Claudia and the New Girl

[osprey_archer]

The second season of The Babysitters Club came out last month, and yesterday I at last watched the first two episodes. The second one was "Claudia and the New Girl", in which book I am deeply overinvested, and it turns out that the episode is not actually a retelling of the novel and my heart was CRUSHED.

So in the novel, the new girl is Ashley Wyeth. Claudia, a talented artist herself, swiftly falls into a fast and all-consuming friendship with Ashley when she realizes that Ashley is a brilliant artist, too. In the pursuit of this friendship and their intense artistic talks, Claudia neglects her old friends, her babysitters club duties, etc. etc., until she realizes that as much as she loves Ashley, she does not in fact want her life to be All Ashley, All the Time. Ashley is a human disaster in all areas of life that are not Art and does not cope well with this change, and the friendship collapses under the strain.

At no point in this book are Claudia's feelings for Ashley referred to as a "crush," but that's definitely what it is. She obsesses over Ashley when they're not together; she's intensely, physically aware of Ashley whenever they're in the same room; she can't see Ashley in the hallway without enthusing about how beautiful and delicate and fragile she is.

In the TV show, Ashley is actually friends with Claudia's older sister Janine. She is not even slightly a human disaster (is she even Ashley Wyeth if she has actual social skills?), and serves as an uncomplicated mentor figure for Claudia. But the emotional center of the episode (and the "New Girl" to whom the title refers) is Mallory, whom Claudia definitely does NOT have a crush on. In fact, she finds Mallory annoyingly talkative and needy, and the story focuses on figuring out how to get along with someone you find annoying when you are in a situation where you are frequently thrown in their company.

This is a perfectly fine story on its own, but NOT "Claudia and the New Girl," and I will mourn forever What Might Have Been if they had the guts to make it as gay as the book.

Comments

[minutia_r]

Awwwww, unfortunate.

So uh out of curiosity how much of an influence was Claudia and the New Girl on Ashlin and Olivia?

[osprey_archer]

Pretty heavy!

[asakiyume]

I was going to ask! Because Ashlin/Ashley seems significant!

[sovay]

This is a perfectly fine story on its own, but NOT "Claudia and the New Girl," and I will mourn forever What Might Have Been if they had the guts to make it as gay as the book.

Fending off a person who wants to be friends with you is diametrically different from the experience of subsuming yourself in a new friendship, too, and since the latter is an experience that people generally have on the way to figuring out boundaries, I don't see the reasons not to do a story about it.

[osprey_archer]

My feeling based on this one episode is that they chickened out in the face of such strong gay subtext, because as you say they ran SO hard away from it that they told a diametrically opposite story. But it seems like a weird place for them to chicken out, given that in the first season the babysitters sit for the children of a lesbian couple and also for a transgender child. Is it different because Claudia is a member of the main cast? Maybe the showrunner ships Claudia/what's-his-name who Claudia dates later in the book series? (I think it's Alan Gray, and I despair that I remember this bit of BSC trivia.) I may have a stronger opinion once I've seen the rest of the season.

[asakiyume]

Maybe you're right, and I think that's really dumb of them. As someone who very much had a Claudia tendency to focus obsessively on one person, I can say it's worth learning about those boundaries, etc., when there's no question of romance or sex involved.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that there's a tendency in kid's shows to focus on friendship problems where the problem can be worked out and the friendship can continue! But some friendship problems can only be solved by either changing the nature of the friendship ("This obsessive best friendship thing isn't working for me anymore! We need to have other friends too!") or ending the friendship entirely and I think shows ought to explore that too.

[asakiyume]

Agreed. The question "Can this relationship be saved?" has to allow for cases when in fact no, it can't be (or it can't be without dramatic redefinition).

[osprey_archer]

Yes. Or sometimes it could be - but only at a price that one or both parties don't want to pay.

[conuly]

Um, do you want a spoiler for later in the season?

[osprey_archer]

Are Janine and Ashley dating, because if so CALLED IT, and also that does not fill the Claudia/Ashley "can these adorable human dumpster fires make this work? NO THEY CANNOT" hole in my heart.

[conuly]

Yes, and - okay, I guess we have two different opinions about all that.

But yes, and Janine deserves to date somebody and have that whole experience treated better than it was in the books.