History Recap / TheHardyBoys2020Season1

* DirtyCop: Some of the Bridgeport police are in on the corruption of Bridgeport and are actually doing dirty work for Gloria, who secretly runs the town--up to and including Chief Collig. Joe and Biff discover this about halfway through the season and fill the others in, and then Biff tells her mom, who in turn tells Aunt Trudy, prompting Jessie and Trudy to start doing their own investigating.

* LoveDodecahedron: Callie is dating Chet and Frank is dating Emma, but Frank and Callie are growing increasingly attracted to each other. Then Emma breaks up with Frank at the start of "Secrets and Lies", though Callie doesn't learn this until "In Plain Sight". Things get more complicated when new girl Stacy comes to town and develops a huge crush on Frank, and he seems to appreciate it and like her back. This makes Callie jealous (in addition to being genuinely suspicious of Stacy), which in turn makes Chet jealous, eventually resulting in Chet forcing Callie to recognize her feelings for Frank and breaking up with her, leaving things awkward between the three of them. Then Frank realizes that Callie was right and Stacy is hiding something, and confronts her at Wilt's, only for her to kiss him at one point to try to persuade him to work with her; Callie happens to see this and gets the wrong idea. Frank eventually rejects Stacy, but before he has a chance to properly work things out with Callie, Stacy kidnaps her to use as a HostageForMacGuffin. It's only resolved at the end of the season finale when Callie and Frank finally become the OfficialCouple and share TheBigDamnKiss. Then there's Joe and Biff, and Trudy and Jessie, who seem to have their own budding relationships (a ToyShip, in the former case) on the side, and Frank also meets his HappilyMarried mom's ex-boyfriend, who still carried a torch for her to the day she died.

** There's also quite a bit between Trudy and Jessie; while it's more subtle than the other examples due to HideYourLesbians being in play (at least for this season), their season-long arc of becoming closer and confiding in each other certainly reads like a budding relationship.

** That being said, the members of the BigBadEnsemble who are behind their respective cases differ. Kanika is ultimately responsible for Rupert's kidnapping that Fenton looks into, Stacy is the one who hired the Tall Man who goes after the Hardys (especially Joe), and Stefan is the person who actually killed Laura.

** Kanika tries to have her nephew killed and sends Fenton into a dangerous situation as well, but implies that she, too, wouldn't target children. After Gloria accuses her of being the one who hired the Tall Man and states that he targeted her grandsons, Kanika is quick to say that someone like that definitely wouldn't be one of her people.

* LoveDodecahedron: Callie is dating Chet and Frank is dating Emma, but Frank and Callie are growing increasingly attracted to each other. Then Emma breaks up with Frank at the start of "Secrets and Lies", though Callie doesn't learn this until "In Plain Sight". Things get more complicated when new girl Stacy comes to town and develops a huge crush on Frank, and he seems to appreciate it and possibly like her back. This makes Callie jealous (in addition to being genuinely suspicious of Stacy), which in turn makes Chet jealous, eventually resulting in Chet forcing Callie to recognize her feelings for Frank and breaking up with her, leaving things awkward between the three of them. Then Frank realizes that Callie was right and Stacy is hiding something, and confronts her at Wilt's, only for her to kiss him at one point to try to persuade him to work with her; Callie happens to see this and gets the wrong idea. Frank eventually rejects Stacy, but before he has a chance to properly work things out with Callie, Stacy kidnaps her to use as a HostageForMacGuffin. It's only resolved at the end of the season finale when Callie and Frank finally become the OfficialCouple and share TheBigDamnKiss. Then there's Joe and Biff, and Trudy and Jessie, who seem to have their own budding relationships (a ToyShip, in the former case) on the side, and Frank also meets his HappilyMarried mom's ex-boyfriend, who still carried a torch for her to the day she died.

* LoveDodecahedron: Callie is dating Chet and Frank is dating Emma, but Frank and Callie are growing increasingly attracted to each other. Then Emma breaks up with Frank at the start of "Secrets and Lies", though Callie doesn't learn this until "In Plain Sight". Then new girl Stacy Baker comes to town and develops a huge crush on Frank, and he seems to appreciate it and possibly like her back, which makes Callie jealous (in addition to being genuinely suspicious of Stacy), which in turn makes Chet jealous, eventually resulting in Chet forcing Callie to recognize her feelings for Frank and breaking up with her, leaving things awkward between the three of them. Then Frank realizes that Callie was right and Stacy is hiding something, and confronts her at Wilt's, only for her to kiss him at one point to try to persuade him to work with her; Callie happens to see this and gets the wrong idea. Frank eventually rejects Stacy, but before he has a chance to properly work things out with Callie, Stacy kidnaps her to use as a HostageForMacGuffin. It's only resolved at the end of the season finale when Callie and Frank finally become the OfficialCouple and share TheBigDamnKiss. Then there's Joe and Biff, and Trudy and Jessie, who seem to have their own budding relationships (a ToyShip, in the former case) on the side, and Frank also meets his HappilyMarried mom's ex-boyfriend, who still carried a torch for her to the day she died.

** For the Khan family, Kanika apparently has a brother, Rupert's father, but she took over the family instead of him and still carries the Khan name (and also doesn't appear to have ever married). Rupert claims that Kanika treated his father poorly.

** Gloria did genuinely love Laura and was truly devastated by her death, and had used her considerable influence to keep her daughter safe throughout her life. She's also power-hungry, and had a very strained relationship with Laura due to the latter's disgust of the family legacy that Gloria perpetuates.

* EvilMentor: Gloria turns out to be this to Callie, whom she's been mentoring for quite a while to help her get into Rosegrave Academy, the prep school founded by Gloria's father, which [[SchoolForScheming turns out to be a front for a secret society running Bridgeport]]. She's only ever been good to Callie, but Frank speculates that it's because she has plans for her, which is proven to be correct in the following season. She also shows a rather cold lack of concern for her protegee when Stacy kidnaps Callie and [[HostageForMacGuffin holds her hostage for the piece of the Eye]], to the boys' disgust.
* FemmeFatale: Anastasia "Stacy" Nabokov is a classic example, wanting to bring down the Circle to avenge her murdered father and to take the Eye for herself, being willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish her goals, including kidnapping and murder. She also [[TheFakeCutie pretends to be]] TheIngenue to win Frank's trust and get him to tell her what he knows, and once he figures out her real identity, acts aggressively forward and seductive with Frank to try to get him to work together with her, later becoming a WomanScorned after he rejects her.

** Played with in George's case. After forming the Circle of the Eye with Ahmed and Sergei, all three of them were equally shady and used the Eye to become rich, powerful, and highly influential, leading the world from the shadows, and Gloria inherited this hunger for power and was eager to succeed him. George, however, eventually had a [[HeelFaceTurn change of heart]] after a major MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, and decided to break up the Circle and ensure the Eye could never be reassembled, even disinheriting Gloria as his heir because he recognized her greed and lust for power. Gloria developed no such scruples, and helped George's partners have him killed, taking over the Estabrook line in the Circle and becoming just as bad as the rest of them.
** Laura, unlike Gloria, was disgusted with the family legacy and wanted no part of it, feeling that NoManShouldHaveThisPower just like her grandfather George. She rejected the life Gloria wanted for her, refusing to attend the family SchoolForScheming and marrying someone Gloria didn't approve of, and became an investigative reporter dedicated to, among other things, exposing Gloria's and the Circle's secrets.

* EvilMentor: Gloria turns out to be this to Callie, whom she's been mentoring for quite a while to help her get into Rosegrave Academy, the prep school founded by Gloria's father, which [[SchoolForScheming turns out to be a front for a secret society running Bridgeport]]. She's only ever been good to Callie, but Frank speculates that it's because she has plans for her, which is proven to be correct in the following season. Gloria also shows a rather cold lack of concern for her protegee when Stacy kidnaps Callie and [[HostageForMacGuffin holds her hostage for the piece of the Eye]], to the boys' disgust.

** It also gets deconstructed more and more. Fenton Hardy isn't around to properly parent Frank and Joe because he's off elsewhere investigating their mom's murder, and they're frustrated at being left behind and attempt to do their own sleuthing rather than just sit around and do nothing. Aunt Trudy, their guardian while Fenton is away, eventually has to put her foot down about it after the boys end up in trouble a few too many times because of it. Joe and Biff wandering in the woods alone at night to investigate leads to both of them falling down a mine shaft, while no one else has any idea where they've gone.

* EvilMentor: Gloria turns out to be this to Callie, whom she's been mentoring for quite a while to help her get into Rosegrave Academy, the prep school founded by Gloria's father, which [[SchoolForScheming turns out to be a front for a secret society running Bridgeport]]. She's only ever been good to Callie, but Frank speculates that it's because she has plans for her, which is proven to be correct in the following season. She also shows a rather cold lack of concern for her protegee when Stacy kidnaps her and [[HostageForMacGuffin holds her hostage for the piece of the Eye]], to her grandsons' disgust.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: This season has relatively less compared to later ones, but the series as a whole [[Foreshadowing/TheHardyBoys2020 has its own page]].

** It also gets deconstructed more and more as the season goes on. Fenton Hardy isn't around to properly parent Frank and Joe because he's off elsewhere investigating their mom's murder, and they're frustrated at being left behind and attempt to do their own sleuthing rather than just sit around and do nothing. Aunt Trudy, their guardian while Fenton is away, eventually has to put her foot down about it after the boys end up in trouble a few too many times because of it. Joe and Biff wandering in the woods alone at night to investigate leads to both of them falling down a mine shaft, while no one else has any idea where they've gone.

** Gloria Estabrook, Laura's mother and the Hardy Boys' grandmother, who is a WellIntentionedExtremist ''at best'', [[ObnoxiousInLaws has never been very nice to her son-in-law Fenton and his sister Trudy]], and controls the entire town of Bridgeport, with the cops (including the chief of police) on her payroll. Nevertheless, she gets several humanizing moments, such as being sincerely heartbroken and regretful about Laura's death, and truly caring about her grandsons and wanting to be a better grandma to them than she was a mother to Laura.

