Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Show

Recapping and reviewing the 1977 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode The Secret of the Whispering Walls

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

Here we are to another episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977. As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together.

This week we have another Nancy Drew episode, The Secret of the Whispering Walls.

I knew part way into this one that it was based on at least one Nancy Drew book — The Secret of Red Gate Farm, but learned on the Nancy Drew Wiki site that it also combined the story of The Hidden Staircase. I didn’t recognize some of the elements from that book until I read that and then I began to see what parts they pulled from it. I did find it interesting that there is a book with this title from the same era as the Nancy Drew books and ironically it is written by Mildred Benson, who wrote about 30 of the original Nancy Drews under the pseudoym Carolyn Keene.

The book was part of the Penny Parker Mysteries series and I thought it was interesting what was written in the description of the book on Amazon.

“Penny Parker starred in a series of 17 books written by Mildred A. Wirt Benson and published from 1939 through 1947. Penny was a high school sleuth who also occasionally moonlighted as a reporter for her father’s newspaper. Benson favored Penny Parker over all the other books she wrote, including Nancy Drew. “I always thought Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is,” Mrs. Benson said in 1993.”

You know I’m going to have to get a copy of this one so I can compare.

On to the episode:

We open to someone breaking into a house.

Then we have Ned Nickerson, the assistant of Nancy’s father, attorney Carson Drew for the purpose of the show, pull up outside a house. Nancy’s friend George Fayne hops out of the back seat and says “Super evening, Ned! Thanks for the movie!” She gives a little wave and hops toward the house, which I assumed was hers because Nancy stays in the car.

We see George go into the house and we see the hands of the person rifling through drawers and that person stops as George closes the front door. So, it must be George’s house, right?

But, no, Nancy then follows a few minutes later, walking into the same house. She’s walking toward the stairs when she hears something fall in her father’s office.

My question is — why didn’t she come into the house with George?

In other episodes it has appeared that Ned was just a friend, unlike in the books where he is her boyfriend. Could Nancy have been staying behind for a goodnight kiss? Hmmmm….

I’m guessing maybe so because after George goes in the house we see someone opening the office door enough to peer out and watch her go up the stairs. Then we switch back to Nancy smiling at Ned and Ned smiling back. Nancy gets out of the car and then Ned looks pretty proud of himself about something or maybe it’s more delighted, as he leans back and shifts the car into gear.

Maybe this was a deleted scene to keep the show clear of kissing sessions. *wink* Again I say hmmmmmm.

Whatever the reason, let us move on to the plot.

Nancy catches someone in her father’s office, but the man pushes her down and takes off back into the office and smashes a chair through the window to escape. I’m not sure why he didn’t just rush past her and through the front door, but I guess he has a flare for the dramatics.

Nancy and George are, of course, alarmed and when they hear someone else coming back to the office from the outside, they arm themselves. George is wielding an umbrella that she brings down on what she thinks is the head of the intruder returning, but it is actually the head of Mr. Drew.

Oops. *cue goofy music here*

The next morning Carson Drew is looking through the papers in office to see if anything was taken by the burglar. He thinks things are mostly in order, but then, wait a minute —  the papers for the sale of the property and farm owned by Carson’s eccentric aunts are missing. The sale was supposed to be finalized the next day.

This means Carson will need to go to the state capital and obtain new copies of the deeds so he can transfer the property to the aunt’s neighbor. He asks Nancy and George to go to the home of the aunts to explain to them what has happened while he heads to the capital.

He’ll be there in time for the signing of the papers, he assures Nancy.

On the way to the farm, Nancy tells George about the neighbor of the aunts, a grumpy and mean old farmer who used to try to scare Nancy as a child with his tractor. No sooner has she said this than a tractor barrels across the dirt road and forces her car off the road.

It’s the grumpy farmer, Mr. Warner, who tells her to watch where she is going. There is a back and forth about it being the land of Nancy’s great aunts and the farmer saying it will soon be his land and him ignoring Nancy’s requests to pull her car out of the ditch.

Nancy and George have to walk to the farm of the eccentric aunts and when they get there the farmer roars by and says, “I warned those two young women! Just remember, if anything happens to them in this old house, it’s on your conscious, not mine!”

“Oh, it’s just his way of scaring people off with wild stories.”

