Season 2, Episode 9:
Captured!
Joe conspires with JB to steal the relic from Stratemeyer Global and get the power out of Frank, but the Eye has other plans.This episode contains examples of:
- Always Identical Twins: Adrian and Aaron Munder, the former of whom is a teacher in Bridgeport while the latter was a Rosegrave Academy student left catatonic by their experiments on him ten years ago, which removed his consciousness from his body. Adrian took advantage of this in "A Midnight Scare" when he caught on that the Hardy Gang were onto him being the Shadow Man by pulling a Twin Switch, substituting Aaron for himself to throw the kids off the trail, and they realize they were right all along after learning about Aaron and Phil then Spotting the Thread.
- The Atoner: Nurse Cody tells Callie and Belinda that she was Just Following Orders in her role in Project Midnight and wasn't in any kind of position to refuse; however, she certainly still felt incredibly guilty about the two victims, and took her current job at Pine Grove Hospital to take care of Patient B, who was left in a vegetative state, to make up for the things she'd done.
- Bad Future: Frank has a vision while he and Joe are in the storage container showing what will happen if they continue down their current path: they find Angela waiting for them at the vault with her men and get captured, and she forces Frank at gunpoint to return the Eye's power to the relic, and when he struggles with it, shoots Joe for "extra motivation". After seeing this, when JB arrives to continue the plan, Frank warns them that it's a trap. Unfortunately for them, they still get caught anyway, but avoid the outcome of the vision thanks to Chet and Brian.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Frank, Joe, and JB reach the final stages of the latter's plan to steal the relic, only to get to the vault and find that they've been Lured into a Trap by Angela, who tries to force Frank to give up the power of the Eye and murders Joe when he's unable to do so...at which point this is revealed to be a vision Frank's having, and he and Joe are still waiting inside the storage crate.
- The vision that the Eye shows to Frank right as he's about to give up the power is of the Shadow Man kidnapping someone who appears to be Lucy from the dance, so he, Joe, and Chet rush there to find him and save her. Lucy's never actually targeted in any way and is not in danger, as the Eye gave Frank a false vision to keep him from surrendering its power; instead, it's he himself who gets taken.
- Big Brother Instinct: Frank's for Joe is still going strong, despite the high tensions between them thanks to the Eye's corruption of him:
- Frank follows Joe to the docks because he knows his brother's hiding something from him, and when JB is shoving Joe into a cargo hold for the next step of their plan (which he's really not keen on), Frank rushes up to push JB away and tells him to keep his hands off of Joe.
- And in a similar vein, when Frank himself pushes Joe hard against the wall during their fight, he immediately regrets it, is so shaken and horrified that he realizes Joe's right about the Eye messing him up, and snaps out of it.
- In his subsequent vision, Angela captures the boys and JB, and she and her men hold them at gunpoint to make Frank give up the Eye. When he has trouble with it, she knows just how to motivate him: put her gun right to Joe's head, and Frank starts screaming in fear.
- Big Damn Heroes: Angela and her minions have Frank, Joe, and JB cornered and are about to make Frank give up the power of the Eye. At that moment, Chet and Brian pull up to the dock in the former's truck, beginning an all-out brawl that allows them to get away.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Downplayed. Lucy kisses Joe at the school dance; he's too preoccupied to properly kiss her back, but does get a big grin.
- Big "NO!": In Frank's Bad Future-scenario vision, Angela shoots Joe to force Frank to give her the Eye, who screams, "NO NO NO, DON'T!"
- Both Sides Have a Point: Twofold when Frank and Joe are locked in a cargo storage, waiting to be loaded onto a freighter, and have a fight:
- Frank rightly calls Joe out on constantly being too impulsive and having half-baked plans that boil down to "We'll figure it out when we get there" rather than thinking things through, which causes him to take needless risks and put himself in danger far too much. But when Frank asks why he didn't talk to him first before going through with this plan, Joe angrily points out that, even though Frank asked Joe to keep him in check, he stopped listening to him about the Eye and everything else a long time ago despite the latter's best efforts.