** On a related note, the Hardy Boys do a ''lot'' of their investigating separate from each other in this season and share their findings later, with Joe usually pairing up with Biff, Frank in a group with Callie and often Chet too, and Phil, when present, fluctuating whom he's with. Phil also appears in several episodes fewer than the other TrueCompanions. The next two seasons have Frank and Joe teaming up with each other much more often to investigate, Biff and Phil usually being the ones to pair off anytime it's not all three younger kids together, and mixing the friends up between age groups more often, and all of the kids appear in every episode of Season 2 and all but one from 3.

** Gloria may be corrupt, [[ObnoxiousInLaws rude and passive-aggressive to her in-laws]], possibly indirectly responsible for her father's death by ratting him out to his partners, and willing to kill her enemies who make moves against her, like Viktor, but she does have some redeeming qualities:
*** She wouldn't dream of harming her descendants or ordering someone else to do so, not even when her daughter was threatening to expose all her secrets, and is appalled when she discovers that her manservant, Stefan, murdered Laura and claimed it was for her sake.
*** She also appears to be a relatively BenevolentBoss; see above.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Both for this season compared to the next two, and for the early episodes compared to the later ones:

** Joe comments in the second episode about Phil being a year older than him, and Phil's not shown in any of Joe's and Biff's classes in this season once school resumes, as you'd expect from someone who's probably a grade above them. The next two seasons do away with this and Phil is now implied to be roughly the same age as Joe and Biff, sharing most classes with one or both of them.
** On a related note, the Hardy Boys do a ''lot'' of their investigating separate from each other in this season and share their findings later, with Joe usually pairing up with Biff, Frank in a group with Callie and often Chet too, and Phil, when present, fluctuating whom he's with. Phil is also the only member of the TrueCompanions who doesn't appear in every episode. The next two seasons have Frank and Joe teaming up with each other much more often to investigate, Biff and Phil usually being the ones to pair off anytime it's not all three younger kids together, and mixing the friends up between age groups more often, and all of the kids appear in every episode of Seasons 2 and 3.

** Anastasia Nabokov wants to destroy the Circle because she (correctly) believes someone in it murdered her father. She initially tries to work together with Frank, but he soon realizes that she plans to take the Eye for herself rather than destroying it and rebuffs her. She responds by trying to use Callie as a hostage to get the final piece of the Eye.
** Gloria Estabrook betrayed her father, George, to his partners when he tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, resulting in his death. More recently, she murdered Viktor Nabokov when he tried to get her piece, and hires JB to steal the Khan's piece from Kanika and her own piece from her own grandsons, wanting to assemble the Eye herself. She claims she wants to use it for better things than the three original Circle founders did, but it's pretty clear what she really wants is the power she'll get from having the entire Eye.

** Gloria Estabrook betrayed her father, George, to his partners when he tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, resulting in his death. More recently, she murdered Viktor Nabokov when he tried to get her piece of the Eye, and hires JB to steal the Khan's piece from Kanika and her own piece from her own grandsons, wanting to assemble the Eye herself. She claims she wants to use it for better things than the three original Circle founders did, but it's pretty clear what she really wants is the power she'll get from having the entire Eye.

** That being said, though, the members of the BigBadEnsemble who are behind their respective cases differ. Kanika is ultimately behind Rupert's kidnapping that Fenton looks into, Stacy is the one who hired the Tall Man who goes after the Hardys (especially Joe), and Stefan is the person who actually killed Laura.

* NomDeMom: Laura's father is never mentioned, and it's not made clear if Gloria even married him or not, but if she did, she kept her own Estabrook surname, and this was Laura's surname as well (at least until she eventually married Fenton Hardy).

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Gloria outlives her daughter and only child Laura, which greatly saddens her. Especially once she learns that Laura's death was not an accident, but murder. Which makes it all the more devastating when she discovers at the end of the season that her own trusted right-hand-man, Stefan, was the one responsible.

** Callie (Archie) starts off dating Chet, who's lived in Bridgeport his whole life like her, is her BestFriend, and comes from a working-class family of farmers (Betty). Then she meets Frank (Veronica), the new kid in town from the big city who gets her involved with his and Joe's investigation, and who's also the grandson of Callie's mentor, one of the richest and most powerful people in the world. In this case, Veronica wins, as Chet and Callie break up and she gets together with Frank by the end of the season.

* TheBigDamnKiss: Between Frank and Callie at the end of the season. While Joe is right there watching. Naturally, he promptly mocks his brother about it.

* {{Bookends}}: The first time the Hardy Boys go into town from the Hardy home in the series premiere as the "new kids in town", they ride side-by-side on bicycles. The final shot of the season is them doing the same thing once again, but now as permanent residents, and significantly more upbeat and optimistic about the future.
* BothSidesHaveAPoint:
** The argument Frank and Joe have with Gloria in the season finale, where they finally turn on her for good. [[JerkassHasAPoint Gloria's not wrong]] that if they do give Stacy the final piece of the Eye she's demanding in exchange for Callie, which would give her all three of them, she'll most likely become too powerful to stop and could cause untold damage, seeing how AxCrazy she's become. However, the boys point out that Gloria's way too confident that Stacy's bluffing about killing Callie when none of them actually know what Stacy will do, and are disgusted that she's so cavalier about Callie being kidnapped and willing to risk the latter's safety so casually.
* BrickJoke: When Frank starts working at Wilt's in "Of Freedom and Pleasure", he doesn't know how to make coffee, and has to ask his pals for help. Much later when Fenton returns home in "Eye to Eye" and Joe tells him about the job at Wilt's, he notes that Frank "still can't make a coffee to save his life." This is proven true in the next episode; Frank tries to make coffee at breakfast for Fenton, who gags on it.
* TheButlerDidIt: The season finale at last [[TheReveal reveals who killed Laura Hardy]]: Stefan, Gloria's butler, who did it to protect her reputation after Laura visited her and vowed to expose the Circle of the Eye, including the Estabrooks. Notably, this was ''not'' at all on Gloria's orders; Stefan acted on his own, and she is sincerely shocked and suitably upset and appalled when she learns this.
* ChekhovsGun:
** One of the earliest shots in the series is of a soldering iron on a shelf with "J. Hardy" engraved into it. It's later in the toolbox that Joe lends to JB on the beach, and he even notes the engraving when he looks at it. It's most likely what allows JB to find out where he lives by providing his surname, and Joe is later freaking out after the police find the toolbox because he knows this soldering iron will prove the tools are his and could get him into trouble for helping JB, though he's able to steal it back before the cops see it.
** Joe makes a fake copy of the piece of the Eye in "The Drop" to trick the Tall Man into taking the wrong one when they confront him, though he ends up with both of them still in his possession. In the season finale, Stacy kidnaps Callie and demands the piece if they want her back alive, but by then, Gloria has the piece after hiring JB to steal it from the boys for her, and it's unlikely they'll be able to get it back in time to exchange it for Callie. Joe then remembers that they still have the fake, and they rig it up well enough to convince Stacy's mooks that it's real for the time they need to get Callie back.

* ContinuitySnarl: Callie reveals to Frank in "Secrets and Lies" that his grandmother lied to him about her argument with Laura, and tells him what she remembers overhearing of it: that Laura was saying something about [[TitleDrop the titular "secrets and lies"]], and it ended with her saying "This all has to stop!" before she stormed out. When the Eye actually shows Frank the argument in "While the Clock Ticked", though, most of this is absent; the closest Laura comes to speaking any of this is with "You lied to me!", but never says the word "secrets" at all, and her parting words to Gloria are instead "You can't, or you won't?"

* DamselInDistress: Callie for part of the season finale when she's kidnapped by Stacy as a HostageForMacGuffin. She gets back at Stacy later by punching her unconscious in the climax.
* DefiantCaptive: Even as Callie's sitting tied to a chair after Stacy and her CoDragons kidnapped her, she just coldly tells them that she can't wait to make them pay for it and sarcastically mocks her that her father would be "proud" of what she's doing. When Stacy calls the Hardy home to demand the piece of the Eye as ransom, the very first thing Callie does when she hears Joe on the phone is shout for him not to give her the piece, and later says the same thing to Frank and Chet when they come to make the exchange, despite clearly being scared the whole time and knowing that Stacy will kill her if she doesn't get it.

* DramaticIrony: The audience knows right from the start that Kanika's piece of the Eye is stolen by JB at Gloria's behest, but the Hardy Boys only find out JB has it the following episode, and it takes a couple more for it to come out that it was on Gloria's orders.

* EurekaMoment:
** The flashback that the Eye shows Frank includes Laura's meeting with Rupert, where she commented to him about the Circle, "[[RightHandVersusLeftHand The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.]]" Frank repeats this phrase when he realizes that Stefan, Gloria's '''right-hand''' man, was the only other witness to her argument with Laura, and that he killed her without Gloria's knowledge.

* FakinMacGuffin: In the season finale, Stacy, who already has the Khan and Nabokov pieces of the Eye, uses Callie as a hostage to get the Estabrook piece from the Hardys, which they no longer have after Gloria stole it from them. Instead, they use the fake copy that Joe previously made, and rig up the sleeve of Frank's shirt with americium from the smoke detectors at Wilt's store, so when Frank hands over the piece, his wrist will set off Stacy's Geiger counter and trick her mooks into thinking the piece is legit. Sure enough, Stacy doesn't catch on until after Frank, Chet, and Callie are long gone.

* TheGlomp:
** Biff to Joe after he and Phil save her from George's secret room where she was accidentally locked in. Joe returns it with a smile...[[ShipTease and then both of them get a bit flustered by it]].

