Season 1, Episode 11:
No Getting Out
Trapped and lost, Biff and Joe’s friendship is tested. Frank can only help find them by revealing too much to people he can’t trust.This episode contains examples of:
- Assassin Outclassin': Stefan sneaks into JB's motel room once again, this time with the intent to kill him and take the piece of the Eye he stole.* Thanks to the piece, JB gets a premonition of himself preparing to avoid this, follows it, and jumps Stefan from behind, leaving him handcuffed on the floor with a badly-shaken soda can for good measure.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Anya understandably hates the three founding Circle families, especially the Estabrooks, since George's bank forced her and her mother off their land after her father's death, and wants nothing to do with them. But although she's dismayed to learn that Frank is Gloria's grandson, she's willing to make an exception for him because he was kind to her before. Gloria's apology for her family's poor treatment of the Kowalskis fails to sway Anya at all to help them, who tells her to Get Out!, but when Gloria asks for help finding her grandson, and Anya pieces together that this would be Frank's brother and sees his desperate face, she reluctantly tolerates his grandma's presence in her shop so she can help Frank, at least until Gloria offends her again by offering to buy secrets off of her.
- Big Brother Instinct: Frank pulls out all the stops in trying to find Joe and Biff, seeking out info from anyone he thinks may be able to help, including people he doesn't fully trust like Gloria and Stacy, and tells the former far more information than he otherwise would have. And after they're able to get in touch through the walkies, when he hears Joe is still planning on staying in the mines even after they find a way out to try to destroy the Eye, Frank passionately tells his brother he cares about him more than anything else to change his mind and convince him to leave, which works.
- Brutal Honesty: Once Frank is reluctantly forced to reveal to Gloria that he and Joe have accessed George's Secret Room to get her to help, he apologizes for not telling her (though he had pretty understandable reasons for not doing so or trusting her), but she recognizes it as the empty placation that it is and dismisses it.Frank: I'm sorry we didn't tell you.
Gloria: No, you're not. You're just sorry there's a consequence. But that's not important. What's important is finding your brother. - The Bus Came Back: After Anya Kowalski was previously a one-off character from "Of Freedom and Pleasure", she makes another appearance when Frank and Gloria go to her for help in finding Joe.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: A little bit once Joe and Biff have gotten ahold of Frank on the walkie and know they'll be rescued soon.Joe: If this doesn't work, it'll be the worst way to die. (Later after they've just emerged) How many days has it been?
- The Charmer: JB, pretending to be an older gentleman, gets the info he needs out of Wilt to figure out where the third piece of the Eye might be through a combination of flattery, good-natured chit-chat, and faking Commonality Connections with him.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: The walkie-talkies Biff got for Joe and herself in "What Happened in Bridgeport" once again come into play and are crucial to them being rescued. They discover that he left his at home, while she still has hers in her backpack. Frank finds Joe's walkie and is able to use it to contact him and Biff in the mines and direct them how to get out safely.
- Chekhov's Gun: When going through Biff's backpack for stuff that could help them, Joe finds a long roll of string and wonders what she has it for. This ends up coming in handy to keep them from getting lost when Joe is able to contact Frank and realizes he's close to an exit, but needs to go back for Biff, who left him to head back to where they started. He leaves all of his stuff there, ties the end of the string to the walkie, and unrolls it behind him until he catches up to Biff; once he does, they follow the string back to where he left the bags.
- Conflict Killer: Thanks to Joe and Biff being in danger, most of the Plot-Mandated Friendship Failures from the previous episode are either resolved or at least postponed while everyone works to rescue them.
- Trudy and Jesse have a heated argument at the beginning of the episode about their respective kids being missing, but do work together to find them and get some solidarity at their irritation with how Collig is handling the search. Once the kids are found and the Hardy family brings Jesse into the case, meaning that Trudy no longer has to keep it a secret from her, this largely resolves the issues they were having.
