Season 3, Episode 2:
A Vanishing Act
Betrayed by one of their own, the gang struggle to understand the meaning behind George Estabrook’s map and are soon faced with a shocking quid pro quo.This episode contains examples of:
- Aborted Arc: Downplayed for Biff. Her Adoption Angst storyline was her main subplot throughout all of Season 2, and she got a call from her biological sister at the end of it. She does get a scene of meeting said sister, Tess, in person, and it's indicated that they're going to stay in touch and keep a relationship, but Biff never meets her bio mom after all the time she spent trying to find her, though she ends up being okay with it after hearing that Abigail tried, but was largely an absent parent, and Tess was mostly raised by their bio dad, who's now dead. It's also never revealed why Biff was given up for adoption when her older sister, whom their mom would've had at an even younger age, was not, especially since their dad apparently talked about Biff all the time while Tess was growing up in a way that indicates he wishes he could have been her parent, too. Ultimately, while Tess is mentioned again a couple of times, the adoption storyline is considered wrapped up after this one scene with her.
- Armor-Piercing Question: George, Smug Snake that he is, is smirking almost the entire time he gives Breaking Speeches...until Chet asks him the following question, at which point the sneer fades and he swallows and clenches his jaw. Though, ultimately, it doesn't have any lasting effects.Chet: But were any of [the people you worked with in the past] friends? Have you ever really had a friend in your entire sad life?
- Bad Boss: George states that no one who worked for him would have betrayed him...because he didn't give them the chance, killing them or having them killed once he no longer needed their services. It's a contrast to his daughter Gloria, who, for all her faults, was a Benevolent Boss.
- Because Destiny Says So: Much of why George is such a Smug Snake is because the Eye has shown him "my destiny" and "the end", so he truly believes that the True Companions' efforts to oppose him will fail because You Can't Fight Fate, and mocks them for it.
- Berserk Button: Downplayed, but George initially refuses to say a word after the Hardy Gang ties him up, until they start mocking his intelligence, and Joe outright says he was never as smart as he thought he was, which finally gets him to break his silence to insist that he's following the Eye's visions, and his destiny will unfold exactly as it showed him. And when Chet angrily punches him in response, George promptly tries to give them all Breaking Speeches.
- Better the Devil You Know: George cites this word-for-word about the gang's option of working with him (whom none of them trust, and with good reason) vs. cooperating with Quill and his shady employers. Instead, Joe takes a third option and just pretends to agree before knocking him out cold at the first opportunity so they can get Frank back without making any kind of deal and have one fewer "devil" altogether.George: Better to trust the devil you know than to let the relics fall into the wrong hands.
Belinda: You are the "wrong hands". - Blatant Lies:
- JB, still dressed in all-black for the Heritage Museum robbery, claims to Jesse that he just happened to be walking by the museum the night before when the Bridgeport cops arrested him. Jesse doesn't believe him, of course, but just tells him he's not being charged with the robbery anyway and has been sprung from jail.
- Joe and co. lie to Trudy that "Frank" isn't with them at the Estabrook house (when they actually just locked him in George's office) because he's at the library "researching symbols and stuff" (as Belinda puts it) to figure out how to open the codexes. Somehow, this works for convincing her to leave despite her obvious skepticism, probably because she was mostly just worried and wanted to be sure they're okay.
- "Frank", after escaping through the Estabrook mine entrance, is quickly found by Jesse, who asks him what he's doing there. He just lamely replies that he's "looking for some clues" in a poor attempt to channel Frank, and she obviously doesn't buy it and brings him to the station.
- Bound and Gagged:
- After capturing George and holding him prisoner in his own study, the Hardy Gang keeps him bound to a chair with a belt, and later have to briefly stuff a cloth in his mouth as they hide him in the Secret Room so Trudy won't catch them.
- Once they re-capture George and bring him to Rosegrave to meet up with Callie, he's again bound to a chair, this time with duct tape, and also has tape over his mouth.
- Breaking Speech: George loves giving these to the True Companions, first collectively calling them a "loyal band of misfits" who'd be admirable if they weren't pathetic, and then takes shots at each individually, based on his observations. That being said, several of them successfully manage to shut him down.
