YMMV / The Hardy Boys (2020)

• Anti-Climax Boss: George Estabrook is revealed in the Season 2 finale to have been Evil All Along and the Greater-Scope Villain of the whole series, and succeeds in stealing Frank's body and trapping his consciousness in the Crystal, all of which seems to be neatly building him up to be the final Big Bad of the series for Season 3. Instead, he turns out to be a Disc-One Final Boss who gets fairly easily tricked and defeated by the Hardy Boys in the third episode of the season, and is left trapped in the Crystal forever once again instead of at least taking over someone else's body to still be an antagonist in some form, in favor of the new villains of the season becoming the final Big Bad. It could be argued that this was the point: that George was an old man out of his time, still stuck in his old ways, who was never as smart or as in control as he thought he was, and ends up being supplanted as the biggest threat by a far younger and more futuristic villain.
• Ass Pull:
  • In the second season's penultimate episode, JB apparently steals the Eye's relic from Joe and escapes while the bad guys are distracted by Brian and Chet showing up to save them. Joe then reveals to Frank and Chet soon after that JB stole a fake that he apparently had and swapped in for the real one during this chaos. Only problem is, Joe shouldn't have had the means to create such a fake. He made a fake piece of the Eye in the previous season by using the real piece to create a mold, but he's never had the entire relic of the Eye in his possession at any time at that point to create a mold for it.
  • In the series finale, Frank and Joe need to venture outside of Drew's compound, into the worldwide simulation she's put up, to get Chet, who has the Eye, so they can use it to shut down the Core. Though they're relatively more protected from still having some lingering power from the Eye inside them, they're not sure it'll be enough for them to resist Drew's full simulation, and accordingly bid their friends farewell in case they don't make it back. They then proceed to just walk right out, grab Chet, and carry him inside without experiencing any effects from the simulation whatsoever, even though they previously spent an entire episode trapped in the prototype version of it before they were able to escape.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After Callie becomes a Damsel in Distress when she's abducted by Stacy in the first season finale, it's rather enjoyable to watch her get her revenge—both for the kidnapping and for Stacy messing with her and Frank for the latter half of the season—by punching her in the face in the climax. And again when Stacy briefly returns in the third season premiere after largely being a Karma Houdini before, pretending to want to work with "Frank" (actually George) but planning to betray and murder him, only to get promptly caught in a mine cave-in and killed off by the real villain of the season.
  • Seeing Laura Hardy's killer, Stefan, get proper comeuppance at the end of the first season when he dies in the mine collapse while trying to steal the Eye for Gloria is certainly this.
  • Similarly, Mack Malone acts like a sleazy asshole every time he appears in the second season, captures the Hardys together with Angela and their men, and threatens the boys with a knife while they're in captivity. Later, Joe finds Malone chained up in the bathtub in Angela's motel room after she betrayed him. Seeing Joe renege on his deal to free Malone and just cheerfully leave him there for Angela to find is quite satisfying, especially when it turns out Malone lied to Joe to lure him into a trap.
  • It's also pretty fun to see Angela get arrested at the end of the second season when she, too, has been responsible for threatening, kidnapping, and trying to kill the boys and others many times throughout the season. Even better in that the good guys beat her by playing dirty like she does: Chet and Belinda trick her into confessing Malone's murder on tape, and Brian uses some good old Framing the Guilty Party to make sure her murder weapon is found to prove it.
  • George Estabrook, once he reappears in the present day after body-snatching Frank and leaving his soul behind in the Crystal indefinitely, turns out to be such a Smug Snake—attempting to give the True Companions their own Breaking Speeches and gloating that their plans are doomed to fail because he's seen everything that's "supposed" to happen with the Eye—that it's immensely satisfying to watch Frank and Joe successfully outsmart him once they're all loaded into the Crystal and lock him in his own office trapdoor, leaving him trapped not just in the Crystal realm, but in a small, uncomfortable part of it where he's even less likely to be able to escape, for all eternity. And even before that, to see the rest of the True Companions mocking George about his imminent fate.
