Awesome / The Hardy Boys (2020)

Despite just being kids, the Hardy Boys and their friends repeatedly prove that they're just as smart, resourceful, and brave—if not moreso—than the adults around them, just like in the source material.

As a Moments page, all spoilers are unmarked.

Season 1

• Frank pretty quickly establishes his Awesomeness by Analysis in the first episode by instantly finding the trick bottom of Laura's music box, and again in the beginning of the second by deducing the motives of "the guy who jumped out of the plane" (JB) after just reading the story about it in the paper.
• Joe likewise shows off his Gadgeteer Genius chops early on by revealing he can pick locks, and in "Where the Light Can't Find You", demonstrates it further by picking the lock on Fenton's briefcase, later fixing JB's radio, and then successfully deciphering the Morse Code coordinates it's transmitting.
• Though it's thanks to the Eye's good luck, Joe easily winning every game he plays at the carnival still counts, netting himself and Biff several stuffed animals in the process.
• JB winning his fight with the Tall Man. The latter is a trained and very experienced killer, while the former's mostly a Non-Action Guy who avoids physical confrontation whenever possible, but when he realizes the man is planning to attack Joe, doesn't hesitate to follow him there and put himself in danger to protect the kid. And even though the entire fight is completely one-sided in the Tall Man's favor, JB is able to use his own resourcefulness to win by grabbing a nearby electrical cord and electrocuting him with it.
• When the Tall Man catches up to the Hardy Boys at the warehouse, Frank is able to slow him down several times so he and Joe can escape, from kicking a door open right into him to knock him down, to pushing shelves into his path, to facing him down with just a 2x4 while the Tall Man has a giant knife for long enough to escape out the door and bar it with the plank.
• The Hardys and friends work together flawlessly to trap the Tall Man in "The Drop". They lure him out to Chet's farm, with Phil being lookout and letting the rest of the gang know when he gets there. Joe acts as bait, and the others successfully knock the Tall Man into and lock him in a cage for the police to arrest him.
  Jesse: Everyone at the station is actually...kind of impressed with how the kids handled this.
• Fenton's subplot involves frequently escaping from dangerous situations: defeating a thug who ambushes him, breaking out of captivity and fleeing after he's briefly caught and interrogated, and finally finding Rupert, taking down his captors, and demanding honest answers from him.
• In the Hardys' final encounter with the Tall Man, he shoves Joe to the ground and lifts Frank right off his feet while demanding the piece of the Eye. Joe acts fast and saves his brother by grabbing a nearby trash can and smacking the Tall Man right across the back with it, causing him to drop Frank and giving the boys a chance to run away.
• Callie has a gut feeling that something's off about Stacy. Even after both Frank and Chet initially dismiss her concerns, with the latter even chalking it up to jealousy, she doesn't let it deter her and trusts her instincts, conducting her own investigation and gathering evidence until she can prove it to Frank.
• Combined with Heartwarming, Frank furiously rakes both JB and Gloria over the coals after the former steals the piece of the Eye from the boys at the latter's behest. Despite needing to get Gloria to trust him for The Infiltration to work, he can't help but call her out on stealing from her own grandsons and hiring a man who previously kidnapped one of them to do it. And when Frank scathingly rips into JB for betraying Joe, the "one person on Earth who both liked and trusted" him, it actually does leave enough impact on JB that he gives evidence against Gloria and later leaves Joe an apology note promising him a favor in the future.
• Fenton and Rupert deducing that Kanika was responsible for the latter's kidnapping, and successfully blackmailing her into helping them bring Gloria down.
• Frank, who has been sucking up to Gloria and faking being on her side so he can eventually get the chance to destroy the Eye, immediately stops pretending when he learns Callie has been kidnapped and it's clear Gloria's not going to help her, turning on his grandma for good:
  Frank: We lost our mother to the Eye. I almost lost my father and my little brother. I'm done sacrificing.
  Joe: Yeah. What he said.
  • Also, once the boys realize very quickly that Gloria's not treating the situation with any real regard for Callie's safety, Joe wastes no time in swiping the key to George's Secret Room from right off her desk the moment her attention's not on him.
• The boys don't have the piece of the Eye that Stacy's demanding as ransom for Callie. They're successfully able to use a fake to trick Stacy's Co-Dragons long enough to rescue Callie before they catch on.
  • When Frank is despairing about not knowing what to do, Joe remembers that they still have the fake piece of the Eye that he made back in "The Drop", which is exactly what they need.
    Joe: (Grinning as realization dawns) Grandma has the real piece.
    Frank: (Figuring out what he means) You still have the fake piece.
    Joe: Yup.
    Frank: You're a genius.
  • Once they discuss the plan at Wilt's with their friends, Biff points out that the Tall Man had a Geiger counter that reacted to the real piece, which wouldn't work with the fake, and reasons (correctly) that Stacy will probably have one too. Phil then realizes the real piece must give off radioactivity, and informs the others that smoke detectors—which Wilt stocks in the store—contain small amounts of americium, suggesting using this to cause a fake reaction with the Geiger counter. Working together, the five of them successfully build an americium "bracelet" to put inside of Frank's sleeve when they make the trade, and this works exactly as planned. Frank and Callie both give Phil major props for this.
• Despite Fenton previously ordering the rest of the kids to go home while the Hardy family goes to bring the remaining Circle leaders to justice, Callie refuses to sit idly by after Stacy kidnapped her. She instead goes to catch up with them, and her passionate statement convinces them to let her join them. And she does help, and get her revenge, in one fell swoop by punching Stacy unconscious.
  Callie: That girl threw me in the back of her van and tied me up. So if you're gonna bring her down, I want in. Anyone have a problem with that?
  Frank and Joe: No./Nope.
  Fenton: (To Frank) I like her.
• Frank is able to use what the Eye shows him to figure out who killed Laura: Stefan. Notably, Stefan doesn't have any dialogue in the vision at all, only appearing in the background when Laura confronts Gloria; however, Frank is able to use his mom's words about Right Hand Versus Left Hand as a "Eureka!" Moment and figures out it was Stefan from there. And Joe, despite not experiencing the vision himself, almost immediately catches onto Frank's deduction and quickly reaches the same conclusion.