“Not so wild!” says the one aunt, pointing at the girls menacingly. “I have heard those demons, and I have seen them!”

“Yeah pink elephants, purple spiders, and usually after one of her ‘cough spellings,’” snaps the other aunt.

This comment starts the reoccurring humorous theme of Aunt Lela’s clearly being a functioning alcoholic. She kept taking a “tonic for her heart” but viewers are given the  impression that drink in the little cup is a bit stronger than a “tonic”.

What Aunt Lila means by “demons” are voices inside her walls. This was a plot point in the Hidden Staircase when the aunt of Nancy’s friend Helen Corning (who later disappears completely from the series) says there are ghosts in her house.

Inside the house later, the aunts tell Nancy and George that they are excited to move and are going to Las Vegas. The declaration of their planned destination is declared by the aunt who is a drinker.

They also make this announcement in front of a couple who have recently arrived at the farm to help the two aunts run it.  To say the couple seems a bit off is an understatement. When Nancy asks the man some questions and then says she gets the impression he cares for her aunts very much, he abruptly stops talking and walks away in a very bad acting moment meant to let us know that there are some secrets brewing at this place and he  may know what they are.

Ned and Carson are supposed to be heading out to the farm with paperwork for the aunt’s to sign but they are knocked off the road by a mysterious truck. Carson ends up in the hospital but doesn’t want Nancy to know so she won’t get worried.

It takes a couple of days for Ned to get to Nancy since he’s with Carson and by then Nancy has already discovered that there is a tunnel behind the walls at the aunt’s house that leads to a well on the property of the cranky farmer who wants to buy the land. The well is one of those huge old-fashioned ones that you can crawl out of. One of those you only ever see in the movies or televi— oh, right.

Nancy wants to find out where the voices were coming from since she didn’t find the source when she went through the tunnel. She know she’ll have to go through again to figure it out.

This plot point is different than in The Secret of Red Gate Farm where Nancy discovers a “cult” but that is something you will have to read if you want to know more about that craziness. People in white sheets. Ahem. That’s all I’ll say about that. It is not what you think it is, however.

Warning! I am going to share some spoilers in these next couple of paragraphs. You’ve been warned.

Are your ready?

If you don’t want spoilers you might want to skip this part.

I’m warning you.

Okay. You’ve been warned.

In The Secret of Red Gate Farm the “cult” on the hill is actually a group of people trying to cover up a counterfeit money ring and it is the same in this episode except the strange couple who came to help out the aunts are running the ring and are trying to get them not to sell so they can keep doing it. They have set up their operation in a room under ground at the end of one of the tunnels that leads from the aunt’s house to the neighbor’s well.

The aunts know about the tunnels by the way, but they thought they were all sealed up. They used to be used for smuggling goods in the 1890s the drinker aunt says as she sniffs her “tonic.”

Nancy discovers what the couple is doing through a series of steps, including finding burnt counterfeit money after the couple has burned the trash further up the proptery, a trap door in the barn, and then spying on the couple as they go into the barn. She also decides to take George with her into the tunnels when she hears voices in the walls after the couple has driven a van into the barn.

At the same time Nancy and George head down the cranky neighbor also hears the voices from his well and decides he’s going to find out what is going on. He is certain that Nancy and her dad are trying to find a way to keep him from buying the aunt’s property.

Eventually, the bad guys (the couple) capture the neighbor and tie him up, which Nancy and George see because they are spying from the end of one of the tunnels. They overhear the couple planning to get as much of the fake money out as they can and then blow the tunnel to bury all the evidence. They’re going to bury the neighbor too.

Nancy sneaks in while they are sneaking out and unties the neighbor so they can all get out before the explosion.

Going back a bit here for a funny scene recap — at one point Nancy sends George for help but George gets lost and can’t find the ladder back to the house. She thinks she hears Aunt Lila and the camera cuts to the woman sitting on the couch by the fire drinking her tonic. George yells out to her and the woman thinks that the spirits are yelling at her from the fire. She freaks out and tosses her little cup of booze at the fire around the same time Ned bursts in and hears George yelling, “Call the police!”

Ned doesn’t know where George is but yells back that Mr. Drew already had him call the police. I’m not sure why he had Ned call the police, but help is on the way.

The police end up waiting for the couple in the cranky farmer’s field when they crawl out of the well. Nancy, George, and the neighbor pile out soon after and Nancy tells the police what the couple is doing. They deny any involvement until the dynamite explodes and counterfeit money blows up out of the well and rains down on everyone.

