A few months ago, I wrote about the first Nancy Drew centered episode of the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys show from the 1970s. For the first season of the show, the episodes switched off each week between the two mystery solvers — with one week featuring The Hardy Boys and the next week featuring Nancy Drew.
Then last week I wrote about the first episode of the series, which featured The Hardy Boys.
This week I will be focusing on the episode, The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle.
In season one, Nancy Drew is portrayed by Pamela Sue Martin (not to be confused with the chestier Pamela Anderson). Part way through season two she left the show because she felt that Nancy Drew was receiving less and less screen time and was replaced by Janet Louise Johnson.
For now, though, we will be discussing episodes where Pamela was portraying Nancy.
We start the episode with Nancy and George flying over scenery in a small plane and George about to throw up from air sickness. She tells Nancy that she was conned into coming up into the plan and Nancy admits she tricked her friend because she needed a witness in the plane in order for her to get her Diamond Triangle Certification (whatever that is).
All I want to know is why Nancy doesn’t have a certified trainer with her as the witness, but…okay…details schmetails. Let’s just go with it.
It also feels a little mean for her to do this to George.
“Yeah, you get a diamond triangle, and I get a nervous breakdown,” George says.
Sounds like most of her adventures with Nancy. If I was her, I’d get a new friend. Nancy is pretty bossy and likes to tell people what to do in the show. I think she likes having George be her little lacky and witness all her exploits.
George is quite whiny in this first season. She’s a mix of Bess and George from the books since there is no Bess in the show. In the books Bess is afraid of everything, and George is more adventurous like Nancy.
While they are in the air, a storm breaks out and Nancy has to find a way to get out in front of it. This takes her off course and while George is worried about them being caught in a storm, Nancy is more upset that she won’t get her Diamond Triangle Award.
While going off course, Nancy notices a car on a dirt road below them swerving around and then crashing. She has her friend Ned Nickerson, who was following them in a truck on the road, call the police for them. This gets Ned in trouble later when the police chief shows up and accuses Ned of filing a false police report. The chief says there was no accident because the road they are talking about has been barricaded for three years when the bridge was washed out.
(Ned Nickerson was Nancy’s boyfriend in the books, by the way. In the show he’s her attorney dad’s lacky and her want-to-be boyfriend.)
The bizarre thing is that Nancy’s dad, attorney Carson Drew, tells Ned he will have to go with the police for questioning, even though Nancy saw the accident and told Ned to call. The chief is all like, “Yep. Let’s go.”
Really? In this day and age, people don’t get arrested for actual crimes or if they do, they are released again but this kid is getting called in for something Nancy actually did?
She’s a serious troublemaker.
Nancy isn’t pleased that the chief has doubted her and tells George they are going out to investigate what happened on their own.
Here is another example where I really don’t like Nancy from the show. When they get to the site of the bridge that is out, she snarks at George, “Don’t worry George, you won’t have to close your eyes this time. We’re on the ground now.”
Hello? Snotty much? Your friend is always risking her life for you, and you repay her by talking down to her? Like I said above, George really needs a new friend.
I suppose the makers of the show were trying to make her tough and bold and that’s all fine and good but why do women on TV have to be snotty to show they are bold and tough?
I think the makers of the show could have made Nancy be strong and brave without making her overbearing and rude. Her outfits are cute at least.
Nancy’s investigation leads her to call the local antique car club to ask them if they know anyone who owns an antique car like the one that went off the road. They only know of two people so Nancy heads to the first name, a young man named Morgan Poole.
Morgan says his car is in the storage barn and is always parked there.
Nancy asks to see it. Of course,it isn’t there so Nancy says Morgan better get a lawyer, which her dad luckily is.
What does he need a lawyer for? I have no idea…it’s not a crime for a car to crash, but it is a crime for the car to be stolen so Morgan should have been calling the police.
He needs a lawyer, it turns out, because his insurance company says they aren’t going to pay for the car since Morgan didn’t prove he fixed up the car before it was stolen.
How did Nancy know this would happen? Who even knows, but luckily Daddy Drew was there to help.
Carson Drew tries to argue with the insurance guy that Morgan should get his money back for the stolen car and it should be paid for because Morgan upgraded the car. The insurance man says, “Nope…he never brought me in the proof of the appraisal that the car had been improved.”
The insurance guy says he might pay out but only if Morgan can prove he improved the car and that will require receipts. Morgan traded other car collectors for the part and doesn’t have receipts, which makes the insurance guy pull Mr. Drew over for a somber “side bar” during which he suggests that the young man may be trying to commit insurance fraud.
Dun-dun-dun-dun!
The car is found later that day, and it requires about 50 police officers and a few photographers to retrieve it because it has been set on fire and pushed into a ravine. There was no one inside so I’m not sure why there were so many police on scene. The budget for those extras was most likely why they didn’t have a budget for actual writers.
Carson, Nancy, George and Ned all go to look at the car in the ravine and Ned declares this means the misdemeanor charge of “crank calls” against him can be dropped. I’m sorry??? This moron chief charged the kid with crank calls when Nancy said she saw it? Guy sounds like a real Barney Fife.
