Season 1, Episode 9:
The Key
Frank and Joe exchange truths with their grandmother and find a long-hidden secret in her home. Fenton finds what he’s looking for. Meanwhile, other forces work against them all.This episode contains examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch:
- After Chief Collig arrests JB and Gloria tells him, "You know what to do with him," he drives to a remote location and tells JB to get out of the car. Both he and the audience think Collig is about to murder him, with JB subtly panicking, but instead, the chief gives him an offer from Gloria to steal Kanika Khan's piece of the Eye (though he does make it very clear that JB doesn't actually have a choice in the matter and Collig will eliminate him if he refuses).
- At the end of the episode, it seems that Gloria will get the Hardy Boys' piece of the Eye after she's convinced them, at least partially through manipulation, that it'll be safer with her. Then the boys and Stefan go to get it, only to find that it's not in the hiding place where Joe and Biff left it (inside a speaker in a movie theater) and someone else has already taken it.
- Battle Butler: Downplayed, but Stefan is Gloria's strongman as well as her Number Two (which was already implied back in the premiere episode in the confrontation with Ern), as he ends the Hostage Situation by sneaking up on JB from the side and punching him out. Joe lampshades it:Joe: (To Frank) Did you know Stefan could do that?
- Blunt "Yes": Gloria tells the boys about another piece of the Eye currently being in town (Kanika's), and that makes it all the more important to keep their Estabrook piece safe. Frank asks, "By giving it to you?", and she says, "Yes."
- Dismantled MacGuffin: The Eye, which was broken into three pieces, each kept by one of the three families who found it; Joe's Good Luck Charm is the long-lost Estabrook piece that went missing 20 years ago with George's death. Each one by itself is far less powerful, but still brings very good luck and sharp intuition to the user, as Joe experienced at the carnival. Gloria tells her grandsons she wants to reassemble the Eye so they can use it to discover what really happened to Laura, but there are plenty of hints she wants it for more than just that. And she's not the only one, as other members of the Big Bad Ensemble are also trying to collect all three pieces to reassemble them, as Gloria herself lampshades.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Phil and Biff go to the police station to report Joe's abduction by JB, and Jesse calls Trudy to let her know and promises the cops will have every available car looking for him. Not only was Joe not in any serious danger because JB was never going to hurt him and just brought him to Gloria's house to confront her, but at this point, the Hostage Situation has already been resolved, JB's been taken away by Collig, and Joe and Frank are both sitting safely in Gloria's study. Trudy's dumbfounded when the boys walk in the door, none the wiser to what's been happening.
- Gloria tells the Hardys near the end of the episode that Kanika Khan's piece of the Eye was stolen, and that someone is acting against the Circle by trying to take them all, to convince them to give their piece to her for safekeeping. The audience already knows that Gloria herself is responsible, having had Collig hire JB on her behalf earlier to steal the Khan piece for her.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Joe's snark about how the citizens of Bridgeports' "secrets have secrets" prompts Frank to deduce that the key to George's Secret Room is hidden in Laura's music box that George gave her, as Gloria told him that it has more than one secret in it, but he's only found one so far (the false bottom). Joe takes it apart, and they do find that the drum of the music box itself is the key.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: As Fenton and Rupert are talking in the car, another car can be seen driving up in the background a few seconds before the people in it start shooting at them.
- Flashback: We get one during Gloria's Info Dump of a major argument between the three original founders of the Circle, with George feeling that they've "gone too far this time" by not preventing the deaths of 4,000 people despite knowing what would happen thanks to the Eye, while Ahmed and Sergei are not as regretful. This made George decide that the Eye was too powerful for one person to use and broke it into three pieces, one for each of them. However, a teenage Laura witnessed this argument, and despite George sending Gloria (who was also there) to talk to her about it, Laura wanted nothing to do with the Circle after that.
- Hostage Situation: Carrying over from last episode, since Gloria previously hired JB to get her piece of the Eye for her, he has brought her grandson to her home, revealing to her that Joe knows where the piece is, so he can get paid. Joe isn't actually harmed at all and indicates that JB promised not to hurt him, but he does accidentally grip him too tightly at one point when Stefan tries to make a move, to Joe's annoyance. The situation is resolved when Stefan sneaks up on JB and punches him in the face, knocking him unconscious.
- Info Dump: This is a very exposition-heavy episode, with lots of reveals and Internal Reveals to go around between the characters. Most notable is Gloria finally telling the boys about the Eye and the men who discovered it and formed the Circle.
- Internal Reveal:
- Combined with the ending of last episode, the Hardys learn that their own grandma was JB's buyer all along. Gloria is visibly uncomfortable when he confronts her about this while both of her grandsons are present.
- Gloria finds out from JB that Joe is the one who found the piece of the Eye inside the idol—revealed here to be the piece originally belonging to her own family—and knows where it is.
- She also only just discovers that Laura was actually murdered when Frank mentions it (thinking she already knew this), and is literally staggered with shock. The Dixon City police believed Laura's car crash to have been a genuine accident, so Gloria thought so, too.
