July 1990 was a month of classic American sensationalism: in the news (Satanic Panic! jingoism! copaganda!), in the theatres (spiders! ghosts! infertile women!) and in the Baby-sitters Club (a friggin' SHIPWRECK?!).
Brooke and Kaykay discuss the first Super Special that felt emotionally authentic, despite its ludicrous premise, and its celebration of ingenuity and integrity.
Note: This episode is yet another installment in our ongoing series, "Reading Logan Bruno and 80s/90s Diet Culture For Filth."
Visit us at our website, and follow us on:
July 1990 was a month of classic American sensationalism: in the news (Satanic Panic! jingoism! copaganda!), in the theatres (spiders! ghosts! infertile women!) and in the Baby-sitters Club (a friggin' SHIPWRECK?!).
Brooke and Kaykay discuss the first Super Special that felt emotionally authentic, despite its ludicrous premise, and its celebration of ingenuity and integrity.
Note: This episode is yet another installment in our ongoing series, "Reading Logan Bruno and 80s/90s Diet Culture For Filth."
Visit us at our website, and follow us on:
[00:00:00] Brooke: Welcome to the Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, you don't talk about Fight Club. Instead, you talk about the battles fought and the lessons learned in the Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel, and editor who's revisiting these books after 30 years.
[00:00:24] Kaykay: And I'm Kaykay Brady. I'm a therapist and I'm new to the books.
[00:00:28] Brooke: And this week we are taking you back to July 1990. July 1990 was a month of milestones happening in different sort of thematic occurrences that we've discussed in previous episodes. So Kaykay, I'm going to see if you remember any of these. So we've talked a lot about, you know, the Satanic Panic in previous episodes.
And in July 1990, I wonder if you remember this, this is when Judas Priest went on trial. Because they were accused of putting subliminal messages that you could only hear if you played an album that came out in 1978, if you played that album backwards, they said there were subliminal messages in there that said "Do it." and that that caused-
[00:01:16] Kaykay: Wait, this went through a court of law?
[00:01:18] Brooke: Civil trial.
[00:01:19] Kaykay: Ah.
[00:01:20] Brooke: Parents sued them and said that it was their subliminal messages in their album that caused their kids to commit suicide.
[00:01:29] Kaykay: Playing backwards?
[00:01:30] Brooke: Yeah, it was really nonsense.
[00:01:33] Kaykay: Okay, so what was the outcome?
[00:01:35] Brooke: The next month they ended up being not liable, because it was nonsense. Although the judge said, "Oh, I can hear the subliminal"-- it was very much like, you know, the whole, if you play the Beatles album backwards, you hear "Paul is dead."
[00:01:47] Kaykay: Right.
[00:01:48] Brooke: It was that. There were some great interviews afterwards with the lead singer of Judas Priest, who talked about how he felt really bad for the parents. How they had basically been taken advantage of by different evangelical right-wing groups who saw this as a cause that they could latch themselves--
[00:02:04] Kaykay: Like latching onto their grief when they were vulnerable and like beating their drum, their agenda.
[00:02:09] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:02:10] Kaykay: That's sad.
[00:02:11] Brooke: It is. And he talked a lot about how he wished that he could just have sat down with the parents and just sort of been there for them in their grief, because it seemed like people were just taking advantage of them instead of really helping and supporting them.
And considering that we had talked about the 2 Live Crew arrest in our last episode. So this was discussed at the time they were like, look at everything that's happening. You've got 2 Live Crew, you've got Judas Priest. There was a real fear of who's going to be next, who they're going to come after and sort of blame artists for things happening in either society or within family systems.
[00:02:47] Kaykay: You know, you're so vulnerable after a kid dies by suicide, and blame is like a form of bargaining. Right? You remember, we talked about those stages of grief. Blame is a part of that, right? Like, if I punish this person somehow they'll come back or, you know, emotionally will come back to me.
[00:03:05] Brooke: Right.
[00:03:05] Kaykay: So yeah, that's too bad.
[00:03:07] Brooke: Yeah. But it's something that's like held up as an example. So it's one of the things where, when you hear about Judas Priest, I remember again, as I said, like, we used to watch Satanic Panic documentaries in Civics class in high school. And this was one of them.
[00:03:21] Kaykay: Aww, Civics class!
[00:03:22] Brooke: In Civics class. And not Satanic Panic as in, "This is bad, here's what to watch out for." But Satanic Panic as in, "It's the late nineties. And I still want you to think that like-" again, this is in a public high school.
[00:03:35] Kaykay: What?!
[00:03:36] Brooke: Yeah. And stuff about Judas Priest--
[00:03:38] Kaykay: What?!
[00:03:38] Brooke: Yeah. We watched the Geraldo Satanic Panic documentary in my high school Civics class years after it was debunked.
[00:03:47] Kaykay: Damn!
[00:03:47] Brooke: So it's still going, as we can see around us right now. Another event that we had discussed with David Hasselhoff performing at the Berlin Wall, remember that?
[00:04:00] Kaykay: Oh now that, how could I forget, with his, uh, his piano scarf? I mean, was he wearing a piano scarf?
[00:04:06] Brooke: Yes, the piano scarf.
[00:04:07] Kaykay: Or did I just want him to wear-- okay, okay.
[00:04:09] Brooke: Nope. Both. Both. You wanted him to wear the piano scarf, and he did. He did. Yeah.
[00:04:15] Kaykay: So that I'll never forget.
[00:04:17] Brooke: And the light up jacket. I mean, once you see the light up jacket, that was originally on The Osmonds, you can't forget that. So Pink Floyd picked up the banner from David Hasselhoff and performed The Wall where the Berlin Wall was, with a lot of special guests. Including Cyndi Lauper.
[00:04:39] Kaykay: Wait a sec. Okay. I don't know why I knew that, but I was about to say Cyndi Lauper.
[00:04:44] Brooke: So you remember this?
[00:04:45] Kaykay: It just seemed like such a Cyndi Lauper event. Maybe. Who knows what's in the deep dark recesses of this little brain of mine.
[00:04:51] Brooke: Well, I was getting like Satanic Panicked, you know, attempted indoctrination in my mind, you were focused on Cyndi Lauper performing with Pink Floyd at the wall. And I think that's superior.
[00:05:04] Kaykay: Obviously.
[00:05:04] Brooke: I'm happy for you for that. Sinead O'Connor was also there. There were a ton of other celebrities performing with them, and the fucking Scorpions. As we had discussed with Wind of Change. So, C-I-A! C-I-A! That was happening with Pink Floyd, The Wall. Allegedly. Allegedly, listen to the Wind of Change podcast if you haven't already.
[00:05:27] Kaykay: So much coming together.
[00:05:28] Brooke: I know, it's all coming together. Just a few days after that, I have a feeling you'll remember this, Roseanne Barr sang the National Anthem at a Padres game.
[00:05:41] Kaykay: I do remember this.
[00:05:43] Brooke: Okay. What do you remember about it?
[00:05:45] Kaykay: I think the only thing that I remember is my dad thought she was terrible.
[00:05:49] Brooke: It was a scandal.
[00:05:51] Kaykay: Why, what does she do?
[00:05:53] Brooke: Everyone was like, "Oh, she sang it really badly, and then she grabbed her crotch and she spat on the ground."
[00:05:59] Kaykay: Okay, I do remember this!
[00:06:01] Brooke: She did. She did all of those things. Here's the backstory. The executive producer of her show, who was also the executive producer of The Cosby Show, like massive producer, had just, in June, purchased the Padres.
[00:06:17] Kaykay: I see.
[00:06:18] Brooke: The Padres were not good. This was not like a team on the rise.
[00:06:24] Kaykay: Wait, what state? What city?
[00:06:25] Brooke: The Padres are in San Diego. One thing to know about San Diego? Big military town! Top Gun? San Diego. Not the best town to not treat the National Anthem with the utmost reverence. So basically everybody was like, okay, if you want to have her do something for Working Women's Day, this was the day. So they're like, we're here to celebrate Working Women's Day. And for that, we're going to bring in Roseanne.
[00:06:55] Kaykay: So weird!
[00:06:56] Brooke: The people that had worked at the park for a long time, the people who knew how things were ran and the way to go about things, were like, "Let's have her sing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.'" You know, nobody cares she can be as irreverent as she wants to be.
