Season 1, Episode 3:
Of Freedom and Pleasure
A terrifying man tracks Joe to the carnival, where a curious new trinket grants Joe incredible luck. Frank tries to find out why Laura was so interested in a decades-old local mine collapse.This episode contains examples of:
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The incredibly tense scenes of Joe fleeing from the Tall Man into the funhouse, and then JB getting into a life-or-death fight with said killer, are interspersed with the Friendship Moment of Frank and Callie riding the Ferris wheel together and exchanging heartfelt accounts of missing their respective moms and offering each other comfort.
- Big Brother Instinct:
- Despite his (very justified) fear of the Tall Man, when JB realizes the killer is planning to go after Joe next—the kid JB's taken a liking to and got involved to begin with—he doesn't hesitate to follow them to the carnival, punches the Tall Man in the face to protect Joe, and tells him to run while he draws aggro.
- Frank instantly becomes alarmed and hurries off with Biff when she comes to get him and tells him Joe's in trouble, and his immediate first reaction on seeing his brother is rushing up and asking if he's okay.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just as the Tall Man has caught up with Joe in the funhouse and is wrestling with him while the latter tries to struggle, JB rushes up and punches the killer in the face, then orders Joe to run, shoving him out the door when he hesitates. When the Tall Man recovers and sees JB, a pretty brutal fight ensues.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- The three other miners who went on the expedition with Jann Kowalski at Demon's Paw, who, as Anya puts it, "went on to have families and live their lives." All three of them become very important later once we learn their names, and one of them turns out to be George Estabrook, Frank's own great-grandfather.
- Curtis, the bully who sneers at Joe's win streak and insists he must be cheating. When Joe and Biff later split up to get away from the Tall Man, Curtis accosts Joe and steals one of the giant stuffed animals he won earlier, which actually helps Joe in the short term.
- Commonality Connection:
- After Anya reads Frank his fortune, she shuts down his attempts to ask her questions about "the Tragedy at Demon's Paw", with the implication that it's a touchy subject for her. When Frank sees a reenactment of it and learns that her dad died in said tragedy, he promptly goes back to her tent to apologize and offer his sympathy, assuring her that he knows how she feels by citing his own still-raw feelings about his mom's recent death. She softens and expresses her condolences, and decides to give him the info he wants.
- Callie reveals to Frank that she, too, doesn't have her mother in her life, although for her it was a case of Parental Abandonment rather than her mom dying. They grow closer bonding over their shared melancholy about this on the Ferris wheel.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: In the Tragedy at Demon's Paw, miner Jann Kowalski was fatally injured during the mine collapse, surviving long enough to reach his young daughter Anya before dying in her arms.
- Dramatization: Frank goes to see a reenactment of the Tragedy of Demon's Paw, which Laura was investigating, at the carnival. There, he learns that a man named Jann Kowalski—father of Anya Kowalski, the tarot card reader he met earlier—led an expedition of three other men into the mine at Demon's Paw. The four of them found something there, but taking it for themselves caused the ground to shake and the mine to collapse, and Jann did not survive his ensuing injuries, only barely able to reach his young daughter before succumbing to his wounds. However, she believed what little he was able to tell her before his death about what they found—despite the other men trying to claim he was delirious from the pain—and has maintained ever since that the town of Bridgeport is cursed.
- Draw Aggro: JB showing up to save Joe also serves this purpose to give the kid time to run away. The Tall Man recognizes him as the man who stole the idol from him on the plane in the first place and forgets all about chasing down Joe to attack JB instead.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: For audience members who aren't using subtitles or checking the end credits, a sharp-eyed viewer can learn JB's name in this episode thanks a "Wanted!" Poster at the cotton candy stand, before it's officially revealed in the next episode.
- Good Luck Charm: After Joe accidentally breaks the gold idol, the strange rock he finds inside turns out to give him supernaturally good luck. Despite how notoriously difficult carnival games are to win (often to the point of being rigged), Joe doesn't lose a single one while he has his "lucky charm" on him, scoring a bunch of the carnies' best prizes, and also survives a close shave with the Tall Man thanks to well-timed distractions and JB showing up Just in Time to save him. All of this convinces Joe (correctly) that the "lucky charm" literally does have magic power.
- Innocently Insensitive: Frank, desperately wanting to know why Laura was looking into the Tragedy at Demon's Paw, tries repeatedly to question Anya about it, who doesn't want to cooperate. Then he attends a reenactment and discovers that this "tragedy" was a mine collapse that killed the expedition leader, Anya's father, who died in her arms after sustaining mortal wounds. Frank wastes no time in returning to talk to her again so he can apologize for this, being very well aware of what it's like to suddenly lose a parent in a horrible tragedy.