* HeelRealization:
** The next episode reveals that JB gave a witness account against Gloria and Collig to help get them arrested, and he leaves a note promising Joe a favor someday if he needs it in return.
** Combined with BreakTheHaughty for Gloria at the very end of the season when Frank and Joe figure out that her own butler, Stefan, was the one who murdered her daughter Laura, and Stefan reveals that his motive for doing so was essentially his UndyingLoyalty to Gloria. She finally seems to realize that, even if she didn't want Laura to die, her actions and obsession with the Eye made her indirectly responsible for it. She's practically speechless with shell-shock and grief as the police show up to arrest her, only able to brokenly apologize to her grandsons.
* HelpfulHallucination: In the climax of the season, Frank tries to grab the Eye right after it's been reforged and passes out. While he's unconscious, he sees what actually happened during Laura's final day: her confrontation with Gloria and her conversations with Wilt and Rupert, giving him the EurekaMoment he and Joe need to realize who killed her: Stefan, Gloria's butler and NumberTwo.
* HostageForMacGuffin: Stacy and her minions kidnap Callie and demand that Frank and Joe turn over their piece of The Eye (the only one Stacy doesn't have yet) in exchange for her safe return. The gang is able to get around this by giving them the fake that Joe made several episodes earlier and tricking them into believing it's the real thing long enough to escape with Callie.
* IChooseToStay: At the end of the season, Frank, Joe, and Fenton decide to stick around in Bridgeport rather than returning to the city (with the implication that Fenton will apply to the Bridgeport Police Force to replace the now-arrested Ezra Collig as chief of police), to the delight of Trudy and Callie in particular.

* ItsAllMyFault:
** A lighthearted version: After Joe and Biff fall into a mine shaft, he apologizes to her for getting her into the situation, and she insists that he's not to blame and she made the choice to come with him herself. This starts off a playful back-and-forth between the two of them in which they each insist that things they did with/for each other earlier in the season are what brought them here, ending with them jokingly concluding that Biff picking up the tab for Joe's sandwich, all the way back in the second episode, is what's responsible for their plight.
** This same mine shaft incident plays this much more seriously on Frank's end, though. He blames himself for it because he and Joe had a fight beforehand about the Eye, and Frank, in addition to having PartingWordsRegret about it, also laments to Callie that he shouldn't have dismissed his brother's feelings so easily because Joe always does something stupid when Frank doesn't listen to him.
** Also played very seriously with Callie's kidnapping. Both Chet and Frank deeply regret not listening to her well enough when she repeatedly tried to warn them about "Stacy Baker" being bad news, especially Chet, who was caught up in his jealousy of Callie falling for Frank over him and says this almost word-for-word. Frank, knowing that Stacy kidnapped Callie right after he rejected the former for good, laments to Joe that he keeps "making mistakes that other people pay for." In their defense, though, Frank did start to believe Callie before too long and help her investigate, and ''nobody'', not even her, predicted just how much Stacy would end up JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope and how far she'd go.
* KarmaHoudiniWarranty:
** Gloria Estabrook betrayed her father and caused his death, murdered Viktor Nabokov not too long before the series began, and has been controlling Bridgeport from the shadows for many years. She gets arrested at the end of the season.
** Ezra Collig, after acting as Gloria's stooge and doing her dirty work for years, likewise gets arrested.
** Stefan kills Laura in the season premiere, with everyone remaining none the wiser for months. In the finale, soon after this is discovered, he dies trying to steal the Eye back for Gloria when the Chamber of the Eye collapses.
* TheKeyIsBehindTheLock: While Biff is searching George's secret room, which can only be unlocked from the outside, Joe is forced to close the door and hide when Gloria and Stefan briefly return. It's only after they leave that Biff realizes she still has the key to the room and is now locked in. Luckily, she's able to pass the key to Joe and Phil through the vents, so they can unlock the door and let her out.
* KilledOffForReal:
** Stefan is killed in the mine collapse in "While the Clock Ticked" while trying to take the Eye back for Gloria, [[KarmicDeath soon after the revelation that he was the one who murdered Laura]].

** Joe and Biff both get another when the Tall Man, who broke out of jail earlier, drives up to them in his car, and start running away while he chases them.
* TheOneThatGotAway: Laura Estabrook (who later became Laura Hardy) was this for Paul [=McFarlane=]. They were both accepted into Rosegrave Prep, but Laura didn't want to go because she felt that it would be just one more way for Gloria to control her life. When Paul decided to attend, she took it as a betrayal and never spoke to him again until a few weeks before she died. Paul regrets this and admits to Frank that he loved her more than anyone he's ever loved since.

* PapaWolf:
** Fenton and the boys head to the Chamber of the Eye for the final confrontation, but hear someone following them in the mines. He immediately has his sons get behind him and stand against the wall for safety, though it turns out to just be Callie coming to help.

** Gloria Estabrook can hardly be called a good person, but she truly does love her family:
*** Additionally, Gloria has been tutoring Callie Shaw for quite some time to get high enough grades to be able to enter Rosegrave Prep, a prestigious prep school founded by her father George, and offers to sponsor her tuition since Callie and her dad could never afford it.

* PleaseWakeUp: Word-for-word. When Frank is unconscious and unresponsive after trying to destroy the Eye and accidentally absorbing its power instead, both Joe and Fenton, especially the former, increasingly-desperately beg him to wake up.
* SanitySlippage: Stacy kidnaps Callie to try to force the Hardys to hand over their piece of the Eye. She then undergoes this further once she finds out they tricked her and handed over a fake.
* SequelHook: A few at the end of the first season:
** Stacy and her goons are still at large as of the end of the season, having escaped in their van.
** JB leaves Joe a radio and a note apologizing for working against him and promises that Joe can call him if he ever needs his help.
** The crew who cleans out and excavates the Chamber of the Eye after its collapse finds the fully-assembled Eye in the rubble.

* SoProudOfYou: Fenton is initially very upset to learn that the boys have been investigating their mom's death while he was away, but after a pep talk from Trudy in which she encourages him to trust them more, he works together with them for the climax to stop the Circle, and is clearly impressed with what they've accomplished. In the denouement, he tells them that he's very proud of them, and that their mother would be, too.
* ThickerThanWater: Gloria and Laura had an ''extremely'' tumultuous relationship, to the point that Laura wanted nothing more to do with her family's legacy and disowned her mother, and Gloria warned her that this would mean she would no longer be able to use her influence to keep Laura safe. But when she finds out that her butler, Stefan, was the one who murdered Laura and he claims he did it for her, Gloria is genuinely horrified and makes it clear that she ''never'' wanted him to do this; however much they may not have gotten along, Laura was still her daughter, and Gloria still loved her and never wanted her to die.

* TheUnReveal: It's implied that Gloria threatened and/or blackmailed Chief Collig somehow to be on her payroll, and when Fenton and Trudy finally confront him about his corruption, the former asks him, "What does she have on you, Ezra?" The answer to this is never revealed.
* UnspokenPlanGuarantee:
** Actually averted with the plan to rescue Callie in "While the Clock Ticked". This time, the entire brainstorming process and preparation is shown from beginning to end, but it also goes off without a hitch.
* WeNeedADistraction: Phil distracts Stefan by asking him to donate money (on Gloria's behalf) to the Bridgeport Sea Cadets, giving Joe and Biff time to sneak into George's SecretRoom for information they need there.

* WorkingTheSameCase: The Hardy Boys and their father, Fenton, as often happens in the books, though here, it's not really any surprise, considering said case is Laura's murder. After Fenton leaves on his mission, the brothers also begin tackling the case from a totally different angle, and between father's and sons' respective investigations, manage to bring down the Circle of the Eye together.

* BaitTheDog: After Frank learns that Stacy is really Anastasia Nabokov, she at first seems to be an AntiHero, since she hates the Circle of the Eye (a group already known to be very shady and corrupt and controls Bridgeport from the shadows) and wants to bring them down, believing they had her father killed. She also seems genuinely concerned when Joe goes missing and gives Frank assistance that proves vital in finding him. But once Frank realizes that she's just as bad as the rest of the Circle and refuses to continue working with her, she goes off the deep end completely, culminating in her capturing Callie and using her as a HostageForMacGuffin.

* CaughtOnTape: Kanika Khan, in exchange for her nephew Rupert and Fenton Hardy not pressing charges against her for her actions, gets Gloria Estabrook to confess to murdering Viktor Nabokov while secretly recording it and turns the tape over to them, which is the evidence they need to bring Gloria down.
* ChekhovsBoomerang: The walkie-talkies Biff gets for Joe and herself to use to contact each other become this a couple of times:
** Joe accidentally drops his, and Phil picks it up and follows him on his bike to return it to him. When he sees JB "kidnap" Joe, he uses the walkie to call Biff for backup.
** Later, when Joe and Biff fall into the mine, they discover that he left his at home, while she still has hers. Frank finds Joe's walkie and is able to use it to contact Joe and Biff in the mines and direct them how to get out safely.

* EvilAunt: Kanika is revealed to be this. She pretends to be concerned about the welfare of her nephew, Rupert, and hires Fenton Hardy to find him; it later turns out that she herself tried to have Rupert killed, and hired Fenton to get him out of Bridgeport so he wouldn't become a threat to the Circle of the Eye.
* EvilIsNotAToy: When JB gets his hands on the Khans' piece of the Eye, he gets a major PowerHigh from the good luck that it brings, and decides to try to assemble the whole thing and have even better luck, breaking into Stacy's house to steal the Nabokov piece. He gets badly beaten up by her CoDragons for his trouble, who also steal the piece that he has, giving Stacy two of them. This snaps JB out of it and he doesn't make the same mistake again when Gloria hires him to steal the third piece from Joe, turning it over without any visible temptation of double-crossing her to keep it for himself and later telling Joe in a letter that he'll be happy if he never encounters the Eye again.

* TheFakeCutie: Stacy Baker, the new girl who inadvertently saves Frank and Joe by accidentally hitting the Tall Man with her car, seems to be a sweet GirlNextDoor type who develops a crush on Frank after he helps her avoid trouble with the police. It's eventually revealed that she's really Anastasia Nabokov, who came to Bridgeport after her father Viktor was murdered to try to get information from the Hardys, and her running over the Tall Man is all but stated to have not been an accident after all. Frank figures out that she's more than she seems when she starts being too obvious about pumping him for info, and once he confronts her and she tells him her true identity, she drops the act, gradually becoming more and more unhinged as the season reaches its climax and the Hardys refuse to cooperate with her.