- He calls Joe "an incessant little pest, chasing glory" and Phil an "insecure loser" who's just trying to impress Biff, and cruelly tells Biff outright that Phil loves her and has been telling everyone, while he can only weakly try to deny it. George then wonders aloud if the reason he can't figure Chet out is because he hasn't figured out himself and has no direction or plans for the future, outright asking why he cares and why he doesn't just walk away.
- That being said, George's criticisms of the girls are pretty weak and based on prejudice. He accuses Biff and Belinda of trying to "fill a void" created by their "broken homes" just because they don't have nuclear families and have one parent in their lives (never mind the fact that both of them are very close to and happy with said parent).
- Brick Joke: Doubling as Hypocritical Humor. When the gang first captures George, Chet gets angry enough to punch him in the face, but Joe stops him from doing it again by pointing out that it's still Frank's body and they need to keep it as intact as possible. At the end, once Joe himself smacks George in the head with the Eye to knock him out so they can get Frank back, Chet lampshades, "So much for keeping Frank's body in one piece!"
- Chekhov's Gun:
- In the second season, when the boys were hanging out in George's Secret Room, Joe was shown admiring his sword on display there before Frank told him to put it down. George, with Frank's body, uses this same sword to try to kill Joe during their confrontation in the room.
- Back in "No Getting Out", Anya told Frank and Gloria how all three founding members of the Circle had their own secret tunnel to the Demon's Paw mine. Since they didn't know where the Estabrook tunnel entrance was—only George did—Frank ended up asking Stacy for the location of the Nabokovs' instead to save Joe. The Estabrook entrance is finally revealed here: a trap door in the floor of George's Secret Room.
- Chekhov's Gunman: There were previously established to be two Rosegrave students who underwent Project Midnight; Season 2 focused on Patient B, revealed to be Aaron Munder. Patient A, who died on the spot when subjected to the tests, comes into play here when Drew tells Callie that her reason for being interested in Project Midnight and wanting to get dirt on it is because Patient A was her older brother, Orrin.
- Choke Holds: George pins Joe to the ground, straddles him, and tries to strangle him at two different times. The first time, Joe grabs something heavy from the floor nearby and smashes him in the head to get him off, and the second time, Chet and Belinda pull George off him.
- Combat Parkour: Joe executes several acrobatic rolling dodges and flying leaps in his fight scene with George, starting with somersaulting under the gun in George's attempt to shoot him.
- Combat Pragmatist: Joe is fighting George in Frank's body, who's bigger, stronger, and burlier than him, and also doesn't want to risk doing major damage to it, so he mostly pulls evasive maneuvers, but does smack him in the face a couple of times with the nearest thing he can grab.
- Commonality Connection: Drew starts to explain how the Rosegrave computers are networked together, only for Callie to pick up on it right away:Drew: Yeah. Wow. Most people don't get it and I have to over-explain.
Callie: Story of my life. (They grin at each other) - Continuity Nod:
- Where did Joe hide the Eye, somewhere that Chet and Belinda failed to find it after searching? Behind the floor vent in his room, the same place Joe first found the idol containing a piece of the Eye back in "Of Freedom and Pleasure" after JB snuck in and hid it there.
- In "Conflicting Reports", Joe wondered aloud to Frank why George would've designed a Secret Room with only one exit that locked from the outside, leaving a risk of him getting locked in. The gang discovers now that George did build in a second exit: a trap door in the floor of the office that doubles as the Estabrook secret entrance to the Demon's Paw mines (after they've previously used the Nabokov entrance).
- Contrived Coincidence:
- "Frank", after escaping from Joe and co, is brought into the station by Jesse for questioning when Biff is also there waiting to talk to her after the meeting with Tess, so she sees him and calls Joe to report where he is. And then JB is being released from jail at the same time, sees Biff and then the bag of codexes that was confiscated from "Frank" after she glances at it, and snatches it on his way out.
- And then the rest of the gang gets to the police station at the same time "Frank" is released from questioning, prompting a Chase Scene.