[00:07:10] Kaykay: Yeah, "Let's stay in a safe zone."
[00:07:11] Brooke: Yes. And he was like, "No." And so he puts her up there, it's acapella. She didn't have a backing track or anything. In her ears they had a delay, so she was hearing herself on a delay. Couldn't hear herself sing.
[00:07:26] Kaykay: Which is impossible.
[00:07:26] Brooke: This is why you get the really important earpieces. Right. And so you see her put her fingers in her ears and people start booing, because they're like, "Oh, she's trying to block us out." She didn't even know what was happening. Apparently she didn't intend to sing it poorly, but it just went horribly for a variety of factors.
And then she was just kind of like, "Okay, well I've done this, so I might as well just pretend I'm a pitcher. I'm on the pitcher's mountain doing this, so at the end, I'll grab my crotch and spit, as pitchers do." Which everyone takes as her like spitting on the National Anthem, right up the road from a Naval base. Ergo, chaos ensues afterwards. So...
[00:08:09] Kaykay: Dang.
[00:08:09] Brooke: That happened in July 1990.
[00:08:12] Kaykay: I vaguely remember this, but what an interesting retelling of what actually happened.
[00:08:17] Brooke: Dad Bush makes a statement. It became a big thing.
[00:08:20] Kaykay: Dad Bush.
[00:08:21] Brooke: Dad Bush. That's what he is concerning himself with right before he signs the ADA, the American Disabilities Act, which we have discussed. In episode 16 on Jessi's Secret Language, we go into more detail about the ADA.
Again, I'm telling you July jam packed full of stuff, following up on things we've talked about. The next day is when Zsa Zsa goes to jail to serve three days for slapping a cop.
[00:08:45] Kaykay: Right. You know, it's really making me understand, I dunno, it's like really the nineties were when outrage culture like started to really roll. You know, think about like Monica Lewinsky and like just all these like stories getting created about how things are, how people are, and then it gets a life of its own and starts kind of racing away.
That really kind of started to pick up a lot of speed in the nineties.
[00:09:10] Brooke: Yeah. And a lot of like putting women in their place.
[00:09:14] Kaykay: A lot of women at the center of these. A hundred percent.
[00:09:19] Brooke: A lot of putting anyone who might go against evangelical Christian heteronormative orthodoxy, a lot of panic about that losing a stranglehold on the culture, and so lashing out against anything that threatens that authority. Because things are starting to threaten that authority.
[00:09:43] Kaykay: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Brooke: So that's where the pushback starts to ramp up, in exchange. So July 1990 was a trip. On the music charts, not as great of a month as June 1990, because June 1990 might go down as an all timer.
I mean, there's still some good tunes on the playlist, so definitely worth checking out, but not as many like back to back to back to back bangers as we had the previous month. "Step by Step" was still number one. That was knocked off by a song called "She Ain't Worth It" by a singer named Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown was featured on it.
[00:10:24] Kaykay: What? I've never heard of this song in my life.
[00:10:27] Brooke: It was a one hit wonder that probably wasn't even that big of a hit.
[00:10:32] Kaykay: All right, sing it.
[00:10:32] Brooke: It's catchy as hell.
[00:10:33] Kaykay: Go girl.
[00:10:34] Brooke: "She ain't worth it. The girl ain't worth it." And then Bobby Brown comes in and like raps about girls trying to make him late for a date. He's gonna tell you goodbye if you make him late for a date.
[00:10:45] Kaykay: He's not here for that.
[00:10:46] Brooke: He's not here for your procrastination.
[00:10:48] Kaykay: He's punctual.
[00:10:50] Brooke: Bobby Brown wants a punctual partner. That's tops on his list. And then we talked in our last episode about the Dick Tracy soundtrack that Madonna was the featured artist on, and "Hanky Panky" from Dick Tracy hit number 10. It's not great, but it is on our playlist.
[00:11:09] Kaykay: It grosses me out. The title is grossing me out.
[00:11:12] Brooke: Yeah. You know, I mean, it's the nineties. It should gross you out, it's July '90.
[00:11:18] Kaykay: It's just very Betty Boop, like weird. I don't know, that kind of weird baby girl sexual culture that like really creeps me.
[00:11:26] Brooke: It's creepy. And you can watch it in action on our video playlist because it's got clips directly from Dick Tracy in it, so you can see how that plays out. Likewise, at the movies, number one at the box office...ehh, the only one that I think is really noteworthy would be Ghost. We all remember Ghost. Demi Moore and...
[00:11:47] Kaykay: The movie is made by Whoopi Goldberg. Let's get real.
[00:11:49] Brooke: And that she won an Oscar for. But also out that month, not number one, but there were some other movies that came out that month that we probably remember from our childhoods. I never saw this, but Jetsons: The Movie came out. And the reason why it's noteworthy is because it had like all of the original voice actors reprising their roles decades later for this movie version of The Jetsons--
[00:12:14] Kaykay: Were they in a bleak hellscape and were they like, "That's when the Jetsons become The Jetsons"?
[00:12:20] Brooke: Kind of. Kind of, actually.
[00:12:22] Kaykay: So they took a page out of The Bradys book.
[00:12:25] Brooke: It's about colonizing an asteroid-
[00:12:27] Kaykay: Shut up.
[00:12:28] Brooke: To like exploit its resources. I'm not kidding. It's pretty bleak. And the only actor who didn't reprise their role- so they had Tiffany, as in "I Think We're Alone Now" Tiffany, play the part of Judy. And then Tiffany sang songs as Judy Jetson.
[00:12:49] Kaykay: They're really trying to do some sort of early version of synergy, you know, where they were going to jump on her fame.
[00:12:54] Brooke: Oh yeah. It was a nice try. It didn't really work. Another movie that came out, this one you definitely saw and I'm sure you saw it on HBO, because I saw it on HBO and I didn't even have HBO, Arachnophobia.
[00:13:06] Kaykay: Oh sure. Big one on HBO.
[00:13:08] Brooke: That was fucking everywhere when it came out. Did that inspire any fear of spiders in you?
[00:13:13] Kaykay: No. You know, I like spiders. I named the spiders in our house after powerful female leaders.
[00:13:20] Brooke: Who's there right now?
[00:13:21] Kaykay: Uh, we have Angela Merkel is like running the downstairs. One of our previous ones was Margaret Thatcher. But, you know, I like spiders. I like, I like keeping them around. It didn't freak me out. How about you?
[00:13:35] Brooke: Sorry. I'm just trying to digest-
[00:13:38] Kaykay: You're like, wait a second. I'm still stuck on the fact that you live with a spider named Angela Merkel.
[00:13:44] Brooke: It's the fact that you said you liked spiders, and yet you named one Margaret Thatcher. And last I checked, you were Irish as fuck.
[00:13:51] Kaykay: Oh shit, you're getting Freudian. You're getting Freudian on me here.
[00:13:56] Brooke: This could become the entire episode, trying to figure out where that came from. That's hilarious.
[00:14:02] Kaykay: I know. I need like two hours of therapy just on that alone.
[00:14:06] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Kaykay: I don't know. She just looked like Margaret Thatcher to me.
[00:14:09] Brooke: Oh, okay. So it was more of an appearance thing. It's, you have a resemblance...
[00:14:12] Kaykay: I mean, it was just like an essence, you know?
[00:14:13] Brooke: Yeah. The essence of Margaret Thatcher. Um, yeah, I'm fine with spiders. I didn't really find it to be super disturbing, but you know, a lot of people, you would hear it like mentioned. Like, "arachnophobia" was like, that's a big word for kids, and we all knew what it meant.
[00:14:30] Kaykay: Yeah. It became part of the sort of popular consciousness
[00:14:34] Brooke: Completely. And then Problem Child. Do you remember Problem Child?
[00:14:38] Kaykay: Who starred in that?
[00:14:40] Brooke: John Ritter.
[00:14:41] Kaykay: Okay.
[00:14:42] Brooke: And Amy Yasbeck. She ends up, he marries her, so then like for the rest of his career after that, she was in like all of John Ritter's things.
[00:14:50] Kaykay: So who was the Problem Child?
