawn actually has the same idea - but it's going to take six weeks for that paperwork to go through, the clerk informs them. Six weeks? Dude, six weeks is long enough when you live in a world where time actually passes; in Stoneybrook, that's basically a death sentence. They search all the yearbooks for Bettinas too, with no luck.
They leave the library, dejected, when Vanessa spies the bulletin board and has the idea to go to old jewelry stores to see if anyone remembers the ring. Why is this a thing that shows up in movies all the time? Why would jewelers and watchmakers and the like remember each and every item they sold and who they sold them to over their whole career? You don't go into Wal-Mart and plunk down a half-used box of tampons and go, "I need to know who you sold this Tampax to. It was sometime in the last year." Shit, I edit books - as in, I read them several times and come know them pretty intimately over the course of a project - but after they leave my desk, they're gone. Out of sight, out of mind. Pretty recently I got a second edition of a book and railed at some length at what a crappy job had been done on the first edition and who was that hack editor before I got some paperwork and discovered...yep, it had been mine. Granted, it was only like my second book at the time and I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but it was still really embarrassing. Probably about as embarrassing as it's going to be to the jeweler who sees the old diamond ring he sold and discovers its band was so shitty it just snapped right off.
Or as embarrassing as Claudia's spelling of "jewelry" is to the town of Stoneybrook at large.
The "old-time" photo of the jewelry store fades into the present-day shot of the same jewelry store, which is a really bad directorial decision, because all it does is make it obvious that the fake old-time photo was taken the same day this episode was shot. A sign in 1925 generally wouldn't advertise that they'd been open "since 1925," for one thing, plus the storefront, the tree, and the sidewalk are exactly the same, and if you look closely, you can see that apparently neither Pacicco's nor the place next door have updated their window display since Coolidge was in office.
For christ's sake, you couldn't have even MOVED THE BICYCLE?
Sweet! I've been looking for that bike for seventy years!
Inside, the jeweler examines the ring, which turns out to be an enormous piece of crap. He should really deny selling it even if he did. He tells them they sold a lot of those piece of crap rings back in the fifties and it isn't worth anything. They ask if he kept records of who they sold them to. Nope! Does he remember two little girls who lived on Burnt Hill Road? Nope!
Whose colon did you retrieve this from? That might provide a clue.
He's all, "Ladies, I'm a very busy man, I'm the process of aging here" and they're all, "It's very important! One of the girls was named Bettina!" He's like, "Well, that's a horse of a different color! Bettina Trono lived on Burnt Hill Road!" Didn't you just say you didn't remember any girls on Burnt Hill Road, you old fuck? They ask what ever happened to her and he says she married the grocer's son. He remembers because lots of people bought their wedding presents from him.
I run a sex toy shop out of the back.
Which grocer? Johnson. He remembers because it's a penis innuendo. "We were just there yesterday!" Stacey says. Oh, yeah, that's where Jenny Jones is taped. "What about the sister?" Dawn wants to know. "Flora," the jeweler says in this wistful faraway voice that know, you just know, says that he tried to bone her and blew his wad prematurely and was so humiliated he never called her again. "I don't know what happened to Flora. It's like she just disappeared," he bluffs.
And if you do happen to see her, tell her I got this numbing gel and I can go for hours now.
The sitters look at each other worriedly and the music turns ominous, because when you lose touch with someone you vaguely knew forty years ago the only possible conclusion is that they met some horrifying end.
Next scene - over at Johnson's Market, the sitters harass the new owner about Johnson. They discover he's dead now and New Owner bought the market from his widow, who opened a flower shop. What about her sister? Oh my god, why would this guy know anything about the sister of the widow of the man whose grocery store he bought. Just get her address and go ask her yourself, freaks. Ominously, New Owner says he met a lot of her family, but he doesn't remember any sister. More ominous looks. Yes, it's SO WEIRD that two people don't know anything about a relative of a woman they barely knew in the first place. It's so hard thinking about stuff.
Next scene - the sitters tromp down the sidewalk, wearily declaring this the "last flower shop in the phone book." What? Why didn't they look for Bettina Johnson in the phone book? Or ask the grocer what the name of her flower shop was? I hate that the writers try to make them seem like awesome detectives by making them jump through hoops to find things, like it's the mark of great investigating to take the least expedient route. (Screenwriter: "I know he could Google this in 0.0002 seconds, but wouldn't it look cooler if he frantically searches the Library of Congress while the bomb ticks down?")
Also, I wear Birkenstocks a good 95 percent of the time, but not with shorts or a skirt under any circumstances. If I were escaping my burning house in a skirt, I would stop to look for flip flips before I would put those shoes on. Naturally, Dawn and Mary Anne are wearing matching Birkenstocks with skirts.
They don't deserve to have feet.