In the end, the neighbor’s wife marches him over to the aunt’s house and he confesses he wanted the property because a big development was going to move in and he wanted all of the proceeds. He tells the aunts that because Nancy and George saved his life he’s not going to buy their property but instead let them sell it the development company and make even more.

The aunts are thrilled because now they will have all the money they need to move to Las Vegas. Aunt Lila is so overcome with excitement that she requests a bit of her tonic. Everyone laughs at the alcoholic old lady as the show draws to a close.

In my opinion, putting aside the weird alcoholic aunt, this episode was well done. There seemed to be a lot more focus on unique camera angles and the acting was better than previous episodes. The  camera angles from above and below and around columns made us wonder if someone was following Nancy or not, keeping us on our toes.

I also felt like Pamela Sue Martin toned it down a ton for this episode. She wasn’t quite as abrupt or bossy as she was in the first two episodes. She seemed to soften her portrayal of Nancy down to where it should be if we are going to compare it to the books.

Nancy was bossy and sometimes a bit rude in the books, but not to the point of Pamela’s portrayal in The Mystery of The Diamond Triangle. For this episode the writers added some moments where she appeared more aloof and clueless, but in a humorous way.

For example, at one point George is afraid to sleep in her room because of all the whispering sounds in the walls and instead curls up in the hallway with a blanket. Instead of telling George to come in with her to be safer, Nancy simply tells George that she’s solved one of the mysteries and then says cheerfully, “Well, goodnight, George,” before leaving her in the hallway alone, huddled under the blanket. It was a funny moment showcasing how fixated Nancy can get on a case.

Next up in our feature of discussing episodes from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries I will be offering my impressions of the Hardy Boys episode entitled The Flickering Torch Mystery. I actually watched this episode ahead of what was next up, but I’ll go back to The Disappearing Floor for a later post.

You can read some of my other Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy posts here:

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Recap: The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle (with spoilers)

Discussing The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Show episode, The Mystery of the Haunted House.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1 Episode 2 The Mystery of Pirate’s Cove

A recap and thoughts on The Hardy Boys 1977 episode “The Mystery of Witches Hollow”

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I’ve been watching and writing about episodes from the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery Show from the 1970s. For the first season the show would switch back and forth between The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.

Last time around, I wrote about a Nancy Drew episode.

Now here we are back to a Hardy Boys episode called The Mystery of Witches Hollow. The Hardy Boys stars 70s teen heartthrobs Parker Stevenson and singer Shaun Cassidy.

We start out with the boys and Frank’s girlfriend, or their dad’s secretary, or whoever she is, Callie, and their friend Chet.

They are all driving in the dark somewhere and Joe says he sees a barn with a hex sign.

It seems like each sleuthing team — Nancy or the boys – have that one friend who is afraid of everything. In the Nancy Drew books it is Bess but in the show they eliminated Bess and gave the fear to George. As someone commented on my Instagram post about the Nancy Drew portion of the show, “They did George wrong in this show.”

I don’t know enough about Chet to know if he was done wrong but in this show the poor guy is afraid of everything and always hungry (yes, like Bess too).

So, we open with the boys driving through Witches Hollow near Salem, Mass and when Joe says he sees a hex sign on a barn roof, Chet fearfully asks what that means.

Callie explains that people in this area of the country are afraid of things that go boo in the night so they place hex signs as a way to ward off evil spirits.

Now Chet is whining that he should have gone on vacation somewhere else and wants to know why they are even going this way when they were supposed to be going camping.

In an info dump, Joe tells Chet that Callie’s Uncle Captain McGuire said there were some strange things going on up here and asked their dad to come up an investigate. As so often happens, Fenton Hardy, Frank and Joe’s dad, seems to be pushing his responsibility off onto his young sons who don’t appear to go to school or have a real job since they have so much investigation time.

When they go to look for Captain McGuire at his house (while it is thundering and lightening, of course), a rather creepy woman answers and says she doesn’t know when the Captain will be back. She’s just there to clean the house, she says.

Frank, always perceptive, sees mail piled up behind her and asks her about it, suggesting it means the captain has been gone for a while.

She says she doesn’t know how long he’s been gone.

Umm….okay. Has she not been cleaning his house everyday?

