Thoughts and Moments

Bess would be so fun for a sleepover. It’s a shame Nancy suspects her of murder, and Lucy Sable is intent on destroying all of the Drew household’s appliances to send her a message. I like the progression of who believes in ghosts in the Drew house here. You’ve got Bess, who is immediately terrified and knows there’s something supernatural going on, Nancy, who is on the fence and trying to logic her way out of communicating with Lucy, and Carson, who is sure they just blew a fuse because Nancy said so. It’s a great barometer to measure all reactions to the supernatural in the show.

(Too soon to use barometer for those who have watched the whole series? Oops.)

Nancy waking up from a nightmare about Kate’s death and her voiceover telling us, “I have too many dead women in my life,” is some great foreshadowing for the storylines to come, as well as the Lucy-Kate-Tiffany trifecta going on in the first season. It would have made a great tag line for the show, to be honest. The CW’s version of Nancy Drew really focuses more on dead women when it comes to the supernatural instead of dead men, which is very interesting to me, and probably deserves a deeper dive than my rewatch is going to give you here. But, there’s obviously the historical undercurrent of witches in small New England towns, and so many ghost stories being devoted to women who were wronged or have tragic ends, and I think the show does an excellent job of putting its own spin on those ideas, of examining forgotten women or women who an entire town turned its back on. 

In the middle of the workday, Bess just has to calm herself with something sparkly, so she pulls out Tiffany’s engagement ring while in the walk-in, and is promptly attacked by Tiffany’s ghost, leading to the introduction of George’s mother, Victoria, who is my second-favorite side character in the show. (My favorite also happens to be introduced in this episode.) And some ghost lore. I have some questions about the ghost lore surrounding Tiffany coming for her ring. Why are ghosts attracted to mirrors? Do they have this need to see themselves? Victoria isn’t entirely clear on that.

Side note: Why does everyone who works at The Claw reference the walk-in as a freezer? It’s not. You know how I know it’s not? Because there are several episodes in the series in which produce is stored in that walk-in cooler (or refrigerator, whatever you prefer). You cannot store produce like, oh, I don’t know, lettuce, in a freezer. It would destroy your product and make it inedible. There’s a very specific temperature range for a cooler versus a freezer. Likewise, you cannot store glass containers in a freezer unless they have liquid in them that has a freezing point far below that of the actual freezer, which I believe also happens later. I think we see glass jars on one of the shelves at some point. Seriously, if there are writers out there who need a consultant on writing about mom-and-pop restaurants, or set dressers who have never seen the backroom/prep areas/storage space/dishpit of a restaurant and want a second opinion, I am available. Hit me up. Just putting that out there. Now, back to the Drew Crew.

George deciding to take one for the team and return Tiffany’s ring to her is heartbreaking. Her hearing how Ryan’s father treats him and then apologizing to Tiffany for sleeping with Ryan provide George with these small moments of growth that pay off much later in the season. Like… I genuinely hate the era of television that saw so many teenage girls in relationships with grown men who had no business “dating” them. It’s something that truly gives me the ick. But I do love the growth that comes for both George and Ryan as a result in this show, and I love that it is never treated like George’s relationship with Ryan was a normal thing for her.

This also has the first appearance of my favorite side character in the entire show. Laura Tandy only appears in five episodes of the first season, but Stevie Lynn Jones is so great in the role. I would have loved to see Laura pop up again. The scenes with Ace following Laura, and then getting caught by her, feel like they are in a whole different show from Nancy, Bess, and George. There’s a rom-com happening in the shadows of the supernatural drama. I think in any other series, it might be jarring to have those different tones, but here, the levity with Ace and Laura helps balance the higher stakes happening with Tiffany’s ring being “haunted.”

Also, Alex Saxon plays his discomfort as Ace in these sequences in some interesting ways. He uses a tone of voice that is largely different from what we have seen from him in the first few episodes. His whole demeanor is just tense and like he’s never quite sure what to do with his hands, like he’s not sure where he should be looking, and it’s such a huge contrast to how we see him interacting with the Drew Crew in The Claw. He’s great. What I’m saying is, I’d like to see him do a rom-com, though I think I’ve only seen him in Criminal Minds since Nancy Drew ended?