[00:14:52] Brooke: A kid that just was Problem Child. Some random kid. A kid who played Problem Child in this movie and its sequel. Kaykay, this movie is so beyond fucked. It is just beyond fucked. It is like misogyny times 10. It is just like an encapsulation of everything. You're like, why are we laughing at this? Oh my God, why was this played for laughs? Oh my God, what the hell?
But like, I remember at the time it was like, oh, this kid's being bad. It was almost a precursor to like Home Alone. Like the kind of antics--
[00:15:25] Kaykay: Yeah, kind of like a Dennis the Menace flavor.
[00:15:27] Brooke: Oh, the whole thing is like, this boy is a huge- so he is adopted. John Ritter and his wife, it's made clear that his wife is infertile. Right?
[00:15:38] Kaykay: Sure.
[00:15:38] Brooke: They're trying to have kids, she's infertile. She's the problem. Her name? Flo.
[00:15:44] Kaykay: Now that doesn't take Freud.
[00:15:46] Brooke: Sit with that for a second. And so they decide to adopt. And they adopt a seven-year-old who we find out later has been returned 30 times. And he is a big fan of a serial killer who he writes to, and so he becomes pen pals with a serial killer, who like breaks out to try to like unite with this kid. And at the end--
[00:16:10] Kaykay: This is, uh, this is uncomfortable space.
[00:16:13] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah. And the wife ends up falling in love with the serial killer.
[00:16:19] Kaykay: No, no, no.
[00:16:19] Brooke: And she ends up shoved in a suitcase that gets thrown into a truck of manure. That's how that ends.
[00:16:28] Kaykay: Dude, that's bad.
[00:16:30] Brooke: Yeah, it's bleak.
[00:16:32] Kaykay: Nothing like normalizing and making fun of serial killers and violence against women.
[00:16:38] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Kaykay: Dang, nineties. Get outta here.
[00:16:40] Brooke: But it's okay. She doesn't count as a real woman because she's infertile, you know?
[00:16:44] Kaykay: Sure. Right.
[00:16:45] Brooke: It has a sequel. And I sure did say for one of my birthdays, let's take all of my friends to go watch Problem Child 2. So I wasn't quite picking up on the messages that were being pumped into my brain, but I'm glad that I did later. So that's the kind of shit that we were indoctrinated with.
[00:17:05] Kaykay: I mean, how much are we all spending in therapy right now trying to unscramble all those messages from our mind?
[00:17:13] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Kaykay: A lot of money.
[00:17:14] Brooke: Well, hopefully we are. Hopefully we are. If not, we're paying in other ways. So thanks, pop culture!
Fortunately, TV was better for us. Debuting that month, I don't know if you watched this show. I loved this show, and I still remember the theme song, Wild and Crazy Kids on Nickelodeon. Do you remember this?
[00:17:32] Kaykay: No! No.
[00:17:32] Brooke: This would 100% be a show that you would love, Kaykay.
[00:17:36] Kaykay: I love the title!
[00:17:38] Brooke: Yeah. It was just like camp games. Tug of war and stuff, or it would be like obstacle course runnings. It was all like physical competitions that were taking place, but they were, they were team-based. They were like three different teams, like different colored shirts and everything. And the theme song was like, "Wa-Wild and Crazy Kids." It was awesome.
[00:17:59] Kaykay: "They're playing tag."
[00:18:01] Brooke: I loved that show. And then also debuting was Blossom. Do you remember Blossom?
[00:18:06] Kaykay: Yeah. I never watched Blossom, but I certainly remember her hat.
[00:18:10] Brooke: It's the hat. Mayim Bialik with the hat.
[00:18:12] Kaykay: Is there anything more than the hat? Do I need to know more than that?
[00:18:15] Brooke: Not really.
[00:18:16] Kaykay: "Not really!"
[00:18:19] Brooke: We also got cursed with Joey Lawrence. I remember Joey Lawrence became like, "Whoa!" He became like, this big, like was pitched to me as a teen heartthrob. I'm like, this guy's just dumb. I did not get Joey Lawrence.
[00:18:32] Kaykay: They had him come out as like a rapper and stuff, which was really embarrassing.
[00:18:36] Brooke: That's sad for him. It was cringe for me at the time and has remained so. But yeah, the hat, the big denim floppy hat with a sunflower in it, peak nineties fashion. And then ending that month. Mr. Belvedere. Did you like Mr. Belvedere?
[00:18:56] Kaykay: I watched Mr. Belvedere.
[00:18:58] Brooke: I liked Mr. Belvedere.
[00:18:59] Kaykay: Yeah. I mean it had heart.
[00:19:01] Brooke: It had a really catchy theme song.
[00:19:03] Kaykay: I don't remember it.
[00:19:06] Brooke: [scats] I don't remember the words, but it went like that. It's very like 1930s kind of like beer song, you know, a little jazzy.
So Mr. Belvedere ended, but fortunately we still had plenty of other child caretakers to look to in Mr. Belvedere's absence, including the girls that we follow in the fourth Baby-sitters Club Super Special, Baby-sitters Island Adventure, that was released this month. So it's time for some back cover copy. And I quote, "Dawn and Claudia have a perfect day planned. They've invited Dawn's brother and three other kids to join them on a sailing race, out to Greenpoint Island.
The girls have even packed a picnic lunch for the adventure. But then a big storm blows up in the middle of the race, and Claudia and Dawn and the kids never return from the island. The baby-sitters can't believe it's true. Two of their members are missing!" End quote.
At the end of the last episode, we said, "I wonder if this will be the Super Special that redeems the Super Specials." Kaykay, what is the verdict on that question in your eyes?
[00:20:19] Kaykay: I enjoyed this Super Special.
[00:20:21] Brooke: I did too.
[00:20:22] Kaykay: You know, this book had a very fast pace and it was a book where I actually didn't mind getting more of a plot book. It was a lot of plot. It was like snappier dialogue.
[00:20:35] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:20:35] Kaykay: I don't know, the dialogue was different, the writing was different. It felt like a nice break. I found it really entertaining. They made a real drama out of it.
[00:20:44] Brooke: I noticed that too. This book, to me, felt like it had a more adult tone to it. There was some more overt, like, reflections about what it is to feel guilt, to feel trauma, like, in the moment. I think one of the issues certainly that I have had with the Super Specials before is that you really get the girls sort of off on their own.
The girls always get split up in previous Super Specials and you don't really see them working together. And if you see them working together, it's usually just to form the basis for conflict that ends up sort of spiraling in a way that you're like, this doesn't feel authentic based on what we've seen of these characters before. The characters felt true to life, both true to who they have been in previous books and also true to like what you would expect a person in this situation to be doing.
[00:21:40] Kaykay: Agreed. And there were a couple of moments where the characters even reflect on their behavior and how like Dawn reflects on her behavior, where she feels like she didn't rise to the occasion, the way that she would have hoped and Claudia really did. And it was done in a really believable way where we didn't get some character that didn't feel like Dawn, we got a realistic scenario, which is sometimes in really traumatizing and challenging situations, you behave differently than you might expect you would. And then you hopefully reflect on it in the end. So I agree. It was like the characters felt presented in a way that felt real and grounded to who they are.
[00:22:20] Brooke: Definitely.
[00:22:21] Kaykay: Do you know if this was Ann M or a ghost writer?
[00:22:24] Brooke: It was. It was Ann M.
[00:22:25] Kaykay: Oh, interesting. Whoa, is this like Ann M after a vacation?
[00:22:32] Brooke: Well, I mean, she didn't write the two previous books.
[00:22:36] Kaykay: It feels really different.
[00:22:36] Brooke: I don't know. Maybe it's like she has more space. Something that I picked up is I felt like it was almost... and it's not a farewell cause this isn't the last book that she writes by any stretch of the imagination. She still writes books in the series throughout the series.
Um, it just felt like it could have been a last book. It felt like this was sort of written from a perspective of somebody who was like, "If I never write these characters again, here's how I want them to be represented."
[00:23:07] Kaykay: It's a season finale, yo.
[00:23:09] Brooke: Yeah, it kind of felt that way where it was beyond the way the characters acted. It was things like, there were so many references. I don't know if you picked up on this throughout, like overtly referencing things that they have done in previous books. It was like a sort of telling the history of these friends and what they've done, kind of like a "best of."