  • Drew Sparewell spends the whole final season manipulating the Hardys and co., turning out to be their Big Bad Friend, is revealed to have had Fenton imprisoned in her Lotus-Eater Machine since the previous season finale, and sticks the boys in it as well for an episode, which puts them through the emotional wringer. It's great to see her get trapped in her own simulation by Callie—her roommate at Rosegrave and the one most personally betrayed by her—who also successfully manages to get the info needed from Drew to shut her simulation down, causing the latter to have a massive Villainous Breakdown. To top it off, she experiences a glitch of some sort when the authorities try to take her out of the simulation, leaving her in some kind of limbo and rendering her catatonic for good.
• He Really Can Act: Campbell really gets to show more of his acting chops in early Season 3 when he plays two different characters, Frank and George Estabrook. He manages to make George's attempted impersonation of Frank quite distinct from the real thing, and George-as-himself very different from both of them, despite looking exactly the same. Special mention goes to when Joe figures out his identity and George reverts from pretending to be Frank into being himself onscreen, with Campbell's whole face shifting without saying a word, and then his voice affect changing as well.
• Ho Yay:
  • Chet and Phil have some in their scene in "No Getting Out" after Joe and Biff have been found safely. They had some Noodle Incident during the search where a hay bale fell on Chet and Phil saved him from it, but both of them are rather flustered by the whole thing, Chet says admiringly, "I never knew you were so strong" and even offers to buy him a milkshake, but asks if that would be weird, while Phil awkwardly assures him it's not and says he misses not getting to hang out with him as much these days.
  • Callie and Drew get Les Yay when investigating together in Season 3, with Callie grinning at her antics appreciatively a few times while Drew occasionally acts downright flirtatious with her. Considering Drew's true nature that's revealed later, this may have been to mess with Callie and/or amuse herself a bit, especially since Callie later points out that, despite Drew's Friendship Denial of the True Companions, she was still way friendlier to them, particularly to Callie, than she needed to be.
• Iron Woobie: The Hardy Boys undergo an enormous Trauma Conga Line throughout the series. Just in the first episode, their mom dies and they leave behind the only home they've ever known to move to Bridgeport, and then soon after, their dad leaves them for months to go solve Laura's murder. It only gets crazier from there, with both of them being kidnapped, held hostage, and/or almost murdered numerous times, plus individual traumas like being body-snatched and locked in a Crystal for Frank and watching his friend JB die in his arms for Joe. Despite it all, the boys overcome and move past their grief and angst, and remain kind-hearted, compassionate kids, committed to righting wrongs and helping others.
• Narm: Several examples in the series finale:
  • Frank and Joe need to retrieve the Eye to have enough power to shut down the Core, but since Chet has it and he's stuck outside in the simulation, they'll have to go out into it themselves to save him, and are not sure that the lingering powers they both still have from the Eye will be enough to save them from being pulled into it themselves. They exchange emotional goodbyes with the rest of their friends in case they don't make it back, and even invite said friends to join them in the simulation if this happens so they can all be together there...only for the boys to then just walk right outside, grab the unconscious Chet, and bring him back in with no issues whatsoever and without the simulation affecting them in any way, making those farewells feel like a needlessly sappy addition.
  • Fenton is eventually able to escape the prototype simulation in the previous episode thanks to his love for his sons and not wanting to fail to protect them the way he did with Laura, and it looks like the three of them will once again team up for the finale like they did in the first season. But then here, as soon as they hit the first fork in the road, father and sons split up again to investigate, and Fenton promptly gets put in the simulation once more, along with the other adults and the entire rest of the world, after Drew activates it, leaving the boys and their friends to once again save the day alone.
  • The group uses The Power of Friendship to channel the Eye's power to the Core and shut it down, only for them all to have a Post-Victory Collapse. Phil is still unconscious after everyone else has woken up, and Biff, without checking for a pulse or anything, gets worried that he's dead and starts screaming for him to Please Wake Up and emotionally states that he's her best friend...only for him to open his eyes, completely fine, having just taken a few seconds longer to wake than everybody else did, making Biff's hysterics feel overdramatic.
• Not His Sled: The advertising for the third season heavily leads audiences to think that Drew Darrow will be the show's interpretation of Nancy Drew, or even turn out to actually be her. Between her being an intrepid investigator as well, being from River Heights (Nancy's hometown from the books), and it being hinted that "Drew Darrow" is an alias, but "Drew", at least, is part of her name, the early clues in the first few episodes point this way. But not only does her real name turn out to be Drew Sparewell instead, she's actually the Hidden Villain Big Bad of the whole operation.