- Deal with the Devil: Subverted. Joe offers, over his friends' protests, to help George get the last relic and let him have all of them in return for giving up Frank's body and changing to a different one so he can have his brother back. Knowing how evil George is, Joe has no intention of really going through with it and is tricking him into admitting how to save Frank, much to the gang's relief after Joe drops the act.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Joe and Callie both (separately) initially suspect(ed) that "Frank" is really Aaron Munder. Viewers would know this theory doesn't make sense because George pretended to be Aaron in "An Unexpected Return" long enough to trick Adrian into freeing him before revealing the ruse, which the real Aaron would've had no reason to do; however, Callie and Joe were still unconscious when this happened and didn't see it.
- The Eye gives Joe a vision of a man stealing one of the leftover pieces of the Crystal from George's desk. The audience knows it's the chauffeur, but Joe's never seen him before, so he can only describe to George what he looks like, though he does suggest him as a possibility.
- Cadmus Quill states that his organization has hired multiple people to track down the codexes, including JB, but he comes to the Hardys because he's heard they've assembled all the scrolls. At this point, they don't have them anymore, and JB himself does after stealing the bag with the scrolls from the police station.
- Enemy Mine:
- Now that the rest of the Hardy Gang have determined that "Frank" is George, they mostly hold him prisoner until they can find out how to save the real Frank, but after George temporarily escapes, he and Joe have one of these in their talk with Cadmus Quill. Despite Joe noting that he and "Frank" haven't been "seeing eye-to-eye recently", both are in agreement that they don't want to give Quill the scrolls.
- Then once Quill offers to give them "the thing you want most"—Laura, as he provides a picture taken of her with a security camera—Joe tells his friends that they need to work together with George, who claims to be willing to accept his earlier offer of the relics in return for giving back Frank's body (though is likely not sincere about it), but Joe's actually just lying to get him to let his guard down and knocks him unconscious.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Joe and Callie, the two people closest to Frank, have both realized that "Frank" is actually someone else's consciousness in his body, but are/were initially incorrect about who it is.
- Downplayed with Joe, though; after figuring it out about the mind switch offscreen, he apparently speculated to his friends before they came to confront "Frank" that he's Aaron Munder, but by the time they capture him here, Joe elaborates to the others that he was "half-right" with what he told them—right about the body-snatching, wrong about who—as he has correctly deduced that it's George Estabrook.
- Callie actually became suspicious of "Frank" even before Joe did—pretty much immediately, in fact, due to his cold behavior when he dumped her—but also thinks that it's either Aaron or Drew's brother Orrin, "Patient A" who was said to have died in Project Midnight, and doesn't learn that it's George until Joe tells her so.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: George is so selfish and lacking in compassion for others that he truly doesn't get why the Hardys' friends are so determined to stop him when he's not causing harm to them personally with his plans. The way he sees it, they don't have any direct reason to oppose him, so they should just walk away. He can't understand that, since the rest of them consider Frank a dear friend, the stakes are very personal to them, or that they also care about everyone else he's hurt and are determined to prevent him from causing more damage.
- Fight Scene: One of the few in the series. George tries to kill Joe—first by shooting him, then stabbing with a sword, then choking him to death—with his brother's body, while Joe mostly just evades him and fights him off until he can grab the bag of scrolls and flee the Secret Room to where his friends are waiting outside.
- Foreshadowing: Joe gets some in-universe from one of the visions he unintentionally receives while touching the Eye, showing him snippets—all from the next episode—of being reunited with his brother and facing off against George.
- Gilligan Cut: Joe repeatedly asks George where Frank is, if he's still alive, and how they get him back, while George just smirks and laughs at him. Joe vows that "somehow, someway", he will get him to talk...and then cut to Joe opening the study doors later after some one-on-one interrogation, commenting, "Man, he is really not talking!" Ultimately, through trickery, Joe does persuade George to tell him what he wants to know.
