Series / The Hardy Boys (2020)

Solving mysteries is in their blood.

A Canadian mystery drama television series based on The Hardy Boys book series, produced by Nelvana and Lambur Productions. The show's 13-episode first season was released on Hulu on December 4, 2020. The story follows two brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy, alongside their friends and father, trying to disclose the truth about something quite menacing happening right in their own town of Bridgeport while also trying to solve their mother's murder.

The series was renewed for a second season on June 17, 2021, with production expected to begin later in the month. Season 2 debuted on April 6, 2022. A third and final season was released on July 26, 2023.

The series contains the following tropes:

• The '80s: When the series takes place.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Callie, Biff, and Belinda are all blond(e)s in the books, and Chet is varyingly described as having blond, red, or light brown hair Depending on the Writer. All four of them have black hair in the show.
  • Laura is blonde and blue-eyed like her son Joe in the original series (as he's stated to look like a boy version of Laura, while Frank looks a lot like Fenton). Gertrude/Trudy, meanwhile, is described as having graying dark hair like her brother. The two of them swap for this series, with Trudy being the blonde while Laura has brown hair.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • The name of the town changes from Bayport to Bridgeport.
  • In the books, Biff's real name is Allen, and he chose his nickname after an uncle he admires. Thanks to getting a Gender Flip here, "Biff" is instead short for Elizabeth.
  • A minor one, but Frank's full name is "Francis" in this series, and Gloria always calls him this in a similar fashion to how she often calls Joe "Joseph". In all book series so far, Frank actually is his full name, not a nickname.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • In the books, Phil Cohen is one of the Hardys' quieter, calmer friends, and acts as the group's computer whiz in several of the more modern series. Here, he's a far more extroverted, hyperactive Keet with a Motor Mouth, who also serves as the series' resident Plucky Comic Relief and most frequent Moment Killer. That being said, he still has a lot of the same interests as his original counterpart, being a major computer nerd who's good at puzzles, cartography, and coding, is the most interested in the new high-tech Sparewell laptop computers, and is part of a nautical club and the school's AV Club.
  • Chet Morton loses his Plucky Comic Relief, Big Eater, and Fat Best Friend traits from the book series, all of which are given to Phil instead—he certainly still has his humorous moments, but they're more downplayed compared to Phil's, and eats a decent amount but not notably more than the other kids—and is a Lovable Jock who hopes to get an athletic scholarship to college. He's also no longer a Lovable Coward and is far more straightforwardly brave, although his Undying Loyalty to his friends remains very intact.
  • Allen "Biff" Hooper in the novels is The Big Guy who's nonetheless an easygoing Gentle Giant, as well as a highly accomplished athlete. Elizabeth "Biff" Hooper on the show is a tomboy, but not any more athletically inclined than the others, is one of the younger kids in the group and thus also one of the smallest, and whose major character traits are rampant sarcasm towards just about everyone and everything (but with fierce Undying Loyalty underneath) and being Constantly Curious.
  • Gertrude "Trudy" Hardy is a strict, peppery older woman (especially in the original books) who often over-fusses about the danger the boys get into, pretending to dislike it and consider them "troublemakers" while actually having great pride and faith in them. Additionally, she's a Supreme Chef who acts as the primary cook for the Hardy home, making them delicious meals and desserts. Trudy in this series is a Nice Girl who struggles with not being strict enough with the boys to properly lay down the law for them, and is not a particularly good cook.
  • Belinda Conrad is a straight arrow and very Nice Girl in the Undercover Brothers book series, whose character most often revolves around having a crush on Frank. Though the Belinda of the series is also quite nice and very compassionate, especially to her friends, she's far snarkier and is a Good Bad Girl who regularly gets herself sent to detention and "lives for trouble", but would never do any kind of illegal act that's actually harmful. While her relationship with Chet (her love interest here) is her most significant one in the friend group, her close bond with her father also gets a lot of focus.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In the books, the Hardy Boys have lived in Bayport for nearly their whole lives since the family moved there at a young age, and are well-respected citizens of the town. They've also been friends with their "chums" for years, being Childhood Friends with Chet in particular. Here, they've likely visited Bridgeport before to see Trudy and maybe Gloria, but don't know anyone else there before moving to town in the premiere.
  • Chet and Callie are dating in this series until they break up in episode 10 of the first season due to Callie's growing feelings for Frank. They never had any such relationship in the books, where Callie has always been either Frank's girlfriend or just a platonic friend of everyone.
  • Similarly, Belinda Conrad from the Undercover Brothers book series is a supporting character largely defined by having a huge crush on Frank; here, she is Chet's Love Interest instead, and is just friends with Frank (and nothing more) once she becomes one of the True Companions.
  • Brian Conrad from Undercover Brothers is Belinda's older brother; in this series, she's an only child, and Brian is her father.
  • While Biff is certainly a close friend of the boys in the novels, Frank and Joe both consider Chet to be their best friend. Due to the Age Lift that ages down Joe, Biff, and Phil, Biff is Joe's best friend in this version, and Joe is closer to both of them than he is to Chet simply because the latter is Frank's age.
  • Furthermore, since Joe and Biff are both straight guys in the books, they're just good friends and nothing more. Thanks to Biff getting a Gender Flip, she and Joe receive some Ship Tease here and are implied to have some feelings for each other in the first season, and in the second and third seasons, Phil, another platonic friend in the books, has an unrequited crush on her.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Unsurprising considering that Laura Hardy undergoes Death by Adaptation in this series and her husband and sons are left mourning her murder. This causes all three of them to be less upbeat and cheerful than they were originally, with Frank in particular being moodier and having far more emotional struggles than in the books and Fenton being portrayed as a flawed father despite his love for his sons. The boys also have serious disagreements with each other at several points that lead to actual fights, and both have more drama in their love lives.
  • This applies to their friends as well. Callie and Biff, who both come from two-parent households in the source material, have only one parent here, with Callie's mom having abandoned her and her dad when she was young while Biff has some Adoption Angst, especially after learning her bio dad is dead. Chet's family is mentioned on a couple of occasions to be having financial struggles with their farm, while Phil—who doesn't really have love interests in the books—has an unrequited crush on Biff as his biggest personal arc in the series. Actually averted for Belinda, though, whose father here is far more loving and stable than her broken home in Undercover Brothers.