She does let them in to wait for the Captain, though, and then warns them that there are scary “goings on in these here parts” but says the Captain will never listen to her about them. She suggests the kids “get on out of here before things get worse,” but they decide to stay and wait for the captain. She leaves with a warning shake of her head, and once she leaves they immediately start snooping around. Chet is looking for food and the boys for clues. They notice the mail on the counter is dated about a week back and Callie notices her uncle’s favorite shotgun is missing.

They decide they better call their dad, who, in true Fenton (and Carson Drew for that matter) fashion, blows off their concerns.

Fenton tells them they are simply getting wrapped up in all the haunted and creepy stories of the area. None of it is real, he says, and the captain is known to wander off for days on hunting trips.

While all this is going the camera keeps taking us outside to some man staggering toward the house and no offense to this guy but it certainly has taken him a long time to get to the house. He’s been staggering around out there since the housekeeper was giving her creepy speech and left, and all while the kids were digging through the captain’s mail.

Now, though, he seems to be being stalked by a black panther. I kept help wondering what state these guys are in and if black panthers are actually native to that area.

Eventually the guy finally gets to the house after everyone is asleep and slowly lets himself in to steal some food. The scream of a panther wakes everyone up and the man takes off into the storm, quickly followed by Joe who is then followed by Frank. When Frank finds Joe, he’s fallen over the edge of a ravine and Frank has to help him up. After a heart-to-heart about Frank saving Joe and how much Joe appreciates it, the pair find a empty shotgun shell and decide it’s time to go to the town sheriff and tell him they think something happened to the captain.

The sheriff is none too happy they’ve woken him up in the middle of the night and says Captain McGuire is probably off hunting, which is why he bought the cabin in the first place.

They leave the sheriff without much information. The next day, though, they do find out from the owner of the gas station that there is a man who is also a city slicker who has bought some property near the captain.  They find the man man — Donner (yes, I know – foreshadowing much?) — tells the boys he hopes to build a large condominium if a road project goes through. There are some in the area who don’t want the project to go through and many of those people are superstitious, Donner says.

They believe that area is haunted by the ghost of a woman back around the time of the Sale Witch Trials who raised cats, including one very large, black one.

The woman probably raised the large cat, probably a panther, from the time it was a baby, Donner says, but because people in the town believed she just acquired it after it was grown, they labeled her a witch. That would have meant a trial but when the towns people came to get her, she barricaded herself in her house with the cat.

“It’s not a very pretty story,” Donner says.

“It’s not a story at all, without a finish,” Frank counters.

“Well, when she wouldn’t come out, they set fire to the place,” Donner finishes.

And now locals say they hear the woman screaming in the night.

There is something a bit shifty about this Donner guy that we the viewers know already because we’ve seen him in a basement jail holding the captain hostage while a large panther guards him. Apparently, the dude built a cage into his wall for the specific purpose of kidnapping the captain. Why has he kidnapped him? It isn’t yet clear.

Flash forward and the boys finally get their man — the man who broke into the house that is. Only he isn’t a man. He’s a young, mute boy. Not deaf, it appears, but mute.

The boy tries to sign to them that he only broke into the house for food. I’m guessing he has no family who feeds him, but I don’t know.

The boys have no idea what else he is trying to say to them after they take him back to the house. Callie is no help either but in the less than 20 seconds they all discuss how they don’t know what he’s saying the kid somehow sketches a fully detailed and colored in picture of the panther. The guy can’t speak but he is apparently an art savant of some kind.

No one is sure what this drawing means but they know the kid knows something.

That night they all fall asleep and “someone” (cough..Donner…cough) jams a block into the front door of the house so it can’t be open and then lays something over the chimney so that the smoke from the fireplace comes back into the house. The smell of smoke wakes Joe who breaks a window to get fresh air. I’m really not sure what Donner thought was going to happen since even with the door locked the boys could break a window and save themselves. Joe and Frank decide whomever did it simply wanted to scare them.

By the way, most of this episode Chet is just eating and being useless. He even whines when the boys tell him to remove whatever is blocking the chimney while they go get the sheriff. The boy, Simon, is able to communicate to them that the captain was taken away, which is yet another reason they need to find the sheriff. Apparently Simon can’t write all this out because he can’t write. I can’t remember how they figured out his name was Simon.

