Season 2, Episode 2:
Conflicting Reports
Joe suspects Dennis’s girlfriend, Lucy, is hiding something about the night he went missing, and Frank realizes The Eye is trying to show him something about the case.This episode contains examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: Frank and Joe spend the entire first half of the season, starting with this episode, concealing from everyone—including their friends—that Frank now has the power of the Eye inside of him, with him outright stating they learned after the events of the last season that they can't trust anyone. They're apparently forgetting that they trusted their friends pretty early on, and said friends all proved to be loyal, helpful, and worth trusting in their investigation. It takes until the sixth episode before they finally clue the others in.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: The boys react this way to Fenton's, and to a lesser extent Trudy's, over-enthusiasm for the pay-per-view wrestling event. Frank asks them not to use their "wrestling voices" while their friends are over, and both brothers refuse to let their dad watch it in the same room with them and their friends, insisting they go upstairs (though this is also to give them a chance to sneak out).
- Apathetic Clerk: Tad Carson, who clerks at the store outside the East Woods, is a somewhat Emo Teen and a Perpetual Frowner who initially has no interest in helping Frank, Joe, and Callie when they question him because he's on his break. Though once Callie states he was wrong about what he saw, this perks him up enough to defend himself and describe it to them too, which ends up being helpful information.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Joe has been mulling over what JB told the boys about the Eye, recalling that Frank was the one who actually touched it fully-forged in the Chamber; he also notes that his brother finding the clue that led them to Dennis was a little too lucky to have just happened upon. Hearing Frank quietly leaving the house early in the morning confirms Joe's suspicions, and he covertly follows him to Gloria's and confronts him about having the Eye, though he truly doesn't expect the twist that Frank accidentally absorbed its power, has it inside him, and can't control it.
- Big Brother Instinct: A quick one, but at the shack in the woods, Frank has Joe crawl under the bed first when they hear someone coming, making himself the one who's more likely to be seen, and once the building's on fire, has Joe go first to escape out the window.
- Continuity Nod:
- The episode starts with the same flashback to George's argument with his partners that was shown in "The Key". However, the original showing of it was Gloria recounting the story to her grandsons and ended with George spotting Laura eavesdropping on them, whereas here, Frank is witnessing the scene with the Eye, so he's standing in Laura's place. The Flashback Effects are also different.
- Once the Eye starts directly talking to Frank in the form of a younger version of George Estabrook, it quotes a few passages from George's journal that the boys read aloud to each other in "The Secret Room".
- The 4-digit code that Frank uses to turn off Gloria's security system is "1961", the year George disappeared and died in a plane crash.note
- Destroy the Evidence: Dennis's kidnapper returns to the shack where he was briefly held prisoner to burn it down...while the boys are there looking for clues, forcing them to hide under the bed. They're horrified to see the arsonist toss gasoline on the floor and light it on fire, and while Joe manages to grab Dennis's pin to prove he was there, they barely make it out of the building alive before it burns to a crisp.
- Draw Aggro: On a nighttime jog, Mayor Krassner spots Belinda and Chet from a distance as they're about to climb up to the library roof; he can't see who they are, but gives chase, and Chet purposely draws his attention and runs off after telling Belinda to hide and meet him at Wilt's. She assures him later that she "lives for trouble" and wouldn't have cared much about being caught, but is clearly touched that he covered for her.
- Flashback Effects: In the flashback in "The Key" to George arguing with Ahmed and Sergei, it was a re-telling of events from Gloria, and the scene looked mostly normal except for slightly different lighting. This time, the same scene is a vision that the Eye is showing Frank, and like all of its other visions, the lighting is more distorted and diffracted, making the scene look more "shiny" than it did originally.
- Helpful Hallucination: Played with. The Eye's visions to Frank are helpful, but don't give him the answers he wants directly; instead, they're often metaphorical, and provide clues in the form of a code that the boys must decipher. Most notably, it shows Dennis being inside a "trunk" (chest) in George's office to indicate that he had been abducted by the bad guys and put in the "trunk" of a car.
- Holding Hands: Belinda and Chet end up doing this instinctively when ducking down by the jukebox at Wilt's after hearing sirens. They both look down and notice almost shyly, but linger a moment before letting go.
- Hypocrisy Nod: Biff steals Phil's watch after he asks about her bio dad, refusing to return it until he proves she can trust him. Phil later shows her and Joe something that he took from Dennis's notebook, and when she asks if he stole it, he replies "You're going to lecture me about stealing?" She nods at the point and pointedly checks the time with Phil's watch.