- Joe also states that Frank has come to trust and rely on the Eye far too much, while Frank has similar feelings about Joe continuing to work with JB despite him repeatedly screwing them over. They both turn out to be correct about this. JB ends up abandoning the Hardys when their theft of the relic starts going south, and then tries to steal it from Joe (though he reveals in Season 3 that this is an attempt to protect him), only failing because the latter swapped in a fake; he then returns to the Hardy home and swipes McFarlane's scroll that Fenton gave the boys. Meanwhile, Frank finds out in the hardest way possible in this episode and the next one that the Eye does not have his best interests at heart.
- Call-Back: During Joe's and JB's planning session to steal the relic from the Stratemeyer warehouse, Joe notes how difficult it sounds, and JB reminds him that he's the same guy who previously stole it from an assassin and jumped out of a plane, so comparatively, this is far more simple.
- Cassandra Truth: After Frank stops Joe and JB from walking into Angela's trap, Joe finally tells JB that Frank knows what would happen because he has the power of the Eye inside of him. JB thinks he's just making up an outlandish lie as a way to avoid telling him what's really going on, and promptly decides to quit (though unfortunately for him, he gets caught in the trap anyway).
- Continuity Snarl: A weird example that happens between scenes. Chet, Frank, and Joe escape from the docks in the former's truck when it's still broad daylight, but then the very next scene has it pitch black outside as they're driving home, with the road only lit by the truck's headlights...even though the waterfront with the docks is in Bridgeport, and thus the drive wouldn't have taken very long (especially since it only took Brian and Chet one scene to drive there from the Conrad home), certainly not enough time for it to have gotten that dark out.
- Distressed Dude: Frank, Joe, and JB are briefly captured by Angela and her men, both in Frank's vision (which ends with Angela shooting Joe to make Frank submit) and in reality even after they try to use what he saw to avoid this, until Chet and Brian show up to save them.
- Dramatic Irony:
- The entire planned theft of the Eye relic from the Stratemeyer vault is this, since the audience already knows Mack lied to Joe about where the relic is (it's later shown that Angela keeps it on her) and that he, JB, and later Frank are walking into Angela's trap.
- Frank tells Joe that JB is looking for the scroll that McFarlane gave to Fenton and notes that they should be glad he doesn't know they have it. In fact, JB does now know this, having given it a lingering look after coming to the attic at Joe's call, and after the botched relic heist, he comes back and takes it for himself, which Joe doesn't learn about until Season 3.
- Empty Shell: Aaron Munder (the man Joe and co. actually found at Munder's house) was left as one when his consciousness was removed in Project Midnight and trapped in the Crystal, leaving his body a catatonic husk because there's no longer a "person" inside to control it.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Phil shows Belinda, Callie, and Biff that the catatonic Munder they found at his house doesn't have the bandaged cut on his wrist that their teacher, Adrian Munder, had. The four of them realize with dawning horror that this man in the hospital is Aaron, who never recovered from Project Midnight, and they were right the whole time about Adrian being the Shadow Man.
- Frame-Up: After Fenton was previously gassed unconscious by Olivia, he wakes up in the hotel room to find the corpse of someone else she killed in the bathtub, and realizes she's framing him for her murders, fleeing the scene as the Dixon City police arrive.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Brian Conrad arrives with Chet at the docks to rescue the Hardys, and manages to grab Angela's gun—which she used to kill Mack Malone—in the ensuing chaos, holding it with a handkerchief so he doesn't leave his fingerprints on it or smear hers. He then returns to her motel room and leaves the gun in the bathroom near Mack's body to ensure the cops can trace the murder to her.
- From Bad to Worse: JB's theft of the relic gets off to a bad start when he realizes that he can't get into the vault by himself and it's a two-person job, so Joe has to come along if he wants it done by that night. And once they get there, Joe is understandably very reluctant to be locked into a cargo hold for an hour, and then Frank crashes the scene after following him there. It continues going downhill, with the brothers having a fight (though they do resolve the issues between them afterward), Frank getting a vision that they'll be captured (and in Joe's case, shot) by Angela if they continue, JB ditching in exasperation, and all of them still getting caught anyway. They only narrowly escape once Brian and Chet arrive.