- Irony:
- When reading Frank's tarot fortune, the first of his three cards he drew is Death. When this visibly alarms Callie, Anya explains that the card doesn't mean a literal death and represents a major change or metamorphosis in one's life. Frank did indeed have one of these recently...thanks to an actual death of someone close to him (his mom).
- Twofold regarding Anya's story to Frank about the mine collapse:
- She tells him, somewhat bitterly, how the three other miners who survived where her father did not went on to become rich and powerful. She doesn't share their names with Frank; if she had, they both would have learned that one of those men was his own great-grandfather.
- The object that the miners found is later revealed to be called the Eye, and Anya states that finding it "cursed this town, and curses it still". Frank's brother Joe happens to have a piece of the Eye with him at the carnival, but has no idea yet what it even is; when the Tall Man is seemingly killed by JB while trying to steal this piece back from Joe, it perpetuates the town's perception that the carnival is cursed.
- Curtis, an older bully who gets jealous of Joe's many carnival wins and expresses skepticism that it's all because of luck, waits until Joe is alone (after he and Biff split up to escape the Tall Man), pushes him to the ground, and steals his big stuffed animal, saying, "Where's your luck now, kid?" Him doing this is, in fact, lucky for Joe, as it misleads the Tall Man for a few extra seconds that Joe needs to reach the funhouse.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate:
- Joe only finds the idol that JB hid behind the vent after sneaking into his room in the last episode because he steps on a loose screw on the floor, figures out the screw came from the vent, and checks behind it.
- And from there, the reason Joe finds the piece of the Eye (his "lucky charm") hidden inside the idol is due to idly tossing it in the air over and over, rather carelessly, only for Aunt Trudy to distract him by calling to him from downstairs, causing him to drop and break it.
- Killing in Self-Defense: Subverted. JB appears to do this when he's very much on the losing end of his fight with the Tall Man and in danger of being killed, desperately grabbing and unplugging a nearby carnival cable and electrocuting him with both ends as a last-ditch attack. This does instantly take the Tall Man down and give JB the chance to get away, but the former turns out to be Not Quite Dead in the following episode.
- Missing Mom: Callie tells Frank, and the audience, that her mom abandoned her and her dad when she was young, so she knows what it's like to not have your mother around.
- Oh, Crap!:
- 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 watches him steal a photo of Joe and realizes this assassin is planning to go after his new pal.
- 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, immediately telling her they need to run away.
- All the kids get this when first Joe, then Frank and Biff, then Callie and Chet find the Tall Man apparently dead in one of the alleys of the carnival thanks to JB electrocuting him. Chet, who previously denied that the carnival is cursed, concedes after seeing this that it definitely is. Though, ultimately, the Tall Man is still alive.
- Pet the Dog: JB has very good reason to be terrified of the Tall Man (just like everyone else), because he personally stole something from him and knows what happened to the Astghik. Despite this, when JB realizes the Tall Man's planning to go after Joe at the carnival, he follows them there for the sole purpose of protecting Joe from him, does indeed rescue him and tells him to run, and fights the Tall Man at great risk to his own life, almost dying in the process, so Joe can get away safely.
- Ship Tease: Trudy and Jesse get some. After watching their respective kids head off into the carnival together, the two of them decide to get dinner and hang out together as well.Jesse: I'll buy you a corn dog.
Trudy: I love corn dogs. - Tarot Troubles: A tarot-reading fortune teller, Anya Kowalski, insists on reading Frank's fortune when he, Chet, and Callie visit her to ask her some questions about the case.
- 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 a big transformation or 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.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Once again, the Hardy Boys have largely different storylines for most of the runtime. Frank works with Callie and Chet to look into the Tragedy of Demon's Paw that Laura was investigating, meeting Anya in the process, while Joe hangs out with Biff at the carnival and wins every game thanks to his Good Luck Charm, only to be stalked by the Tall Man for it. The two of them finally meet up again when Biff goes to get Frank for help and all the kids find the Tall Man's "corpse" after JB electrocuted him.
- The Un-Reveal: What, exactly, the miners at Demon's Paw found before the mine collapsed is not revealed to the main characters here. It takes until "The Key" before the boys find out what it was (the Eye).
- Wham Shot: Joe's Good Luck Charm is shown to have part of the symbol on it that was drawn in Laura's notebook and on the chest pulled up by the Astghik, proving that, despite Joe stumbling into finding it, it's very important to their case.
- Would Hurt a Child: It's made very clear that the Tall Man has no problems with hurting or killing Joe, who's 12 years old, when he figures out the kid has the piece of the Eye he's looking for. He corners Joe in the funhouse, pins him to the wall, grips him tightly, and seems prepared to do worse while Joe can only helplessly struggle to break free and desperately shout for help. Luckily for him, JB shows up Just in Time.