** Joe gives one to Fenton when the latter finally returns home in "Eye to Eye". Frank's, meanwhile, is more like a bear hug.

** JB seems to have one when Frank shows up at Gloria's home to confront both of them about stealing the Eye. He looks ashamed when Frank yells at him over betraying Joe and can barely look him in the eye as he goes to leave, and hearing him then yell at Gloria about hiring someone who made Joe a target and used him as leverage gives JB further pause. The next episode reveals that JB gave a witness account against Gloria and Collig to help get them arrested, and he leaves a note promising Joe a favor someday if he needs it in return.

* TheInfiltration: Frank, knowing that Gloria wants him to be her heir in the Circle, pretends to side with her and agree to be her successor in the hope that it'll give him a better opportunity to eventually destroy the Eye, as he and Joe both want to do. Only Joe is aware that Frank is undercover, and Frank is clearly unhappy at having to lie to his own father, among others. He soon stops trying to play nice with Gloria once Callie is kidnapped and the former refuses to trade her piece of the Eye for the latter's safe return.
* TheIngenue: Stacy Baker. Until we learn she's really Anastasia Nabokov, a FemmeFatale who was [[TheVamp deliberately invoking this]] to get Frank to fall for her so she could get info from him about the conspiracy going on in Bridgeport. He eventually sees through her when she plays this up a little ''too'' much, to the point of giving him bad vibes and making him realize she's too good to be true.

* LuredIntoATrap: Fenton's entire case is an extended version. Kanika Khan tells him about her nephew Rupert working together with Laura on the latter's latest story, claims Rupert has been kidnapped possibly by the same party who had Laura killed, and hires Fenton to find him. It turns out Kanika herself had Rupert kidnapped and hired Fenton just to get him out of Bridgeport so he wouldn't interfere with the Circle's schemes, and intended for both of them to die.
* MamaBear: Jessie in "No Getting Out" when Biff has gone missing along with Joe. She's angry that her daughter is in danger because of something she was doing with Joe, and once the two of them are found, she furiously threatens to arrest the Hardy Boys unless they let her in on what they've gotten Biff into, at which point they share with her everything they've discovered in the case so far.

* NoManShouldHaveThisPower: What George Estabrook came to believe about the Eye when thousands of people died as a result of its misuse. He broke it into three pieces and planned to make sure his piece was lost forever so it could never be fully reassembled. His power-hungry partners disagreed, and arranged for his death. Laura believed this as well, which is why George chose her instead of Gloria to be his successor (though he and Laura both died before the latter could learn this).

** Fenton asks his sons to get off the case they're investigating because he "need[s] [them] to be safe", and has quite a bit of AngerBornOfWorry when he returns home and learns they've still been investigating anyway.

* PartingWordsRegret: Discussed by Frank after Joe and Biff fall down a mine shaft. The last time the boys talked, they had a major disagreement about what to do next, which ended with Joe in tears and too upset to even talk to his brother. When Frank is successfully able to contact Joe via the walkie-talkies, he notes that he would have had to live with that being their last talk if he hadn't found Joe.

* SanitySlippage: Stacy undergoes this when Frank realizes she's no better than people she's working against (namely, the Estabrooks and the Khans) and refuses to cooperate with her, and eventually kidnaps Callie to try to force the Hardys to hand over their piece of the Eye. She then undergoes this further once she finds out they tricked her and handed over a fake.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere:
** Dean [=McFarlane=] starts to give Frank some valuable information about what Laura was investigating and asks to meet him the following day, only for Frank to return then to find that [=McFarlane=] has suddenly resigned his post and disappeared, clearly out to fear of what would happen to him if the shady organization behind Bridgeport and Rosegrave learned about this. He leaves behind only a note for Frank with minimal clues so the latter can continue his investigation, and [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse is never seen again for the rest of the season]].
** Once Kanika gives Gloria's recorded murder confession to Fenton and Rupert as evidence, she leaves Bridgeport forever and washes her hands of the Eye conspiracy altogether. It's partly due to her deal with them in exchange for not turning her in to the authorities, but she doesn't exactly seem crushed to cut ties with the Circle.

** Biff reveals to Joe in the 11th episode that she recently discovered she's adopted and learned something about her birth family that she didn't like, but doesn't tell him what it is, leaving it open to explore further.

* SketchySuccessor: Inverted; the quite-sketchy Gloria chooses straight-arrow Frank as her successor to the also-sketchy family legacy. Frank doesn't actually want any part of it, but plays along to gain Gloria's trust so he can eventually get the opportunity to destroy the Eye.

* TheUnfavorite: A non-siblings variation. George Estabrook did love his daughter Gloria, but he recognized that she was as power-hungry as his partners and outright told her that she would never be part of the Circle, instead planning to pass on his secrets to her daughter and his granddaughter Laura, who shared his disgust of and desire to distance themselves from the family legacy. Gloria's jealousy at being passed over led to her alerting George's partners of his plan when he tried to run away with his piece of the Eye, resulting in them murdering him and Gloria becoming his successor instead.

* VehicularKidnapping: The penultimate episode ends with Callie being restrained and dragged into a blue van by Stacy's goons.

* WomanScorned: Even after Frank learns who Stacy really is, she still seems to be attracted to him and wants to work together with him to bring down the Circle. Eventually, Frank realizes that she's just as bad as the other Circle members and rejects her, and she responds by kidnapping Callie to force Frank to give her the last piece of the Eye.

* WouldHurtAChild: The Tall Man when trying to get the piece of the Eye. He goes after Joe, whom he knows has the piece, several times, and some of the other kids as well, manhandling both Joe and Frank and even threatening them with a knife at one point.
* YouHaveFailedMe: After the Tall Man fails to eliminate Ern and then is repeatedly unable to retrieve the piece of the Eye that Joe has, the mysterious woman over the phone tries to fire him, but the Tall Man responds by promising to take the piece to another buyer instead of her once he gets it back. He once again tries to attack the Hardys and they again escape from him, and he starts to pursue them, only to be fatally struck by a car by Stacy Baker when he runs into the road in front of her. At first, it appears to be an accident, but with the later reveal that Stacy is Anastasia Nabokov and was the woman he spoke to on the phone, it's clear she hit and killed him on purpose to get him out of the way after he failed again.

** Chet doesn't take his girlfriend Callie's suspicions of Stacy seriously at all, and in fact treats it with annoyance, because he's chalking them up to Callie having romantic feelings for Frank that she's refusing to admit to and [[YoureJustJealous her just being jealous of how much attention Frank has been paying to Stacy]]; this is making Chet jealous in turn--despite Callie's insistence that she's "just trying to look out for our friend"--and leads him to break up with her. Chet is completely right that Callie ''does'' have feelings for Frank (and he for her), to the point that the two of them end up getting together by the end of the season, and this is indeed some of the initial reason for her dislike of Stacy. Nonetheless, Callie follows her instincts, does some good detective work to prove her hunch, and turns out to be more correct than she ever suspected, culminating in Stacy and her goons kidnapping her, after which Chet laments not heeding her warnings.

* KeepingSecretsSucks: Trudy and Jessie, who have quite a bit of ShipTease, start working together to figure out what their respective kids are up to. Frank and Joe eventually let Trudy in on their investigation when she finds their StringTheory board and forces them to come clean, but swear her to secrecy, and her friendship/budding relationship with Jessie becomes strained for a couple of episodes when the latter realizes that Trudy is holding out on her, while Trudy, in turn, is clearly unhappy and uncomfortable about not being able to tell her the truth. They get better once the Hardys eventually bring Jessie in as well.

* SarcasticConfession: JB realizes the pieces of the Eye have magic powers after experiencing impossibly good luck from one of them, and asks Joe what else they can do. He quips "Win teddy bears," and JB just chides him that he's serious, but this is, in fact, exactly how Joe himself figured out the Eye is magic, by winning every single game he played at the carnival and getting several stuffed animals as prizes.

* DismantledMacGuffin: The Eye, which was broken into three pieces, each kept by one of the three families who found it. Each piece by itself is far less powerful, but still brings very good luck to the user, as Joe discovers. The [[BigBadEnsemble numerous villains]] are trying to take all the pieces for themselves to reassemble it, with the Hardys and their friends getting caught up in it after Joe inadvertently comes into possession of one of them.

** Joe's snark about how the citizens of Bridgeports' "secrets have secrets" prompts Frank to figure out that the key to George's SecretRoom is hidden in Laura's music box, which Gloria told him has more than one secret in it while he's only found one. Joe takes it apart, and they do find the key hidden there.

* AnOfferYouCantRefuse: JB's failed attempt to use Joe as leverage against Gloria ends with him being arrested by Chief Collig (whom, thanks to Joe, he now knows is a DirtyCop working for Gloria) and driven to a secluded location, seemingly to murder him. Instead, Collig gives him a second-chance offer from Gloria to steal the Khan piece of the Eye while Kanika is in town. JB is hesitant at first, but agrees when Collig makes it clear that the choices are either accepting the offer or death.

* ReedRichardsIsUseless: Rather than using the Eye's power to prevent wars, cure diseases, or help people, the Circle instead just used it to make themselves rich and powerful (to the distaste of Frank and Joe when they learn about it).