- The Glomp: Biff and Trudy both share huge hugs with Jesse once she wakes up from her coma at the hospital. And when Joe comes to visit them, he and Biff share one as well.
- Heist Episode: Joe's subplot has him joining JB to steal the relic from Stratemeyer so he can get the Eye out of Frank. Despite the heist being an utter disaster that goes wrong nearly every step of the way, Joe ultimately does get what he wants out of it and ends up with the relic.
- I Want My Mommy!: Frank says if he continues to use the Eye's power, it will give him what he wants the most. Joe angrily demands to know what it is, and Frank screams in response, "I WANT MY MOM BACK, JOE!"
- In Spite of a Nail: Frank sees a vision of himself, Joe, and JB being taken hostage by Angela during their attempt to steal the relic, and he and Joe try to use this to avoid capture and turn the tables. However, since this vision causes Angela's tracking device to spike, she's able to locate him and capture all of them anyway, though they're luckily saved by the timely arrival of Chet and Mr. Conrad.
- Ironic Echo: Joe asks for the details of how JB plans to conduct the theft of the relic, and he replies, "I'm afraid that's classified."* A few minutes later, one stipulation Joe gives is that Frank can't know anything about what they're planning until after they have the relic; JB curiously asks why not, and Joe gives the same answer, earning him an eye-roll in response.
- Irony: JB falsely accused Joe and Frank back in "A Disappearance" of having swapped in a fake relic of the Eye for the real one when they were in the Chamber. Here, after their heist goes sideways, Joe does pull such a switcheroo on JB himself, with the bonus of fooling Angela, too.
- Just Following Orders: Nurse Marian Cody, who assisted Dr. Burelli with the Project Midnight experiments, makes it clear to Belinda and Callie that, whatever her personal feelings, she couldn't just ditch Stratemeyer and walk away when she knew as much as she did, as her life would have been at risk. There's subtext laced in that this was especially true because she was a black woman in a subordinate position in the 70's.Belinda: So, you tried again on another kid.
Nurse Cody: You say that like I had a choice. Like the balance of power was leaning my way. Don't tell me you don't know what that's like. (Gives Belinda a significant look) I couldn't just quit on Stratemeyer Global. I knew too much. I was scared for my life. - Kick the Morality Pet: Even as Frank becomes increasingly compromised by the Eye and stops listening to Joe, his Big Brother Instinct for him remains very intact. So when they have a fight that ends with Frank actually pushing his brother hard into a wall, he's shocked and dismayed at having done so and immediately steps back from the brink of madness the Eye has brought him to, finally agreeing to give up its power.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: JB going over Joe's request to get the relic back from Stratemeyer. He outlines what he'd have to do in a way that makes the theft sound incredibly difficult (which it is)...and then, to Joe's surprise, gladly agrees with no complaints, pointing out that he's good at what he does and it's still less difficult than the first time he stole a piece of the relic (taking it from an assassin and jumping out of a plane).
- Lured into a Trap: The false info Mack gave Joe about the relic (claiming it's kept in a vault at the Stratemeyer docks, while Angela actually keeps it with her) sends him, Frank, and JB right into a trap set by Angela when they try to break into the vault to get it.
- Makes Us Even: Joe is cashing in on the favor JB promised him last season, and JB makes sure to tell him that, once he's finished this job for him, they will be even, which Joe acknowledges.
- Manipulative Bastard: The Eye's manipulation of Frank becomes more blatant than ever, sowing distrust and suspicion in him towards his brother and friends. And as Frank later prepares to return the power to the relic, it stops him by claiming his True Companions are in danger and showing him a vision of the Shadow Man attacking the school dance and carrying off Lucy, which prompts him, Joe, and Chet to hurry there. This turns out to be completely false, and the Eye further leads Frank right into being jumped, chloroformed, and abducted by the Shadow Man.
- Match Cut: Frank's vision ends with Angela shooting Joe as motivation and/or punishment for Frank failing to release the Eye; the sound of the gunshot as Frank snaps back to reality coincides with the sounds of the freight crate in real life slamming into place on the ship.