- Guile Hero: After having no luck in getting George to answer his questions about Frank, Joe tries a different tactic of offering George a deal: they'll give him the relics, and even help him find the last one, in exchange for him leaving Frank's body afterwards and swapping to another one. In truth, Joe knows how unlikely George is to keep his end of the bargain, but the offer itself is insincere and just a ploy to get him to tell them where Frank is and how to save him, which George finally does; Joe then beans him and re-kidnaps him as soon as he gets the chance.
- Hypocrite: George, unsurprisingly, is a big one. He gets mad at Joe for lying to him after the latter reveals he still has the Eye, despite everything that George has done and lied about himself. Joe calls him out on it without missing a beat.George: You lied to me!
Joe: You body-snatched my brother. Don't get all high and mighty about it. - I Lied: After Quill's visit, where he promises to give them Laura (who's apparently still alive) in exchange for the scroll map, Joe pretends to agree to work with George to get it back from JB and convince the rest of the gang it's necessary, but since George has already told them where Frank is, Joe decks him unconscious when his back is turned so they can re-capture him and get Frank back without making a Deal with the Devil.Phil: Oh, thank goodness!
Joe: You really thought I was gonna make a deal with that guy? - Idiot Ball: Biff sees JB, who was earlier competing with the Hardys and friends for the codexes, being released at the police station. When he looks over and sees her too, she casts a very unsubtle nervous glance at the black bag nearby with the scrolls in it, which "Frank" was forced to leave there after being brought into the station and which she was just about to try to take back. Since she couldn't have been more obvious about this if she'd tried, JB unsurprisingly sees the bag when he otherwise might not have and covertly steals it on his way out of the station, and when Biff tries to follow, she's stopped by her mom coming up to talk to her, which lets him get away with the scrolls.
- Interface Spoiler: Downplayed with Cadmus Quill; the subtitles first call him "Quill" only a scene before he tells the boys his name himself.
- Internal Reveal: The entire gang learns fairly quickly in succession that George Estabrook is the person who returned from the Crystal and took over Frank's body, starting with Joe (the one who figures it out), then everybody else except Callie, and finally Callie herself.
- Ironic Echo: As George goes around the room insulting all the True Companions, he calls Joe an "incessant little pest, chasing glory." Later, once Joe finally has something to hold over George to negotiate with, he comments, "I'm an incessant pest, remember?"
- Kick the Dog:
- George's Breaking Speeches to the gang are full of this, like—in addition to all the name-calling—casually referring to Frank as "collateral damage", cruelly telling Biff that Phil's in love with her, and mocking Belinda and Biff for coming from "broken homes" just because they live in one-parent families.
- George also reveals to Joe that, despite promising his loyal chauffeur who helped him with his plans that he'd be rewarded when George returned, he actually included orders in his instructions to Gloria for her to kill the chauffeur, too, to further to Leave No Witnesses just like with the doctors he killed, although Joe speculates she didn't go through with it. The next episode answers this for sure.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Trudy—who heard "Frank" calling her for help—asks Joe if she heard someone shouting, and he claims it was him, and she may have thought otherwise because "my voice is getting deeper," referencing how much Joe's voice has changed between each season thanks to Alexander Elliot hitting puberty over the course of filming the show.
- Let's Just Be Friends: After Biff finds out from George that Phil has feelings for her, she asks him about it later, and tells him that she does like him, just not in that kind of way. He accepts it and tells her it's okay, but is obviously bummed, especially with how she learned about it.
- Love Informant: As George is insulting each of the True Companions in turn, he tells Biff (and everyone else present, though they already knew) rather mockingly that Phil's in love with her. Phil's quite upset that that's how she learned of it, since he wanted to confess it himself.
- Mama Bear: Despite their relationship, Trudy's not very happy with Jesse for bringing her nephew (or at least, who she thinks is her nephew) in for questioning without her being present there with him from the start.
- Manipulative Bastard: As Chet lampshades, George was like this his whole life, never having real friends and manipulating and backstabbing those around him. This includes his own daughter Gloria, whom he always knew craved his approval and consistently exploited it for his own benefit.