Like highlighting really good moments that they'd have experienced together and things that as a reader, you read it and you're like, "Oh yeah, I remember that. Oh yeah, I liked that." You know? So it felt like a gift to everyone who loves these characters.
[00:23:46] Kaykay: And done in a really subtle way, right? Because it's in service of the plot that's happening.
[00:23:52] Brooke: Right.
[00:23:53] Kaykay: I feel like she did a really good job of being able to use those moments to service the sort of exciting plot that had a lot of movement. So it was satisfying.
[00:24:03] Brooke: Yeah. So for any listeners that either haven't read this book, or it's been a while since you've read the book, let's flesh out the plot. Because we've talked about how the Super Specials always feel more plot driven than others. But personally, for me, I think the reason why this worked is because the plot stays in spaces.
Like besides the beginning that leads to the shipwreck, there isn't a lot of jumping around and movement. Everybody kind of has to like sit and deal with the situation as it is. And so you see how they cope with things, as opposed to "Run around, do this, do this, do this." It's like they're doing things, but they're really doing the same thing over and over and over again.
And so you get to see how their view of their situation changes as they're trying to make movement and not succeeding, which I think helps you get into like a deeper mind set. You get to do more character exploration than you would if it's a person is just bouncing from place to place to place and not in one place long enough to really process what's happening.
[00:25:09] Kaykay: That's true. And there's something about being stuck. The characters have to go deeper into their own psyche because they're not getting what they want and they're stuck, literally. And so you get a very cool kind of cycling down into deeper fears, deeper sense of strength. And it is that plot of being shipwrecked.
So yeah, the plot, it's kind of simple, Claudia and Dawn decided to do a boating competition. By the way, where are these boats coming from?
[00:25:36] Brooke: Yeah. So let's just say this. So the premise is ridiculous. The premise is ridiculous.
[00:25:42] Kaykay: Thank you! Somebody had to say it.
[00:25:45] Brooke: But how it's dealt with, I think, is good.
[00:25:47] Kaykay: You know, because like, look, people have boats, but you don't just randomly have a boat all of a sudden.
[00:25:53] Brooke: Yeah. So the way that they present it, and I did not grow up in wealthy tri-state suburban communities. So perhaps this is a thing that I just wasn't aware of, but they take two months of sailing lessons at the Stoneybrook community center. And I guess they've got boats to just like, "our community center has sailboats." Dude, state and local governments have been so defunded since the eighties if this is true. If this is true, if we used to have community centers with sailboats for the taking for the day...
[00:26:26] Kaykay: I don't think so. I mean, I don't know because we definitely were not sailing in the Bronx. My family definitely didn't have sailboats, but I think it's like a family thing. Like your family might have sailboats, but like, no, you don't just have like community sailboats.
[00:26:41] Brooke: Apparently Stoneybrook does! Lucky Stoneybrook.
[00:26:44] Kaykay: Maybe! Maybe, I don't know. Somebody who grew up in like Darien, Connecticut, please let us know. Did you get to just check out a fucking boat like a library book? Is that how this works?
[00:26:56] Brooke: Yeah, the 1% really do live in a different world than the rest of us. Do not get that twisted.
[00:27:02] Kaykay: I mean, certainly my friends had their own boats, you know, they had these like little skiffs that they would sail in like Cape Cod or whatever other rich space they were in. But that was their family owned that boat. Anyway, very convenient to have this plot.
But anyway, somehow they take boating lessons with communal boats that they're allowed to take out alone with children.
[00:27:23] Brooke: That's what I love. They're like, okay, you've graduated now. So they start by doing a race with their counselors, which I'm guessing are like, instructors, I don't know, whatever. Apparently they're like, here's an adult who you can take to sail with you.
And now you've proven that you can sail out to this island and back now you don't need us to be with you. You just can't sail alone. It's fine if you bring a four-year-old, but you can't sail alone.
[00:27:48] Kaykay: You just gotta sail with a four-year-old.
[00:27:49] Brooke: That's better somehow.
[00:27:52] Kaykay: And I mean, dude, Connecticut is like near New York City, which is like a major world fucking shipping channel. Like, Molly, you in danger, girl! Speaking of Ghost.
[00:28:04] Brooke: Seriously.
[00:28:05] Kaykay: Anyway, so Dawn and Claudia are for some reason in this big competition over the boating, like they really want to show each other up.
[00:28:13] Brooke: That is the one thing about Claudia in the Super Specials. In the Super Specials, she is a champion competitive athlete. In the non-Super Specials, there's no glimmer of that anywhere whatsoever.
[00:28:24] Kaykay: She's sitting on her butt, eating Ring Dings, doing art, as Claudia should.
[00:28:28] Brooke: Yep. I am feeling that, Claudia. And I think she is too after this experience, but anyway.
[00:28:33] Kaykay: Yeah. I mean, all right, I'm going so many different places and I can't help it, which is like, how was Kristy not in on this?
[00:28:40] Brooke: Oh, for real.
[00:28:41] Kaykay: Kristy's not driving a boat?
[00:28:43] Brooke: Kristy isn't like planning an entire event around this and using it to like raise funds for more Kid Kit supplies?
[00:28:49] Kaykay: Kristy isn't like running a regatta?
[00:28:50] Brooke: Right. Exactly.
[00:28:52] Kaykay: And you know, if you've got to be shipwrecked, you want a lesbian there. That's all I have to say.
[00:28:57] Brooke: For real.
[00:28:57] Kaykay: I mean, who else do you want? Sadly, there's none.
[00:28:58] Brooke: Lesson learned. Next time, bring a lesbian, kids. Okay?
[00:29:02] Kaykay: Don't bring a four year old, bring a lesbian.
[00:29:04] Brooke: Haley Braddock has some lesbian hair. So it's possible that there was one on the trip. We don't know that, I'm not saying for sure. I'm saying perhaps that is the secret, that's why they were able to eventually get off.
[00:29:17] Kaykay: Everybody got saved.
[00:29:17] Brooke: Latent lesbianism brought them to safety.
[00:29:21] Kaykay: Latent lesbianism will bring all of us to safety. Let's get real. So they decide to do this competition. They bring along a four year old. They bring along Dawn's brother who's visiting from the West Coast. They bring along other kids from the neighborhood.
[00:29:34] Brooke: They bring along Jessi's sister, because Jessi is being left at home alone at 11 years old while her parents go away for a long weekend and they're like, "You're 11. You can stay home alone with your eight year old sister and your one and a half year old brother and care for them for three days."
[00:29:54] Kaykay: I guess like, I didn't realize that. I mean, I just hadn't done the math.
[00:29:58] Brooke: Yeah. Suffice it to say, I'm on Aunt Cecelia's side hardcore in this.
[00:30:03] Kaykay: That's a mandated report. That's all I gotta say is, that's a mandated report.
[00:30:08] Brooke: Mm hmm.
[00:30:11] Kaykay: Okay. So they bring a sampling of neighborhood children. They do this race. A huge storm blows in and they lose their way, and there's sort of a lot of drama and like they lose each other, they find each other and they land on some island that they don't know where they are.
[00:30:28] Brooke: Yeah. Dawn's boat actually sinks. So they have to bail out because in the storm they've gotten like a hole in the boat and it's sinking. And so she and Jeff and Haley Braddock have to jump out, and so they just hang on to Claudia's boat until they land at what they think is their destination island, but which they find out is not.
[00:30:50] Kaykay: And then they have to survive and they do a pretty good job of it.
[00:30:54] Brooke: They really luck out that they land somewhere with like an absolutely perfect-
[00:30:58] Kaykay: A beautiful cave.
[00:30:59] Brooke: Yeah. Where it's like boulders that are perfectly positioned to provide them warmth and shelter, where they can even like have a fire going indoors to keep them warm. And there's adequate space that they can make like a bed out of leaves and keep it far enough away from the fire.
[00:31:16] Kaykay: And let's talk about the other magic, which is Jeff catching 10 fish an hour. Which like, have you ever seen the show Alone?
[00:31:23] Brooke: No.
[00:31:24] Kaykay: It is hella hard to catch fish. Especially if you don't have a net.
[00:31:30] Brooke: Oh yeah. And what he has, he's able to rig a fishing pole out of a stick string and a safety pin.
