Litchfield Meets Stoneybrook: ‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ & ‘Orange Is The New Black’ Together At Last
After plowing through the entire season of Orange Is The New Black in two days, I realized I haven’t felt such rabid devotion to a group of females in some time. In fact, I’d have to go nearly a decade back, to middle school, to find an equal comparison: The Baby-Sitter’s Club. Sure, one series is about a group of women serving time in a federal prison, while the other is about a group of girls balancing baby-sitting with school and boys, but there’s still the same underlying message: bitches get stuff done. Oh, and friendship.
The similarities extend to the characters as well, so here are Litchfield’s prisoners Stoneybrook doppelgangers. Ann M. Martin, please consider the crossover potential.
Piper / Mary Anne Spier
Piper is dropped into jail wide-eyed and shy, but eventually evolves into a hardened, I’ll-cut-a-bitch prisoner. Mary Anne Spier, the BSC secretary, undergoes a similar transformation, as she starts off as a cardigan-wearing, goodie two-shoes who eventually gets a Winona pixie cut and a slap on the wrist for bringing her boyfriend to baby-sitting gigs. Despite their changes, both Piper and Mary Anne are still guilty of possessing cringe-worthy naivete at times. Not to mention that their storylines are usually the ones we tend to skip over. (C’mon, like you actually read Mary Anne and the Search For Tigger.)
Red / Kristy Thomas
There’s no denying that Red and Kristy Thomas will go into the pantheon of Formidable Women, along with Lysistrata and Leslie Knope. Both of them know the only way to get things done is to take things into their own hands, whether it’s smuggling in electric toothbrushes and zit cream or starting a baby-sitting monopoly. Of course, their ambition sometimes backfires, as seen by the firing of Pornstache and the Fall into Fall Festival Block Party. But through their ups and downs, they always have the loyalty of their prison family/BSC members. Let’s just hope Kristy avoids the Russian mob once she’s out of college.
Taystee / Claudia Kishi
The moment Taystee takes a clump of Piper’s blonde hair for a makeshift weave, I knew the BSC’s resident sartorial badass, Claudia Kishi, would approve. Aside from their innovative style, they both go great lengths for their sweet tooth. Claudia has to hide her candy from her strict parents in sock drawers and boots, while Taystee brawls with inmates over King Cones and trades inside information for sweets. Their laid back personalities often hide their insecurity over their lack of book smarts, but their innate intelligence and creativity always shines through. I mean, have you seen their spelling choices?
Nicky / Stacey McGill
Stacey mostly represents Nicky pre-prison: preppy Upper East Sider with a doorman and a love of big hair. If it wasn’t for the BSC, Stacey could’ve easily slipped into a Nicky-esque life of crime and teenage debauchery, as seen in the most scandalous book of the series, Stacey and the Bad Girls. But even behind bars, Nicky has a take-no-s**t attitude that echos Stacey’s city sophistication. They both always have their share of love interests, though Nicky prefers the ladies and Stacey likes dreamy boys with names Toby and Ethan. Still, you can bet they probably partied at the same Lower East Side dives in their early twenties.
Yoga Jones / Dawn Schafer
Yoga Jones is the zen earth mother Dawn never had. You know the moment Dawn moved back to California, she started growing her own ganja and rocking dreadlocks. Anyone who read the “mature” BSC spin-off, The California Diaries, saw that Dawn ran with a different crowd from the apple-faced tweens in Stoneybrook. Yoga Jones and Dawn would have definitely crossed paths at their local farmer’s market or a serendipitous beach-side drum circle. The former’s jailbird status would be a cautionary tale of what happens when the hippie lifestyle take a wrong turn down the patchouli patch.
Daya / Mallory Pike
When you come from a big family, as both Daya and Mallory can attest to, you have to fight for attention. Whether you accomplish that by sleeping with your mom’s drug dealing boyfriend or going to boarding school, it will always be tough for the oldest child. Both also rely on quiet hobbies to escape from the chaos, as seen by Daya’s fascination with manga and Mallory’s obsession with writing mind-numbingly boring stories about horses and field mice. Only time will tell if Mallory’s need for attention will blossom into an illicit affair and subsequent pregnancy with her prison guard, but you never know.
Janae / Jessi Ramsey
Janae and Jessi are both initially defined by their talent in their respective fields: track and ballet. Whether Jessi will crack under the pressure of being the best and later rob a bodega remains to be seen. But the two wunderkinds could definitely bond over wanting to be treated like a normal girl rather than some prized horse on a pedestal. Neither take to overbearing authority well, whether it’s in the form of a neat freak roommate or an overbearing aunt who insists on slathering Vaseline on their hair. Let’s just hope Jessi is better at controlling her angry tendencies. You know how hard it would be to pirouette in SHU.
Alex / Cokie Mason
If Piper is Mary Anne, that would make insufferable Larry’s counterpart Logan Bruno. But who would play the part of Piper’s sexy ex-girlfriend and fellow inmate, Alex? We’d have to turn to Stoneybrook’s favorite villain, Cokie Mason. Though Cokie has always been one to bully Mary Anne around, could there by a hint of sexual tension beneath all those bitchy remarks? We’ll leave that up to fanfiction writers, but in the mean time, if there was anyone who could corrupt Mary Anne, it would be Cokie. Sadly, we’ll have to wait for Ann M. Martin to write BSC: The College Years to see whether Mary Anne ever has an experimental phase.
Orange Is The New Black Images via Netflix, BSC images via The Baby-Sitter’s Club Wiki