• Relationship Writing Fumble: Joe's and Biff's close friendship whiplashing so much in portrayal between the first season—where they're inseparable best friends with a lot of Ship Tease and it's implied they're developing feelings for each other, especially Biff for Joe—and the second two, where they're portrayed as still close friends (and Biff possibly being a bit jealous of Joe's crush on Lucy, though it's not certain) but nothing more, and with Biff now being closer to Phil than she is to Joe. It's unclear if the writers originally planned their relationship as romantic before later changing their minds^*(possibly because Joe's aunt and Biff's mom get together by the second season and even move in together by the series finale, essentially making them step-cousins, so they could have wanted to avoid any hint of Kissing Cousins even though there are No Blood Ties between Joe and Biff), or if they were only ever intended to be close platonic friends and no more than that from the start, in which case their bond in Season 1 is a case of Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: For many viewers, one of the biggest complaints about the first season is the Love Triangle between Frank, Callie, and Chet, and later Stacy as well, seeing it as an unnecessary waste of time that causes needless drama between the characters and makes Frank come off negatively in the long run by stealing his close friend's girlfriend. Plenty also feel that the chemistry between Frank and Callie and/or Frank and Stacy and/or Callie and Chet isn't very convincing in the first place. Thankfully, the following two seasons fix this once Chet gets a new Love Interest in Belinda, with whom he does have a lot more genuine chemistry, and the relationship between Frank and Callie works much better.
• Salvaged Story:
  • One major complaint about the Love Triangle of the first season (see Romantic Plot Tumor above) is how both Callie and Frank didn't seem to have much regard for Chet's feelings when they get together after the former broke up with him, making them both come off as Unintentionally Unsympathetic, while Chet mostly seems to shrug it off. However, later in the second season, it's shown that he is actually quite hurt by this and was just suppressing his feelings for the sake of his friendships with them, culminating in him having a genuine heart-to-heart with them where he directly admits and addresses this and they both sincerely apologize.
  • It comes off a Contrived Coincidence and strains credibility when, out of the nine or so extremely gifted students who take entrance exams for Rosegrave Academy in the first season, Frank and Callie—the two named characters there—are the ones who supposedly get the two best scores to make it to the end and are accepted into the school, especially considering that Frank hasn't really been interested in attending until Gloria urged him very recently to apply and hasn't been rigorously preparing for it the way Callie and the other students have. Then in the second season, Gloria spells out to Callie that this was NOT a coincidence at all; the exams were rigged from the start and Frank's and Callie's acceptances were assured long before then, due to being Gloria's grandson and protégée, respectively. Gloria explicitly states that Rosegrave is "not a meritocracy".
  • Season 3 splits the difference with Joe and Biff suddenly having different main Love Interest options in Season 2 after their Ship Tease in Season 1. The two of them still aren't teased anymore and have solidly settled into platonic friendship, but Lucy, Joe's sudden crush in Season 2, is entirely absent from the third season and never mentioned. Meanwhile, though Biff eventually does admit to Phil that he is her best friend, too, she clarifies that she sees them as Just Friends and isn't interested in him that way, and also states that it's not a good time for her right now to pursue any kind of relationship with anybody, and they do not get together by the end of the series.
  • One of the bigger complaints about the first season, especially the first half of it, is that Frank and Joe would spend most of the episodes separated, pursuing their own investigations for the case with help from friends, and only meet back up at the beginning and end of each one to compare notes. While this was a chance to grow them as individuals, along with their bonds with other characters in the main cast, it also leaves them with not as much screentime together as fans would have liked (even though it is still a large amount). In Seasons 2 and 3, while they do still split up on several occasions, the boys spend a much larger percentage of their adventures on the case together, which also allows for their friends to pursue their own investigations and subplots that don't just revolve around the Hardy Boys and instead both flesh them out more as individual characters and let them make their own deductions and show off their own skills better.
