Claudia and the Missing Jewels (TV#6)

What happens:

At a craft fair, Claudia's jewelry gets "discovered" by a local shop owner, who commissions some earrings. Kristy helps her with the sales side of things, and is a very enthusiastic supporter. But following a sitting job for Karen Brewer, the earrings go missing. Claudia's stressed, because if the earrings aren't ready in time, she'll have to refund the $50 deposit, which she already generously volunteered for a club activity. Kristy is convinced the thief is Julie, the Brewer-Thomas housekeeper Kristy doesn't like. But soon there's more to go on than just ill will: the BSC spies her wearing a pair of Claudia's earrings! This lead to an awkward confrontation when Kristy accuses Julie of stealing. But Karen had given Julie the earrings as a birthday present.

So then Kristy goes to confront Karen, who first says she was going to give the earrings back, then that they were a present, then that they came from her "treasure tree." The rest of the BSC surmises that Karen came up with the stunt as a way to get Kristy's attention. When Kristy gives Karen the attention she's demanding she deserves, Karen shows her a hollow in a tree where she's been stashing things that aren't hers. Kristy apologizes for ignoring Karen, and gets the treasures back where they belong, which include the rest of the earrings Claudia made. Realizing that Julie had also been ignored, the BSC throws Julie a small surprise birthday party, complete with a pair of earrings that Claudia made, legitimately hers this time. The episode ends on the party, so we don't get to see Claudia sell her wares, and this ends up more of a Kristy episode.


Things I noticed:

Again, the actress playing Claudia is really good with kids. Come babysit my kids, Jeni F. Winslow!

There's a small armchair in Kristy's room. In the books, several of the girls have armchairs in their rooms.

The scenes with the club spying on Julie are pretty funny. They're all wearing giant, conspicuous sunglasses and hiding poorly. At one point, Jessi gets distracted by buying some gum from a candy machine, very much like an eleven-year-old.

Karen seems to be visiting for longer than just a weekend. This episode was filmed before she and Andrew started staying every other month. It's not summer, as Kristy's doing homework in a scene.

The scene with Kristy accusing Julie of stealing...the BSC sees someone in possession of a stolen item, and they're wrong for bringing that up? It's not like it's that far a leap of logic to assume that she'd taken them. Of course the diplomatic thing to do would be to exclaim, "Oh, you found them! Thank you so much!" but these are teenagers.

Also...Karen feels ignored because Kristy wanted some quiet when she was working on a book report, and then some space to hang out with Claudia (the later scene when Karen wanted to show Kristy something and Kristy rudely brushed her off is different). Karen's response is to steal stuff, hide it, give it away under the guise of being nice, and Kristy's the one at fault?


Special guest stars: Ashley Chase as Karen (who does a great job as the over-excited kid),Gina Gallagher as Charlotte Johannsen, Danny Tamberelli as Jackie Rodowsky, and Missy Yager as Julie