• Adaptational Diversity:
  • Since the books were originally written almost a hundred years ago, there wasn't much in the way of racial diversity in the boys' main friend group, who are nearly all white in the books. This series does a better job of diversifying its main cast, as many of them get Race Lifts: Chet and Belinda are Black, Callie is also a person of color, and Biff and her mother are Asian-American. Some supporting cast members get this as well, such as Belinda's father Brian, as well as Deputy Riley (who is a white man in the books and a Black woman in the show).
  • As mainstream attitudes about the LGBTQ+ community have only very recently become more accepting, only a couple of the most recent books have featured non-straight or non-binary side characters. Despite this series' timeline being in The '80s, later seasons avert Hide Your Lesbians with a few main characters who aren't straight: the boys' Aunt Trudy and Biff's (now-unmarried) mother are both lesbians here, and get major Ship Tease in the first season before getting a Relationship Upgrade by the second, culminating in them moving in together by the series finale. Belinda, meanwhile, is bisexual, with her main Love Interest being a guy (Chet) while her ex (Erica) is a girl.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • In the older books published during the years in which this series is set, Laura Hardy is simply a stay-at-home mom; even in the more recent books that do give her careers outside the home, said jobs so far have been a research librarian (Undercover Brothers) and a real estate agent (Adventures). In this series, she's a journalist/investigative reporter.
  • Similarly, Gertrude/Trudy Hardy was never shown having a job in any of the book series, and lives with her brother Fenton and his family. Here, she lives alone (until the boys and her brother come to stay with her) in the house she and Fenton grew up in with their parents, thus needing some sort of income, and is a painter who displays and sells her artwork in galleries, and later a school guidance counselor.
• Adaptational Location Change: While the Hardy family does live in Bridgeport (the equivalent of Bayport from the books) for the duration of the series after moving there following Laura's death, they start off living in the fictional Dixon City, where Fenton is a police detective at the start of the series. In the books, Fenton was instead a cop for the New York Police Department in his backstory, and the family moved from NYC to Bayport when his sons were still very young after he retired from the force to become a PI.
• Adaptational Mundanity: Inverted. The original Hardy Boys books are grounded in "realistic" fiction, lacking fantastical or magical elements, while plot points that appear to be such are proven to actually be a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax by the end (or, at most, when dealing with the possible existence of beings such as Bigfoot, the story altogether sidesteps the issue of "proving" or "disproving" its existence and leaves it ambiguous). The only exceptions are the "Ghost Stories" books that are explicitly advertised as being supernatural and non-canon to the main series. This show starts out similarly, but gradually introduces straight-up magical Artifacts of Power of non-Earth origin, starting with the Eye in Season 1 (which can grant users foresight, provide them with information they otherwise couldn't possibly know, and give them good luck) and expanding to include the Crystal in Season 2 (which stores one's consciousness) and the Core in Season 3 (a massive energy source).
• Adapted Out:
  • Tony Prito is the only one of the Hardy Boys' four main "chums" from the books who is not adapted into the series. He's briefly mentioned in the second season as an athlete on the track team, but never actually makes an appearance and isn't part of the group.
  • Iola Morton, Joe's girlfriend and Chet's younger sister in the books, is also absent. Chet doesn't mention having any siblings, and Joe instead gets Ship Tease with the gender-flipped Biff.
  • Con Riley, the Hardys' most prominent Friend on the Force, is instead essentially replaced by Jesse Hooper. Though this is subverted in the second season, where Riley is now Jesse's Number Two on the force.
• Adults Are Useless: Downplayed, but present, rather like the source material, especially because the Hardy Boys and friends keep the adults in their lives Locked Out of the Loop for their safety. Adults like Aunt Trudy and Fenton do help the boys occasionally with their investigations, and their Friends on the Force come through to arrest the bad guys, but usually after the True Companions have done most of the work finding and stopping them. A particular example is the series finale, where the four main adult/parent figures—Fenton, Trudy, Jesse, and Brian—are all put in Drew's simulation along with the rest of the world, leaving only the teenage main characters left to stop her.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Fenton's best friend and former police partner, Sam, occasionally calls him "Fent".
  • JB frequently addresses Joe as "Joey". Unlike in the books, where this is only ever used diminutively and he hates it, JB respects him and his use of it is genuinely affectionate, and Joe doesn't seem to mind.
  • Both of Belinda's Love Interests in the series, Erica and Chet, sometimes call her "B". She herself signs Chet's cast with "B-Rad".
• Age Lift:
  • Joe, Biff, and Phil, who are all in their mid-late teens in the books (17 for Joe, vague age of 16-18 for Biff and Phil) are aged down to be tweens here; Joe is explicitly 12 in the first season and implied to be 13 by the second, and Biff seems to be a similar age. Phil is stated in the second episode to be a year older than Joe, but also shares classes with him and Biff in Season 2.
  • Frank is a milder example, going from 18 to 16.
  • Aunt Trudy also seems to be much younger here. In the books, she's Fenton's older sister and is most likely in her forties somewhere, while here, she's almost certainly meant to be younger than Fenton and is probably in her thirties.^note (For comparison, her actress, Bea Santos, was 30 at the time the first season was released; meanwhile, Fenton's actor, James Tupper, was 55.)
• Amateur Sleuth: Frank and Joe both have a knack for detective work, like their book counterparts.
• Amicable Exes: Not at first after Callie and Chet break up, but after the six-month Time Skip between Seasons 1 and 2, they've become this, since they're both part of the Hardys' friend group. It's played with for a bit on Chet's end since he does have some buried resentment about how the breakup went down that makes things feel unfinished, but once he confesses this to Frank and Callie and they apologize to him, he gets the closure he needs and this is played fully straight for the rest of the series. It helps that, by this point, Callie and Chet are each truly in love with other people, and both recognize that they're Better as Friends.
• Anachronism Stew: Lots of examples of this, especially in Season 3 when the Hardys are dealing with a futuristic, high-tech foe in Sparewell Technology. Despite the 1980s setting, there're many liberties taken.
