Hey guys! How's everyone's weekend going? Mine's been pretty good. I just wanted to talk about the Hardy Boys a little bit more than what I got to do in my review of the trailer for the upcoming Hulu/YTV series. There's a lot that I'd like to say about the books and what I'm expecting from the show when it premieres in less than three weeks. I'd like to start with my history with the Hardy Boys.
The first book I ever got in The Hardy Boys series was this two in one hardcover, containing the first two books in the series, The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff. They were the 1959 revised text versions of the two books and it was in flipbook format, where one book was on one side, and then if you flipped it over, you'd have the other book on the other side. I got it somewhere around 1995 or 1996 as it was my first encounter with The Hardy Boys series. In fact I remember sitting outside up at the cottage during my uncle's wedding reception and reading the book while the adults socialized and my siblings played with some of the other kids who were there with their families for the wedding.
Not long after, I was up at the cottage again, staying with my grandparents for two weeks and my grandmother gave me two Hardy Boys books, Tic-Tac-Terror (book #74 of Hardy Boys Digests, pictured above) and The Blackwing Puzzle (book #82 of The Hardy Boys Digests, not pictured). These were the later paperback releases that continued the numbering of the original hardcover series from the late '70s and early '80s and apparently they were my uncle's or something like that.
Then my Nana picked up The Serpent's Tooth Mystery (book #93 in the Hardy Boys Digests) at a garage sale for me, which was the most recent Hardy Boys book I owned. At the same time I got a box of older Hardy Boys books from my mom's cousin. The box contained a mix of the original text versions of the books and the revised text versions, which is how I managed to get most of the original Hardy Boys series when I was a kid. I think I had three shelves full of Hardy Boys books in our basement at the time.
Then in grade 6, circa 1998/1999, I discovered the older teen series, The Hardy Boys Casefiles when I read book #55, Beyond the Law, which deals with corruption in the Bayport Police Force and Chief Collig is the prime suspect so the Hardys have to clear his name. I got this book at the school library and devoured it three times before my class's next library period the following week. Later on, I got this book for my own collection in a compilation with two other books in the Casefiles series. But aside from six books across two compilations, I didn't own any of the Casefiles books, and only read two of them prior to getting the compilations. This was a pretty good series from what I read of it. Both Hardy Boys series continued through the '90s, though I was unaware of the later books in each series as I didn't read any Hardy Boys books that came out after 1991.
Because I have such a history with The Hardy Boys, and to a lesser extent, Nancy Drew, there are a few things I'm expecting to see in the new series because it's The Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe are there, as are Fenton Hardy and Aunt Gertrude, known as Aunt Trudy in the show. Chet Morton will be there, though the trailer didn't show whether he was carrying cookies in his pockets or not like he did in the books. He's also a lot thinner in the show than he was described as being in the books too.
Even though Frank and Joe are just meeting everyone for the first time, at least from what it showed in the trailer, I'm hoping that Frank and Callie start dating by the end of the season. No love triangles, no weird pairings like Chet and Callie or Phil Cohen and Callie or anything like that. Just let Frank and Callie come together naturally. That would be cool. However, because this is a modern teen drama being produced in 2020, there are a few things that I am expecting to happen that hopefully won't.
The first is that one of the supporting female characters, probably Biff, who is a girl in this show, but just as likely Callie, will be a Lesbian. On the flipside of that, either Chet or Phil will be gay. Just because it does feed into the whole diversity thing, which, as I mentioned in my trailer reaction post, was severely lacking in the Hardy Boys books even into the '90s. If Callie isn't a Lesbian, then chances are she'll be with Chet or Phil prior to Frank and Joe arriving in Bridgeport (not Bayport). And that will cause tension between Frank and whichever boy Callie is with. Which might be interesting since there's never really been any real tension between the Hardys and their friends except maybe Chet and Joe in the Casefiles series since Chet's sister, Iola, who was Joe's girlfriend, died in the first chapter of the first book, Dead on Target.
The biggest thing I'm starting to notice from having just rewatched the trailer two more times is that The Hardy Boys is going to be more like Stranger Things than it is like The CW shows, Nancy Drew and Riverdale which is fine by me because I don't like Riverdale and I haven't watched Nancy Drew at all, so it's not going to be as sexy or sexualized as Riverdale became at the end of it's first season. Plus The Hardy Boys, especially the Casefiles series, felt more like Stranger Things anyway, except the Hardys and their friends were all older teenagers.
And of course, just like the town of Riverdale, and probably the place where Nancy and her friends live in Nancy Drew, Bridgeport has it's secrets that Frank, Joe and their friends are going to uncover. That's a huge trope in these more recent teen dramas set in small towns. Mind you it was starting to become a trope back when Smallville and The O.C. were on in the 2000s. So that's something I've come to accept about this kind of show. I'm also hoping there will be great character moments and development, but I'm expecting there to be some, but not as much as there was in the first season of Stranger Things with those characters.
Like I said, I love The Hardy Boys and I grew up reading the books. Because of that, I am super excited for this show to start airing in less than three weeks. I've also been burned by this kind of show before, so I'm also crossing my fingers that it'll be good. I really feel like it's been way too long since we've had Frank, Joe and their friends and family on TV and that this is the kind of show we need right now. It's dark and atmospheric but it also looks like fun escapism, which is something I need right now.
That's gonna be it for me for tonight. I'll have a lot more to say about The Hardy Boys when I review the books. I'll be back tomorrow with this week's Disney Review, where I'll be reviewing the 1985 animated movie, The Black Cauldron, which I'm about to watch on Disney+. Later.
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