Laura helps push the mystery forward a little bit because she has no intention of letting her sister’s death be called “natural.” She is ready to fight the Hudsons, the police, and anyone in town who might potentially put even a toe in her way. I love her. She reminds me of a freer, lighter, Nancy. Laura doesn’t suffer under the weight of guilt that Nancy does with the recent death in her own life. There isn’t really any sneaking around for Laura in this first appearance either. She goes after what she wants in the open, gets it, and then makes her case at her own sister’s funeral in front of some of the most powerful people in town. It’s ballsy, and a great way to disrupt the narrative with a new character.

She also gives us a tiny window into who Ace is since she knows about his hacking, doesn’t seem entirely sold on his stoner facade, and had an intense summer with him the year before. My bet would be that she and Ace are meant to be the same age, though that’s never explicitly stated, and Ace was her summer fling after graduating high school that became too serious too fast for either of them, with the way their story plays out here.

Side note as I’m editing this: I said “stoner facade” with regard to Ace because I’m curious if he was ever actually smoking on a regular basis. I say this because we know Nancy has this impression of him in the pilot, but we never actually see him smoke in the show, which could just be down to censorship or “standards and practices” for the CW at the time. Yes, he eats all the crackers and drinks all the boxed wine in the pilot, but beyond that episode, the stoner stereotypes are pretty well dropped other than one or two nods. His “weed guy” in his phone is also the chief of police. Laura’s tone when she talks to him and says “bumbling stoner thing” makes me think she’s always thought he played it up, and Ace doesn’t deny that. So, is it just something he lets people think about him so he can observe quietly in the background? Is he a recreational smoker who just plays up the stereotype so people underestimate him? Honestly, I feel like it's the latter. I feel like his smoking would contribute to the rift between him and his father that we see in the show because his father is going to see something like that as the epitome of not living up to his potential.

I'm apparently big on side notes this time around, sorry.

Also, Laura Tandy’s name is an Easter Egg in case anyone reading this is interested in that sort of thing. Russell Tandy was the illustrator behind the original covers of 25 of the first Nancy Drew novels. He did the covers for ones that have already been referenced in the show, including The Secret of the Old Clock, The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Secret at Shadow Ranch, and ones that will be referenced later, like The Password to Larkspur Lane, The Message in the Hollow Oak, and more. I love this kind of Easter egg, honoring the people who made the series what it is.

We get some backstory on Bess, too, not just Ace. Bess Turani is just looking for family after a rough life in East London. (And we never hear that particular version of her accent again, which I’m sure is a choice by the production team to keep Bess sounding more elegant, and not at all because Maddison Jaizani sounds so awkward in that scene.) Turani, in case anyone is wondering, is most often an Italian or Persian surname. I was curious. Bess’ anxiety makes a lot more sense even with this tiny taste of her backstory. Her willingness to believe in the extraordinary or supernatural also does since she’s spent her whole life dreaming of things for which she had no proof.

So, we’re only four episodes in, but at this point, all of our main characters have essentially been cleared of suspicion by the audience, if not by the police in Horseshoe Bay. Ace had an alibi in the pilot, so he was already in the clear. Nancy is our narrator who found the body, so she’s always been in the clear from our point of view, if not the police department’s. The last two episodes cleared George and Nick, at least from an emotional standpoint. This episode clears Bess for us. It’s so great for the show to get all of that out of the way so fast so that we can move on to the other main and recurring characters and feel like we’re actually getting into an investigation.

I do have to say, I think the scene with Nancy at Kate’s grave is a really important one to understand Nancy’s initial reluctance to believe in ghosts, and then her wholeheartedly believing she can successfully communicate with them once she accepts the supernatural as part of her reality.

It’s very easy, and makes sense in the first few episodes, to simply see Nancy as logical, and I even said that in a previous episode rewatch. But here, she admits that part of her not believing in ghosts is that she wants her mom’s ghost to still be there for her. It’s even more heartbreaking than George with Tiffany, and one of Kennedy McMann’s better emotional scenes in the first season. Even with what little we’ve seen of the characters so far, it’s clear that Kate Drew was well-adjusted, that she accepted her death, and I think that’s enough of an explanation for why she isn’t lingering or haunting Nancy and Carson. That scene establishes some ghost rules for us.

And that’s all I’ve got in me for this round of Nancy Drew.

I will, however, be tracking down Kennedy McMann's new movie, Love on Tap. It's finally releasing after being stuck on a shelf for a couple of years (when it was called Brewmance, though I would guess there was a name change because there is a documentary by that name), so there might be a brief interlude from Nancy Drew for that.