* ThouShaltNotKill: JB insists to Joe that he's a thief but not a murderer, and has never killed anyone.[[note]]He did ''almost'' kill the Tall Man at the carnival by electrocuting him, but it was in self-defense as opposed to cold-blooded murder, and the Tall Man survived anyway.[[/note]]

** It's never made clear exactly how the Tall Man escapes from lockup at the Bridgeport police station. Since Chief Collig is revealed in the following episode to be corrupt, some of the characters seem to think that he secretly let him go, but seeing as Collig works for Gloria--who understandably shows concern about the Tall Man's escape, since he's very much ''not'' on her side and has been going after her grandsons--this wouldn't make much sense, and he certainly doesn't seem happy to have to tell her about it. Once the Tall Man is KilledOffForReal at the end of the seventh episode, the mystery of how he got out of jail takes a backseat to everything else going on and is never resolved.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: A couple in quick succession when the Hardy Boys encounter JB at the abandoned factory in "The Drop". As he tries to leave, Frank insists that he give them more information, resulting in:
-->'''JB''': You want "something?" Here's "something": I stole a golden idol from a ''killer''. The people who hired ''me'' are probably just as dangerous. So what were ''you'' [[AndThenWhat gonna do if you caught up with them?]]\\
'''Frank''': ''(Long {{Beat}})'' I don't know, I hadn't thought that far ahead.\\
'''JB''': Think ahead ''now''. You let this go.\\
'''Frank''': ''(To his back as he walks away)'' If it were your mother, would you let it go?\\
'''JB''': ''(Stops and turns around [[{{Beat}} after a moment]])'' [[{{Touche}} No. I wouldn't.]] [[ArmorPiercingResponse But I bet your mom wouldn't want you end up like her.]] ''(Pauses to let this sink in.)'' Get out of here.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: A justified example. Joe is panicking about the police having found the toolbox that he lent to JB before later finding out he's a criminal, as Joe's soldering iron with his name engraved on it is in there and he fears being arrested as an accomplice. Biff comes up with a plan to help him get it back while stating that since it's Joe's soldering iron, if he takes it back from the police while he's at the station, it's not really stealing. Of course, this is completely untrue, as taking something that's been classified as police evidence very much ''is'' stealing and is illegal, but these are two 12-year-olds saying it, not actual law enforcement, and they do acknowledge later that breaking into an evidence locker is a felony.

* DefectorFromDecadence: Laura was born and raised into one of the world's richest and most powerful families, the Estabrooks, but once she learned where their fortune came from, she refused to have anything more to do with them and abandoned her life of privilege. She even broke up with her boyfriend when he chose to attend Rosegrave, and ended up marrying Fenton instead, who came from a modest working-class family.
-->'''Paul''': [Laura] said that Gloria was writing her life for her, turning her into another privileged, powerful, rich Estabrook heir. And she was turning her back on all of it.

* FullNameUltimatum: Jessie sternly says "Joseph Hardy!" when she catches him in Chief Collig's office trying to get JB's file. Aunt Trudy also says "Joe Hardy, you get in that house right now!" when Jessie brings him home.

** [[ImplacableMan The Tall Man]] has a fake-out death in "Of Freedom and Pleasure" when JB electrocutes him in self-defense, and recovers and escapes from the hospital in the following episode. However, Stacy hitting him with her car in "A Figure in Hiding" is enough to do him in for good.

* MyGirlBackHome: Emma is initially this after Frank and Joe leave Dixon City for at least some of the summer to stay with their aunt in Bridgeport. It becomes deconstructed, though, when Emma eventually gets tired of waiting for Frank to return and breaks up with him.

* NotQuiteDead: JB wins his fight with and escapes from the Tall Man, who was attempting to kill him, by electrocuting him with the plugs from one of the carnival rides. Everyone initially thinks he's dead, but he wakes up and escapes from the hospital a few days later. The boys are certainly wary about the fact that a man who can withstand enough electricity to power an entire carnival is after them. The Tall Man is finally KilledOffForReal when he's hit by Stacy's car.
* ObnoxiousInLaws: Gloria Estabrook to her son-in-law Fenton Hardy, whom she even acknowledges has never liked her because Laura also didn't like her. Trudy, despite Gloria not technically being an in-law of ''hers'', actually regards her as this even more than Fenton does, as she states that Gloria has never been nice to her, Fenton, or their parents.

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Joe is able to steal his soldering iron back at the police station, but then tries to get more information about JB and is busted. The next day, Biff shows up at the Hardy home to give the boys a copy she made of the police report on JB, having somehow managed to get her hands on it at the station without her mom noticing. She even admits, "It wasn't easy, but I can't resist a challenge."

* PartingWordsRegret:
** During the final time Gloria saw Laura before the latter's death, they had a huge argument that the former claims was related to Frank, but it's later revealed it was about Laura's plan to publicly expose the Circle of the Eye's corruption. Gloria lampshades to Frank that she will forever regret that this was the last conversation she had with her daughter.
** Discussed by Frank after Joe and Biff fall down a mine shaft. The last time the boys talked, they had a major disagreement about what to do next, which ended with Joe in tears and too upset to even talk to his brother. When Frank is successfully able to contact Joe via the walkie-talkies, he notes that he would have had to live with that being their last talk if he hadn't found Joe.
* PassiveAggressiveKombat:
** Gloria exchanges this with Trudy (and Fenton to a lesser extent) earlier in the season, sometimes even to the point that the "passive" is dropped altogether, though both women dial it back later on as they make an effort to bury the hatchet.
** Frank is not impressed and fairly contemptuous of Stavros's haughty, pretentious attitude about Rosegrave during their tour, and expresses it through a combo of bored disinterest and snarky comments. Then see his parting words when he and Callie cut the tour short to go snoop:
--->'''Frank''': And good luck with the whole "being the best" thing!

*** She wants to be a better grandmother to the boys than she was a mother to Laura, and while some of her efforts to do so are certainly a bit misguided, she clearly does care about them, looks out for their safety, and is nicer to them than she is to most other people.
*** She also makes a real effort to mend the fences with Trudy Hardy, with whom she's never gotten along, likely out of sincere regret at losing Laura. She has tea with Trudy (which Gloria suggested) and offers to talk to some friends at art galleries in the city about displaying and selling some of Trudy's artwork.

* RichSuitorPoorSuitor: Laura Estabrook's high school sweetheart Paul [=McFarlane=] was the rich suitor, being from a wealthy Bridgeport family like herself. Eventually, Laura turned her back on the privileged life she was born into and broke up with Paul, and ended up dating and marrying Fenton Hardy instead, the (relatively) poor suitor from a middle- or working-class family that Gloria considered to be, as Trudy puts it, from "the wrong side of town".

* StereoFibbing: Joe and Biff come to the police station so Joe can try to steal his soldering iron back from the evidence locker, but they need to get past the sergeant at the desk. Biff lies that they're there to get a charity collection box, and when he asks what the charity is for, Biff says "kittens" and Joe says "orphans" at the same time, and Biff quickly covers by adding "Orphan kittens at the animal shelter."
* TheTeam: The fifth episode solidifies the main kids--Frank and Joe Hardy, Chet Morton, Callie Shaw, Biff Hooper, and Phil Cohen--as a six-person team working to unearth the conspiracy in Bridgeport and learn what Laura Hardy knew about it and who killed her.

* TheUnReveal:
** Frank and Callie discover in their research at the library that, right after the Eye was found, the agriculture of Bridgeport completely changed to become much more habitable, going from a place you couldn't pay people to live in to a booming town with a skyrocketing population. This plot point is never brought up again, so how exactly it occurred--whether it was [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane thanks to the Eye's powers literally changing the landscape somehow, or the people who found it using its information]] to change the land itself--doesn't get any elaboration.
** It's implied that Gloria threatened and/or blackmailed Chief Collig somehow to be on her payroll, and when Fenton and Trudy finally confront him about his corruption, the former asks him, "What does she have on you, Ezra?" The answer to this is never revealed.

** The gang trapping the Tall Man in "The Drop". Just a very basic, general premise of what they're planning to do--lure him to Chet's farm to catch him--is shared, while the details are kept hidden. It works perfectly, such that everyone at the police station is impressed.

* UpperClassTwit: Stavros Vasili, the Rosegrave student who gives Frank and Callie a tour, comes across like this. He's shown to be ''incredibly'' arrogant and pretentious about attending the school, constantly bragging about how awesome everything is and how everyone who attends is a cut above the rest, while barely noticing how little the two of them are paying attention to him, and they quickly ditch him to investigate. Frank, who already had his misgivings about Rosegrave, is even more put off by Stavros's elitism.

* WantedPoster: JB Cox has these in Bridgeport (and presumably other cities as well) after stealing the idol from the Tall Man and jumping out of a plane, becoming a fugitive. Seeing one of these, along with the police file on him, is how the Hardy Boys learn his name.
* WeNeedADistraction:
** While visiting Rosegrave Academy, Callie purposely breaks a vase to distract the dean's secretary so Frank can sneak into his office, though he unfortunately does still get caught in the act.
** Phil distracts Stefan by asking him to donate money (on Gloria's behalf) to the Bridgeport Sea Cadets, giving Joe and Biff time to sneak into George's SecretRoom for information they need there.

** Joe becomes this to JB Cox, despite JB claiming to only be out for himself. When he sees the Tall Man steal a photo of Joe and realizes the former is going to hunt down the latter at the carnival, JB catches up to them JustInTime to stop the Tall Man from hurting or killing Joe and pulls a YouShallNotPass to give him a chance to get away. He later warns Joe and Frank to stay away from the case so they don't get hurt, and when he takes Joe hostage against Gloria, insists that he'd never actually hurt him. When Gloria hires him to steal Joe's piece of the Eye and bring it to her, Frank reams him out over betraying Joe, and despite JB responding that he was doing the job he was hired to do, does seem to genuinely feel bad about it. The season ends with a voiceover of a note that he wrote to Joe, declaring that JB owes him a favor as repayment for stealing the Eye piece and tells Joe to contact him if he ever needs his assistance.

** JB, hiding in Joe's closet, has a couple in rapid succession: first when he sees that the Tall Man (from whom he stole the idol) is the intruder in the Hardy home, and then when he sees him steal a photo of Joe and realizes this killer is planning to go after the kid.
** Joe gets a ''huge'' one at the carnival when Biff tells him there's a man with a photo of him asking people where he is and he turns around and sees the Tall Man, and ''immediately'' tells her they need to get out of there.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: Downplayed. Despite being set up as an important character, Ern is only in the first two episodes before he's PutOnABus and never seen again, even after the man who was trying to kill him is dead. Nonetheless, he plays a big role in getting the Hardys involved in the case by being the SoleSurvivor of the ''Astghik'' and giving them important info about what the Tall Man stole from the ship, and first putting them in the Tall Man's crosshairs as well when they try to help him. In the long run, though, Joe meeting JB (the man who stole the idol from the Tall Man) turns out to be more vital to the plot.