[00:31:38] Kaykay: No. And he's literally pulling like five fish a pop! Ann M, not an Eagle Scout.
[00:31:50] Brooke: Yeah. The fishing part was funny too because, this is one area where I was like, does she know that vegetarians don't eat fish? Does she know that fish are animals too? I thought it was funny where Dawn is like judgmental of people who aren't willing to eat fish, particularly when they're like, "I don't want to eat something that I've seen that was alive," and Dawn rolls her eyes.
And it's like, that's vegetarianism, basically. But we can forgive those little flaws when the book overall, I think, is far superior to all of the Super Specials that have come before.
[00:32:28] Kaykay: Definitely. I mean, it's a loving, poking, fun feeling. Oh, and then there's another piece which, oh, wow. Okay. This is starting to dawn on me right now. There was this whole thing with reporters. So this becomes, it's called "the Connecticut disaster." Like this goes on the news everywhere. This is local news. This is national news. This is like a big deal that these kids are missing. And there's a plot that keeps coming back and coming back, coming back, which is how terrible reporters are. And I was like, where's that coming from?
[00:33:01] Brooke: There was shade on reporters, and there was also some very brief shade on politicians as well. And one of the things that I thought was interesting about this, this is a very female centered, woman empowerment, girl power book. The ladies and girls that are getting shit done and Jeff, but you see when they ultimately get rescued, their friends and their family members are all out looking for them.
And the Coast Guard is looking for them. They're trying to figure out how they can signal where they are, because they're like, people are going to be looking for us on Greenpoint Island. We're not there. They're going to come across Dawn's wrecked boat, and they're going to assume that we've drowned.
What if they just stopped looking for us because they see it? And then when they land with Claudia's boat, they don't bring it inland far enough. And then when the high tide comes in, it washes their boat away. So they have no way of getting off. And they're like, oh great. They're going to see wreckage of one boat.
They're going to find the other boat drifting. What if they don't, they're going to stop looking for us. They just assume that we've, you know, drowned. And so the kids all like, you know, have the idea of like, let's spell out "help" on the beach with shells and such and Dawn and Claudia realized, well, no, one's going to be able to see it because the shells are the same color as the sand.
It's not going to jump out. They're trying to figure out what they can do. And then Claudia goes and starts looking for, is there anything else on the island that might be able to help us? And she finds a mirror. And when I read this, I literally stopped. And I was like, oh my God, the mirror, I wrote it in like big purple letters on my notes, because I remember this so vividly reading this and learning about it.
And it was something that like, when I would be out on a boat, not a sailboat, a motorboat with my family at the lake and stuff. I remember thinking, oh, maybe we need to like, bring a mirror with us so that we can signal to rescuers if we're ever like, stranded and lost on an island, because that's what Claudia does, you know, uses the mirror to kind of like catch the reflection of the sun and signal to any sort of airplane that goes overhead. And it works.
[00:35:25] Kaykay: And that's how they get saved!
[00:35:26] Brooke: That's how they get saved, yeah. Claudia's ingenuity. And the rescue plane is saying, we're going to bring you a doctor and some rescuers. And one of them is like, "Okay, when the doctor, when he gets here," and Haley Braddock goes, "Or she," you know, makes sure to interject the doctor could be a woman.
And then the doctor is a woman. The mayor is a woman, when the mayor shows up at the end to like recognize the heroism of these kids for their survival, but there's a little bit of politician shade. When they first land, the reporters are all waiting for them. The mayor is there. Everybody is like making a big deal out of these kids, like using it to draw attention for whatever they want to draw attention to capitalize on it.
And Dawn talks about how the mayor, you could tell the mayor wanted to keep speaking when the doctor is like, "We need to get these kids to the hospital to get looked over." Dawn's like, "I can tell the mayor wanted to keep speaking because the TV reporters were there and she's up for reelection. You know, just like a little, like a really small thing. But again, it didn't need to be there.
[00:36:34] Kaykay: Yes! There was a lot of subtle shade. Yeah, I definitely noticed that.
[00:36:37] Brooke: That's there for a reason. Yeah. And you know, talking about this now, I'm like, oh man, I should have looked into what was going on with like the congressional elections in 1990, because that would have been going on at the time when this was published, but didn't think about that until now.
[00:36:52] Kaykay: I wanna see if Ann M, you know, experienced some fame or something. You know, was she starting to experience fame? Was she starting to interact with reporters? Cause it feels personal.
[00:37:03] Brooke: Right.
[00:37:03] Kaykay: It feels like someone personally has been burned and is working it out a little bit.
[00:37:08] Brooke: Yeah, cause you see several characters have like a microphone shoved in their face when they're distraught, looking for their friends, like, "How do you feel?"
And they all respond with like a snappy retort, like, well, "How do you think I feel?" And it's like applause, and then they move on. That's supposed to be a sick burn, I guess.
[00:37:28] Kaykay: I could think of way sicker burns. Okay.
[00:37:31] Brooke: Yeah. There were little digs at the media, at politicians in this, but most of the book is really focused on the girls and their relationships with each other and with the shit men in their lives. Holy shit.
[00:37:47] Kaykay: Yeah. There's also a lot of like care-taking of men in very intense ways on the island to where they're very like care-taking of Jeff, and sort of giving him so much credit for like anything he's able to do. It's again the thing we've talked about in the past, right? Where like, oh my God, Jeff's good with kids. Wow. He's like Jesus Christ incarnate walking on water. And then Logan, the dipshit of course.
[00:38:11] Brooke: Oh, Logan's the fucking worst. Yeah, the ones that I was thinking of, you see them taking care of like Jamie Newton. Which, one, don't take a four year old on this. Just don't do it. And definitely don't do it if the kid is sick, you know? Like, you already knew he was sick. It said at the beginning, he's sniffly. And the mom is like, "I don't know if you should go." Hey mom? Don't leave that decision to your four year old. You say, "You're not going. It's okay. I will take you on a boat with a licensed sailor and we will make up for this some other time when you're not sick," you know?
[00:38:46] Kaykay: Good point. I mean, I'm pretty sure to operate a boat alone, you have to have a captain's license.
[00:38:52] Brooke: I would hope so. Maybe this was the impetus of that.
[00:38:55] Kaykay: This is regulated.
[00:38:56] Brooke: Oh, right.
[00:38:57] Kaykay: This is where it started.
[00:38:58] Brooke: Well, yeah. What is the nineties? What is a huge theme politically of the nineties? Deregulation. Yeah. Yeah, this is what happens. This is what deregulation will get you, fuckers.
[00:39:08] Kaykay: But I'm pretty sure you needed a captain's license even then.
[00:39:09] Brooke: Yeah. I would hope so. But everybody on the island, generally, one of the things that I thought was nice is you don't see them go like Lord of the Flies, which they very easily could have. Like everybody works together. Everybody pitches in, you know, Dawn ends up feeling bad at the end. Cause she's like, well, Claudia and Jeff were the ones who did so much, like Claudia makes sure that they get water.
Jeff makes sure that they get food. You know, they're the ones that are sort of meeting the basic needs. And Dawn is like, "I just took care of Jamie." But somebody had to take care of Jamie. He's four, you know, he can't take care of himself.
[00:39:42] Kaykay: He was, he was a heavy pull. I mean, he was a four year old with like a 103 fever.
[00:39:48] Brooke: So the men that I'm thinking of, because I put down for like what they were fighting, I had "guilt and powerlessness," and we'll get into those things. But then I also had, "and shitty selfish men who seek to punish their empathy." It was just brutal. Stacey's dad refuses to not even let her go home, so Stacey is in New York for the weekend, visiting with her father, when she gets word that this shipwreck has happened.
She gets word as she's getting ready to like go out to a theater that night with her dad, and Stacey's dad comes in and she gets off the phone and is like, "What are you doing? We got to get going. Let's go." And she's like, "I don't want to go. I need to go home. My friends are missing." And he's like, "Anastasia, I spent so much money to get these theater tickets."
Like, "No," and she was just like, shut down even processing her feelings that her friends are missing. And same thing. Like the next day still refuses to like, even discuss this with her. And she walks out on her dad. I'm like, go Stacey, fucking leave him. Like, this is not, she's like, "Fine. I'm just, I'm packing up. I'm calling a cab. I'm heading back home. Fuck you." Writes him a letter on the train ride home, calling him out on his shit. Correct.
