Because one noir-ish teen drama wasn’t enough, the CW is doubling up on Wednesday nights. Riverdale, meet your new weekly companion, Nancy Drew. Just like Riverdale did with its source material, the CW adaptation of this classic children’s book series wanted to spice things up a bit.
This Nancy Drew is horny. We get some opening narration about how she chased mysteries as a kid until her mom died of cancer, then we immediately cut to Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson boning down in a garage. Yeah yeah, not your grandma’s Nancy Drew, we get it. It gets that message across, at least.
To the show’s credit, the mystery gets started pretty fast. Nancy’s working at a restaurant when Ryan Hudson, the heir to a business empire walks through the front door. He requests that someone bring his wife, Tiffany, a salad. Her boss requests she do it as she needs some help—something Nancy finds odd. She brings the wife a salad, and goes back into the restaurant to fetch a glass of their finest boxed chardonnay. The power goes out in the restaurant and the wife ends up dead. Worse still, since everyone in the restaurant was off by themselves at the time, Nancy and her coworkers/friends/frenemies are all suspects.
Kennedy McMann as Nancy and Sinead Curry as Tiffany. (Photo Credit: Dean Buscher / The CW)
One thing the show nails is the supernatural side of the mysteries. Nancy realizes she has a recording of the victim’s last moments and checks it out on her phone. The woman appears to have been killed by a ghost. Not just any ghost, a town-famous ghost. Lucy Sable, a girl crowned high school Sea Queen nearly 20 years ago just before she drowned. That’s exactly the kind of mystery Nancy Drew would handle in the books. More often than not, the culprit would end up being smugglers of some kind. Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be the case here.
Nancy narrates the whole episode, and it generally works. It gives the series a detective noir feel I really like. It’s not so heavy-handed that it becomes annoying either. What I don’t care so much for is the part where she swears she’s given up mystery solving. Look, we all know she hasn’t really, otherwise there wouldn’t be a show. Her reasoning for swearing off detective work is never made all that clear. We know it’s because her mom died of cancer, but her reasoning beyond that isn’t even glossed over. If the show can’t even be bothered to care about its character’s convictions, how can we be expected to?
Kennedy McMann as Nancy and Leah Lewis as George. (Photo Credit: Robert Falconer / The CW)
Fortunately, it doesn’t spend too much time on it. Almost immediately, Nancy breaks into the victim’s house to search for evidence of what may have led to her death. She finds a hidden sea charm before the house’s security alarm tips off the police. Thankfully, Nick shows up to help her escape, though her hat gets caught on a bush. You’d think that would come back to bite her, make her look even more guilty, but nope. Karen, the friendly police officer, brings it to her dad. She knows Nancy’s innocent, but would have a hard time proving that if any other cops found the hat. That’s nice and convenient for the character, but it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting story.
The show is much more interested in her estranged relationship with her father, which…to be honest, it’s not working for me at all. We didn’t see what their relationship was like before, and we’re only told what it’s like after her mom died. That’s why it’s not shocking when Nancy finds out he’s been seeing Karen. It’s just the less interesting of two possible story threads. In any case, the revelation pushes her into the arms of Nick. She decides she wants to commit to their relationship and really get to know him as a person, rather than just a warm body. When her dad sees Nick dropping her off the next morning, he freaks out. Nancy deduces that Nick must have been one of her dad’s clients, and she goes investigating. Turns out Nick spent some time in jail for manslaughter. And Tiffany Hudson was the key witness in that trial. So her boyfriend has a motive. Great.
Leah Lewis as George, Maddison Jaizani as Bess, and Tunji Kasim as Nick. (Photo Credit: Robert Falconer / The CW)
He’s not the only one, though. In a rather exciting sequence, we see that everyone’s been up to some suspicious stuff. Nancy’s boss, George Fan, has been having an affair with Ryan Hudson. Her coworker Bess has somehow got her hands on the wedding ring that was stolen off Tiffany’s body. And Ace, the stoner kitchen attendant, has been spying on all of them and sending pictures to the police chief. The chief, as it turns out, has it in for Nancy since she spent most of high school solving mysteries for him and making him look like a bad cop. Everyone’s compromised here, and it makes for a pretty good mystery.
The show also appears to be leaning into the supernatural elements even more than I expected. First, Nancy and George discover that Tiffany’s sea charm was given to her by the town medium. They set up a seance and try to contact Tiffany. Nancy is skeptical, but even she starts to believe when the medium begins speaking in a ghostly voice. Only instead of Tiffany, it’s Lucy Sable saying “find the dress.”
Kennedy McMann as Nancy. (Photo: The CW)
We don’t find out what that means until the very end of the episode. While Nancy is plotting out what she knows about the mystery in a notebook, the power goes off again. She walks out of her room to find the attic open. Up there, she finds a poem behind the wallpaper detailing Lucy Sable’s death, and suggesting that her killer might be coming for Nancy (or whoever is reading the poem) as well. It draws her attention to a chest against the wall. Inside, Nancy finds a bloody dress. And it looks like the ghost of Lucy Sable is right behind her. Who knows whether any of these ghosts are real, but in the moment, it’s pretty damn scary. If this incarnation of Nancy Drew turns out to be a horror show, you won’t hear me complaining.
Scott Wolf as Carson Drew and Alvina August as Karen. (Photo: Robert Falconer / The CW)
Nancy Drew kicked off with a pretty decent pilot. There were certainly some major problems. Most of the relationships feel a little hollow, and I don’t feel like I really know anything after spending an hour with this show. I know a mystery story isn’t going to give up its secrets this early, but we should at least feel like some progress has been made. Despite that though, the mystery itself is a compelling one and I’m super interested to see how it plays out. Nancy herself is a cool and interesting character, and McMann is so charming in the role. It also helps that the show looks great. It’s atmospheric and noir-ish in a way that’s wholly distinct from Riverdale. I can easily see getting hooked on this show, provided it fleshes out the other characters and relationships more.
That all said, I do wish there was more mystery-solving in this episode. Ending on a cliffhanger was scary and exciting, but we didn’t learn anything new. The murder of Tiffany Hudson looks like it’s going to be the big season-long mystery, and I was really hoping we’d have one that only lasted an episode. Like a Case of the Week building up to solving a larger murder. Basically, I guess I was hoping Nancy Drew would be like the first couple of seasons of Veronica Mars. And yeah, it’s not entirely fair to judge a new show because it isn’t that. Still, if you call a show Nancy Drew, I’m going to want way more detective work and way less teen drama tropes. Hopefully, that’s what we get as this first season goes on.
Nancy Drew airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
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