  • Though the gang does speak with a decent amount of 80's slang terms, modern slang is often used as well. “Rando”, anyone?
  • In "The Crash", the gang is confronted by a group of enemies driving Chevrolet Suburbans. The Suburbans are 10th generation models, produced from 2007-2013. Their modern appearance is extremely out of place.
  • A couple examples of Sparewell's highly futuristic technology come right out of later decades. The fact that the company is so far advanced is probably supposed to be the justification, but considering the time period, their appearances still majorly stick out:
    • Sparewell makes laptop computers that have an industrial design straight out of the late 1990s.
    • Modern-looking VR headsets are used in the last two episodes of Season 3.
• Beta Couple: In the second and third seasons, Chet and Belinda are this to Frank and Callie. It's played with in the second season because Frank and Callie are a steady couple, but do have one major argument (although they patch it up an episode later), while Chet and Belinda are still getting to know each other and are the ones building a relationship, but have pretty smooth sailing to do so. It's briefly played straighter in the third season where Chet and Belinda are pretty solid for the most part while Frank and Callie are temporarily broken up, but this is only because someone else dumped Callie after stealing Frank's body; once Frank gets his body back, he and Callie go right back to being a very steady couple.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Frank towards Joe, definitely; even more so than usual in this series considering the larger age gap between them. It comes out the most when Joe is briefly taken hostage at separate times by Ern and JB, when he and Biff go missing due to falling down a mine shaft, in the many visions Frank sees from the Eye of someone trying to hurt Joe, and the couple of times they're captured by Stratemeyer Global.
    Frank: I'd never let anything happen to you. I've always got your back. Right?
  • On the flipside, Joe is no slouch in the Little Brother Instinct department, either. He hits the Tall Man in the back with a trash can to make him release Frank, and worries about him throughout the second season once Frank has become the new vessel for the Eye, determined to keep the bad guys away from his brother even if he has to go behind his back and against his wishes to do so. Once Joe learns in Season 3 that Frank has been body-snatched by George, he's relentless in working to get him back, and even uploads his own brain into the Crystal, at great risk to himself, to find and save his older brother.
  • In another inversion, Trudy once beans Olivia over the head with a brick to protect her older brother Fenton when she think's Olivia's going for her gun to shoot him. Most of her dislike for Gloria is also on behalf of her brother and whole family; since Fenton is Gloria's son-in-law, she's had many more occasions of being unkind to him, and to their parents, than she is to Trudy herself.
  • For that matter, Chet and Callie also get this for Joe, as well as Biff and Phil. At the time Joe and Biff go missing, things are awkward between Frank, Callie, and Chet due to the latter two breaking up and Stacy's interference, but they both put that aside to help Frank find Joe and Biff and get them home safely. There's also the way all three older kids promptly rush off to save the younger three from dying in a mine, and how Callie quickly comforts and looks after Biff when her mom nearly dies in an explosion.
  • JB Cox pretty quickly becomes protective of Joe, too, and of Frank as well to a lesser extent. He goes out of his way to save Joe from the Tall Man after learning that he's in danger despite his own fear of the man, and when Stratemeyer Global is trying to find the Eye and JB is forced to reveal the Hardys have it, he very noticeably tries to keep them from going after the boys directly for it, instead claiming they stashed it somewhere else. He also tries to warn them away from investigating their various cases on multiple occasions to keep them from getting hurt or worse, and when Frank accuses him at one point of trying to run Joe down in a car, JB immediately retorts angrily that he would never hurt Joe. In the third season, he mainly gets involved in the case to protect the Hardys from his buyer, threatening to burn the MacGuffin if any harm comes to them, and even ends up Taking the Bullet to save Joe and Frank.
• Brother–Sister Team: Fenton and Trudy Hardy act as this a couple of times, such as when they interrogate Chief Collig in "While the Clock Ticked" and confront Olivia in "An Unexpected Return".
• Canon Foreigner: The vast majority of the supporting cast is this, which is justified since most of the victims, bad guys, suspects, and side characters were different in every book anyway. There are a few especially prominent examples, though:
  • Laura's mother Gloria Estabrook and grandfather George. In the source material, we see practically nothing of Laura's relatives, and she's a regular woman and mother who certainly doesn't come from any sort of rich, shady family.
  • Biff's parents aren't given names in the books, and like the parents of all of the Hardys' friends, make sparse appearances and are rarely plot-relevant. Here, Biff's mom, Jesse Hooper, is a prominent recurring character, the gang's Friend on the Force, and later Trudy's girlfriend.
  • JB Cox has no canon equivalent from any book series. In the show, he fills a void for Joe left by his mom's death and dad's absence as a supportive-but-shady adult friend who looks out for him, and the boys usually have no interest in actually trying to get him arrested for his previous, unrelated thefts as long as he's not the culprit behind the cases they're actively trying to solve. Joe's book counterpart is older, has both parents around, and is far too much of a straight-arrow to form an ongoing Odd Friendship with a career thief, and ditto for Frank.
• Chastity Couple: Chet and Callie seem to be a PG version, considering the nature of the series. They're never shown kissing the entire time they're dating in Season 1, while Callie and Frank share many onscreen kisses after they get together, as do Chet and Belinda.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the very first episode, Gloria shows Frank and Joe a picture of her father (their great-grandfather) George Estabrook, stating that he "made the discovery that made all this [wealth and luxury] possible," and also founded Rosegrave Academy. Not only do the boys learn more about this discovery (the Eye) throughout the first season, but George turns out to be a far more important character than just a backstory Predecessor Villain: the end of Season 2 confirms that he was Evil All Along, faked his death, and was still alive inside the Crystal all this time. He manages to steal Frank's body, so the main characters meet him in person and he becomes a major antagonist in Season 3.
• Chick Magnet and Dude Magnet:
  • Frank has three different girls interested in him in just the first season: his Dixon City girlfriend Emma, main Love Interest Callie, and the dangerous, sultry Stacy.
  • Callie likewise has three different guys who become attracted to her: she's dating Chet at the start of the series, and later ends up with Frank. Donald Dukay is also into her, although it's very one-sided.