- And then the Hardys tell her that Kanika hired Fenton to find Rupert, and the latter and Laura were working together on a story. Gloria apparently just knew Fenton was away working on a case, but not what it pertained to.
- Trudy confronts the boys over their String Theory board she found and demands answers, and they tell her everything they've learned so far. One of her conditions for allowing them to keep investigating and keeping it a secret is that they continue to fill her in on what they find.
- Knockout Gas: How JB steals Kanika's piece of the Eye: filling up their room with gas by sticking the nozzles under the door, waiting for them to fall unconscious from it, and then going in (with a gas mask on) and taking it from her. Though Nigel's not quite under yet when he goes in, and JB has to just hold him down until he fully passes out.JB: Imagine if it was poison. (Chuckles) It's not, though.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, according to Trudy, Phil was once convinced he saw a giant alligator in a lake.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: JB's failed attempt to use Joe as leverage against Gloria ends with him being arrested by Chief Collig (whom, thanks to Joe, he now knows is a Dirty Cop working for her) and driven to a secluded location, seemingly to kill him. Instead, Collig gives him a second-chance offer from Gloria to steal the Khan piece of the Eye while Kanika is in town. JB is hesitant at first, but agrees when Collig makes it clear that the choices are either accepting the offer or death.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Callie and Stacy get some. Stacy states that a teacher at Galebridge High, her old school, had it out for her and Callie answers "Can't imagine why" (on the surface meaning it at face value, but her tone hinting she's being sarcastic); then later, after Callie calls her cousin Marina who goes to Galebridge and doesn't know anyone named Stacy Baker, she directly asks her if she knew Marina, and Stacy denies it and says "Maybe she just wasn't that memorable."
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Rather than using the Eye's power to prevent wars, cure diseases, or help people, the Circle instead just used it to make themselves rich and powerful, to the distaste of Frank and Joe.
- The Reveal:
- Joe's "lucky charm" is one of three pieces of a supernatural artifact called the Eye, which grants the user with foresight and knowledge to "achieve all your desires." The "secret society" that controls Bridgeport from the shadows and is behind Rosegrave (among many other organizations) is known as the Circle of the Eye, and was created by the three men who found it.
- On a related note, after hearing about these three other men in "Of Freedom and Pleasure" who went into the mine with Jann Kowalski, found the Eye there, and survived where he didn't, we get names for them here: Sergei Nabokov, Ahmed Khan (Kanika's father), and George Estabook himself, Gloria's dad and the boys' great-grandpa.
- Rupert elaborates to Fenton on the story he and Laura were working on: destroying the Circle of the Eye by revealing their secrets to the world, and in doing so, stopping them from putting the three pieces of the Eye back together.
- Gloria comments to Kanika, and then Rupert also tells Fenton, that Viktor Nabokov—Sergei's son and Gloria's and Kanika's counterpart as the leader of the Nabokov branch of the Circle—was murdered recently.
- The titular key to the door behind the Bookcase Passage turns out to be hidden inside the music box that George Estabrook gifted to Laura. Specifically, the entire cylinder of the music box is the key, and the boys successfully use it to unlock the door at the end.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Joe suggests picking the lock on the door to George's Secret Room, but Gloria informs the boys that any attempt to open the door with anything other than the proper key (which she does not have and doesn't know the whereabouts of, assuming it was lost in George's plane crash like the piece of the Eye was) will trigger a "kill switch" bomb that destroys everything behind the door.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Gloria tells the boys that the door behind the bookcase has been locked since right before George died. Joe offers to pick the lock, then quickly adds:Joe: I mean, I-I'd have to learn how, of course, 'cause it's definitely not a skill that I already have.
- Talking Your Way Out: JB weakly tries this when he thinks Collig's going to shoot him, saying "You don't have to do this," though he soon realizes the chief has something else in mind.
- Tempting Fate: This exchange during the Hostage Situation:Gloria: Do you really think you can barge into my house, hold my grandson hostage, and demand money from me?!
JB: I mean, it's working, isn't it?
(Stefan sneaks up on JB and knocks him out with one punch) - What Would X Do?: As Frank and Joe prepare to insert the key into the lock on the secret door, Joe questions if they should and expresses worry that this won't actually work and will trigger the Self-Destruct Mechanism instead. Frank responds with "I just asked myself what you would do." Thankfully for them, it does work.
- White Sheep: Laura has been this to the Estabrook family since her late teens, and Rupert is shown to be this to the Khans as well. They were both horrified at the idea that their families were trying to reassemble to Eye, and wanted to put a stop to it by bringing them down.
- You're Just Jealous: Chet says as much when Callie asks him if he thinks there's anything weird about Stacy. She then points out that this applies to him as well.Chet: What's up with you? Why are you so stuck on that girl? Or maybe it's the fact that Frank's stuck on her and that's what's really bothering you.
Callie: (Beat) Why are you acting like this?
Chet: That wasn't even convincing.
Callie: You know, I'm just trying to look out for our friend. Okay? Although I do find your jealousy adorable.
Chet: Who said I was jealous? I could just be hungry.
