So Why Did Netflix Cancel The Baby-Sitters Club?

On March 14th, I opened Instagram. The same as any other day. This day, however, was different. As I clicked through my friends’ stories, I stopped when I saw one repost in particular. I read the caption on Shay Rudolph’s post. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but the later posts by Momona Tamada and Malia Baker confirmed my fears. The Baby-Sitters Club was canceled.

In my very qualified opinion, The Baby-Sitters Club was one of the best book-to-screen adaptations out there. While some plot points were changed, the integrity of the show remained and the changes were always made in favor of creating more diverse plot liness featuring strong characters. The BSC did an amazing job creating an updated version of a classic story without losing any charm. Making the characters more diverse, relatable, and having them be such inspiring activists truly made the show appeal to the next generation. Updated plot points found in episodes like “Mary Anne Saves the Day,” in which Mary Anne babysits for Bailey Delvecchio, a young trans girl, and stands up for her when doctors misgender her, exemplifies the importance of using media to educate young people. The television adaptation of The BSC turned an already powerful story into a show that was able to educate and inspire a new generation of viewers.

What bothered me the most (besides the fact that The BSC was one of my favorite shows and I was devastated to see it end) was the fact that I can’t think of a single show genre like that of The BSC.

As I looked more into the audience of The Baby-Sitters Club, I was surprised to learn that while it was incredibly well reviewed, viewership was limited. According to Deadline.com, both seasons of the show received scores of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it only lasted one week on Netflix’s top ten. While the reasons for this areit is unclear the reasons for this, (though it could be due to the brevity of the seasons, as (season one had ten episodes and season two had only eight), it seems that the audience was a contributing factor to the show’s cancellation.

But The BSC’s audience is part of what made the show so special. It is one of the only shows I can think of that is centered on middle school girls without making them seem too young or too old. The actors were not adults pretending to be teenagers; they were real teenage girls. According to New York Magazine’s Vulture, “so few series fill its specific niche: stories about preteen girls that don’t oversexualize or infantilize them… The Baby-Sitters Club was the rare TV series not about how the world sees girlhood but rather how girls see themselves.” I can personally attest to the challenge of finding shows that accurately portray middle schoolers. When I was in middle school, and even now, it was really hard for my family to decide on shows to watch. Since I have a younger sister and my family tends to watch shows together, finding a balance between shows that aren’t too mature or immature can be really difficult. The BSC was a great solution because it bridged everyone’s interests and featured characters that were all relatable.

Furthermore, The BSC was empowering. Who didn’t read or watch The Baby-Sitters Club as a preteen and try to start their own babysitting club? Even though the idea didn’t work out so well for most of us, the impact of The BSC was lasting. Fellow fan of the show and Needham High Student Lily Katz said, “I think that Netflix has a tendency to cancel shows that have strong, complex, young female leads that are nuanced and have multiple passions and are intelligent. Shows like Anne With an E, Julie and the Phantoms, and I Am Not Okay With This have all been canceled recently. I think that’s really bad because even for me, growing up pretty recently, I didn’t feel like we had characters that weren't shown as completely against or fitting the stereotype, but as real people. And there’s something so, so powerful about that, especially with something like The Baby-Sitters Club, where they’re starting a business together? That’s insane and it was just the most empowering thing for me to watch as a thirteen year old, so I can’t imagine how powerful that is for young kids, so it’s really disappointing to see Netflix decide that that’s not enough, because it certainly is.”

Lily is exactly right. Like her, I do not remember seeing such vivid girls like me in tv shows growing up. The Baby-Sitters Club showed a cast of characters that were not perfect. ; iInstead they were realistic and incredibly relatable. In many books or shows with multiple girl main characters, I find myself drawn to the one character that I most identify with. Oftentimes, characters are put into specific boxes and young viewers can feel pressured to be just like one specific character, just like I did.. In The Baby-Sitters Club, however, viewers can identify with every character, and while we’re all bound to have our favorites, we can see pieces of ourselves in each of the diverse characters.

I understand that there are many reasons why shows get canceled. Some reasons we may never understand and there are factors beyond the audience’s control. However, the cancellation of The BSC has an impact on all of the young girls who will never get to see the continuation of this series. I only hope that watching the show will lead more girls to read the books and continue to be inspired, as I was, by Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, Mary-Anne, Dawn, Mallory, and Jessie.