Review: Jessi and the Mystery of the Stolen Secrets (BSC TV Series Episode 9)



We had to wait until episode nine for Jessi to get top billing, but it's worth the wait considering that Nicole Leach proves herself to be one of the more talented actors on the series. She was also one of the more experienced actors on the show, having previously appeared on several episodes of The Cosby Show and was a regular on a television series titled Shining Time Station. Much like Meghan Andrews who played Mallory, Nicole Leach is still a working actor. 

Within the Babysitters Club universe Jessi stories often featured a variety of social justice issues--the first novel to be narrated by Jessi had her learning sign language so that she could communicate with a character from the series who was deaf. In later books she would help a kid with a life threatening illness, apologise to a teacher who was being bullied and help a friend who was suffering from Anorexia Nervosa. Jessi was always portrayed as being fairly mature for her age, though it was obvious from her debut in the series that had to be that way. When she first moved to Stoneybrook she and her family encountered their fair share of prejudice as they were the only black family in town. She was also a talented ballerina, but feared that same prejudice may stop her from being cast in lead roles, as she explains to Mallory in Hello, Mallory. Of course, there is a bit of artistic licence at play with her character--in real life, even a very advanced eleven year old would not be able to have quite as many responsibilities and the same insight into people as Jessi did. Within the confines of a series that has strong messages about responsibility however, a character like Jessi is a perfect fit.

Anyway, Jessi and the Mystery of the Stolen Secrets touches on themes of responsibility. For once, Jackie Rodowski isn't the main sitting charge--that honour goes to Matt Broderick a boy of about eight or nine, who is deaf and one of Jessi's regular sitting charges. In this episode some top secret information about the Babysitters Club goes public, which leads to the girls jumping to conclusions before the truth is revealed--and both sides learn an important life lesson. 

I couldn't help but notice in this one that some of the kids looked a bit older, and wonder if there had been a break in filming between episodes. Sadly some of the actors, particularly the ones who played Claudia and Mary Anne, are beginning to look too old for the parts they played. I was also amused in one scene to discover that Claudia had a Goosebumps book in her bedroom, beside her Nancy Drew books. (Goosebumps being, of course, the other major series that was published by Scholastic during that era. Goosebumps would also get its own TV series a few years later.) Later in the library, Jessi and Mallory walk past a shelf filled with what looks like Babysitters Club books. (But they may have been other Scholastic titles I suppose ...)

Anyway, this was a fun though slightly predictable instalment in the series. The only part I really remember is where the girls thought that their headquarters may have been bugged ... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more