Season 2

• The Hardy gang finds Dennis before the police and an entire search party do so, saving him from potentially getting sicker or being hurt worse by having to spend another night exposed to the elements.
• When teenagers show up on Tom Elroy's land to pull Demon Week pranks on him—launching fireworks that give him flashbacks to his war days and put him in a Heroic BSoD, and leave Frank and Chet trapped in place while burning a hole in the former's sleeve—Belinda sneaks out the side and lets Tom's dog loose from her cage so she can drive the pranksters away. Frank gives Belinda an impressed grin of respect for this, and this is when she truly becomes a full-fledged member of the True Companions.
• Joe goes into the Shaws' video shop alone to get the film from Dennis's tape, only to find the bad guy, dressed in a Demon Day mask, already there. Despite this person being a full-grown adult, Joe is able to stun them long enough to get past them and lock the door to the back room, grab most of the film, and escape out the back.
• Frank and Joe spend a large part of "Heading for Destruction" as Distressed Dudes and out of the action from stopping the bomb plot. Their friends do a great job of stepping up to the plate in their absence:
  • The girls and Chet, through "good old-fashioned detective work" of questioning various people of interest and getting a list of who has the means to create the bomb and also have the track coat that Dennis saw, correctly deduce that the culprit is Vanessa Bender, this year's Demon Queen, and waste no time in heading out to stop her.
  • They also figure out that the bomb is at Wilt's Deli, and Callie is able to pick the lock to get in thanks to spending so much time with Frank and Joe. Then Chet deduces that the bomb is hidden inside the arcade game because it was the only thing out of place after Wilt's was broken into.
  • Phil successfully finds the car that abducted Dennis. And when he ends up knocked out and stuffed in the trunk of that same car, he manages to break out and confront the driver, Lola, though he's unfortunately unable to stop her from detonating the bomb.
  • Jesse bravely tries to disarm the bomb while sending the kids present away for their own safety, telling them to get everyone out of the area. And when she realizes it's about to explode, manages to take cover behind the counter just in time, leaving her critically injured but alive.
  • Trudy actively helps by confronting Vanessa and chasing her when she flees. And Biff is the one to stop her with a tackle, complete with an Ironic Echo of Vanessa's rude words to her earlier.
  • The Hardy Boys do make their triumphant return Just in Time to help their friends catch Lola when she tries to run away, with Joe stating that they were able to get the gist of what was going on just by seeing from a distance the others chasing her.
• In "Hunting an Intruder", Frank reveals that, in just the brief moment he looked down at Angela's energy tracker in the previous episode when they were being released after it got a signal, he was able to memorize the entire longitude-and-latitude coordinates, down to three decimal places for the seconds. Belinda is clearly impressed in a "yeah, this guy is enough of a nerd to do that" kind of way.
  • From there, Phil is able to use his nautical maps to find the location of these coordinates, determining that it's Gloria's house. He's also able to do the math in his head without needing a calculator.
  • When Angela later corners Phil there with threats of hurting him, rather than panicking, he does his best to bluff his way out of the situation, starting with rightly calling her out for trespassing. It veers into Funny territory with his subsequent Blatant Lies, but Phil overall does a great job of keeping his cool until the Hardy Boys Draw Aggro away from him so he can escape.
• Angela spends most of the season a step or two ahead of everybody, but one thing she fails to predict is Chet's Undying Loyalty to his friends, figuring she can drive a wedge between him and Frank to convince Chet to turn against him. He takes advantage of this blind spot to become a "Double Agent" and pretend to help her, which gives him the opportunity to set up her downfall by the end of the season.
• After seeing Mack terrorize the Hardys and JB with Angela, it's highly satisfying to watch Joe find him imprisoned in the motel room, trick him into telling him everything he wants to know (though he does lie about one crucial detail), and then renege on releasing him, aware of the high chance that Mack will just immediately take him hostage as soon as he does. And then Joe walks out with a smirk while Mack can only scream ineffectively after him.
  Joe: Just one more question. Do you think I'm an idiot?
• After the gang finds the bug in the Hardy attic, Callie is able to use a trick with her radio involving feedback loops to determine that there aren't any more bugs hidden. She also teaches Joe how to swap two wires to kill signal on a radio, and Joe breaks into Angela's motel room later and does this with her receiver so she can't keep eavesdropping on them.
• The battle at the docks in "Captured!":
  • Chet and Brian arrive Just in Time as Angela has the Hardys and JB captured and is about to take the Eye from Frank. Both of them start fighting and holding their own against Stratemeyer men who jump them, Frank rushes in to tackle Angela when she tries to shoot at them, and JB, despite mostly being a Non-Action Guy in fights, starts a skirmish with another Mook.
  • One that retroactively becomes this in Season 3, where JB explains his reason for stealing the relic from Joe (or at least trying to): it was a way to protect him so Angela (or anyone else) wouldn't come after him, and JB was drawing aggro by taking it and jumping off the ship, knowing he could swim away to safety while Angela would be distracted and Joe, Frank, and Chet would have a chance to get away. Joe may have swapped in a fake relic, but otherwise, this does indeed work just as planned.
  • Joe—anticipating that either JB would try to steal the relic from him, or Angela and Stratemeyer would attempt to take it back—manages to swap in a fake in the chaos, while he, Frank, and Chet successfully escape with the real one.
  • Afterwards, Brian engages in some good old-fashioned Framing the Guilty Party by bringing Angela's gun, which he stole, back to her motel room and leaving it sitting right on the bathroom floor near Mack's body so the police will easily be able to figure out she killed him.