* StringTheory: Frank and Joe begin making one on a billboard in the attic, trying to figure out what Laura was investigating and who killed her. Trudy eventually finds it and makes the boys fill her in on their investigation.
* TarotTroubles: A tarot-reading fortune teller, Anya Kowalsky, is introduced in "Of Freedom and Pleasure", and insists on reading Frank's fortune when he, Chet, and Callie visit her.
** Said fortune is thankfully mostly free of "trouble": his cards are Death, the World inverted, and Two of Cups. Anya correctly tells the kids that the "Death" card isn't literal and symbolizes metamorphosis, a major change in Frank's life (which in this case, ironically, actually ''is'' from a literal death, Laura's, as well as the move to Bridgeport). The inverted World means a lack of closure and need for answers, representing Frank's and Joe's investigation into their mom's death. And finally, the Two of Cups indicates a new friend or partnership, which is indeed the case with the Hardy Boys' new friends who are helping them solve the mystery.
** However, Anya also tells them that if Frank's Two of Cups had been inverted instead of upright, it would have symbolized total chaos and the world being out of balance. Sure enough, at the end of the episode--after she's told them about how the town of Bridgeport is cursed and the Tall Man was seemingly killed at the "cursed" carnival--one of her cards falls off the table when she's packing up, and it turns out to be the Two of Cups inverted this time, which she sees as a foreboding omen.

* CommonalityConnection: Joe and JB form one pretty soon after meeting. It comes up in conversation that Joe's mom is dead, and JB expresses his sympathy and reveals that his own mom died too when he was around Joe's age. After he admits that he still misses her, too, Joe visibly warms up to him a bit more and helps him fix his radio.

** Gloria has a dog named Peppermint in the first episode, but he gets out of the house and runs off into the woods in the first episode (which becomes a plot point when Joe goes looking for him and gets captured by Ern) and is never seen again. Maybe best not to think about that one too much....
** Joe sees a stuffed boar head on Gloria's wall in her home, and she comments, "That's the beast that got your Uncle Harry," sounding rather blasé about it. "Uncle Harry" is never mentioned again, and neither Gloria nor Laura are ever shown to have had siblings.

* {{Expy}}: JB Cox is clearly intended to be one to D.B. Cooper, a man who, in 1971, took over a plane, jumped out with a bag of cash, and was never seen again. JB's debut likewise has him jumping out of a plane after stealing the artifact (later revealed to contain a piece of the Eye) from the Tall Man, though, unlike Cooper, we find out what happened to him afterward.

* ForWantOfANail: Joe's OddFriendship with JB Cox plays a huge role in the entire series, and is how Joe first gets the Eye, which brings the boys into the case more directly. The two only meet in the first place because 1) Biff just so happens to be walking along the beach where JB washed up from jumping out of the plane and is camping out, approaches him, and agrees to buy him supplies in exchange for some cash; 2) Biff goes to Wilt's to buy said supplies when Joe happens to be there as well; and 3) Joe gets curious enough about the situation to tail her back to JB.

* InterfaceSpoiler: JB Cox's name is not officially revealed until the end of "Secrets and Lies" when the boys learn it from his WantedPoster (though sharp-eyed viewers could spot one of these posters in "Of Freedom and Pleasure" in a FreezeFrameBonus and learn his name that way); before this, they just call him "the guy on the beach." However, audience members watching with subtitles can learn his first name, JB, from his very first line in his debut episode ("Where the Light Can't Find You"), thanks to the subs identifying him as such.

** The premise of the series is Laura dying in a car crash early in the first episode, and her family trying to finish the investigation she started.

* LeaveNoWitnesses: What the Tall Man was ''supposed'' to do when stealing the artifact from the ''Astghik''. Unfortunately for him, one person, Ern, survives, and despite the Tall Man's efforts to track him down and kill him too, Ern ultimately manages to evade and escape from him.

* NoNameGiven: "The Tall Man" is the nickname that the Hardys and friends use for the seven-foot-tall hired assassin who blew up the ''Astghik''. His real name is never revealed.

** Frank and Callie both get this when he enters the hotel, where Ern (whom he's [[LeaveNoWitnesses trying to kill]]) is hiding in the basement.

* SatchelSwitcheroo: How JB steals the idol on the plane from the Tall Man. The latter notices only after JB has already locked himself inside the bathroom, and by the time the Tall Man and the stewardess break the door open, he's already gone.

** After Ern is hunted and nearly killed by the Tall Man in an effort to LeaveNoWitnesses, he and his girlfriend skip town.

* SoleSurvivor: Ern is the only survivor of the ''Astghik'' crew, which gets him targeted by the Tall Man, who intended to kill ''everyone'' there.

** Or dog, in this case. Gloria's dog, Peppermint, gets out of the house in the first episode after Joe neglects to properly close the door behind him. The kids get distracted from searching for him by Ern taking Joe hostage, it's never stated if the dog was found or came back or not, and Peppermint is ultimately never seen or mentioned again in the whole series.

* DismantledMacGuffin: The Eye, which was broken into three pieces, each kept by one of the three families who found it. Each piece by itself is far less powerful, but still brings very good luck to the holder, as Joe discovers. The [[BigBadEnsemble numerous villains of the season]] are trying to take all the pieces for themselves to reassemble it, with the Hardys and their friends getting caught up in it all after Joe inadvertently comes into possession of one of the pieces.

* TheDreaded: The Tall Man. Ern is terrified of him because he's the SoleSurvivor of the man's massacre on the ''Astghik''; JB fears him because he stole the idol from him and knows the Tall Man will kill him in revenge; and the Hardys are already scared of him because of the ''Astghik'' as well, but then become even more so once he starts targeting them directly for Joe's piece of the Eye. Being a seven-foot-tall ImplacableMan who survives enough electricity to power a whole carnival, breaks out of jail, and chases after the Hardy Boys and their friends with a knife multiple times will do that for you.

*** She wouldn't dream of harming her descendants or ordering someone else to do so, not even when her daughter was threatening to bring her down and expose her secrets, and is appalled when she discovers that her manservant, Stefan, murdered Laura and claimed it was for her sake.

* TheHeavy: The Tall Man, the huge assassin who pursues the Hardys several times to steal their piece of the Eye and is working on behalf of a mysterious woman (Anastasia Nabokov), acts as this for the first half of the season, until he's killed off by Stacy hitting him with her car accidentally (or not).

* LoveDodecahedron: Callie is dating Chet and Frank is dating Emma, but Frank and Callie are growing increasingly attracted to each other. Then Emma breaks up with Frank at the start of "Secrets and Lies", though Callie doesn't learn this until "In Plain Sight". Then new girl Stacy Baker comes to town and develops a huge crush on Frank, and he seems to appreciate it and possibly like her back, which makes Callie jealous (in addition to being genuinely suspicious of Stacy), which in turn makes Chet jealous, eventually resulting in Chet forcing Callie to recognize her feelings for Frank and breaking up with her, leaving things awkward between the three of them. Then Frank realizes that Callie was right and Stacy is hiding something, and confronts her at Wilt's, only for her to kiss him at one point to try to persuade him to work with her; Callie happens to see this and gets the wrong idea. Frank eventually rejects Stacy, but before he has a chance to properly work things out with Callie, Stacy kidnaps her to use as a HostageForMacGuffin. It's only resolved at the end of the season finale when Callie and Frank finally become the OfficialCouple and share TheBigDamnKiss. Then there's Joe and Biff, and Trudy and Jessie, who seem to have their own budding relationships (a ToyShip, in the former case) on the side. Not to mention that Frank also meets his HappilyMarried mom's ex-boyfriend, who still carried a torch for her to the day she died.

** With the Estabrooks, Gloria usurped leadership from the family after her father had a change of heart, and while we know she had some kind of love interest in the past whom she may or may not have married--Laura's father--Gloria kept her own surname regardless. The Hardys even jokingly refer to her as "The Queen of Bridgeport" in the premiere. That being said, she wants her grandson Frank to succeed her; however, she also seems to want him to adopt the Estabrook surname (her own name and his mom's maiden name) rather than continuing to use his legal Hardy name.

* OnlySaneMan: Of the main different factions fighting over the pieces of the Eye--the three family leaders, JB, and the Hardy Boys--Joe is the only one who, after learning the full details of what it is, wants to destroy it right from the start rather than trying to reassemble it. Even Frank briefly considers the idea of assembling it to see and speak with an illusion of their murdered mom before eventually coming to the same conclusion as Joe.

** Frank is not impressed and fairly contemptuous of Stavros's haughty, pretentious attitude about Rosegrave during their tour, and expresses it through a combination of bored disinterest and a few snarky comments. And then there's his parting words when he and Callie cut the tour short to go snoop:

*** Additionally, Gloria has been tutoring Callie Shaw for quite some time to get high enough grades to be able to enter Rosegrave Prep, a prestigious prep school founded by her father George, and offers to sponsor her tuition since Callie and her dad would never be able to afford it.

** Stacy purposely tries to invoke this with Frank, partially to make Callie jealous but more to get information from him, but Frank eventually catches on. There's still some genuine attraction and chemistry between them, but Frank turns her down when he sees more of what she's really like.
** There's also quite a bit between Trudy and Jessie; while it's more subtle than the other examples due to HideYourLesbians being in play (at least for this season), their season-long arc of becoming closer and confiding in each other more and more definitely reads like a budding relationship.

** Callie (Archie) starts off dating Chet, who's lived in Bridgeport his whole life like her, is her ChildhoodFriend, and comes from a working-class family of farmers (Betty). Then she meets Frank (Veronica), the new kid in town from the big city who gets her involved with his and Joe's investigation, who's also the grandson of Callie's mentor, one of the richest and most powerful people in the world. In this case, Veronica wins, as Chet and Callie break up and she gets together with Frank by the end of the season.