But now, with the appearance of the car, Carson Drew says poor Morgan clearly committed insurance fraud by getting a higher binder on the car when he called to say it had been upgraded and then burning the car. Nancy refuses to believe Morgan would do that because he loved the car and worked so hard to refurbish it.
She grabs a rope and begins to climb into the pit where the car is while the chief and her father look on, and don’t even try to stop her. Yeah…okay…believable.
During this we hear an awkward football metaphor from Nacy that ends with an awkward come on line from Ned that Nancy can play in his backfield anytime.
WHAT? Just….no.
Anyhow, the police actually arrest this kid for felony insurance fraud. Like put him in actual jail.
Let me pause for a well drawn out facepalm.
Nancy still wants to help Morgan, so she visits him in jail like she owns the place and tells him she wants to help him. He doesn’t want her help because he knows he’s been framed but no one will believe him.
“Well, I’m going to find out anyhow,” Nancy declares. “I don’t like being made a fool of!”
And off she marches to find out what really happens.
She is in another stunner of an outfit with a shiny pink shirt and a really cute skirt in this scene, incidentally. No sarcasm on my part here. Her outfits are very nice.
Ned and Nancy take off in a plane again with Ned not wearing his glasses for some reason and Nancy pointing that out. She bosses him and scolds him in the same way she does George. “Keep it steady! Use the controls. Take some speed off! Go down! Lift up! I said keep it steady, Ned!”
She gets a bit of a taste of her own medicine when she starts to feel sick to her stomach from Ned’s flying.
She sees a man below her in the bushes and tells Ned.
“Where?” he asks.
“Never mind. Just keep your bearing!” she snaps.
Then we switch to some bad looking men reporting to each other that there is a plane flying low over them.
Back to Nancy and Ned and they are flying too low, about to crash. More yelling from Nancy who is a few seconds short of calling him a “blithering idiot” and then she takes over and has to land the plane in a nearby field.
Uht-oh…this means the bad guys have seen them, but, luckily, they end up leaving them alone because Ned and Nancy are “just a bunch of kids.”
Later Nancy wants to explore more but Ned puts his foot down and says, “Nancy, you can’t go out there alone and if you want my help you will need to do it on my terms!”
This pisses off the feminist Nancy and she tells she and George should go out there alone and find out what the real story is.
Oh my gosh…my husband had a huge crush on this actress, but she is really not a good actress. She’s always yelling or snapping but she barely has any inflection in her tone.
So, George and Nancy go snooping and find out that cars are being stolen and smuggled across the broken bridge to a warehouse. Also, while snooping they are walking through the woods and there are weird bird sounds that George says are from an an owl. Um..no. Those bird sounds are from an Amazon rainforest, which neither of these girls are in.
They discover a ‘villain lair’ but really don’t know if they are villains or what they are doing. They try to sneak off, but the men hear them walking away and go to look for them.
Back in Carson’s office, he’s got Morgan out on bail and is telling Morgan he thinks he’s guilty of the crime and the little snot better fess up. During all this I keep wondering where in the world are Morgan’s parents or family? Do they not care about their family member possibly going to jail for a crime he didn’t commit?
A member of the police department is brought into the meeting with lawyer and client and all three begin to brainstorm what might really be going on. They decide it might be a car stealing racket where someone is stealing the cars buyers are looking for, giving them a new paint job, and then passing them on to the buyers. Huh. Odd they didn’t think of this before but instead decided to rush forward to attempt to prosecute a teenager for a felony.
Anyhow, now we are back to Nancy and George who have uncovered the very plot Carson and the police offer suggested in in a warehouse somewhere out in the jungle — I mean woods in some American state. They are outside looking in at an essential chop shop when they are caught by the two scary bad guys they saw in a tiny shed earlier.
Meanwhile, Ned has somehow used a computer program to pinpoint where all the cars are being taken from and finds out they were all insured by the same insurance company.
Ned decides to go back to where the broken bridge is to see if that is where Nancy went. I found it interesting that he’s also using a CB radio to try to contact Mr. Drew to tell him what is going on. Of course Mr. Drew walks in the house just as Ned is trying to contact him.
Ned tells him where he is going and Mr. Drew, who still has the police officer with him, tells him he’ll meet him there.
Ned tries to rescue the girls before Mr. Drew arrives though and is discovered which results in all three of them being chased around the warehouse by the bad guys. When Ned hears the police sirens he opens the door to the warehouse, letting the police come in and nab the bad guys.
As for the burned out car — Ned says the bad guys did that to try to throw the police off the scent while they moved their operations elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Morgan is now out a car and all the parts he paid for ,but Nancy and George say they want to find a way to make the police give him a reward for helping them break up the car stealing ring. Ah, if only small municipal police departments had that kind of money to throw around.
Anyhow, this concludes another review/recollection of a Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode. Have you seen this crazy ride of an episode before?
If you want to listen to a podcast about this episode and all things Nancy Drew, check out the True Drew Podcast hosted by Avery: https://www.truedrewpodcast.com/
Here is the episode about this … ummmm… episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-drew/id1712601901?i=1000685173400
I am not associated with the podcast. I simply enjoy listening to it.
Next up I will write about the episode The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of Witches’ Hollow.