Season 3

• After being outed, George tries to kill Joe first by shooting him, then stabbing him with the sword, then strangling him. Joe shows off some awesome Combat Parkour to somersault underneath the gun as he fires, rolling and leaping to dodge the sword strikes, and hits George in the head with a nearby object to break his Choke Hold, smacks him again in the face, and gets to where his friends are waiting as backup.
• George's attempts to give Breaking Speeches to all the other kids, most of whom give him some level of Shut Up, Hannibal! in response:
  • The crowner has to be Chet. George saves his analysis of him for last, but Chet actually turns it around on George and mocks him for never having had a true friendship in his whole life. This actually does seem to hit a nerve for George, as his Psychotic Smirk fades and the muscles in his throat tense up.
    Chet: Listen, George, you probably had a lot of people running with you back in the day. Colleagues, employees, co-conspirators. But were any of them friends? Have you ever really had a friend in your entire sad life? I'm guessing not, because anyone that's had a friend wouldn't ask why I care.
  • And later, once Joe finally gets the upper hand in his interrogation of George (see below), he snarkily tosses back the latter's earlier insult:
    Joe: So take the deal. Let's get you a new body.
    George: Whose body?
    Joe: I don't care, George. I'm an incessant pest, remember?
  • George also mocks Callie for caring and says her relationship with Frank was nothing more than a "fleeting teenage romance." She quickly disabuses him of the notion that she's only doing this because she's broken-hearted over a boy, calling him out for how many lives he ruined with Project Midnight. George doesn't have a response to this and just tells her she'll fail, and she responds by taping his mouth shut again, much tighter this time.
• Chet is understandably very worried when Joe says he wants to try to negotiate with George by using the Eye, calling it a mistake. But Joe masterfully outwits the Manipulative Bastard that is George to get the info he needs to save Frank, showing off some major Guile Hero chops.
  • George is at first thoroughly uninterested in any kind of deal, until Joe reveals he has the Eye. He then convinces him that the gang doesn't care about the relics and are willing to let him have them, and even help him find the last one, as long as they can get Frank back afterwards, offering to put George's mind into a different body instead to accomplish this. It's enough to finally get George to answer Joe's three repeated questions ("Where's Frank? Is he alive? How do we get him back?") after previously just laughing in his face every time.
    Joe: Told you you'd talk.
  • And then later, after George has escaped, Quill pays the boys a visit, and offers Laura (or at least information about her) in exchange for the map (which they no longer have), Joe pretends to agree to stick with his offer to George and work with him to get the map back. However, Joe knows it's pretty unlikely he'll actually follow through on returning Frank's body once he has what he wants, and George has already told him what he needs to know about Frank, so Joe doesn't give George the chance to turn on them and knocks him unconscious so they can force him back into the Crystal without needing to work with him and get Frank back instead. His friends are quite relieved.
    Phil: Oh, thank goodness!
    Joe: You really thought I was gonna make a deal with that guy?
• Combined with Funny, when Joe definitely leans a bit too much into the "jerk" side of his Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality with respect to Drew, whom he doesn't want involved in getting Frank back, she can't resist taking him down a peg before she leaves. His friends' "Oh, snap!" faces indicate that they find it Actually Pretty Funny.