Logan. Once again, fuck Logan. Logan is the sort of impetus for a fight between Dawn and Mary Anne before Dawn sets sail. Dawn is like trying to get everything ready, and Logan calls to tell Mary Anne that he can't meet her at the library as they had planned because his brother is sick, and so he has to watch his sister. And Dawn is like, "Okay, I'll call Mary Anne. I'll tell her." I don't know why he didn't just call her where she was babysitting, but whatever. And then Dawn gets call after call after call. And so she's just taking down messages for people and she forgets to call Mary Anne to give her the message.
And Mary Anne is absolutely furious because she comes home, she's mad at Logan, she gets into a fight with Logan. She finds out that Dawn didn't tell her. And she's like, "I hope I never see you again." Again, very Home Alone, you know, where he's like, "I wish my family would disappear" and they do. And she's basically like, "I said to Dawn, I wished that I would never see her again, and now I might not see her."
And both Dawn and Mary Anne are feeling very bad about that while Dawn is on the island. And Logan calls Mary Anne, just basically like, "Is there any news?" And she's like, "No." And then she's like, "Well, you've called me, like, are we still fighting?" And he's like, "Yep, we're fighting." Basically, "How dare you ever question me? I can't believe that you would think that I could possibly stand you up. So yes, we're still fighting." And then he fucking hangs up on her. Fuck Logan, once again.
And then Bart pulls the same shit on Kristy, where Kristy is like-
[00:42:53] Kaykay: Yeah, there's like a lot of emotional manipulation.
[00:42:56] Brooke: So much emotional manipulation. So Kristy is like, she wants to go help search for her friends, but she feels obligated to like still have this practice with Kristy's Krushers, because they have another game coming up against Bart's Bashers. And she doesn't know what to do, cause she feels like she's being pulled in two different directions.
And someone is like, "Umm, these are your best friends. And also, like one of your players on your team is missing. One of the cheerleaders for your team is missing. These kids know these other kids. I think they're going to be understanding of why we're not still having practice."
And so she's like, "You know what? You're right. I need to focus on my friends. Sam, if you could help me call to cancel the practice, I'll let Bart know." And Bart basically calls her a coward and is like, "Yeah right. You're just doing this because you're just afraid to play me because you haven't beat me yet. You're just looking for an out."
Kristy hangs up on him after being like, "I'm sorry, how is this irresponsible of me? You're saying I'm being irresponsible. I'm I'm not seeing where I'm being irresponsible." And he's like, "Don't get sarcastic with me." And like, ultimately she hangs up on him, which is the very least that you could do in that situation.
[00:44:05] Kaykay: Sure. And then she feels bad about it.
[00:44:07] Brooke: And then she feels bad about that!
[00:44:08] Kaykay: Come on, Kristy. There is nothing to feel bad about here.
[00:44:11] Brooke: And then when they make up, Bart's like, "Well, you know that you tend to exaggerate." We haven't seen that from Kristy.
[00:44:16] Kaykay: What was that? That is exactly- I highlighted that. I was like, what is this shit? That is gaslighting nonsense.
[00:44:22] Brooke: We've never seen Kristy exaggerate. We see Kristy call out the truth that people don't want to hear.
[00:44:26] Kaykay: Yeah! Kristy's like very straight on.
[00:44:29] Brooke: Super honest. And then Kristy's like, "You're right. I won't cry wolf again." Why are you crying wolf? Like, he knows your friends-
[00:44:38] Kaykay: This is The Connecticut Disaster!
[00:44:41] Brooke: It's everywhere. And like, can you imagine if you were like, "Oh, I'm canceling practice because my friends are shipwrecked on an island." If that was like, literally just made up, we would need a whole other book series about what is going on with Kristy in Kristy's mind. We know that that's not what she's doing. Bart knows that's not what she's doing.
So why are we twisting it around into like, "Well, it's all right for people to be doubtful of Kristy, because she's a known liar," which she is absolutely not? Fuck Bart too! Fuck all of these guys. The girls have to live in the world with them and they all kind of put up with it. They stand up for themselves, but then they like reconcile to a different extent.
And it doesn't feel like, I mean, maybe with the exception of Stacey's dad who actually writes her a letter back apologizing and is like, "You know, I never saw it that way, that you're a divorced kid." How did you not see it that way? Like, how is that possible? But in any event, they stand up for themselves and that's good, but then they just go back to sort of status quo at the end.
But they support each other. The girls support each other with the exception of Mary Anne.
[00:45:51] Kaykay: They do. I really like your take on it, I think it's right on. I had something similar, which is they're fighting to hold true to their values of nurturing each other and staying in community and not being just completely narcissistic and up your own ass with your own pursuits.
I don't know, there's always this feeling of Stacey's dad is a workaholic. You know, he's just not connected to like family or nurturing. It's been explicitly told to us that this is a problem in the marriage problem in the family. You're seeing it also with Bart, right? Who's just fixated on this sport rather than being able to see Kristy's need to like connect and nurture.
That was sort of the overarching thing that I saw. They were really fighting to like stay true to that value.
[00:46:36] Brooke: Yeah. And to like stand up for themselves.
[00:46:38] Kaykay: And they do at the end. But there's a lot of guilt, which sucks.
[00:46:40] Brooke: There's a ton of guilt. And I think all of that comes back to this overall sense of powerlessness. Everybody is feeling powerless because of the circumstances. They're all trying, right? They're like, "I don't know what more I can do, but I'm going to do what I can do. I'm going to avail myself of the resources that are in front of me. I'm going to use the skills that I do have to try and change the situation." Claudia's creative thinking, her ingenuity, that is the thing that ultimately gets them out. That's where the power is, right?
[00:47:18] Kaykay: That's what I had written down, ingenuity.
[00:47:21] Brooke: Really? That's amazing.
[00:47:22] Kaykay: Yeah, it's literally on my paper.
[00:47:23] Brooke: That's so cool. And that, you know, it's just like, do what you can and get creative and try to figure out another way. If this way doesn't work, let's try this. We'll learn from what worked, we'll figure out like, okay, we need to make sure that we empty all of the water from the tarp before it's too late, cause otherwise the weight of it will cause it to crash down.
You know, just little things like that, that they're learning and changing and adapting as they go. And that sort of feeling of powerlessness, of like being adrift, of like having limited resources being given to you. The fact that that is happening while we're also seeing how these girls are subjected to unfair treatment by the men and the boys in their life.
It's just the sort of the weight of the world being upon you and things being harder for you than they would be if you were not in this position of less power in your society.
[00:48:18] Kaykay: Yes. It's really like you're oppressed by circumstance. It's both the circumstance of the storm and all of these things, but also the circumstance of sort of like where they lie in the social pecking order.
[00:48:30] Brooke: Yeah. Gender as a circumstance.
[00:48:32] Kaykay: [Dogs barking] Yeah, exactly.
[00:48:34] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, they agree. Your female dogs right now are like feeling this deeply. They're like, "We hear what you're saying. And we just want to say from across the species that we feel you, we hear you and we are with you."
At the end, in the epilogue, Dawn says, "I filled in the cracks by interviewing my friends with a tape recorder. Here are final comments from the seven of us." And the very first thing that came up is Claudia. And this is a quote from Claudia, "I never realized that I was smart until I got stuck on that island. Okay, I'm not smart like Janine, but I'd rather be practical anyway. Too bad you don't get graded on practicality in school." And that's really, really true.
[00:49:19] Kaykay: Yes. It's very true.
[00:49:21] Brooke: You see Claudia saying this when she reunites with her parents. She says to her parents how she was the one who got them off the island, and she was the one who made sure that they stayed alive by collecting water. You know, she came up with her own system.
So again, it was her creativity. There was nothing there, so she had to figure out how to make it happen. And so she's got that like creative brain that can come up with solutions when none are immediately visible to you.
[00:49:53] Kaykay: Yep.
[00:49:53] Brooke: So she said to her parents, she goes, "You know, I do promise to study harder in school, but I have to admit, I don't feel nearly so bad about my report card now. I may not be school smart or book-smart, but I'm practical. I think I'm pretty good at solving problems, aren't I?" And her parents just hug her and cry. We don't hear them say yes, which would have been nice, but the implication is she's reaching another level of understanding with her parents because she's got another level of understanding of herself. Like, "Look at what I did."