** The flashback that the Eye shows Frank includes Laura's meeting with Rupert, where she commented to him about the Circle, "[[LeftHandVersusRightHand The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.]]" Frank repeats this phrase when he realizes that Stefan, Gloria's '''right-hand''' man, was the only other witness to her argument with Laura, and that he killed her without Gloria's knowledge.

** JB seems to have one when Frank shows up at Gloria's home to confront both of them about stealing the Eye from them. He looks ashamed when Frank yells at him over betraying Joe and can barely look him in the eye as he goes to leave, and hearing him then yell at Gloria about hiring someone who made Joe a target and used him as leverage gives him further pause. The next episode reveals that JB gave a witness account against Gloria and Collig to help get them arrested, and he leaves a note promising Joe a favor in return someday if he needs it.

* SatchelSwitcheroo: How JB steals the idol on the plane from the Tall Man. The latter notices only after JB has already locked himself inside the bathroom, and by the time the Tall Man and the stewardess break the door open, he's already gone

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: A justified example. Joe is panicking about the police having found the toolbox that he lent to JB before later finding out he's a criminal, as Joe's soldering iron with his name engraved on it is in there and he fears being arrested as an accomplice. Biff comes up with a plan to help him get it back while stating that since it's Joe's soldering iron, if he takes it back from the police while he's at the station, it's not really stealing. Of course, this is completely untrue, as taking something that's been classified as police evidence very much ''is'' stealing and is illegal, but these are two 12-year-olds saying it, not actual law enforcement, and they do indeed acknowledge later that breaking into an evidence locker is a felony.
* BadBoss: Anastasia Nabokov. The fact that her counterparts in the other families, Gloria and Kanika, are much more in the vein of {{Benevolent Boss}}es [[spoiler:sets up the eventual reveal that she's actually even more evil than they are]]. Her "aunt and uncle", who are really bodyguards her father hired for her before he died, act far more robotic and emotionless than the genuine loyalty that Stefan and Nigel show to their employers, and at different points, she's seen bossing them around and obviously treating them like servants, snapping at them, ''screaming'' at them, and ''slapping'' them across the face. She also pulls a YouHaveFailedMe on the Tall Man by hitting and killing him with her car, while using a WoundedGazelleGambit immediately afterwards to convince everyone else it was an accident.
* BaitTheDog: After Frank learns that Stacy is really Anastasia Nabokov, she at first seems to be an AntiHero, since she hates the Circle of the Eye (a group already known to be very shady and corrupt and controls Bridgeport from the shadows) and wants to bring them down, believing they had her father killed. She also seems genuinely concerned when Joe goes missing and gives Frank assistance that proves vital in finding him. [[spoiler:But once Frank realizes that she's just as bad as the rest of the Circle and refuses to continue working with her, she goes off the deep end completely, culminating in her capturing Callie and using her as a HostageForMacGuffin.]]

** Gloria's shown multiple times giving polite thank-yous to her staff and treating them graciously, such as Sonya and Stefan, and appears to have considered the latter like family for many years, so much so that [[spoiler:he developed UndyingLoyalty to her and murdered her own estranged daughter in a highly misguided attempt to protect her interests]]. She also gives JB multiple second chances despite him repeatedly failing to bring her the pieces of the Eye she hires him to steal, and even after he tries to betray her at one point by taking the pieces for himself; when he finally does deliver it, she pays him as promised with a curt thanks and dismisses him, not having any intentions of double-crossing him.

** Kanika Khan tried to have her nephew Rupert, who was investigating the Circle along with Laura Hardy, killed, and then hires Fenton Hardy to find him in order to get Fenton to leave town so he won't threaten the Circle, hoping that both men would die. When this fails and her piece of the Eye is stolen, she drops out of the ensemble, [[spoiler:getting the evidence Fenton and Rupert need to get Gloria arrested and promising to leave Bridgeport and the Circle behind forever in exchange for them not turning Kanika over to the cops]].
** Anastasia Nabokov wants to destroy the Circle because she (correctly) believes someone in it murdered her father. She initially tries to work together with Frank, [[spoiler:but he soon realizes that she plans to take the Eye for herself rather than destroying it and rebuffs her. She responds by trying to use Callie as a hostage to get the final piece of the Eye.]]
** Gloria Estabrook betrayed her father, George, to his partners when he tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, resulting in his death. [[spoiler:More recently, she murdered Viktor Nabokov when he tried to get her piece of the Eye]], and hires JB to steal the Khan's piece from Kanika and her own piece from her own grandsons, wanting to assemble the Eye herself. She claims she wants to use it for better things than the three original Circle founders did, but it's pretty clear what she really wants is the power she'll get from having the entire Eye.
** Interestingly, though, [[spoiler:while Gloria killed Viktor, none of the above murdered Laura, despite most characters believing that Viktor and Laura were killed by the same person. Stefan, Gloria's [[TheDragon Dragon]], did that without her knowledge or consent]].

** Chet doesn't take his girlfriend Callie's suspicions of Stacy seriously at all, and in fact treats it with annoyance, because he's chalking them up to Callie having romantic feelings for Frank that she's refusing to admit to and [[YoureJustJealous her just being jealous of how much attention Frank has been paying to Stacy]]; this is making Chet jealous in turn--despite Callie's insistence that she's "just trying to look out for our friend"--and leads him to break up with her. Chet is completely right that Callie ''does'' have feelings for Frank (and he for her), to the point that the two of them end up getting together by the end of the season, and this is indeed some of the initial reason for her dislike of Stacy. Nonetheless, Callie follows her instincts, does some good detective work to prove her hunch, and turns out to be more correct than she ever suspected, [[spoiler:culminating in Stacy and her goons kidnapping her, after which Chet laments not heeding her warnings.]]
** The argument Frank and Joe have with Gloria in the season finale, where they finally turn on her for good. [[spoiler:[[JerkassHasAPoint Gloria's not wrong]] that if they do give Stacy the final piece of the Eye she's demanding in exchange for Callie, which would give her all three of them, she'll most likely become too powerful to stop and could cause untold damage, seeing how AxCrazy she's become. However, the boys point out that Gloria's way too confident that Stacy's bluffing about killing Callie when none of them actually know what Stacy will do, and are disgusted that she's so cavalier about Callie being kidnapped and willing to risk the latter's safety so casually.]]

* TheButlerDidIt: [[spoiler:The season finale at last [[TheReveal reveals who killed Laura Hardy]]: Stefan, Gloria's butler, who did it to protect her reputation after Laura visited her and vowed to expose the Circle of the Eye, including the Estabrooks. Notably, this was ''not'' at all on Gloria's orders; Stefan acted on his own, and she is sincerely shocked and suitably upset and appalled when she learns this.]]
* CaughtOnTape: Kanika Khan, in exchange for her nephew Rupert and Fenton Hardy not pressing charges against her for her actions, gets Gloria Estabrook to confess [[spoiler:to murdering Viktor Nabokov while secretly recording it and turns the tape over to them, which is the evidence they need to bring Gloria down]].

** Joe makes a fake copy of the piece of the Eye in "The Drop" to trick the Tall Man into taking the wrong one when they confront him, though he ends up with both of them still in his possession. [[spoiler:In the season finale, Stacy kidnaps Callie and demands the piece if they want her back alive, but by then, Gloria has the piece after hiring JB to steal it from the boys for her, and it's unlikely they'll be able to get it back in time to exchange it for Callie. Joe then remembers that they still have the fake, and they rig it up well enough to convince Stacy's mooks that it's real for the time they need to get Callie back.]]

* ContinuitySnarl: Callie reveals to Frank in "Secrets and Lies" that his grandmother lied to him about her argument with Laura, and tells him what she remembers overhearing of it: that Laura was saying something about [[TitleDrop the titular "secrets and lies"]], and it ended with her saying "This all has to stop!" before she stormed out. [[spoiler:When the Eye actually shows Frank the argument in "While the Clock Ticked", though, most of this is absent; the closest Laura comes to speaking any of this is with "You lied to me!", but never says the word "secrets" at all, and her parting words to Gloria are instead "You can't, or you won't?"]]

* DamselInDistress: [[spoiler:Callie for part of the season finale when she's kidnapped by Stacy as a HostageForMacGuffin. She gets back at Stacy later by fighting and beating her up in the climax.]]

* DefiantCaptive: [[spoiler:Even as Callie's sitting tied to a chair after Stacy and her CoDragons kidnapped her, she just coldly tells them that she can't wait to make them pay for it and they'll never get away with it. When Stacy calls the Hardy home to demand the piece of the Eye as ransom, the very first thing Callie does when she hears Joe on the phone is shout for him not to give her the piece, and later says the same thing to Frank and Chet when they come to make the exchange, despite clearly being scared the whole time and knowing that Stacy will kill her if she doesn't get it.]]

** [[spoiler:The flashback that the Eye shows Frank includes Laura's meeting with Rupert, where she commented to him about the Circle, "[[LeftHandVersusRightHand The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.]]" Frank repeats this phrase when he realizes that Stefan, Gloria's '''right-hand''' man, was the only other witness to her argument with Laura, and that he killed her without Gloria's knowledge.]]

** Gloria may be corrupt, [[ObnoxiousInLaws rude and passive-aggressive to her in-laws]], possibly indirectly responsible for her father's death by ratting him out to his partners, and [[spoiler:willing to kill her enemies who make moves against her, like Viktor]], but she does have some redeeming qualities:
*** She wouldn't dream of harming her descendants or ordering someone else to do so, not even when her daughter was threatening to bring her down and expose her secrets, [[spoiler:and is appalled when she discovers that her manservant, Stefan, murdered Laura and claimed it was for her sake]].

* EvilMentor: Gloria turns out to be this to Callie, whom she's been mentoring for quite a while to help her get into Rosegrave Academy, the prep school founded by Gloria's father, which [[SchoolForScheming turns out to be a front for a secret society running Bridgeport]]. She's only ever been good to Callie, but Frank speculates that it's because she has plans for her, which is proven to be correct in the following season. She also shows a rather cold lack of concern for her protegee [[spoiler:when Stacy kidnaps her and [[HostageForMacGuffin holds her hostage for the piece of the Eye]]]], to her grandsons' disgust.