• Cool Aunt: Aunt Trudy tries very hard to be this, while also still laying down ground rules for the boys. She grows into it more and more as she becomes increasingly involved in her nephews' investigation.
• Daddy's Girl:
  • Callie Shaw seems to be one, especially since her mom isn't around. She's apparently close enough to her dad that one reason she's a bit unsure about her college plans is because she'll have to leave him behind.
  • Belinda Conrad is close to her own dad, Brian, and chose to live with him after her parents' divorce.
  • Gloria Estabrook, whose mother is never shown or mentioned and is only known to have had her father, is an unhealthy version of this; she and George sincerely loved each other, but she's a "Well Done, Daughter!" Gal who's willing to follow in her father's unscrupulous footsteps just to impress him and carry out his will.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's almost a World of Snark, but there are a few notable cases:
  • The most prominent examples are Joe (which he shares with his book counterpart of every series) and Biff; since they spend so much time together, this often turns into Snark-to-Snark Combat. Joe lampshades this to Frank at one point by stating that he's "lightening the mood by being hilarious."
  • Frank and Chet snark almost as much, and often build on and add to each others' snark.
  • Clearly, it runs in both sides of the Hardy Boys' family, since Trudy, Fenton, Laura, Gloria, and George all have their moments as well.
  • JB Cox and Belinda Conrad also both get in some pretty good lines of snark.
• Death by Adaptation: The series kicks off by killing off the boys' mother, Laura Hardy, in the premiere, while she has remained alive and well in all of the book series to date. Interestingly, this isn't the first TV series to have done so; The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries series of the 70s did this as well.
• Devil's Advocate: Biff is the team member who most often challenges the others' viewpoints and suggests opposing ideas in discussions, even when her suggestions are far more cynical or uncomfortable. She even lampshades it in the second season by name-dropping the trope.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Biff's dad, which is why she's so close to her mom, Jesse. More accurately, she's never had one because her mom adopted her, and when Biff starts looking into her bio parents, she learns that her birth dad is dead.
  • Nothing at all is known about Laura's father (the boys' grandfather). Gloria's hinted to have been married at one point since she's called "Mrs. Estabrook", but if that's the case, she kept her maiden name, and it's never stated whether or not he was in Laura's life at all.
• Elaborate University High: Rosegrave Academy, a prep school founded by Frank's and Joe's great-grandfather George Estabrook, is an extremely prestigious one for the very best of the best, with a very competitive selection process and housing future leaders of the world. Frank and Callie are both accepted there, but are far less enthusiastic about the idea of attending after learning that it's really a School for Scheming and that their admissions were largely due to their connections to Gloria; however, Callie does enroll in a summer program there as a Scholarship Student in Season 3 to go undercover. Laura Hardy got in as well when she was a teenager, but chose not to attend.
• Establishing Character Moment: Quite a few, especially for the Hardy family:
  • Frank is portrayed right off the bat at someone who thinks things through before taking action, as he plans and discusses with Joe the best actions to take to win the video game they're playing, in contrast to the more impulsive Joe, who steals the control, jumps right in, and gets a game over, to Frank's exasperation. He also has a close bond with his mom, who helps him practice for baseball, and has no problem being openly affectionate with those he cares for, frequently hugging her and engaging in PDA with his girlfriend.
  • The boys' bickering dynamic is also shown while debating how to win the game, wrestling with each other over the controller, and calling each other "butthead". But it's also made pretty clear that Frank would never actually cause his brother any serious harm, promising his mom even as he moves to tussle with Joe in annoyance, "I won't hurt him."
  • Joe gets quite a bit: establishing that he likes to mess with his older brother, but can also be overconfident, during the aforementioned video game scene; shown to be street-smart but not interested in school by the fact that he failed math class and has to take summer school largely due to a lack of effort; and also proving that he doesn't take shit from other kids, acting defiant against bullies and pissing them off further when they insult him, but wins over adults more easily, shown by a woman in the background grinning at his antics.
  • The very first shot of Fenton as he gets dressed for work shows a newspaper clipping establishing him as a local hero, and we soon see him bust a criminal deal and slyly trick the crook into implicating himself, proving right from the get-go why he's a famous detective.
  • Laura's very few scenes before she dies show her to be a very loving and supportive mother, playfully holding Frank back to give Joe a chance to beat the video game they're playing, and later helping Frank practice his pitching for his baseball games.
  • JB Cox is first introduced on an airplane as a seemingly-bumbling Nervous Wreck passenger who performs a Satchel Switcheroo with the Tall Man, a dangerous murderer, then locks himself in the plane bathroom to quickly strip off a disguise and then jump out of the plane, establishing him as a resourceful Master of Disguise who performs high-risk thefts in style.
  • Belinda Conrad's first scene is Chet meeting her in detention, where she tells him she was sent there for carving her name in her desk, admits they're "definitely not" allowed to talk there before continuing to do so anyway, and reveals that she purposely gets sent to detention on her first day at a new school every time so she can "learn who's cool", right away setting her up as rebellious, free-spirited, and irreverent to rules and authority. She's also working on her 'zine, drawing on her desk, and signs Chet's cast in large, eye-catching letters, showing her artsy and creative side.
  • Drew Darrow is introduced unabashedly arriving late to a summer class at Rosegrave and then barely paying attention, but when the professor tries to call her out by having her answer the question he just asked, she does so correctly, then snarks that she both was and wasn't listening to him and wins over the other students (including Callie), showing right from the get-go that she's smart, more concerned about what she's doing than what's expected of her, doesn't have any particular regard toward authority figures, and tends to respond to snark with snark.
• Evil Old Folks: The series' Predecessor Villains who discovered the Eye and formed the Circle—George Estabrook, Sergei Nabokov, and Ahmed Khan—became this later in life, at least before George had a crisis of conscience and left the Circle. Gloria and Kanika qualify in the present as well. And then it's later shown that George didn't really change after all and was in fact the most evil of all of them. This sets them as a contrast to the heroic teenage main characters.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Frank is a lot more calm and analytical than the impulsive and short-tempered Joe. Justified, as Joe is several years younger than Frank in this version, and still just a tween. JB once lampshades Frank's status as the "responsible older brother".