- Meaningful Echo: In "A Disappearance", Biff tried to make Joe swear to something "on your mom's grave"; knowing he couldn't do it, he just said "That's not fair," proving to her that he didn't mean it that much. Now, once Frank says he'll give up the Eye after their fight, Joe tells him to "swear on Mom's grave" to make extra-sure he means it, and Frank agrees and repeats, "I swear on Mom's grave."
- Mood Whiplash: Biff works up the courage to call her birth mom and leave a message, clinging to Phil's arm for support the whole time. Phil compliments her on how brave it was, and the whole thing is very sweet...but then it segues into humorous when he points out that she forgot to leave a callback number, and Biff hastily picks up the phone again to call back.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The tension between Frank and Joe about their differing opinions on the Eye reaches a boiling point and results in a fight, with Joe shoving Frank, who in turn pushes him quite hard into the wall of their storage crate. Frank is instantly horrified at having gotten physical with his little brother and gets a Jerkass Realization, and this is what finally convinces him to give up the Eye's power.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In addition to Frank's visions having progressed to become straight-up dangerous for him (due to sometimes physically hurting him, like giving him a seizure in the previous episode), another reason everyone's worried about Frank is his increasingly snippy, paranoid behavior towards his loved ones thanks to the Eye manipulating him against them—having rather cold encounters separately with Joe and Chet where he treats them with suspicion—and refusal to listen to anyone's concerns about its effects on him.
- Out-Gambitted: In the confusion at the marina when Chet and Brian show up to save the Hardys, JB grabs the relic from Joe before escaping. Joe reveals to Frank and Chet in the car afterwards that JB took a fake that he swapped in during the chaos, while he has the real one. Though JB does bounce back fast when he sneaks into their attic once more and takes the scroll McFarlane gave to Fenton, which he's been looking for.
- Plot Hole: Munder told Phil in the previous episode that the cut on his wrist came from an injury he received during the parade bombing; however, since he's the Shadow Man, he couldn't have even been at the parade at all during the bombing since he had to be already stationed at Gloria's house by that point, ready to break in, steal the Crystal, and get out during the one minute interval in which the bomb explosion took out her security system. Thus, Munder's story to Phil about how he got hurt only makes sense if he were lying and actually got cut by accident during the break-in, but Phil repeats the story to his friends as if it's the truth, and no one questions it (since the more important piece of information is that the Munder in the hospital doesn't have this injury).
- The Reveal:
- Project Midnight involved attempted "consciousness harvesting": using the Crystal to store people's consciousness and transfer them into other bodies, with Rosegrave students as test subjects. However, it never worked correctly, with Patient A dying on the spot and Patient B being rendered permanently catatonic, after which the project was shut down.
- The Shadow Man is indeed Adrian Munder, the Bridgeport teacher. His twin brother Aaron was the aforementioned "Patient B", and he's the catatonic man Joe, Phil, and Lucy found in the previous episode after Adrian pulled a Twin Switch.
- Rewatch Bonus: During the climactic battle at the docks, once you know to look for it, one can see Joe swap out the real relic with the fake right before JB swipes it in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, moments before Joe reveals to Frank and Chet that he did so.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: JB becomes increasingly frustrated with how out of control the relic theft has gotten. First Frank follows them there, and then once Joe wants to change plans and seemingly lies about why (he's actually being honest, but JB doesn't believe him), he decides to just scrap the whole thing rather than risk being caught, although Angela still captures him as soon as he tries to leave.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
- The Eye warns Frank that he can't trust his brother or friends because they're conspiring to take its power from him. All of them are concerned about him, and at least Joe and Callie are plotting behind his back to take the power away...because they've seen how strangely he's been acting thanks to Eye corrupting his mind, not to mention how his visions are outright hurting him, and are only doing it to save him.
- As Frank prepares to give up the power of the Eye, it gives him a vision of the Shadow Man abducting someone who appears to be Lucy from the school dance. He tells Joe and Chet about the upcoming attack, and they quickly head there. In fact, the vision was a trick to lure them to the school. The Shadow Man does attack someone there: Frank himself, once he and the others arrive.