  Drew: But FYI, I'm not leaving 'cause you told me to. I am leaving because I have other things to do that don't include babysitting a rude little twerp whose Motor Mouth isn't nearly as charming as he thinks it is. But I will be here if you need me. And I suspect you will. You know, in case you need help getting there sooner than "eventually".
• How the boys flawlessly beat George at his own game in the Crystal realm. They take turns drawing aggro to lure him into his Secret Room, and now that they're the ones with the power of the Eye, they're in control of the realm, shaping it to fit their needs, starting with Frank getting out of the room behind George when it otherwise would've been impossible and locking him in. And when he tries to escape through the trap door, he finds the boys have walled off the escape route, turning it into just a hole in the ground.
  • George starts having a Villainous Breakdown and tries to convince the boys to work with him, saying We Can Rule Together and the Estabrooks can take control of the world again. They remind him of one important fact, before closing the trap door over him and permanently locking him in there:
    Joe: We're not Estabrooks.
    Frank: We're Hardys.
  • Once Adrian shows up, Frank figures out that Aaron is the one behind the locked door that he saw earlier. Now that the boys control the realm, he's able to simply create the key to the locks out of nothing so they can free him.
• Trudy proves that Hardy badassery is In the Blood when she figures out, via Spotting the Thread, that Olivia's one of the villains and is lying with what she's said about Fenton, and now she and her nephews are in the car with her. Trudy goes full Mama Bear by hinting for the boys to put their seatbelts on, then decks Olivia and crashes the car so the three of them can escape. She encourages Frank and Joe to take the bus to Dixon City to continue their investigation, while she'll hot-wire a car to get home.
  Joe: You can hot-wire a car?
  Trudy: (grins) I'm a Hardy too, y'know. I had a life before I was your aunt.
• Callie successfully charms Hurd Sparewell—a private, reclusive billionaire well-known for refusing to do interviews, give internships, or take pitches—into giving her a bit of his time just by exuding confidence and asking him an intriguing question—how he deals with loneliness—in a way that shows genuine empathy, such that he pushes back his lunch plans to talk to her more (although it's just a trick so she and Drew can get what they need from his office when he steps out for a moment, and they're gone by the time he comes back). It's even more impressive in hindsight since he knows his daughter Drew is evil and Callie is introduced as a "friend" of hers, so he probably wasn't exactly positively inclined toward her to begin with. An impressed Drew even notes that she's never seen anyone put her father "on his heels" like that.
• Even though it's not real and only inside Drew's VR simulation, the Hardys (that is, Frank, Joe, Fenton, and Laura) teaming up as a Badass Family to defeat Drew and stop her plans, with Fenton and Laura taking out the pilot with teamwork; Laura pulling a Pretend to Be Brainwashed while the boys confront Drew, only to turn the tables and knock her out; and Frank disarming the Core with Joe's help.
• Joe, after figuring out that something's wrong with the world around him in thanks to A Glitch in the Matrix, immediately realizes he's going to need evidence for Frank to believe him. So he figures out a way forcibly cause another glitch and create irrefutable proof for both of them: lying to Frank about the contents of a hidden section in his drawer, and checking whether they see what's really there or what Joe told them to see. Sure enough, it works and his brother sees the fake items, and when Joe reveals the deception, they glitch into the real ones and cause glitches to the whole room around them, which gets Frank to believe him right away so they can start working together to escape.