* TheFakeCutie: Stacy Baker, the new girl who inadvertently saves Frank and Joe by accidentally hitting the Tall Man with her car, seems to be a sweet GirlNextDoor type who develops a crush on Frank after he helps her avoid trouble with the police. It's eventually revealed that she's really Anastasia Nabokov, who came to Bridgeport after her father Viktor was murdered to try to get information from the Hardys, and her running over the Tall Man is all but stated to have not been an accident after all. Frank figures out that she's more than she seems when she starts being too obvious about pumping him for info, and once he confronts her and she tells him her true identity, she drops the act, [[spoiler:gradually becoming more and more unhinged as the season reaches its climax and the Hardys refuse to cooperate with her.]]
* FakinMacGuffin: [[spoiler:In the season finale, Stacy, who already has the Khan and Nabokov pieces of the Eye, uses Callie as a hostage to get the Estabrook piece from the Hardys, which they no longer have after Gloria stole it from them. Instead, they use the fake copy that Joe previously made, and rig up the sleeve of Frank's shirt with americium from the smoke detectors at Wilt's store, so when Frank hands over the piece, his wrist will set off Stacy's Geiger counter and trick her mooks into thinking the piece is legit. Sure enough, Stacy doesn't catch on until after Frank, Chet, and Callie are long gone]].
* FemmeFatale: Anastasia "Stacy" Nabokov is a classic example, wanting to bring down the Circle to avenge her murdered father [[spoiler:and to take the Eye for herself, being willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish her goals, including kidnapping and murder]]. She also [[TheFakeCutie pretends to be]] TheIngenue to win Frank's trust and get him to tell her what he knows, and once he figures out her real identity, acts aggressively forward and seductive with Frank to try to get him to work together with her, later becoming a WomanScorned after he rejects her.

* HeelRealization / BreakTheHaughty: Gloria at the very end of the season [[spoiler:when Frank and Joe figure out that her own butler, Stefan, was the one who murdered her daughter Laura, and Stefan reveals that his motive for doing so was essentially his UndyingLoyalty to Gloria. She finally seems to realize that, even if she didn't want Laura to die, her actions and obsession with the Eye made her indirectly responsible for it. She's practically speechless with shell-shock and grief as the police show up to arrest her, only able to brokenly apologize to her grandsons]].
* HelpfulHallucination: [[spoiler:In the climax of the season, Frank tries to grab the Eye right after it's been reforged and passes out. While he's unconscious, he sees what actually happened during Laura's final day: her confrontation with Gloria and her conversations with Wilt and Rupert, giving him the EurekaMoment he and Joe need to realize who killed her: Stefan, Gloria's manservant.]]
* HostageForMacGuffin: [[spoiler:Stacy and her minions kidnap Callie and demand that Frank and Joe turn over their piece of The Eye (the only one Stacy doesn't have yet) in exchange for her safe return. The gang is able to get around this by giving them the fake that Joe made several episodes earlier and tricking them into believing it's the real thing long enough to escape with Callie.]]

* TheInfiltration: Frank, knowing that Gloria wants him to be her heir in the Circle, pretends to side with her and agree to be her successor in the hope that it'll give him a better opportunity to eventually destroy the Eye, as he and Joe both want to do. Only Joe is aware that Frank is undercover, and Frank is clearly unhappy at having to lie to his own father, among others. [[spoiler:He soon stops trying to play nice with Gloria once Callie is kidnapped and the former refuses to trade her piece of the Eye for the latter's safe return.]]

** Also played very seriously with [[spoiler:Callie's kidnapping. Both Chet and Frank deeply regret not listening to her well enough when she repeatedly tried to warn them about "Stacy Baker" being bad news, especially Chet, who was caught up in his jealousy of Callie falling for Frank over him and says this almost word-for-word. Frank, knowing that Stacy kidnapped Callie right after he rejected the former for good, laments to Joe that he keeps "making mistakes that other people pay for." In their defense, though, Frank did start to believe Callie before too long and help her investigate, and ''nobody'', not even her, predicted just how much Stacy would end up JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope and how far she'd go.]]

** Gloria Estabrook betrayed her father and caused his death, [[spoiler:murdered Viktor Nabokov not too long before the series began]], and has been controlling Bridgeport from the shadows for many years. [[spoiler:She gets arrested at the end of the season.]]

** [[spoiler:Stefan kills Laura in the season premiere, with everyone remaining none the wiser for months. In the finale, soon after this is discovered, he dies trying to steal the Eye back for Gloria when the Chamber of the Eye collapses.]]

** [[spoiler:Stefan is killed in the mine collapse in "While the Clock Ticked" while trying to take the Eye back for Gloria, [[KarmicDeath soon after the revelation that he was the one who murdered Laura]].]]

* LoveDodecahedron: Callie is dating Chet and Frank is dating Emma, but Frank and Callie are growing increasingly attracted to each other. Then Emma breaks up with Frank at the start of "Secrets and Lies", though Callie doesn't learn this until "In Plain Sight". Then new girl Stacy Baker comes to town and develops a huge crush on Frank, and he seems to appreciate it and possibly like her back, which makes Callie jealous (in addition to being genuinely suspicious of Stacy), which in turn makes Chet jealous, eventually resulting in Chet forcing Callie to recognize her feelings for Frank and breaking up with her, leaving things awkward between the three of them. Then Frank realizes that Callie was right and Stacy is hiding something, and confronts her at Wilt's, only for her to kiss him at one point to try to persuade him to work with her; Callie happens to see this and gets the wrong idea. Frank eventually rejects Stacy, [[spoiler:but before he has a chance to properly work things out with Callie, Stacy kidnaps her to use as a HostageForMacGuffin.]] It's only resolved at the end of the season finale when Callie and Frank finally become the OfficialCouple and share TheBigDamnKiss. Then there's Joe and Biff, and Trudy and Jessie, who seem to have their own budding relationships (a ToyShip, in the former case) on the side. Not to mention that Frank also meets his HappilyMarried mom's ex-boyfriend, who still carried a torch for her to the day she died.

** Frank and Joe to their grandmother, Gloria. She straight-up admits to Trudy that she wasn't a good mother and wants to be a better grandmother, and though she doesn't always go about it in the best way, she sincerely loves her grandsons and doesn't want to see any harm come to them. [[spoiler:As she's being arrested at the end of the season for killing Viktor Nabokov--soon after she and the Hardys all learned that her butler Stefan killed Laura--she apologizes to both boys for everything that happened.]]

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Gloria outlives her daughter and only child Laura, which greatly saddens her. Especially once she learns that Laura's death was not an accident, but murder. [[spoiler:Which makes it all the more devastating when she discovers at the end of the season that her own trusted right-hand-man, Stefan, was the one responsible.]]

** [[spoiler:Fenton and the boys head to the Chamber of the Eye for the final confrontation, but hear someone following them in the mines. He immediately has his sons get behind him and stand against the wall for safety, though it turns out to just be Callie coming to help.]]

** During the final time Gloria saw Laura before the latter's death, they had a huge argument that the former claims was related to Frank, but it's later revealed it was about [[spoiler:Laura's plan to publicly expose the Circle of the Eye's corruption]]. Gloria lampshades to Frank that she will forever regret that this was the last conversation she had with her daughter.

* PleaseWakeUp: [[spoiler:Word-for-word. When Frank is unconscious and unresponsive after trying to destroy the Eye and accidentally absorbing its power instead, both Joe and Fenton, especially the former, increasingly-desperately beg him to wake up.]]

* SanitySlippage: [[spoiler:Stacy undergoes this when Frank realizes she's no better than people she's working against (namely, the Estabrooks and the Khans) and refuses to cooperate with her, and eventually kidnaps Callie to try to force the Hardys to hand over their piece of the Eye. She then undergoes this further once she finds out they tricked her and handed over a fake.]]

** Once Kanika gives [[spoiler:Gloria's recorded murder confession]] to Fenton and Rupert as evidence, she leaves Bridgeport forever and washes her hands of the Eye conspiracy altogether. It's partly due to her deal with them in exchange for not turning her in to the authorities, but she doesn't exactly seem crushed to cut ties with the Circle.

** [[spoiler:Stacy and her goons are still at large as of the end of the season, having escaped in their van.]]

* ThickerThanWater: Gloria and Laura had an ''extremely'' tumultuous relationship, to the point that Laura wanted nothing more to do with her family's legacy and disowned her mother, and Gloria warned her that this would mean she would no longer be able to use her influence to keep Laura safe. [[spoiler:But when she finds out that her butler, Stefan, was the one who murdered Laura and he claims he did it for her, Gloria is genuinely horrified and makes it clear that she ''never'' wanted him to do this; however much they may not have gotten along, Laura was still her daughter, and Gloria still loved her and never wanted her to die.]]

** Actually averted with the plan to [[spoiler:rescue Callie]] in "While the Clock Ticked". This time, the entire brainstorming process and preparation is shown from beginning to end, but it also goes off without a hitch.

* VehicularKidnapping: The penultimate episode ends with [[spoiler:Callie]] being restrained and dragged into a blue van by [[spoiler:Stacy's goons]].

* WomanScorned: Even after Frank learns who Stacy really is, she still seems to be attracted to him and wants to work together with him to bring down the Circle. Eventually, Frank realizes that she's just as bad as the other Circle members and rejects her, [[spoiler:and she responds by kidnapping Callie to force Frank to give her the last piece of the Eye.]]

* YouHaveFailedMe: After the Tall Man fails to eliminate Ern and then is repeatedly unable to retrieve the piece of the Eye that Joe has, the mysterious woman over the phone tries to fire him, but the Tall Man responds by promising to take the piece to another buyer instead of her once he gets it back. He once again tries to attack the Hardys and they again escape from him, and he starts to pursue them, only to be fatally struck by a car by Stacy Baker when he runs into the road in front of her. At first, it appears to be an accident, but with the later reveal that Stacy is Anastasia Nabokov and was the woman he spoke to on the phone, it's clear she hit and killed him on purpose to get him out of the way after he failed once again.