• Foreshadowing: Bucketloads, as appropriate for a mystery series, including a decent amount of Five-Second Foreshadowing as well. There's enough of this throughout the series for its own separate page.
• Friend on the Force:
  • Jesse Hooper for the Hardys and friends; justified because she's Biff's mom.
  • Sam Peterson, Fenton's former partner, serves as a source of information (such as running background checks) for Fenton and later for the boys as well.
• Friendless Background: Implied for both Joe and Biff, and likely contributes to them becoming such fast friends.
  • Unlike Frank, who had his girlfriend Emma and possibly at least some of his baseball teammates, Joe isn't shown to have had any friends when living in Dixon City at the start of the series, as the only interaction he has with other kids consists of retaliating against some bullies. It's hinted that being Wise Beyond His Years makes it easier for him to connect with older kids (like Frank, Chet, Callie, and Belinda), and even adults like JB, than with those his age, with Biff and Phil seeming to be his first real friends in his age group.
  • The beginning of the series hints that Biff's something of a loner and considered kind of weird by other kids in town, and she's also not really shown spending much time with any of them until she becomes Joe's friend. This changes, though, when she and the other kids who've also begun hanging out with the Hardy Boys form a tight-knit group.
• From New York to Nowhere: The Hardy Boys have lived in the fictional Dixon City, which seems to be the largest metropolitan city in the area, for their entire lives until they move to more rural Bridgeport, which is referred to as a "small town" several times, although it seems to be somewhat larger than some examples. The Hardys are not keen on it at first, but settle in and decide to stay there by the end of the first season.
• Full-Name Basis: A refusal to use a nickname, in this case, rather than using a first and last name. Gloria will use both "Joseph" and "Joe" interchangeably, but only ever calls Frank "Francis", never using his nickname. The one time he introduces himself as Frank to someone (Dean McFarlane) in front of her, she almost-dismissively tells the dean that "Frank is more of a nickname", and still doesn't use it.
• Gender-Blender Name:
  • "Biff" is far more commonly a name or nickname for boys, and indeed the original Allen "Biff" Hooper in the books was male, but the gender-flipped Elizabeth Hooper still uses this nickname here. It's justified by this nickname being derived from her mispronouncing her name as a child, and also fits pretty well with her being a tomboy.
  • Gender-blender spelling, in this case; while Jesse/Jessie is a unisex name, it's usually spelled as "Jesse" for men and "Jessie" for women. However, as revealed by the ending credits, Biff's mom's name is spelled the traditionally masculine way, "Jesse".
• Gender Flip:
  • Biff Hooper, who was originally one of the Hardy Boys' male chums, and whose real name is Allen; for this series, she's changed to a girl and is Joe's best friend, and Biff is a nickname for Elizabeth.
  • Con Riley, the Hardys' most frequent and prominent Friend on the Force in the books, is a man there. Here, Deputy Riley is a woman.
• The Ghost:
  • Chet talks about his folks a few times, and they run a farm as they do in the books, but he's the only one of the main friend group whose family members never appear onscreen at any point during the show.
  • At the start of the series, the Circle of the Eye is led by the second generation of the founding families: George's daughter Gloria, Ahmed's daughter Kanika, and Sergei's son Viktor. Gloria and Kanika are part of Season 1's Big Bad Ensemble, but while Viktor is mentioned many times, he's Killed Offscreen without ever making an appearance, and his main importance to the story is finding out who killed him.
• Hide Your Lesbians: Not entirely surprising for a show that's set in the 80's, the first season plays this straight, where all romantic relationships explicitly shown are het, while the close bond between Trudy Hardy and Jesse Hooper is more ambiguous and could be interpreted as either Ship Tease or them simply becoming very close friends. However, refreshingly, this becomes completely subverted by the second season onward: Jesse and Trudy are now dating, and Belinda is explicitly confirmed to be bisexual and is shown to have an ex-girlfriend named Erica.
• I Got Bigger: Alexander Elliot, Joe's actor who was 14 and hadn't hit puberty yet while doing the first season, did so during filming of both of the next two, because each one was made and then debuted about 15-16 months apart. As a result, Joe is both taller and has a deeper voice at the start of each new season. Compare Season 1, where he's the shortest of the Hardy gang by a slight margin, to Season 2 where he's outgrown Biff and Phil and is around the same height as Callie, to Season 3, where he's about as tall as Frank and taller than all the other kids.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • As in the source material, Joseph Hardy shortens his name to Joe, Philip Cohen goes by Phil, and Chester Morton is known as Chet. This is also the case in this series for "Francis" Hardy going by Frank (in a departure from the books, where Frank is his full name).
  • As a five-year-old on the first day of kindergarten, Elizabeth Hooper couldn't pronounce her name correctly and said "Elizabiff", and the nickname "Biff" just stuck.
• Intangible Time Travel: The visions from the Eye showing past events that actually happened are a Pensieve Flashback version: the viewer experiences the past as if they're literally standing there watching it happen, but can't interact with anyone at all. However, a couple of Frank's visions in the second season have George actually see him standing there, making it a straight example of time-traveling; he's still intangible, but this forms a Stable Time Loop by George learning of his great-grandson's existence and plotting to commit Grand Theft Me with Frank's body.
• Law of Conservation of Detail: Much like the original source material, even apparently-innocuous events or tidbits, seemingly throwaway lines, or background noise will usually turn out to be important to the case (or to a future one) somewhere down the line, either as vital info or as a major Red Herring that temporarily distracts the heroes.
• Local Hangout: Wilt's Deli. The gang meets there many times throughout the series, and Frank even gets a part-time job there. Wilt also becomes an ally to the boys, telling them about gossip he's heard from around town and in his shop, and even hiding them in the back of the store when corrupt Bridgeport police officers are looking for them.
• Locked Out of the Loop: The main characters, in general, don't tell their parents most of what's going on in their cases, both to keep them safe and to keep them from worrying. The boys will fill Aunt Trudy in when she finds out some of the info and forces them to, but they still try to keep things on a need-to-know basis.
• Maiden Aunt: Aunt Gertrude was the Trope Codifier from the books, so it's unsurprising that Aunt Trudy is this here too, though she seems to be significantly younger than her book counterpart. It becomes subverted in the second two seasons, though, where she's now in a steady relationship with Jesse Hooper, even moving in with her in the Series Finale.