- Ship Tease: As Biff dials her birth mom's phone number, she reflexively clutches Phil's arm in support. Considering he has a crush on her, the way his eyes widen at this makes it pretty clear this is a big deal to him, and he gets a bit flustered afterward.
- Spotting the Thread: Once Callie and Belinda learn about Aaron Munder, they think he's the Shadow Man, but Biff and Phil notice some of the facts don't line up. Phil then remembers and shows the others that the catatonic man they found doesn't have the wound on his wrist that he saw on Mr. Munder in class...which means this guy is Aaron, Adrian pulled a Twin Switch, and he really is the Shadow Man like they first thought.
- Tempting Fate: Chet tells Frank (who's deep under the Eye's Toxic Friend Influence at this point) that they need to come up with a plan for how to deal with Angela, but Frank dismisses her as a concern, saying she's "all bark and no bite." He learns during the heist how very wrong he is once she and her men capture them, and one of his visions shows that she would have killed Joe had Chet and Brian not arrived Just in Time.
- Try Not to Die: Frank and Joe plan to use the element of surprise from Frank's vision to snatch the relic from Angela, jump off the boat, and swim for it, agreeing, "Let's try not to die." Then they leave the storage container to find Angela waiting right there for them.
- Twin Switch: With The Reveal that Adrian Munder has a twin brother named Aaron who underwent Project Midnight and never recovered, it's confirmed that he used this in "A Midnight Scare" to throw the heroes off his trail. Aaron is the one Joe, Lucy, and Phil previously found catatonic; Adrian put his brother in his own place so everyone would think he was a victim of the Shadow Man instead.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: A double-whammy when JB recruits Joe to help him with the latter's own request to steal the relic from Stratemeyer:
- JB describes exactly what he would need Joe to do to help him pull off the heist. This is also combined with some Dramatic Irony, since the audience knows that Malone was deceiving Joe with the information he gave him about the relic's location in the previous episode. The plan goes off the rails right from the start when Frank shows up uninvited, and then Angela is there waiting with her men to catch them off guard.
- After Frank crashes the party, he gets a vision where he foresees Angela capturing the three of them; he and Joe then attempt to use this to flip the script on her, with Joe describing his whole idea to Frank. The second the two of them step out of the cargo hold, they find that Angela has already caught JB (who tried to bail) and has them cornered, having used her tracking device to find Frank after he had his vision.
- Wham Episode: Jesse wakes up from her coma at last, and gives her blessing in Biff's search for her birth mom. Frank's and Joe's simmering tension over the Eye finally boils over and they have a fight, which leads to Frank agreeing to give up the Eye's power. They and JB get captured by Angela and her goons (both in a vision and in reality), who almost force Frank to hand over the power until Chet and Brian rescue them. JB fails to take the relic thanks to Joe pulling a switcheroo, but instead swipes the scroll he'd been searching for from the boys' String Theory board. Finally, Callie, Belinda, Biff, and Phil figure out the true identity of the Shadow Man (namely, that they were right about it being Munder all along, and he performed a Twin Switch to throw them off the trail) just as the latter succeeds in kidnapping Frank at the end.
- Wham Shot: Trudy gets a box of files from the attic for Fenton and leaves to go meet him, closing the door behind her...which reveals JB standing behind it once more, and shows that he took the scroll Fenton got from McFarlane and left with his sons (which JB was hired to find).
- Would Hurt a Child: Angela; unsurprising considering she's already kidnapped the boys before. Frank's vision shows that, after capturing them, she would have murdered Joe in cold blood to incentivize Frank to give up the Eye had it not been for Brian and Chet arriving to rescue them.
- You're Just Jealous: As a sign of how much the Eye has corrupted Frank, during his fight with Joe, he angrily accuses the latter and their friends of wanting to remove its power from him out of "jealousy" that the Eye "chose" him and not them. Joe, of course, is in utter disbelief. Thankfully, Frank snaps out of it soon after.
