Hey everyone! How's your weekend so far? Mine's been pretty good actually. My friend, Danielle, and I had a wonderful conversation over video chat this morning, and I just came in from outside. Today I'm going to be talking about the first season of The Hardy Boys as the season finale aired on YTV last night. I haven't completely decided whether I'm going to talk about spoilers in this review or not yet so I put up the spoilers label in the title of this review, just in case I do decide to talk spoilers. So, just in case you haven't seen this show yet and are interested in doing so, don't read this review until you have.With that out of the way, let's get into this review.
As you know from my numerous posts that I've made about this show since it was first announced to being released on Hulu back in December, I was so excited for this to start airing here in Canada. And it did not disappoint. I mean it was pretty predictable with very few twists and turns, but that's exactly what the Hardy Boys books have always been. I mean the original books were aimed at kids between the ages of 10 and 14 so they weren't meant to have the drama, twists and turns that most modern mystery novels and teen TV shows have. Even The Hardy Boys Casefiles, which was aimed at older teenage readers, had slightly more twists and turns, but still not much personal drama for Frank and Joe. Though there's definitely more than there was in the original books.
Normally predictability is a problem for me in shows like this. After all, if you know what's going to happen before the characters do, what's the point in watching the show? But I was fine with it here, because I used to figure out the murder cases that Castle and Beckett solved on Castle when I used to watch that show, and this is the Hardy Boys. Plus it was fun watching Frank and Joe discover the clues to unveil the mystery piece by piece. Though by episode 10 the mystery had pretty much been completely revealed to us and to them. The only thing missing was who actually killed Frank and Joe's mom. That didn't get revealed until the finale.
My favourite characters on this entire show were Frank and Callie. I've always loved Frank and Callie in the books since I first started reading the books when I was a kid. The TV show versions are even more awesome. Especially Callie. Here she was strong, smart, capable and a great friend to the entire group. Chet and Phil were pretty great, though Chet had less to do than he ever did in the books, in any version of the books. Phil was much goofier than he was in the books, but that's why I liked him so much. I also liked Aunt Trudy (Aunt Gertrude in the books) alot. I mean she was thrust into looking after Frank and Joe once they got to Bridgeport and Fenton ran off to look for Laura's killer/run away to hide from his own grief (which Trudy pointed out to him in the finale). And she struggled with it, because she's never had kids of her own and it was difficult for her.
My least favourite characters were Joe and Biff. To be clear the actors did a wonderful job playing them, and I actually liked that Biff was turned into a girl for this series, it made perfect sense. What I didn't like was that they were both twelve years old and that Joe was useless the entire season. Twelve year old characters don't inherently bug me. It's just in every version of the Hardy Boys, Joe is usually 17 years old. Except in the earliest books from 1927 until the early 1940s where he was 15 and Frank was 16. But because of them de-aging him for whatever reason, that meant that he and Frank were split up for most of the season. Plus Joe as a twelve year old is annoying because he's so arrogant and it gets him and Biff into alot of trouble throughout the season. Like I said, the actors did a good job, but the way the characters were written was off.
Like in the books, Fenton Hardy didn't actually have a whole lot to do. Of course the show let us see him more than we did in the books, since the books were focused on Frank and Joe. Despite that though, he still didn't have a whole lot to do this season. If the show gets a second season, we'll probably see Fenton alot more than we did this season.
Chief Collig was a bit disappointing too. Mainly because throughout the entire book franchise, Ezra Collig was one of the few cops who couldn't be corrupted. He and the boys didn't always get along, particularly in the original text versions of the books from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and in The Hardy Boys Casefiles, but he was always an honest cop who couldn't be bought by anyone. From what I've been able to gather, despite having not read it yet, this version of Collig is similar to the one in the first arc of the Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys comic book series. So that's interesting. As is Jesse Hooper, Biff's mom and one of the few honest cops left in Bridgeport. Of course it could've been much worse, since he genuinely knew nothing about Laura Hardy's murder.
One other character that I really got a kick out of was JB Cox. He was a thief hired by Gloria Estabrook (Frank and Joe's grandmother) to recover the Estabrook piece of the Eye from the Nabokav's hired gun, the Tall Man, but he wasn't a bad guy. He was just so fun to watch the few times we got scenes with him in them where Frank, Joe, and Biff weren't in with him. I also loved the dynamic that he had with Joe and Biff as well.
I haven't really talked about Biff's mom, Jesse Hooper that much. Mainly because while she was a pretty prominent character in the first half of the season, she only appeared sporadically in the second half, when things were starting to happen quickly for Frank, Joe and their friends. Same thing actually happened to Chet. Especially once he and Callie broke up. Yes, they were boyfriend and girlfriend for most of the season, but they were having relationship problems as early as the pilot. Nothing insane like on The O.C., One Tree Hill, and Glee, but stuff that was actually pretty relatable, like them wanting to do different things with their lives after high school. Which is typical for high school relationships.
The only cast members I recognized from is Jim Codrington, who plays Fenton's partner, Sam Peterson, who is this show's version of Fenton's partner in the books, Sam Radley, and Laara Sadiq, who plays Kanika Khan, one of Gloria's rivals for the Eye. Laara Sadiq played Councilor/Mayor Pollard in seasons 5, 6, and 7 of Arrow and was recently in an episode in the final season of The Magicians on SyFy. And believe it or not, Jim Codrington was a host on Polka Dot Door throughout the 70s and 80s. Of course I watched reruns of Polka Dot Door on TVO in the early to mid 90s. Since then, Jim Codrington has been on several shows that I've heard of and/or seen like Degrassi High, Earth: Final Conflict, Mutant X, Life with Derek, and Supernatural. So that was pretty cool.
Overall I thought that season 1 of The Hardy Boys was pretty solid. Like I said, my only major problem with it is how they wrote Joe and Biff for most of the season, but otherwise it was great getting to watch it week to week like a traditional TV series. And on YTV no less. There hasn't been any announcement as to whether the show is getting a second season but I'm under the assumption that it will get a second season as both Wikipedia and the Hardy Boys Wiki refers to this as season 1, not the series. Now that could change if the show does get cancelled, but right now I'm working under the assumption, and the hope, that it'll get a second season. I think there's plenty of stories to be told with these versions of the classic characters along with show specific characters like Jesse Hooper. I would definitely recommend giving this show a chance, even if you've never read a Hardy Boys book before. My buddy Aaron has been watching it on Hulu, watching only one episode a week so he wouldn't be too far ahead of me, since they were only airing one episode a week here. He's enjoying it and he's never read any of the books before. Of course if you're a fan of the books, you'll pick up some interesting nods to the source material in this show.
Alright guys that's gonna be it for me for this week. I'll be back on Tuesday for the start of the month June blog update post because I have some things I wanna tell you about. So until then have a wonderful rest of your weekend and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.
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