- Only temporarily between Frank, Callie, and Chet. Callie was upset at seeing Stacy kiss Frank in the previous episode, but doesn't bring this up to him until the next one, once Joe and Biff are safe. And things are awkward between Chet and both of them, but when he hears that Biff and Joe are in danger, he's quick to put that aside and head out with Phil to look. Frank apologizes for not calling, and Chet answers:Chet: C'mon, man. It's Joe.
- Heavily downplayed since Joe and Biff don't have a friendship-damaging conflict before they split up (Joe to destroy the piece, Biff to go back where they started), sharing a hug before they do so, but once Joe gets a signal on the walkies from Frank, he realizes they're very close to a way out and quickly retrieves Biff, who just wanted to escape anyway and gladly comes with him now that they've been found.
- Frank's Parting-Words Regret from his fight with Joe about the Eye makes him want above all to set things right. Joe at first plans to stay in the mines after getting Biff out so he can keep trying to destroy the Eye, but Frank persuades him to come out too by making it clear he cares for his brother in a short but heartfelt speech, and they make up.Frank: Joe, listen to me. I don't care about the Eye. I care about you, okay? Look, whatever we choose to do, we'll do it together.
(Later, after Joe and Biff both escape together)
Joe: Can't say no to you when you're emotional. (They exchange relieved grins)
- Didn't Think This Through: JB, experiencing how the piece of the Eye heightens his instincts and gives him flashes of foresight, uses it when breaking into Stacy's house to steal her piece too, gloating to one of her bodyguards who fails to sneak up on him. He apparently doesn't consider that, if Stacy does indeed have the piece he seeks, it would give her these same abilities as well. Sure enough, the other bodyguard does successfully jump him, Stacy tells him that she saw him coming, and they steal his piece and work him over.
- Distressed Dude and Damsel in Distress: Joe and Biff spend most of this episode trapped inside the mines at Demon's Paw after falling down a mine shaft at the end of the previous episode. They do some of the work of saving themselves by wandering around the mines with the piece of the Eye's guidance until Biff's walkie-talkie picks up the signal from Joe's (which Frank has), and Joe is able to pick the lock open on their side of the trapdoor to get out, but Frank does have to guide them to the door first and unlock it on his side.
- Get Out!: Anya is not happy when Frank brings Gloria—the daughter of one of the men from her father's expedition, whose family (Gloria included) screwed over Anya's family over the years—into her shop, and angrily tells her this word-for-word. She briefly relents when they plead for her help and reveal Frank's brother is missing, as she's at least willing to assist him and gives him enough info to send him to Stacy for help next, but when Gloria offers to pay her for whatever additional intel she can provide about the original families and the tunnels, this enrages Anya once again, who kicks her out for real this time.
- Innocently Insensitive: After Frank left Gloria's house somewhat upset near the end of the previous episode (not even specifically with her, and more out of lingering frustration with everything else going on), she was clearly worried that it was something she did; when he comes to see her here, the first thing she does after greeting him is apologize for potentially coming across as insensitive with everything she revealed about the Estabrook family to him and Joe in "The Key". Frank notes that it probably would have been a lot to handle regardless of the circumstances of when she did it.
- Internal Reveal:
- Frank is forced to reveal to Gloria that he and Joe found the key to George's Secret Room and have already been inside, bring her in there too, and tell her what items they took from there to get any information she might have that could help save Joe and Biff.
- Anya learns that Frank, whom she helped in the past, is Gloria's grandson and thus part of the Estabrook bloodline.
- Once Joe and Biff are rescued, Jesse goes Mama Bear and threatens to arrest the Hardy Boys unless they tell her what they've gotten Biff into. The boys and Biff bring Jesse to the Hardy attic, show her the String Theory board, and fill her in on the case.
- Irony: While in George's Secret Room, Frank asks Gloria if he had a secret tunnel into the mine, and she admits she doesn't know; they later learn from Anya that all three Circle founders did, and Joe and Biff end up using the Nabokov entrance to escape after Frank learns its whereabouts from Stacy. All the way in Season 3, the Hardy Gang discovers that the Estabrook entrance is right there in George's office, through a trapdoor on the floor beneath the rug, meaning that Frank and Gloria were standing right on top of it while talking about it.