[00:50:25] Kaykay: Yes, and she understands it so well that she can even express it.
[00:50:28] Brooke: Exactly.
[00:50:29] Kaykay: Which is a pretty high level of understanding.
[00:50:31] Brooke: Yeah. I like that this book throughout, it was like a justification. It was almost like Ann M being like, if these girls were real, and to an author, not every author in every circumstance, but like, you have to see these characters as real in order to-
[00:50:49] Kaykay: Well, especially in this kind of series where you're going on for a hundred books.
[00:50:53] Brooke: Yeah. You have to really feel like you know them and you love them and you want the best for them. If you don't love a character that you have to keep coming back to over and over again, you're not going to be able to get your readers to even want to engage with them. Like, I don't think Ann M loves Logan.
[00:51:12] Kaykay: Nope.
[00:51:12] Brooke: And I do not either. You know? Like, it is very apparent to me.
[00:51:19] Kaykay: I wonder if Ann M was like resentful that she had to have Logan, or maybe she felt she had to have Logan in there, right? There had to be some sort of love interest. And I wonder if she felt resentful for that on some level.
[00:51:29] Brooke: Maybe. Yeah, it's definitely possible. It seems like she's kind of playing the role of like, if she was like counseling these girls, and this was her last time that she got to leave them with some words of wisdom, what would she want them to know to carry with them going forward? This book felt like a love letter to these girls, to me.
[00:51:48] Kaykay: Mm, beautiful.
[00:51:49] Brooke: Again, with the exception of Mary Anne. Which is funny because Mary Anne is the one that she says that she identifies with the most.
[00:51:55] Kaykay: Most resonates with.
[00:51:56] Brooke: Mary Anne comes across, I think, the worst in this book.
[00:52:00] Kaykay: And she's also very in the background.
[00:52:02] Brooke: Mm hmm. She doesn't get involved. She doesn't go out to help search. It's almost like she feels too guilty to do that. And so she's like, "Well, I'll just stay back and care for kids," kind of like what Dawn does, right? Dawn's like, "Somebody needs to do this, and this is what I can do."
And Mary Anne kind of mirrors that back in Stoneybrook. One of the things that we've discussed numerous times, how Dawn has been sort of parentified, you know, Dawn has always taken on so much responsibility feeling like she has to care for not only the children, both in her home and in the community, but also her mom in a lot of ways too.
And on page 202, she's talking with her mom about how she feels like she let people down, she feels like she didn't do enough to get them off the island. Like she should have been the one who did what Claudia did basically. And she feels bad about that. And then her mom talks her through about like, "You took good care of Jamie. That had to be done."
You know, the other ones had it covered and like that's okay. And her mom says, well, you know, maybe you learned something about yourself. And this is a quote from Dawn's mom, "You can't always be the strong one. And by not being the strong one for once, I think you helped Claudia learn something about herself."
And Dawn says, "That she can be the strong one, that she can figure out problems?" And Dawn's mom goes, "Exactly." So it's like, it's okay to let other people step up and lead. You know, it's okay to not feel like you have to fix every situation yourself by yourself.
[00:53:37] Kaykay: And for Dawn, that shows the most growth.
[00:53:40] Brooke: Totally.
[00:53:41] Kaykay: Given what Dawn is struggling with, right? With this parentifiedness. That shows the most growth that she can step back and let someone else step forward.
[00:53:50] Brooke: And growth in her mom. Her mom here is very much playing that role of like advisor and supporter, and helping her get that context, and putting things into perspective and reassuring her and boosting her. Like, doing exactly what you would want a mom to do.
They're in a role of mother/daughter here, and the mom is playing the role of the mother and the daughter is playing the role of the daughter, and we don't see that happen all the time. That's how they come to a resolution in this. And that's why I just kind of felt like throughout, and I knew it wasn't the case, but if I didn't know this wasn't the case, I would have suspected this was Ann M's last book.
Maybe there was a possibility that it would be, which is why it reads that way.
[00:54:36] Kaykay: True. Who knows what her plan was and what her knowledge was of what her next steps were.
[00:54:40] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:54:40] Kaykay: But you're so right. There's so much summary. There's so much reflection on growth, on movement, you know, where the characters were, where they are now. And that is very indicative of an end or a change.
[00:54:54] Brooke: And I think that's one of the reasons why we maybe see the men and boys, you know, potential romantic figures in this book being cast in not a great light. Because it's like, it's not about them, when it comes down to it. This is about the girls and their ability to shine and what they're learning and taking away from this.
Dawn kicks this off by sort of starting with a recap of all of the times that she's gone through like excitement and trauma. Again, uses the word "trauma," because this would be incredibly traumatic. And she talks about different experiences that she's had in the past. It says that this adventure was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to her so far. She's only 13, and so it will happen again.
And it's funny too, that you talk about how there's this like reporter shade that you see, and how at the end she interviews her friends with the tape recorder. She says in this intro too, "We were back safe and sound in good old Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I interviewed my friends. That was fun. Maybe I'll be a reporter someday. I haven't thought of a better career."
So maybe this sort of reporter shade is kind of like, okay, we're seeing un-empathetic treatment of people in crisis, and Dawn, the way that she's getting quotes directly from people when they are in a position and they trust her to give that information, showing like, here is an alternate way to get information. Sort of like empathetic reporting. I haven't really thought about that much, but based on the conversation that we've had, there may be something to that.
[00:56:36] Kaykay: I think also now that you're talking about it, it speaks to what you were saying before. It feels a little older, the voices feel a little bit older. And I think part of it is, um, I mean, I'm not going to say cynical, but maybe like an understanding that people have different agendas and motives, and they may not align with your values and your agendas and motives.
This is the most explicit book we get in any of the books of, "these are our values and here are some other values, and like they don't align with ours." Because the whole book is basically taking care of each other, coming together, understanding, subverting your own needs and wants at any given moment for the good of the group.
And then on the other side, the sort of cynical, maybe like self-aggrandizing, self-obsessed-
[00:57:24] Brooke: "How can we exploit this for our own benefit?"
[00:57:26] Kaykay: Exploitative. Exactly, "exploitative" is a perfect word. So in that way, it is a much more adult voice, because that does happen as you get older, right? You have to start understanding that not everybody in the world is going to hold your values. And you need to figure out, how do you find peace? How do you find strength? How do you move forward, holding your own values in the face of this?
You know, you said before that they shine. Well, they all shine in community, right? The lessons they're learning, they're all learning it through community with each other, through interaction with each other, which we know that that's how people learn, that's how people grow, right? So the book again is so brilliant and very unlike a lot of other books of its type of its time period, where it's really shining a light on the way that we become who we become in relation to other people.
[00:58:22] Brooke: Yeah. And you see that really spelled out with Dawn's conversation with her mom, I think.
[00:58:27] Kaykay: Exactly.
[00:58:27] Brooke: How it's actually Dawn taking a step back and frankly being like, "I'll take care of Jamie" allowed Claudia to, like, would Claudia have ever come to that realization about herself were it not for sort of, she had to rise to the occasion. Like, a survival depended on it. Everybody's survival depended on everybody bringing their best selves to the forefront.
And so she was able to find like, whoa, my creativity is why we're all still here. And so yeah, maybe I won't pass all of my math tests. However, look at all of these lives that I saved. Which one really matters in the end? She a tremendous strength that isn't being recognized, and she knows it now.
[00:59:13] Kaykay: And it also speaks to the way that the sort of rigidity of her system, of her home system, and the identity and the labels that everybody's holding in, it kind of keeps everybody stuck, right? Keeps everybody trapped. That's how systems work is like they work like a machine. And if any one piece of the machine changes, the whole machine has to change.
So in other words, because Dawn doesn't step forward to parentify, Claudia gets to step forward. So Dawn changes the entire system, the entire machine, by just changing how she would typically respond to something different. And that's like a cool representation of that.
[00:59:49] Brooke: Yeah.