Before they get to the sheriff, though, the boy points to the side of the road, to indicate he wants them to pull over. They do and see tracks in the dirt. That’s when the boy begins frantically pointing and they look down over the embankment and see two trucks with large speakers affixed to the top, broadcasting a screaming woman over the area.  

Ah, so this is why locals think they hear a screaming woman in the woods at night.

The boys jump onto the back of one of these trucks and find cement that belongs to the contractors who were working to build the freeway. It appears someone is stealing their supplies so they can’t complete the project.

When the boys get back to the house, their dad is waiting for them and was just about to send out a “posse”. I think Fenton thinks it’s 1833 or something.

Anyhow, the boys fill their dad in by saying they think someone is trying to stop the project and that the captain found out about that and that’s why he’s missing.

Fenton says e’s going to get that sheriff to round up a posse and find the captain, but the boys will have to stay at the house, and out of trouble.

“You’re certainly good at poking holes in our balloons,” whines Joe.

“Only when there isn’t enough air in them,” Fenton scolds with a little shake of his head.

During this scene, Joe goes into the next room to “change his shirt” and starts to unbutton it. I’m sure all the teenage girls were hoping for a shirtless scene with this teenage heartthrob, but, alas, it did not help. A few seconds later it appears Joe either has another version of the same shirt or he just changed his mind about changing because he comes out tucking in the exact same shirt. On closer inspection, though, it appears the shirt is the same color but the last one was plaid and this one has stars of some kind on it.

Fenton tells Callie to come with him to get the sheriff because he’s going to need some feminine charm to convince the sheriff to send a posse out to look for her uncle.

When he leaves Simon becomes very animated and draws the boys a picture of a foot, which leads them to the nickname “flatfoot” which is what Donner called the captain when they visited with him.

“What’s that, Simon? Donner is holding the captain hostage?”

Okay, they don’t really say that, but close and Simon nods emphatically, which sends them all rushing out the door, leaving Chet to finish yet another meal while saying, “Here we go again.”

Well, here you go again what, Chet? You’re just shoveling more food in and not going anywhere.

Back we flip to Donner talking to the captain and telling him there is a bill about to pass in the state legislature to stop construction on the freeway pending a study.

First, Donner is clearly an idiot, nothing actually passes in a state legislature and if it does, it is many years after it needs to and by then the bill is completely pointless.

Second, I completely lose Donner’s reasoning at this point. Something about killing the captain and throwing his body at the construction site will delay the project even further.  Why does the guy want the project delayed? He stands to get a lot of money from the construction of condominiums and other structures.

Finally it clicks when he says that other business owners will panic when it looks like the freeway is going to be scraped and will sell to him for a dirt cheap price to get out of what looks like an area that isn’t going to bring their businesses any money. Then, when the project is back on again, he’ll own all that land to mow over the little mom and pop stores and build his more expensive tourist traps.

Donner gives the captain his “final meal” before leaving the basement cage. That meal which includes a steak, but that doesn’t seem very smart of Donner because before long the boys arrive to save the captain and are able to use that steak to distract the wildcat from attacking them.

They then break into the cage and free the captain who bolts from the basement and chases after Donner. The previously useless sheriff shows up at just the right moment, though, and arrests Donner, without even hearing the entire story that the boys only learned after their dad left, I might add.

Maybe Chet told them what was said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. I have no idea.

I will say that this episode, though a bit cheesy, was much better than The Mystery Of the Diamond Triangle with Nancy Drew.

I bet you didn’t know that there is a Hardy Boys Fandom site, but there is, and here is a bit of trivia from it:

“This is the only episode in the entire run of the 1977 show to be adapted from an actual Hardy Boys book, in this case #41 The Clue of the Screeching Owl, with the opening scene at the circus and the sub-plot dealing with Bobby Thompson and Mystery the beagle & the dog-napping ring being deleted, and a few relationships being changed. An example of a changed relationship, in the book, Captain Maguire is a friend of Fenton Hardy, the boys father; in the TV episode Captain Maguire is the Uncle of Callie Shaw (Callie, while mentioned in the book, never made an actual appearance).”

If you would like to watch the episode for yourself, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQs2wdw1uw&list=PLwN7GQjoEtl-rP_m3yPtZym6qGzVEP7qx&index=6

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Recap: The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle (with spoilers)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

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.