- Meaningful Echo: In "An Unexpected Return", after briefly pretending to be Aaron to get Adrian Munder to set him free, George revealed the lie and said to him, "Look into my eyes. Do you see someone who loves you?" Here, as Callie explains her hunch to Drew that "Frank" isn't really Frank, she states (in reference to their breakup) "All I know is, when I looked into Frank's eyes, I didn't see someone who loved me."
- Mood Whiplash: The scene where Trudy comes to the Estabrook house to find the boys is rather humorous as the kids, who hid "Frank" in the Secret Room, try to lie to her about where he is. But it quickly becomes very serious when they enter the room afterward to find that George got out of his bonds while they were gone and escaped through a trapdoor on the floor, which turns out to be the Estabrook secret entrance to the mines.
- Murder in the Family: George tries numerous times to kill his great-grandson Joe, at first because He Knows Too Much and then to get him out of his way.
- Not Me This Time: Quill confirms George's guess that the organization he works for threatened the unknown witness, who saw "Frank" leaving the Demon's Paw mine right after the explosion that killed Kanika and Stacy, to retract their statement. Joe expresses his suspicion of the fact that "Frank" really was at the Chamber last night, and George shortly replies, "I didn't blow it up, if that's what you're implying." Despite Joe's skepticism, George is being honest in this instance, since he barely survived the explosion; however, considering that he was planning on killing Stacy and Kanika himself before the bomb interrupted them, he's hardly an innocent party, either.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Joe didn't come alone to confront George, having told his friends offscreen about "Frank" being an impostor and hatched a plan together for them to wait outside the Secret Room to ambush and capture "Frank". They're ready and waiting, and it works perfectly.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The gang, after knocking George out near the end, somehow manage to get him all the way from the Hardy home to Rosegrave and into Callie's dorm room without getting caught or him escaping.
- Out-Gambitted: George is on the receiving end this time. He agrees to Joe's offer where the kids will help him find the last relic and let him keep them all in exchange for switching to another body so they can bring Frank back. While it's very likely he wouldn't have held up his end and would've kept Frank's body anyway, he at least pretends to go along with it for now and finally answers Joe's question of how to save Frank, likely to lull him into trusting him. However, Joe's deal was a lie from the start, and now that he has the info he needs, he instead lulls George into trusting him by pretending to insist to his friends that they need him, then knocks him out and takes him to Rosegrave so they can rescue Frank.
- Present Absence: This is the only episode in the series where Frank Hardy, the character, doesn't actually appear*, as all of Rohan Campbell's screentime is of him playing George. Naturally, though, finding out where Frank is, what happened to him, and how to get him back is the driving motivation for his brother and their friends and all of their actions.
- Psychotic Smirk: "Frank" gives one when Joe reveals to Chet, Belinda, Biff, and Phil that he's really George. He gets several more while the kids attempt to interrogate him, although it slips a few times when they pull one over on him.
- Shipper on Deck: Building off of the previous episode, Joe gets some more for Frank/Callie, telling their friends that somebody should call Callie with the "good news" that Frank didn't actually break up with her.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: The friends give George several in response to his Breaking Speeches. Belinda snaps at George that the times have changed since he was around in "19-dickity" and family standards are not at all the same, with Biff adding that they and their families are functioning just fine. And then Chet, trembling with anger, actually does seem to hit a nerve by mocking the fact that George has obviously never had a real friend in his "entire sad life", because if he had, he wouldn't need to ask the question of why Chet cares.
- Spotting the Thread: Used to determine that "Frank" has someone else's consciousness inside his body.
- Joe already did this to figure out "Frank" is an impostor, but for how he deduces who he really is, Joe explains to his friends that he's been getting progressively more weirded out by how "Frank" has been dressing differently and speaking in an old-fashioned way, plus his previously-established observation about the awkward way George says "Grandma" about Gloria.
- Callie has less information to work off of than Joe does, so she doesn't specifically figure out that "Frank" is really George until Joe and the others fill her in. However, she actually started suspecting something's up well before Joe did, pretty much as soon as "Frank" broke up with her, because, as she explains to Drew, when she looked him in the eyes, she didn't see the warmth and love there that he'd always shown her. The real reason she came to Rosegrave for the summer program and secretly took the Crystal with her was to follow up on this hunch.
