Book #26, Netflix S2 E7
Original Book - Writer: Ann M.Martin
Netflix Series - Director: Robert Luketic, Writer: Sascha Rothchild
Basic plot
When Mimi dies, Claudia finds it difficult to cope with her grief. With help from friends she starts being able to process and move on.
Things that are kept the same
- Claudia and Mimi have special tea together.
- In their last conversation Mimi tells Claudia she says "don't want to confuse the muses" as Claudia is working on some art and "Good-bye, my Claudia".
- Claudia gets up to find her parents quietly talking and they appear to have been crying, they tell her Mimi died during the night.
- Claudia finds it hard to believe as she was just talking to her before that, her parents start making funeral arrangements.
- Claudia feels very numb and finds it hard to cry, she wants to pretend everything is normal including holding BSC meetings.
- Mary Anne who was close to Mimi is upset by the news as well.
- Claudia and BSC share stories about Mimi, such as a birthday family dinner ending up being pizza at dodgy place instead of Japanese restaurant and Mimi being an ambulance chaser only to discover it was going to a family member.
- Stacey's parents are not getting along so well at the moment.
- Claudia is upset when she finds Janine going through Mimi's jewellery box and confronts her about it.
- Mimi it seems had marked a lot of her things for people to have as she must have known her time was coming.
- Claudia reaches out to family and they start to move on with their grief more.
Things from other books
- Nothing stood out as from other books.
Things that are changed
- As the book is longer the show obviously had to focus more on some parts. In the book there are several chapters where Mimi's health declines she is in and out of hospital before she actually dies.
- There is also a side plot in the book where Claudia and Mary Anne are hosting an art class for some babysitting charges. One of them Corrie is constantly being picked up late and ignored by parents.Her and Claudia bond, and eventually Claudia confronts the mother and things appear to improve.
- On her last night Mimi calls Claudia from the hospital, she is supposed to come home the next day but dies at the hospital (rather than at home in the show).
- The show has more traditional Japanese funeral customs such as no visitors until after the funeral, in the book immediately people start coming over with food.
- Because no visitors are allowed, Claudia goes to stay with Stacey because she doesn't want to stay in the house without Mimi.
- Stacey is living in New York at this stage in the books but her and her mother come for the funeral.
- Kristy hosts the BSC meeting at her house in the show, Karen upsets Claudia by saying the ghost of Mimi visited her and is going to marry the ghost of her great-grandfather Ben Brewer.
- In the show while staying with Mary Anne, Claudia opens up about her grief and Mary Anne talks about her Mom dying and her Dad's grief.
- In the book Janine is going through jewellery box herself in the show Ashley Wyeth is with her and after the confrontation she tells Claudia Ashley is her girlfriend. In the books Janine was depicted as straight.
- In the book Claudia and BSC tell stories about Mimi at pizza party and it is midway trough the book so Claudia still has feelings to deal with. In the show it's more concluding part, she makes special tea for everyone and invites her parents, Janine and Ashley.
- In the book towards the end Claudia talks to her family about feeling mad at Mimi for "giving up" and at herself for making Mimi feel like a bother at times. She makes a collage about Mimi which they hang in her old room.
Final Thoughts
This was one of the best BSC books (and the saddest) and the show did a really good job adapting it, including some direct quotes from the book. I feel Claudia has had some of the strongest episodes in this show, Mimi's death was very heartbreaking, and I thought the actress did a good job with it. I thought it was nice that Mimi was teaching Claudia to make special tea at the start. I did think Karen's story of ghost Mimi visiting her was a bit much,and very inappropriate, not that it would be out of character for her necessarily, but its odd that no-one tried more to stop her talking. It is also one of the things that also highlights how difficult another season would be, they already aged Karen up to 8 as mentioned in this episode. For the book I really liked the longer process Claudia took, like seeming fine and telling Mimi stories but then backsliding, the show had to compress that but I think they were both really good at showing young girl coping with death.