[00:59:49] Kaykay: The other thing that I was thinking of is I love this idea that this does feel like a love letter and a goodbye. There's also separation, right? And stress about the separation. It's really interesting to me, as we're talking about it, that you have Mary Anne and Kristy, who kind of always felt more to me like the heart of the series, like the beginning of the series and maybe the characters that truly resonate with the author more in the beginning.
And then you have sort of like maybe the newer characters. And they get separated and there's some sort of stress and trauma about like what's going to happen to them. And in the end, good things happen to them, right? So it's kind of, in some ways it seems like it could be the author kind of working out this fear of an impending separation. What's going to happen to her babies, you know, that she's created?
And in fact, they're going to be great. And in fact, the challenge is a fantastic growth opportunity, which is so true and so brilliantly done and is a real parenting experience. Being afraid of like letting your kids take risks and fail. And, and then ultimately seeing that you've got to let them go, you've got to let them try because that's how they become who they are, right? They don't become who they are by you keeping them sheltered in Stoneybrook, safe, right? They become who they are through adversity and challenge. So yeah, it's like a really cool metaphor.
[01:01:11] Brooke: Yeah. Gosh, I didn't even think about the fact that Ann M probably felt like I'm going to be out on this island now, you know, and is working through that and like, but it's still going to be okay. It'll be okay.
What did you have for most nineties moments?
[01:01:27] Kaykay: Emergency calls and Gilligan's Island, both of which I think I've had before.
[01:01:31] Brooke: I don't know if we've had an emergency call before, where it's like the time before call waiting and an operator literally breaking into a call. So Kristy's on the phone with Bart and the operator breaks in to the call. So like a, another human being it's like, "You have an emergency call from Jessi Ramsey." So it's like, you could call the operator and they're like, "Well, that line's busy." And it's like, "You have to break in." It's kind of wild to think about now.
[01:01:59] Kaykay: Dang. It's totally wild.
[01:02:01] Brooke: Yeah. I had some smaller things. So Dawn calls Jeff a dweeb, but like in an affectionate way, right. That felt very nineties. I don't know that I've heard the word "dweeb" in a couple of decades.
[01:02:15] Kaykay: That's straight truth. I've not heard "dweeb" in a while.
[01:02:18] Brooke: And then I also had, as Dawn was preparing for the race, she talks about how she's going to bulk up on some pasta. And that was a thing in the nineties before any sort of athletic competition, I remember this.
[01:02:33] Kaykay: You were gonna carbo load.
[01:02:35] Brooke: When I was playing basketball in junior high, it was always like, "Eat a lot of spaghetti." It was like specifically "eat pasta." Pasta makes you run faster in the nineties. That was the theme.
[01:02:48] Kaykay: Well, you know, and it's magical because it's low fat.
[01:02:51] Brooke: Oh, yeah, exactly.
[01:02:52] Kaykay: That was nineties logic for you.
[01:02:54] Brooke: Yeah, that was Susan Powter "Stop the Insanity"-
[01:02:57] Kaykay: "Stop the Insanity!"
[01:02:58] Brooke: Logic. Jesus Christ.
[01:02:59] Kaykay: Dude, diet culture. So riotously loud, diet culture.
[01:03:04] Brooke: I literally, I don't know if you saw, like when I said "Stop the Insanity, Susan Powter," it's just like, everything shut down for a minute. It was just like, "Too far. We weren't ready to process that today."
[01:03:14] Kaykay: I had like a little burst of heartburn in my stomach.
[01:03:19] Brooke: Stop the insanity, get Susan Powter off my fucking TV spouting nonsense. And then the exercise that Dawn is doing to warm up.
[01:03:30] Kaykay: Oh, right! This is such a good one.
[01:03:33] Brooke: It's like Jazzercise, but like-
[01:03:36] Kaykay: It was totally Sweating to the Oldies.
[01:03:38] Brooke: It was, but it was even like more super dorky than that, because she's running in place to "Give My Regards to Broadway."
[01:03:49] Kaykay: Yes, I was just looking for what song it was.
[01:04:00] Brooke: Can you imagine putting that on like your workout playlist? "Give My Regards to Broadway," and you're just running in place in your living room?
[01:04:08] Kaykay: I mean, only if you're a gay man, that's the only pass. The only person that gets a pass is a gay man.
[01:04:13] Brooke: It felt very little easy to me as I was reading that I was like, this is Gray Gardens. This is Little Edie's workout tape.
[01:04:21] Kaykay: I'm sure the Bouviers had boats.
[01:04:23] Brooke: Oh, for sure.
[01:04:24] Kaykay: I'm sure they were sailing. You kidding me?
[01:04:25] Brooke: For sure.
[01:04:26] Kaykay: They're probably crashing boats all over the fucking place.
[01:04:27] Brooke: Definitely had holes in it. There were all kinds of animals living in it, you know, but they had boats.
[01:04:33] Kaykay: Captained by raccoons.
[01:04:35] Brooke: Yeah!
[01:04:35] Kaykay: The raccoons had the captain's license.
[01:04:41] Brooke: Oh, gosh...
[01:04:42] Kaykay: I mean shit, there was so much nineties magic in here.
[01:04:45] Brooke: Yeah. The little glimmers of things that you pick up, where you're just like, "Wait a minute." Like, "Oh, that feels unexpected." You know, just the little things that are sort of like taken for granted that now you're like, "Huh, we didn't think that was weird at the time. Okay." That's a nineties moment, you know?
[01:05:03] Kaykay: Yeah. And also just like, there is something around Dawn's obsession with like what she's eating, how much she's working out in anticipation of this athletic event that feels like that was coming up in the culture.
[01:05:16] Brooke: Definitely another nineties thing I think that we see, and I say that it's nineties in that it's the first time that we see it in this book. I haven't seen it take place in any of the other books and we're in 1990, so I'm going to hope that this is a trend that we see carried throughout the nineties books in this series, is somebody finally interjects and is like, "What the hell are the adults doing giving you all this responsibility?"
And that's Aunt Cecilia, who Jessi is not a fan of, but I am a huge fan of Aunt Cecilia. Aunt Cecilia saying what we're all thinking, which is, "Jessi's parents, what the fuck are you doing leaving an 11 year old to care for your entire family and your entire household while you go away for the weekend? Absolutely not. I'm coming in." And like, Jessi's like, "All I can do is go be with my friends!" And it's like, that is correct. That is all that you should do. Good. Good. Let's keep this train running.
[01:06:15] Kaykay: Welcome to childhood.
[01:06:16] Brooke: And the next book is all about that wonderful woman, as Aunt Cecelia stays with Jessi's family for the next book, and Jessi is not happy about it. So we're going to see how that plays out with the next book, which is Jessi's Baby-sitter. And by "baby-sitter," that is her Aunt Cecelia.
[01:06:37] Kaykay: Interesting!
[01:06:38] Brooke: The babysitters are going to be babysat. And we get to see that power dynamic play out in our next book.
[01:06:44] Kaykay: Okay, this is what happens. I haven't read it yet, but this is what happens when someone tries to come in and change the system.
[01:06:50] Brooke: Oh yeah.
[01:06:51] Kaykay: You're gonna get a lot of protesting.
[01:06:53] Brooke: I think we're going to get a lot of protesting. We already saw that protesting happening. Jessi indicates at the end of this book that she is absolutely not happy about things. She says, "If Aunt Cecelia stays a second longer, I am going to scream. Why hasn't she gone home yet? You and Claud must know how much I worried about you. But one thing I learned about this weekend is that adults in my family don't trust me as much as I thought they did."
And it's like, no. Someone in your family is simply saying, "Enough is enough with the responsibility. Let this child be a child." And so we get to see how that plays out in our next episode. I'll be very interested in your take on this from a, from a therapist perspective.
[01:07:32] Kaykay: Oh, this is gonna be so family systems oriented, because even just what you've said, so when you've been parentified, you get kind of insulted if you don't get parentified. It becomes like offensive to you as you've gotten the message that this is what's required of you.
[01:07:47] Brooke: Yep.
[01:07:48] Kaykay: Anyway, I'm fascinated. I did not see an Aunt Cecelia book coming. I am here for it.
[01:07:53] Brooke: Well, I'm looking forward to discussing the outcome of that with you next time Kaykay. But until then...
[01:08:02] Kaykay: Just keep sittin'! [theme] Boop boopie do!