• Master of Disguise: JB Cox, the thief-for-hire who pulls off many different disguises throughout the series (often to commit his thefts, but sometimes for other reasons, too), several of which make it truly difficult to tell that it's him except for up close. The crowner is probably his disguise as a frail little old lady in Season 3.
• Missing Mom:
  • Laura becomes this to Frank and Joe once she's killed in the first episode.
  • Callie bonds with Frank over the fact that she, too, doesn't have a mom (though her mom isn't dead and just left the family).
  • Belinda lives with just her dad, and references her parents having divorced. It's unknown how much contact she has with her mom.
  • Downplayed for Biff since she fully considers Jesse, who adopted her, to be her mom, but her biological mother counts, having given her up for adoption when Biff was a baby.
  • Nothing is known at all about Gloria's mother. It's implied George was married at one point, but it's unknown when Gloria's mother died, since she's not mentioned.
• Momma's Boy: Downplayed since neither Fenton nor Laura show any signs of playing favorites between their sons, who in turn both adore both of them, but Frank seems to have been a bit closer to Laura than he is to Fenton. Thanks to being older, he has some tension and a bit more resentment towards Fenton about him leaving them behind in the first season, and also has a harder time than his little brother with accepting their mom's death, while Joe, thanks to his upbeat personality and younger age, has an easier time coping with it and forgiving his father. Joe actually argues with Frank multiple times about the fact that it was their mom who died, not just Frank's, and Joe cares just as much as his brother does even if he doesn't grieve in exactly the same way.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Most of the Big Bads of the series are women, as are the majority of the most vicious, irredeemable characters.
  • Notably, all three members of the Big Bad Ensemble in Season 1 are women.
    • Meanwhile, Season 2's Big Bad Ensemble consists of two women, both of whom are The Sociopath or very close to it, and one man, who's the most sympathetic of them and even makes a Heel–Face Turn in the the following season.
    • Season 3 looks like it's going to break the trend, but ultimately follows suit: the one irredeemable male Big Bad becomes a Disc-One Final Boss, and while it looks like his replacement is also a man, it turns out that he's being framed, and both the real Hidden Villain and The Dragon (the latter of whom is one of the aforementioned psychopathic members of S2's Big Bad Ensemble) are women.
  • All three seasons see at least one male lackey get killed by a female current or former employer or partner: the Tall Man by Stacy in S1, Mack by Angela in S2, and Quill and JB by Olivia (on Drew's behalf) in S3.
  • One major exception, though, appears with George and Gloria Estabrook. This seemed to be the case in the first season with the implication that Gloria ratted out a reformed George to his partners to get him killed, but it was later Retconned to make George both Evil All Along and Eviler than Thou, as he was a Bad Boss and a psychopath who was willing to kill people working for him to Leave No Witnesses. Gloria, meanwhile, for all her many flaws, was a more Benevolent Boss with a distaste for killing members of her staff or family.
• Mythology Gag: The show contains many nods to its source material, enough for its own page.
• New Transfer Student: Several throughout the series:
  • The Hardy Boys themselves start as this, though it's downplayed in that they move to Bridgeport during the summer when school isn't in session. It's intended to be temporary, but when Fenton's investigation and time away from home stretches out longer than planned, they do have to start school in Bridgeport as the new kids. By the end of the first season, it becomes permanent.
  • Stacy for the second half of the first season, though she also does at least start at the beginning of the year like the Hardys do. She and Frank bond over the shared experience of being the new kid. It doesn't last, since she turns out to be evil and flees Bridgeport at the end of the season when her plans fail.
  • Belinda in the second season; her dad moves around a lot for work, so this is a regular occurrence for her. Her move to Bridgeport is an extreme example, given that it's less than a month before the end of the school year. The end of the season implies that she, too, will be sticking around, and her dad won't be moving for work again anytime soon.
• Nom de Mom: Laura's father is never mentioned, and it's not made clear if Gloria even married him or not, but if she did, she kept her own Estabrook surname, and this was Laura's surname as well until she eventually married Fenton Hardy.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: This was the case in Bridgeport until the Hardys move there shortly after Laura's death (who happens to be the daughter of the most powerful person in town) and start digging into it. Their new friends tell them several times that helping them investigate their case is the most exciting thing they've done in Bridgeport their whole lives, and things just keep getting crazier from there.
• Odd Friendship: Joe Hardy, a Kid Detective and Amateur Sleuth, gradually forms one with JB Cox, a career thief and criminal. It helps that, despite JB working both with and against the Hardys at different times depending on what suits his needs, he's repeatedly and consistently impressed with how smart Joe is and looks out for his safety, even saving his life a few times.
• Outliving One's Offspring:
  • Gloria outlives her daughter and only child Laura, which greatly saddens her. Especially once she learns that Laura's death was not an accident, but murder. Which makes it all the more devastating when she discovers at the end of the first season that her own trusted right-hand-man, Stefan, is the killer.
  • George cheated death by locking his consciousness inside the Crystal for 20 years until he gets the chance to steal Frank's body, at which point he attends his daughter Gloria's funeral in the Season 3 premiere while masquerading as her grandson.
• Parental Favoritism: Or rather, grandparental favoritism. Gloria does care about both of her grandsons very much and is frantic when Joe goes missing near the end of Season 1, but overall, she's much more attentive to Frank and actively tries to bond with him a lot more than she does with Joe, probably because Frank's older and getting to the point where she can start to groom him for leadership in the Circle of the Eye while Joe is still just a kid. Most notably, she chooses Frank to be her heir in the Circle, and when she's in prison in Season 2, she very much wants Frank to come visit her and is overjoyed when he finally does, but never asks how Joe is doing even once. Though this becomes heavily subverted with the reveal that George always planned to steal Frank's body one day and thus ordered Gloria in his instructions to give everything she owned to him in her will; while it's ambiguous how much she knew about what he was plotting, it's heavily implied she focused more on Frank because she knew her father's plans involved him in some way.
• Previously on…: Each episode utilizes this (except for the first two season premieres) to highlight which developments and plot points of previous ones will be most relevant. The Season 3 premiere has the longest one of all, recapping the most important info from the series so far.
