Written by Alex Marcus
When word broke four years ago that CBS was developing a new series with a couple of Grey’s Anatomy executive producers about an all grown-up Nancy Drew as an NYPD detective, I remember loudly asking to no one in particular, “Why?!?” Taking the story of a classic teen super-sleuth from a small town and turning it into a NYC-set police procedural about an adult woman seemed at once an inexplicable and downright predictable move by America’s parents’ favorite broadcast network. However, when that idea fell apart and CBS kicked the Nancy Drew intellectual property rights over to their cool younger sister, The CW, and attached Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, creators of teen drama smash hits like The OC and Gossip Girl along with the more recent Marvel teen soap Runaways, my ears perked up.
Bringing a classic teen heroine like Nancy to a teen-skewing network with executive producers who know how to create a hit teen drama seemed like absolutely the way to bring our plucky amateur investigator into the peak TV era. Sadly, after watching the first episode, The CW’s Nancy Drew falls victim to an entirely different set of unnecessary genre cliches.
You see, Nancy, played well by newcomer Kennedy McMann, is not a teen detective earnestly pursuing the truth wherever it lay. She’s actually a waitress in her early 20s who has given up crime solving, for which she had become famous within her small Maine town, after the untimely death of her mother from an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. Nancy suffered this loss last year, during her senior year of high school, and the grief caused her to give up solving mysteries and tank her grades. This unfortunately dashed her ambition to leave her small town for Columbia University.
She does, however, have a new boyfriend, Ned “Nick” Nickerson (Tunji Kasim) who was convicted of a felony when he was still a minor. She’s reluctant to get attached, and and feels similarly towards her peers at the small restaurant at which she works. The full cast of twenty-somethings have quirky backstories that may or may not come into play down the line, including most notably Nick, but I can’t say any of these performers left much of an impression on me in this opening entry to justify me caring.
Nor was I particularly interested in the idea that NANCY DREW would be a reluctant detective, too haunted by her past to solve mysteries until she finds herself at the center of one. She’s going to be a detective. There is no mystery to that, as far as the audience is concerned, so I could have done without the tragically reluctant detective cliche, which the writers use to inject unearned pathos into Nancy’s characterization, especially when they never actually do the work to connect Nancy’s mother’s death with her now dormant love for solving mysteries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arJ3Z0qXhCU
In any case, Nancy does, indeed, find herself swept up in the mysterious death of a woman, the wife of the rich and possibly nefarious Ryan (Riley Smith), in the parking lot of Nancy’s restaurant. Since she discovered the body, Nancy becomes a prime suspect, but is let go after a brief interrogation scene where you learn the police detective was friends with Nancy’s mom (and later is revealed to be sleeping with Nancy’s dad Carson, played by the ageless Scott Wolf). I expected this murder to be a case-of-the-week mystery resolved by episode’s end. However, we soon find out that all of Nancy’s friends and her new boyfriend could be plausible suspects, or…it could be a ghost?
That’s right! This version of Nancy Drew is haunted!(?). Nancy doesn’t believe in ghosts, but her New England town sure does; and there is reason to suspect that a prom queen who took a nosedive off a cliff in the way back year of 2000 (God am I old) and now haunts the town may be responsible. There are spooky power outages and maybe a video tape of Lucy the dead prom queen approaching Ryan’s wife shortly before her death. However, it all seems like set up for a Scooby-Doo style reveal where the ghost was actually the old groundskeeper this whole time until the episode’s final moments. At this point, Nancy has a flashback to her parents ominously digging something up or maybe burying it late at night when she was a young girl. Then, a strong gust of wind leads her upstairs into her attic where a Stranger Things For Dummies wall message about Lucy is revealed from behind the wallpaper and a box opens up revealing a bloodied prom dress. Nancy investigates the dress as what very much appears to be Lucy’s ghost enters the frame over Nancy’s shoulder. Cut to black.
Look. I get it. The CW has had a lot of success with teen-skewing genre fare over the years. Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries (and its many spinoffs), Charmed 2.0, and even the DC superhero shows all fall under the “genre” umbrella. However, Nancy Drew, as a character, is all about using her incredible detective skills to solve mysteries. Paranormal elements are not needed to make her compelling. Veronica Mars was a damn fine show without ever needing to spice things up by throwing in ghosts.
Create a compelling mystery. Cast actors who can bring some life to the material. Make a good old fashioned whodunnit for tweens. If the story is compelling, they will stick with you even without goblins and ghosts. Have a little bit of confidence in a brand that has delighted audiences for 80 years…or make a show about a red-headed amateur detective who investigates paranormal crimes and don’t call it Nancy Drew.
Nancy Drew airs Wendesday nights on The CW Network.
Alex Marcus is a writer and podcaster with a passion for film, television, and podcasts. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, long walks on the beach, and convincing strangers that Mad Men is the greatest series in TV history. Listen to his podcast, Cinema Joes, where three average Joes discuss the significant topics in movie culture! New episodes debut (almost) every Monday on Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcasts, and more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KamIlI3a3s