"This is getting really weird," Mary Anne says. "Nobody knows what happened to Flora!" "And in the letter Flora says she was afraid of Bettina," Claudia adds. "You guys, I'm scared," Stacey says. I want to snark on her delivery of this line, but Lawrence Olivier couldn't have made it sound convincing. They are standing on the sidewalk in broad daylight in front of a florist. They speculate that Bettina might have really done something to Flora. Okay, let's pretend for a second that this isn't the stupidest line of reasoning ever - don't you think that the murder or disappearance of a little girl in a quiet little town like Stoneybrook in the 1950s would have made big damn news at the time? It would have made it into town lore; they'd probably know. I know every detail of the one big murder that ever happened in my little town way before I was born. And the jeweler certainly wouldn't have said, "Yeah, dunno whatever happened to her"; he'd have been like, "Flora Trono? Murdered back in '58. It was crazy."
"What if we find her and she thinks we know too much?" Stacey wants to know. Oh my god, Stacey, sure, you know too much, but I guess her parents and everyone else who ever knew both of them didn't suspect a damn thing. How do you remember to breathe in and out. "Just remember," Claudia instructs them as they prepare to enter, "she could be dangerous."
I'm sure she'll be too stunned that Kristy came into her store with no pants on to react.
"HEY YOU GUYS," Kristy yells, snatching a photo off the counter. "This must be Bettina and Flora!" How subtle.
This is supposed to be a photo from the '50s. Maybe the props people thought it meant the 1850s?
For reference, this what an actual photo from the 1950s looks like. Less "Party like it's the Spanish-American War," more "It's Howdy-Doody Time."
A woman walks in, menacing a pair of pruning shears all "Yes, I'm Bettina...no, Flora's not here right now but I'll take care of you HAHAHA - oh hey, there's Flora, maybe she can explain why you're screaming like lunatics." Dawn's like, "FLORA! YOU'RE NOT DEAD! Uh, I mean, hey, I found your ring." What? It's Bettina's ring. That was the whole damn point.
Instead of saying, "What the hell are you on about," Flora's like, "That old fucker?" Emily Gilmore, guuuuurl, what are you doing slumming it in this piece of crap series? You were already in Dirty Dancing by now, don't debase yourself this way!
She ended up having to hock the ring to pay for her granddaughter's private school.
Bettina's like, "There's that ring you lost!" and Flora's like, "It's BROKEN, you idiot, it obviously fell off your finger" and Bettina's like "HDU I NEVER LOSE THINGS" and Flora's like "But it's BROKEN you GERIATRIC GOAT" and Bettina hilariously flings her gardening shears in Claudia's face to gesture at her sister. I can't wait until my sisters and I get so old that our fistfights start involving canes and walkers. Finally Flora's like "whatever, I don't care /drive by finger" and asks how the sitters found them, anyway. They all start talking excitedly at once, except you can hear Kristy yell "CLAUDIA HAD A SÉANCE!" Uh. If I asked someone how they got my address and the first words out of their mouth involved "séance" I'd be politely asking them to leave. Particularly if that person had no pants on.
Next scene! Claudia comes into the kitchen where Janine is cooking and tells her they solved the mystery and found the sisters thanks to Janine's clue. Janine is way too happy about this considering she was being really snotty about the whole thing last time they talked. Janine asks if they really didn't "converse - talk - again." Claudia says no, they own the store together: "They're like you and me. They're really different, but they get along." It's exceedingly nice of Janine to accept this sisterly moment without yelling at Claudia for dunking her finger in the bowl of frosting, licking it off, and sticking it in the bowl again. Gross, Claudia, jeez.
Janine's making cupcakes for the sister picnic, of course, and asks Claudia to help decorate them. That’s probably to make sure they look scary enough that no one will try to eat them, now that Claudia's stuck her finger in them. Claudia reacts to this by using the spatula to eat batter. Ugh.
Now I have to throw out this entire batch, you assclown.
Anyway, once again their "explanation" just points out plot holes you could fly a jet through. If Bettina and Flora get along well enough to own a store together right in town, why does everyone know Bettina but have no idea Flora even exists? Why would the grocer have met her whole family and been aware she was opening a flower shop but not heard of her sister, who was a partner in said shop? How in the world could the jeweler have been involved in Bettina's wedding and never even crossed paths with Flora? Why weren't they in any yearbooks if they never left Stoneybrook? I mean, jeez, take a stab at it, say they went away to boarding school and had a feud for a while but recently moved back to town and made up or something.
Final scene - ugh, the sister picnic. Two little ginger girls run off with a basket of flowers. Who the hell were they? Margo and Claire, maybe? Have the TV people even looked at a COVER of a BSC book before? Margo and Claire are on tons of them. You can tell because all the Pike kids except for Mallory are brunettes.
Claudia unloads a picnic basket with Bettina and raves about all the really expensive flower arrangements they apparently made for this thing for free. They did wreaths, you see: "Her idea was, wreaths are circles, like my ring!" And that's a joincidence with a c.
The sisters all put wreaths on each other's heads and Claudia makes them join hands and close their eyes in a "circle of love." "A ring of love," Flora says. "A wreath of love," Janine says. "A circle of sisters," Becca says. I'm pretty sure I saw a porno that started this way. Vanessa declares them a giant ring around the rosy, so they do, and for some reason this is shot in slow motion like it's Chariots of Fire.
Dunnn dun dun dun dunnnnnn dunnnnnn...
Yes, screenwriters, yes. I have bought into this completely. I want to put on a wreath and dance with you; I'm so overcome with emotion right now.
Obviously.