  • Also in the first season, when the main cast are split up, it's almost always by age group: Joe pairing off with Biff while Frank hangs with Callie and Chet, with only Phil (who's in between their ages) migrating between both groups, which often makes Frank or Joe feel like "my friend's brother" rather than all of them being a group of friends. The second and third seasons take steps to remedy this: in Season 2, while the friends are often paired up by Love Interests during the investigation (Frank & Callie, Chet & Belinda, Phil & Biff, Joe & Lucy), there are many more instances of cross-age-group matchups, such as Biff choosing to hang with Chet and Belinda at the drive-in, Biff and Belinda pairing up to question a suspect, Joe and Chet working together to contact JB and trick Angela, Callie tutoring Biff at math, and Joe and Callie conspiring to remove the Eye from Frank before it hurts him, as well as getting multiple Friendship Moments together in Season 3. There are also pairings among the same age group that aren't just done with love interests, like having Frank join Chet and Belinda a couple of times, Joe and Phil working together more, and Callie and Belinda investigating a lead together. Season 3 continues this: Joe and Frank are pretty much always together, which leaves Frank hanging out with all the younger kids when they ambush JB at his apartment, and Joe hanging with all the older kids when they meet up in the Chamber of the Eye.
• Stock Footage Failure: The same "motel room" set is used numerous times throughout the series for scenes with various characters who are temporarily staying in Bridgeport, even when the actual motels where they're rooming are different in-universe, which is obvious by the fact that all of these "different" rooms have the exact same layout. This makes it painfully easy to tell that, in the scenes near the end of Season 1 where Rupert and Fenton confront Kanika in the former's motel room, the door that the characters use to supposedly "enter" and "exit" the room actually leads to the bathroom, especially since this door doesn't have any kind of lock on it on the bedroom side, while the real front door with the chain-link lock can quite clearly be seen in the background.
• Strangled by the Red String: Considering how much Ship Tease Joe and Biff have together in the first season, having this suddenly be almost completely dropped in the following two seasons in favor of giving both of them other potential Love Interests (with whom they each have far less chemistry than they do with each other) can create a lot of whiplash. It could be justified by the fact that six months have passed in-universe, which is enough time for Biff and Phil to have grown closer offscreen and for Joe to meet and nurse a crush on Lucy, but from the audience's perspective, the changes come off as very sudden.
  • Joe now has a major crush on Lucy Wayne, Dennis's girlfriend (actually ex-girlfriend) in Season 2, but she dislikes him for the first few episodes, only to suddenly warm up to him very quickly afterwards. What's more, despite them getting to kiss at the school dance and their apparent interest at season's end in building to something more, Lucy doesn't appear at all in Season 3, nor is she even mentioned or alluded to. It ends up making Joe's crush come off as just an Excuse Plot for him to be so determined to help Dennis (implicitly to try to help her as well, and impress her), and to provide distractions for him at critical moments. The fact that the series foregoes giving Joe either of his canon steady love interests from the books—Iola Morton and Vanessa Bender (the former being Adapted Out and the latter getting complete Adaptational Villainy)—in favor of Lucy, a Canon Foreigner, really doesn't help.
  • Despite there being absolutely no Ship Tease at all between Biff and Phil in the first season, Phil suddenly has serious feelings for her by Season 2, with his sister commenting that he's apparently had a crush on her for ages, and his main character arc for the second two seasons revolves around him being in love with Biff. In fairness, though, this ends up being subverted on Biff's end; while she does admit at the end of Season 3 that Phil is her best friend (though this is certainly a change from the first season as well, where she was inseparable Best Friends with Joe), she tells Phil that she just likes him as a friend and this isn't a good time for her to be thinking about romance, and the two of them are indeed not dating at series's end.
• The Woobie: Aaron Munder. When he was still in his late teens, he agreed to take part in Project Midnight with the promise that he'd get to be part of the Circle of the Eye in exchange, and it's implied he wanted this for the sake of his twin brother, Adrian, as well as himself, to earn a better life for both of them. Instead, his consciousness was ripped out of his body and put inside the Crystal, where George Estabrook was waiting and locked him away deep inside its realm for 10 years, while his body is left as a catatonic husk that still physically ages but doesn't have a soul. When Adrian finally comes to rescue Aaron, the former's now a grown adult while the latter is still a kid. And to top it off, he's not really saved because there's still no way for him to get his body back, so his final fate is to remain trapped there forever, though at least he now has his brother for company.