YMMV / Nancy Drew (2019)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: What were Diana Marvin's plans for Bess's meeting with Amaya Alston?
  • Did she honestly expect such an abrasive and aggressively sexual executive to become a mentor to someone she immediately dismissed as a pretty socialite?
  • Did she expect the two to begin a sexual relationship, business be damned?
    • If so, was she hoping for a more formal alliance between their houses, an Arranged Marriage?
    • Or was it Sex for Services, pimping out her estranged daughter's "impure" offspring in exchange for favorable business deals with Amaya, with Bess going along because of her desperation to be a Marvin?
  • Or might she be a Sink or Swim Mentor herself, testing Bess's mettle to see how she responded to the situation?
• Cult Classic: Nancy Drew was never the highest rated series on The CW, but it made it to four seasons due to a dedicated audience that supported the show and stuck with it. Up until its final season, the series enjoyed the largest DVR bump in ratings of any series on the CW, which meant the audience was indeed there, albeit not watching live.
• Growing the Beard: The show has gone through a marked improvement since the first season (and it shows by audience reception, if reviews online can be counted). The season-long mystery aspect has been ditched, there has been a lot more character-focused episodes, and Nancy doesn't rely on help from ghosts to solve mysteries all the time.
• Moral Event Horizon: Everett Hudson crossed it years ago, twice.
  • First, he covered up the sinking of the Bonny Scot, which killed 12 men and traumatized the only survivor, a refugee stowaway.
  • Second, he was responsible for Lucy’s death. He hated the fact she was dating his son, to the point where he destroyed her life and her family’s life by getting her mother fired from her job and spreading rumors that she was a slut. He also cut off communication between Ryan and Lucy, and threatened her unborn child’s life.
  • Turns out he crossed it even before the aforementioned murders. Almost 20 years before that, he murdered his own brother.
• Narm Charm: At the end of her Journey to the Center of the Mind in the season 2 finale, Nancy and her traumas embrace while the tree containing the wraith grows a bunch giant glowing pink flowers. Cheesy in the best way.
• Seasonal Rot: In contrast to some of the points noted above, the lack of an overall story has also negatively effected the story as several plotlines are juggled without rhyme or reason. And while there is more focus on the characters, there is little in the way of development. The ratings also reflect dropping interest; discounting the series premiere, the first season averaged around 656,000 viewers (high of 813,000, low of 489,000). By contrast the second season has average around 465,000 (high of 628,000, low of 376,000).
• The Woobie: The entire Drew family once it's revealed that Lucy wanted the Drews to adopt her in order to prevent the Hudsons from finding out about Nancy's birth. Especially Nancy Drew.
  • Ryan Hudson also is revealed to be this. Born into the Hudson family, his relationship with the girl he loved was broken up by his "parents" and while he was away at boarding school she is supposedly killed. Nineteen years later he is in a marriage he describes as a "business transaction", when she dies and he is pinned as one of the initial suspects. His former girlfriend begins to haunt him. He begins to delve into his family's misdeeds and learns that his wife died by accident, he was the real target. The murderer, his former girlfriend's brother, believed he was responsible for her death. The final episodes of season one really then start to whale on him: he learns that his father was threatening his girlfriend to make her break off the relationship and her initial refusal was met with him spreading rumors about her being a slut. And when she couldn't take it anymore, even after breaking up with him, she committed suicide. The day after learning this, he discovers that she was pregnant and is led to believe that the baby died with her. He soon realizes though that his child survived and is a girl he has been rather nasty to at some points during the show and most of his attempts to try to reconcile are rebuffed. While he maybe closer to a Jerkass Woobie, one can't deny that the poor guy needs a break.
  • Ned Nickerson who went to prison and lost his chance to go to college due to accidentally causing someone's death in self defense.
  • George has an irresponsible and negligent mother and has had to raise three younger sisters all by herself. She was also a social outcast at school. As she acknowledges, this has not made her the most pleasant person.