- Internal Reveal: Joe learns about Frank having the power of the Eye, and it arguably counts as this for Frank too, who until now has been convincing himself the Eye's visions are just "strange dreams". Initially, Joe thinks his brother did pull a swap and lie to JB about it, and has been actively using the Eye like he did to find Dennis, until Frank clarifies that the power is inside of him, not something he's using on purpose or can even control at all, and he didn't realize this until now because he only recently started having visions.
- Match Cut: In Frank's vision from the Eye, he enters George's office, only for the man himself to appear behind him. As the camera moves from one side of Frank to the other, briefly blocking George from sight, he switches from the old man he's always appeared as to a younger version of himself in his thirties or forties—the form that Frank will usually see from the Eye from now on—while briefly distorting back and forth between the two to confirm that, yes, this is still George whom Frank is seeing and not a completely different person.
- Mood Whiplash: In-universe and out. Frank cracks a joke about the Eye possessing him, Joe jokes back, "Very scary," and they're both chuckling, until they look up and see the actually-very-creepy abandoned shack in the woods, and their grins quickly fade.Frank: That, on the other hand...
Joe: Yeah, that'll do it. - No Conservation of Energy: Discussed, but the Eye ultimately averts this. Frank brings up to its vision of George how the latter tried to destroy it, and Young George counters that he broke it and explicitly notes that energy can't be destroyed. In Frank's subsequent talk with Joe about how the Eye gave him its power, he states outright, "Energy can't be created or destroyed, only changed or moved."
- Publicity Stunt: The mayor of Bridgeport wants to get a picture at Wilt's with the Hardy Gang, "the local heroes who saved Dennis", to go in the paper. He ends up just using the opportunity to plug his political views and accomplishments to the press members present, and makes a comment to the photographer indicating that Chet and Phil will be cut out of the final photo altogether so it only includes him and the Hardy Boys.
- Punk in the Trunk: The gang figures out that the bad guys abducted Dennis and shoved him in the trunk of a blue car.
- Relationship Reveal: Trudy and Jesse are revealed to have begun dating between seasons, as shown when they exchange a kiss.
- Remember the New Guy?: When Callie discovers that she's been falsely accused of cheating on her Rosegrave entrance exam, she thinks the person responsible is Donald, who apparently took the test with her and Frank and was one of the rejected candidates. None of the students at this exam in the previous season were named as "Donald Dukay," and if one of them was actually supposed to be him, he's
played by a different actor here than he was then. - Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Played for Laughs. Chet and Belinda arrive at the Hardys' to watch the wrestling, only to find Biff and Phil actually wrestling in the living room, and promptly decide to bail and go do their own thing instead.
- Secret-Keeper: Once Frank tells Joe about having the Eye inside him, his brother becomes the only other person who knows about this for the next several episodes, doing his best to cover for Frank when he has visions and keep anyone else from finding out.
- Serious Business: Fenton, Trudy, Biff, and Phil get way into the pay-per-view wrestling match they watch at the Hardy home, complete with Fenton calling it "the pay-per-view event of the century!"
- Shout-Out: Joe's reaction to learning that his older brother has the Eye inside him—calling him a superhero, starting to ask him what different powers he has, and talking about needing to test them—is very reminiscent of SHAZAM!, where Freddy Freeman, who's similar in age to Joe, responds almost exactly the same way to his foster brother gaining superpowers. Complete with both boys asking if their brothers have laser eyes.
- Slave to PR: The Hardy Boys are excited when, after successfully finding and rescuing Dennis, the mayor of Bridgeport wants to take a picture with them at Wilt's. Once they actually get there, they find that Mayor Krassner has little respect for them, their friends, or their investigative skills, using the entire affair as a chance to plug his political values to the witnessing photographer and reporter to put in the paper, and even plans to crop Chet and Phil out of the picture altogether.
- Stock Footage: After Frank says the brothers can't trust anyone, we get a montage of possible suspects and shady individuals involved in the case—Dennis, Lucy, JB, Krassner, Gloria, Mack, Angela, the black-booted arsonist—taken from scenes from the previous episode or this one.
- Trespassing Hero:
- The Hardys squeeze through a fence in the East Woods with a sign that says "Trespassers will be shot" to venture onto private property and see if they can find where Dennis was filming and/or got kidnapped.
- Chet lampshades this when Belinda encourages him to climb up to the roof of the library with her, though they ultimately don't get the chance before Mayor Krassner spots them and chases them off.
- We Need a Distraction: After the Hardy Boys leave to go investigate the East Woods, they task Callie, Biff, and Phil with distracting Fenton and Trudy if they come downstairs for any reason, and/or covering for them. Though the adults are secretly just amused by it:Trudy: You could tell them that you know they're still investigating.
Fenton: Where's the fun in that?