- Taking the Heat: Downplayed since she doesn't get in any worse trouble than being scolded, but as Drew and Callie sit in the chapel together and talk about the Sleep Room, they hear the new dean coming, and Drew has Callie hide, gets caught herself, and pretends to be there alone.
- Talk to the Fist: As George starts going on about how the Eye showed him his "destiny" and he knows how everything will unfold, Chet punches him in the face in fury that all of the rotten things George has done were essentially Because Destiny Says So.
- Tap on the Head: Once Joe is done pretending to play friendly with George, he bludgeons him in the back of the head with the Eye relic, knocking him out. Chet lampshades that this is despite Joe stopping him earlier from beating George up because it's Frank's body.
- Trauma Conga Line: Biff invokes this to Jesse as a cover for why "Frank" is acting strange and Not Himself: that his grandmother died, his dad's still gone after leaving again, and he and Callie broke up.
- Underestimating Badassery: A combination of this and overestimating himself is how George gets so thoroughly Out-Gambitted by Joe. The latter will stop at nothing to save his brother, but gets the former to mistake his determination for desperation by offering him what appears to be a last-ditch bargain where George has the upper hand the whole time. Thus, he misjudges his importance to the Hardy Gang and thinks they need him more than he needs them (as he straight-up boasts to them later), tells Joe what he wants to know as bait to reel him in, and never seems to consider that Joe, Guile Hero that he is, was lying to him all along; since George gave him exactly what he needs to save Frank, Joe no longer has any reason to play nice or pretend to work with him, and just knocks him out and captures him again.
- Villainous Rescue: A witness saw "Frank" leaving the mines the previous night after the Chamber explosion, so Jesse brings him in to talk to him, but by the time Trudy comes to pick him up, they've recanted the statement and he's free to go. After the boys meet Quill, he makes it explicit that the shady organization he works for threatened the witness to "forget" what they saw because they want to hire and/or use the Hardys to find the scrolls and can't do that if "Frank" is held up by being arrested or jailed.
- Would Hurt a Child: George has no hesitation in trying to murder the 13-year-old Joe, his own great-grandson whose older brother's body he's using, first for figuring out his identity and then to try to take the Eye from him, and attempts to shoot, stab, and/or strangle Joe numerous times.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: When Biff meets her older sister Tess, their conversation indicates that the latter was largely raised by their dad because their mom was mostly absent. In the previous season, Abigail was said to be 17 when she had Biff, which she presumably figured out via birth year and when Abigail was Demon Queen in Bridgeport; since Tess is at least 3 years older than her (probably more) because she's old enough to drive, that would've put Abigail at 14 at the oldest when she had Tess. Not only is this pretty uncomfortable, but if their father were around the same age, he wouldn't have been able to raise her by himself as a minor and probably would have needed parental help, and if he were older than that, would've been arrested for statutory rape for having a relationship with Abigail. It's possible that this is a Retcon and Abigail was supposed to have been 17 when she had (or even when she was pregnant with) Tess, and then in her early 20s when Biff was born (with their dad being similar in age), which would make more sense; Biff may have previously found out her birth mom was pregnant at 17 and just assumed she herself was the resulting child due to not knowing yet about having a sister, while Abigail was actually pregnant with Tess at the time and had Biff later.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the past, George had his loyal chauffeur kill the doctors who knew about Project Midnight once they'd set it up ensure there were no loose ends. George tells Joe that, in his letter to Gloria, he instructed her to do the same to the chauffeur himself, too, after he finished driving her to where she could hide the codexes. Joe is doubtful that she would've actually done it.
- You Just Told Me: Joe is either bluffing or being sarcastic when asking about George about his private island, only to learn he does have one:Joe: And Then What? Jet off to your private island and live out the rest of your days in your great-grandson's body?
George: (Beat) You know about the private island?
Joe: You actually have an island? Who inherited that? - You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Joe says this to "Frank" at the beginning when the latter holds him at gunpoint. George quickly proves he would, in fact, kill someone who's figured out his ruse, even if it's a kid, and pulls the trigger. Luckily, Joe is able to fend him off.
