Hey guys! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Apologies for not having a comic book review out yesterday, but I decided that with the two reviews I'm doing today, I would hold off on the comic book review until next week. Before I get into this first review of the day, I just wanted to let you know that, like with Superman & Lois I will be doing weekly episode reviews for The Hardy Boys. And while I will be watching Punky Brewster for the whole season, today's second post will probably be the only post I do on the show unless I have something to say when the season is over. So with that out of the way, let's get into it and talk about the first episode of The Hardy Boys, entitled, "Welcome to Your Life". By the way, there will be some spoilers in these reviews as the entire season is out in the US and it's been out for three months now, so those people who wanted to see it down there, have probably seen it by now. Just so you're aware.
I've been looking forward to this show for four months as of this writing. When it dropped on Hulu in the US on December 4th, 2020, but it didn't air here in Canada, I was afraid we were never going to get it. For the longest time we had no airdate for the pilot, only saying it was coming to YTV in 2021. And then finally it was announced that the first episode would premiere on YTV on March 5th, 2021. While I waited for last night to finally arrive, I was nervous about the show because I've loved the Hardy Boys since I was ten or eleven years old. And being a modern adaptation meant that it would either be the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. Even as I watched it, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and the modern TV teen drama tropes to get in the way. I was so relieved when last night's episode finished and it was amazing all the way through.
The first thing I took note of while watching this episode is that the look and feel of the show felt very Hardy Boys. Creepy but not outright terrifying. Interesting but not dangerous. Which is very much the tone that pretty much every incarnation of The Hardy Boys that I've read, from the original The Hardy Boys Mysteries right through to the more recent/current The Hardy Boys Adventures. And I really appreciate they didn't have to contrive this feel out of thin air like they did with both Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Which I'm thankful for, because I don't think I could manage to watch a CW version of The Hardy Boys.
I also like that they don't try to force too much nostalgia down your throats. This show is based more on The Hardy Boys Casefiles series from the late 80s and early 90s than on the original 1927 to 2005 Hardy Boys Mysteries series, but unless you knew that logo, they don't indicate anywhere that that's what this show is and don't market it as an adaptation of that specific Hardy Boys series. And unlike the CW comic book based shows, it isn't just an amalgamation of every version of the Hardy Boys either.
Speaking of the boys themselves, Frank is pretty cool, but I'm a little unsure of Joe. For whatever reason, the writers and producers decided to make Joe a twelve year old rather than his usual 15 or 17 year old self. I mean, yeah they de-aged Frank, the other teen characters like Chet, Callie, Phil and Biff, and Aunt Gertrude, named Aunt Trudy here, like she's been called since the Undercover Brothers series that started in 2005, but I think they de-aged Joe and Biff too much in this series. And I think that's the influence from Stranger Things and It: Chapter One at work here, since all of those characters are no older than 14, maybe 15. So it's an odd move, but hopefully one that doesn't blow up in their faces.
Continuing on that trail of thought, I thought it was kind of dumb that Joe was captured so quickly by Ern, the survivor of that ship that exploded under mysterious circumstances at the beginning of the episode. Hopefully that doesn't happen too often on this show. It's 2021 though so chances are it will happen at least one more time before the season is over.
No matter what the show is there's always going to be some contrivances in order to get the characters to the status quo needed for the series opening. In the case of The Hardy Boys, the death of Frank and Joe's mom, Laura, is done pretty well, even if it isn't done in a way that hasn't been done before. I mean it's a mystery series called The Hardy Boys, it's never going to be groundbreaking or fresh in the way it approaches the classic mystery tropes that do surface here.
We don't get much of the supporting characters in this episode, but I do like what I got to see of them in this episode. Chet Morton is no longer the stout boy who eats all the time. Instead he's tall, athletic, and drives in a bright yellow pickup truck that's meant to invoke his old yellow jalopy, the Queen, from the original book series. Phil Cohen is...it's hard to describe Phil because Phil didn't play a very big role in the books. In fact he was in the early books from the 20s and 30s more than he was in the revised text versions and the later books of the 50s through to the 2000s, so he's pretty much a clean slate here, which is cool. Callie Shaw is also a clean slate since, while she appeared way more in the original books than Phil did, and has almost co-star status with Frank and Joe in the Casefiles series, which this show is at least inspired by if not directly adapted from, she is very different in this show, than she was in her early TV show appearances in The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries from the 70s. So it'll be interesting to see how she develops as a character as the season goes on.
Biff Hooper is probably the most different in this series. In the original books, as well as in the later ones. Like Joe, Biff is probably about 12 years old on this show, again, most likely taking influence from Stranger Things and It: Chapter One, but Biff is no longer Allen Hooper. Instead Biff is Elizabeth Hooper, which is an interesting change. I guess she's supposed to be replacing Chet's sister, Iola, who, so far anyway, is nowhere to be found. So I guess she's a combination of the original Biff Hooper and Iola Morton. In the original books, Biff was the most developed of the Hardys's friends next to Chet, as he would frequently join Frank and Joe on their cases alongside Chet. So that's probably what we're going to get out of this version of Biff too. It's just weird that Joe is so much younger than Frank, Callie, Chet and Phil, so it makes sense for there to be someone else his age there as well.
I think Frank and Joe's grandmother, Gloria Estabrook, knows alot more than what she's saying about Laura's death. And I think we'll find that as the season progresses, there will be some big reveals about her. Not sure what yet though.
The thing I liked best about this episode is that it actually showed Laura spending time with Frank before her death. So often we get character deaths as catalysts for the events of a season and we're supposed to care about that character's death. Except very rarely are we ever given a reason why we should care when we don't have much screentime with said character before their death. Here though we actually get a good amount of time with Laura before she was killed, but they also didn't draw it out either given it's the reason the Hardys move to Bridgeport where the rest of the cast is.
Speaking of Bridgeport, I don't really get why they changed Bayport to Bridgeport for this show. Is it because Bridgeport sounds more modern than Bayport does? The town does look consistent with other fictional small towns like Derry, Riverdale, Smallville, and Hawkins. It's also pretty close to how Bayport is described in The Hardy Boys Casefiles. Which is cool.
Overall this was an amazing start to what is probably my most anticipated show of 2021. Like I said they didn't go the Riverdale and Nancy Drew route by making the show sexy in any way, which I appreciate as a long time fan of the books. That sort of thing is unnecessary in shows like this, and I'm glad they just didn't go there. At least not in the pilot. There's still twelve episodes left for that to happen in, but this is not Degrassi, Riverdale, Nancy Drew, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or The O.C. I really enjoyed it though and I am really looking forward to seeing how this season unfolds. Like I said, I'm doing reviews of every episode so stay tuned for more.
I think that's going to be it for this review. I'll be back shortly with my thoughts on the first two episodes of Punky Brewster, which was also pretty fun and interesting but in a different way than The Hardy Boys was. So stick around for more.
Thanks for the review. I like shows that keep close to the original material.
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