- It's All My Fault:
- A lighthearted version: in the mine shaft, Joe apologizes to Biff for getting her into their current fix, 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 claim 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.
- The 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 Parting-Words Regret, also laments to Callie that he shouldn't have dismissed his brother's feelings so easily because Joe always does something crazy whenever Frank doesn't listen to him.
- Mama Bear:
- Jesse is 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.
- Trudy also has some towards Joe, sticking up for him against Jesse's angry accusations and going out to Demon's Paw with Frank to look for him, although she does tell Frank privately that Joe will have to answer to Jesse if Biff is indeed with him.
- Gloria gets the entire Bridgeport PD on the search for Joe (and Biff), and calls in numerous favors to get several outside forces involved, including the Gresham PD and a helicopter from Dixon City. She also goes with Frank to talk to Anya, whom she usually avoids because of the animosity Anya has for the Estabrook family, to get her help in saving her grandson.
- No Honor Among Thieves:
- Even though Gloria offered to pay JB to steal Kanika's piece of the Eye for her, now that he's experienced what it can do, he's interested in keeping it for himself, getting the other two pieces, and reassembling the whole thing. Stefan breaking into his motel room again with the intent to kill him this time just makes JB double down on his decision to betray Gloria.
- Anya tells Frank and Gloria that, back when her father led the mining expedition that resulted in the discovery of the Eye, even though he was ostensibly in charge, the other three men—George, Ahmed, and Sergei—each built their own secret entrance to the mine right from the start, separate from the main one that they all used (which is boarded up in the present day), because they didn't trust each other.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever happened to Chet and Phil during their search for Biff and Joe. It's implied a hay bale somehow fell over onto Chet, who has one entire side of his face covered in hay, and Phil managed to lift it off of him, but Chet requests Let Us Never Speak of This Again.
- Parting-Words Regret: The last time the Hardys talked, they had a serious argument that ended with Joe in tears and too upset to even talk to his brother. It's obvious in Frank's interactions with others that he feels utterly horrible about this, and when he's successfully able to contact Joe via the walkies, Frank notes that he would have had to live with that being their last talk for the rest of his life if he hadn't found him.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Played with, but subverted, or at most heavily downplayed. Joe and Biff are snippier with each other than usual thanks to their stressful situation, but don't have any kind of major argument and work together to find their way out of the mines. Even once they strongly disagree on where to go next and neither can convince the other—with Joe wanting to keep following the piece of the Eye to where it was found so he can destroy it, while Biff wants to go back to where they fell down the hole to wait for rescue—they decide to split up to each follow these respective paths, but exchange a hug and wish each other luck before parting. It only lasts a few minutes, though, before Joe gets a walkie signal from Frank and goes back to get Biff, who's far happier to take a known avenue of rescue instead.
- Power High: JB's continues from the previous episode in regards his newfound desire to reassemble the Eye. After learning from Wilt about Stacy being new in town, JB correctly deduces she has the third piece and breaks into her house to steal it, but relies too much on using his own to pull this off without considering that she can easily do the same. He gets jumped and badly beaten up by her Co-Dragons for his trouble.
- Rule of Fun: Biff admits this was her reason for coming with Joe to the mines despite having some misgivings. She knew it probably wouldn't be safe, but figured it would be fun, and came along willingly, which she assures him when he apologizes for the mess they're in.
- Sequel Hook: Biff reveals to Joe that, in trying to find out who her dad is, she discovered she's adopted and learned something else she didn't like, but doesn't tell him what it is or bring it up again this season, leaving it open to explore further in the next one.
- Soda Can Shakeup: After thwarting Stefan's attempt to kill him, JB leaves him handcuffed on the floor of his motel room, then shakes one of the soda cans he was planning to drink several times and tosses it on the floor next to him out of spite.JB: In case you get thirsty.
- The Un-Reveal: Neither the characters nor the audience ever learn the identity of the corpse that Joe and Biff find in the mine tunnels.
