Nancy Drew

Recap
18 year old retired teen detective, Nancy Drew, tries to solve a mystery to clear her and her friends names who are all suspects.
Spoiler Level: Mild
Review
For the last article of “Hero” month, I am going in a different direction and looking at a show from 2019: the new Nancy Drew airing on The CW (I am half way through season 1, season 2 started on January 20th). I have loved mysteries since I can remember. I blame this obsession on Scooby Doo! I remember as a child having read several Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mystery books and of course I was a fan of the 1977 to 79 television series, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries with Pamela Sue Martin (Dynasty) playing the title character.
A brief history. Nancy is a girl detective featured in a series of books starting in 1930. She was the female equivalent to the Hardy Boys. Both book series were created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer. Nancy is a true hero and icon having been an influence for many powerful women. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former First Lady Laura Bush have all credited Nancy Drew as an inspiration. The character has been changed and updated over the years, but retains the basic essence of the original character, strong willed, smart, elegant and excessively good at almost everything she does. The original Nancy was a 16 year old high school graduate, this is later changed to 18. In addition to the book series, Nancy has been the main character of movies, TV shows and graphic novels.
The new series has Nancy (Kennedy McMann) still reeling from the death of her mother from pancreatic cancer the year before. She missed her college application deadline and has gotten a job at local seafood restaurant The Bayside Claw for the year gap before she leaves for college. Nancy learned at a young age that she had a knack for solving crime, but when her mother got sick and eventually passed, she retired from looking too closely at the world and being a detective. In the pilot, Nancy with her coworkers Bess, George and Nick, and love interest Ned are suspects in the death of Tiffany Hudson whose body Nancy finds in the Claws parking lot. In addition to solving Tiffany’s murder, Nancy is also being haunted by Lucy Sable, a girl who was killed nineteen years before and whose ghost has become a town urban legend. How are the two deaths related, and can Nancy solve both mysteries? It seems like everyone she knows has a motive and a secret, including her father. What secrets were her parents keeping from her?
The series is very well done and fun to watch. This isn’t the Nancy that I expected, the character having been modernized with the current trend of dark and brooding storytelling. Nancy isn’t the happy-go-lucky soul from the books and she isn’t perfect. Although she has retained her brash outspoken aspects, she is more human, with human failings. She is still mourning the death of her mother and angry at her father, feeling abandoned. Although, not necessarily poor, they are not rich either, another deviation from the books. A nice touch is the supernatural aspect of the series. Subtle at first, as the first season progresses, ghosts play a bigger and bigger part of the plot. Nancy doesn’t want to believe they exist, because if they do, why hasn’t her mother appeared to her, but she eventually has to believe her own experiences and admits that she is being haunted. I love the atmosphere of the production and the story is engaging and exciting. The series is well cast and the performances seem genuine and believable as the unbelievable seems to occur.
Final Thoughts
With its supernatural undertones and engaging who done it plot, I am really enjoying the first season and am excited to get to season 2.
Nancy Drew: Supernatural Super Slueth
- Writing - 10/1010/10
- Storyline - 10/1010/10
- Acting - 9/109/10
- Music - 9/109/10
- Production - 10/1010/10