• Psychometry: How the Eye works. It can create visions to show the person holding it how to "get what they want most", as well as showing the future and providing information they otherwise couldn't possibly know. When it's split into three pieces, as seen in Season 1, its power is weaker, but each piece can still show tiny glimpses of the future, heighten the user's instincts, and bring extreme good luck.
• Retcon: A few in the second two seasons, relative to the first:
  • Phil is stated in the second episode to be a year older than Joe, and when school starts back up in the second half of Season 1, he's accordingly not shown to be in any classes together with Joe and Biff, presumably being a grade above them. Come Season 2, though, and he, Biff, and Joe share all of their classroom scenes, even though it's still the same school year that it was in the first season.
  • Once Brian is discovered in Season 2 to be involved with Stratemeyer in some way, he reveals to Belinda and Chet that he's an agent with the Department of Special Affairs, which is presumably shortened to "the DSA". We indeed see him working at the DSA in Season 3, except that this acronym is now shown and stated to stand for "Defense Support Agency" instead.
  • It's all but outright stated in the first season that George Estabrook's partners, Ahmed and Sergei, had him killed by causing his plane to crash after he had a change of heart about the Circle and tried to flee with his piece of the Eye, and that Gloria tipped them off about this, betraying George, because she was hurt at being passed over as his successor and wanted to become a Dragon Ascendant after he died. Then the following two seasons show that George was Evil All Along and never turned over a new leaf at all, and not only did he fake his death, he sabotaged his own plane to do so, rather than Sergei and Ahmed being responsible, and Gloria was always helping his plans come to fruition.
• Romantic False Lead:
  • Frank has a girlfriend named Emma from his hometown of Dixon City at the beginning of the series, but she rather insensitively breaks up with him over the phone at the beginning of the fourth episode when he admits he has no idea when he's coming back to Dixon City from Bridgeport, clearing the way for Frank to grow closer to Callie.
  • Stacy Baker shows up at the midpoint of the first season as a rival to Callie for Frank's affections, especially since Callie hasn't fully realized her feelings yet and is still with Chet, while Stacy is significantly more forward about her attraction to him. Frank definitely shows some interest in her, especially at first when Callie is still taken and he thinks Stacy's just a sweet new girl who went through a traumatic experience; however, once he discovers her real identity and then sees her true colors and that she's no better than anyone else in the Circle, he firmly rejects her, and she knows for sure that Callie's the girl he truly likes.
  • Chet and Callie turn out to be this to each other as well. They're dating at the beginning of the series in what's implied to be a Childhood Friend Romance, but have only been together for less than six months by the time they break up in the tenth episode. Their relationship falls apart because they both realize Callie has much stronger feelings for Frank than she does for Chet, and Frank and Callie become the Official Couple of the show; meanwhile, Chet gets a new Love Interest in Season 2, Belinda, who becomes his girlfriend for the rest of the series' run.
• School for Scheming: Rosegrave Preparatory Academy, founded by George Estabrook, is a front for the Circle of the Eye, and grooms many of its students to either be part of the Circle someday or at least be connections for them. Even the dean of the school, Paul McFarlane, is just a pawn in their scheme, and is afraid of them. The second season adds another layer to this with the reveal that Rosegrave was experimenting on some of its students in Project Midnight using the Crystal. In the Series Finale, Callie goes public with everything she and Drew learned about the school and Project Midnight, hopefully finally ending them once and for all.
• Second Love: After Laura broke up with her High School Sweetheart Paul McFarlane, her First Love, she met, fell for, and ended up very Happily Married to Fenton Hardy, the love of her life and vice versa. Though Paul still loved her to the day she died and considers her to be The One That Got Away.
• Secret Room:
  • The Hardy Boys and friends discover a Bookcase Passage midway through the first season in Gloria's home, and later enter and discover that this bookshelf concealed the hidden office of George Estabrook (Gloria's father and the boys' great-grandfather), where tons of his secrets about the Eye, the Circle, and other mysterious objects are hidden. They continue to use it and find crucial info there throughout the rest of the series.
  • In Season 3, JB is also revealed to have a safe room hidden behind the back of his coat closet in his apartment, which is where he keeps his records and information pertaining to his work as a thief-for-hire. He lets the Hardy Boys and friends hide there with him when some thugs show up looking for all of them, and it becomes the gang's main base of operations for the second half of the season.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Both Frank and Olivia bring up in Season 2, on separate occasions, how Anya told the Hardy Boys that the ground they walk on is cursed, making it sound like it was a warning or threat to them specifically. For one thing, Anya only ever interacted with Frank in her two appearances in Season 1—Joe never even met her—and she was fairly kind to him in these encounters. She just bitterly told Frank, Callie, and Chet that the Circle founders' discovery of the Eye "cursed this town, and curses it still", not the boys in particular.
  • Fenton in Season 2 and Joe in Season 3 both state that Gloria may be a lot of things, but they don't think she's a killer. This is conveniently forgetting that the very crime she's officially arrested for at the end of Season 1 is the murder of Viktor Nabokov. They probably mean that Gloria wouldn't kill her family or one of her own subordinates—as she's a fairly Benevolent Boss who cares about family legacy—but regards outsiders like Viktor as fair game, especially since he was trying to steal her piece of the Eye. Still, they don't vocally make this distinction, just saying she's not a killer, which is certainly untrue.
• Small Town, Big Hell: Bridgeport certainly isn't tiny, but is still a small enough town that most people there have at least heard of most other people, and news spreads fast, especially because, normally, Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here. Multiple newcomers in town comment on it:
  Stacy: There are no secrets like small town secrets.
  Angela: [A murder] hasn't made the news yet, but the rumor mill in this town is quite impressive.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Frank doesn't get along with JB Cox nearly as well as Joe does, especially after JB "kidnaps" Joe in an effort to get leverage over Gloria, and tends to be pretty hostile to him, so every time they're forced to work together turns into this for the two of them.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Biff and Callie, respectively. Callie dresses feminine and fashionable and is shown multiple times to have a makeup compact on her at any given time, while Biff dresses more androgynously, often in a backwards baseball camp, and doesn't do dresses or makeup at all. When Belinda joins the cast, she falls somewhere in between, being less girly than Callie but far more so than Biff.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Bridgeport is certainly this. In addition to the town originally being founded by a secret society (the Circle of the Eye), just finding the Eye somehow completely changed the local agriculture, with the land going from dry and barren to green and fertile. There's also no shortage of shady people in town, which Joe lampshades:
  Joe: What's with this town anyway? You can't throw a rock without hitting a new mystery. ... It's like their secrets have secrets.
• Trespassing Hero: Throughout the course of the series, the True Companions commit quite a bit of various flavors of trespassing during their investigations, such as breaking into people's houses and offices to snoop when they're not there numerous times, ignoring "No Trespassing" signs to venture onto private property, and sneaking into public buildings after closing hours. Again, very consistent with the original books.
• True Companions: The Hardy Boys and their friends are the main characters of the series who work together to solve their cases, and are thick as thieves. The group consists of Frank and Joe Hardy, Chet Morton, Callie Shaw, Biff Hooper, and Phil Cohen, and expands to include Belinda Conrad as well for Seasons 2 and 3.
• Two Girls to a Team: The Team of six friends/main characters consists of two girls, Callie and Biff, opposite the four boys (Frank, Joe, Chet, and Phil). Though this becomes subverted in the second season onward once Belinda joins the cast, making it three girls on the team of seven.
• Two Guys and a Girl:
  • In the first season, Frank, Chet, and Callie frequently group up to investigate, creating this dynamic. The girl is dating one of the guys at the start, but he later breaks up with her as she falls for the other guy, causing tension between them all for a bit. It becomes subverted from the second season on, though, once Belinda joins the team, leaving four older kids who often pair up by couples (Frank & Callie, Chet & Belinda).
  • In the second two seasons, once Phil starts hanging out with Joe and Biff a lot more, the three of them also make one of these when they're together. In this case, despite Joe and Biff having had Ship Tease in the first season, they mostly don't for the next two; meanwhile, Phil has a one-sided crush on Biff.
• Two-Part Trilogy: How the series as a whole is written.
  • Since the showrunners didn't know when making the first season if there would be any more, it's by far the most standalone of the series, with the mystery and Driving Questions of the season wrapped up fairly neatly by the end of it. While there are some Sequel Hooks that wouldn't have gotten follow-up if the series hadn't been renewed, they're not directly related to the case that the boys solve, and the Season Finale still would have worked perfectly fine as an And the Adventure Continues-style Series Finale. Made even clearer by the fact that there's a six-month Time Skip between the first and second seasons, and the S2 premiere is the only other episode besides the series premiere to not start with a Previously on… segment, since there isn't anything pressing left to solve from Season 1.
  • By contrast, in addition to the the second and third seasons having a few format changes (they use Episode Title Cards while the first season did not, and there are a couple of recasts of major supporting characters), each introduce additional Artifacts of Power that weren't alluded to in Season 1 and greatly ramp up the supernatural aspects. It's very clear that Season 2 was written with the intention of having a third one as well, ending on a huge Cliffhanger that would have been a massive Downer Ending for the series as a whole if it had been canceled then. It's only resolved in the first few episodes of Season 3, which, unlike the previous Time Skip between seasons, is an Immediate Sequel this time. There are also a few plot points from S2 that don't become relevant until S3, like McFarlane's scroll and some of Olivia's subplot, and it's also retroactively revealed that Fenton's final cliffhanger scene in the S2 finale is the result of him already being trapped inside the simulation where he spends most of the last season. Since the creators knew ahead of time that Season 3 would be the final one, they were able to wrap it up with their planned ending.
• Underestimating Badassery: Just like in the source material, most adults, especially law enforcement and the villains, don't expect the Hardy Boys and their friends to be more competent and savvy investigators than the trained professionals. One of the boys' biggest sources of frustration in the series is the cops giving them the Not Now, Kiddo treatment, only for the kids to do most of the work of catching the bad guys while the police just arrive at the end to actually arrest them.
  • The Hardy Gang are also Genre Savvy enough to know that adults frequently underestimate them and consider them Beneath Notice, taking advantage of this to idly ask important questions, get information that people might not give as freely to adults, and explain away odd behavior, occasionally even invoking the "we're just kids" routine to deflect suspicion.
  • It's also implied that one of the reasons Joe gets along with JB as well as he does is because the latter is an adult who actually does respect and admire the Hardy Boys' skills as detectives without brushing them off as "just kids", especially considering how many times they give him valuable intel throughout the series. The few times he doesn't believe something they tell him truthfully, it's because he has reason to think they're lying to him, as opposed to not taking them seriously.
• Undying Loyalty: Carrying over from the books, what makes the Hardy Boys and their friends such a strong-knit group of True Companions is that they will always stick by and support each other, and all of them know it. Callie puts it best in "A Vanishing Act":
  Callie: I've never had friends like the ones I have now. I'd do anything for them.
• Where the Hell is Bridgeport?: Bayport from the book series is usually located in New York as a suburb of NYC, although it's also sometimes been put in New Jersey (or, in the 70's TV show, in Massachusetts), but it's not clear where Bridgeport and Dixon City are supposed to be here, other than being some kind of coastal town because they have docks and beaches. It's not even specified what country the series is set in: whether it's the US like in the books, or Canada, where the show is created and filmed (and the actors and their characters have Canadian accents). It seems to be somewhere north because the characters often wear long sleeves outdoors even in (what's supposed to be) summer. Downtown city scenes in season 3 are clearly Toronto. However, American spellings are used in the Defense Support Agency.
• Wild Card: JB Cox's role. He's a thief-for-hire who's usually Only in It for the Money, and works both with and against the Hardys and their friends at different times, sometimes providing them with useful info and warnings while other times screwing them over by stealing something important from them. Joe is consistently a Morality Pet for JB throughout the whole series, but this doesn't stop him from using Joe as leverage or double-crossing him when it suits his needs, although JB still sincerely likes him and respects his skills, would never actually purposely cause him harm, and tries to look out for his safety when he can, even going out of his way to protect Joe (and sometimes Frank and their friends too) on a few occasions for no personal gain.

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