You can tell we’re getting close to the midseason break because big things are happening in every episode. The big mystery of Nancy Drew likely won’t be solved next week, but Nancy’s suspicions are at their strongest. Last week’s episode ended with her asking her dad point blank if he killed Lucy Sable. He insists he’s no hitman, but he can’t come up with an explanation for taking Lucy’s crown from the DNA examiner. Or for Lucy’s bloody dress disappearing from the attic. Before this conversation can really go anywhere though, George shows up at the front door. She’s got bad news. As Nick saw last week, Ace and Laura Tandy were in a car accident.
The gang all rushes to the hospital and Lisbeth accompanies Bess. Nancy immediately suspects her as she works for the Hudson family. It’d be very convenient for the Hudsons if Laura suddenly died. Even more suspicious, when Nancy finds a recording Ace made just before the crash, Lisbeth excuses herself. The recording makes it clear that Tiffany wasn’t controlling the car when it crashed. She couldn’t brake, and it was accelerating on its own. They figure someone must have hacked the car’s CPU. Nick sneaks into the impound lot and finds that it could only have been done after it left his garage. So by someone who knows cars. Lisbeth is starting to look even more suspicious.
Kennedy McMann as Nancy and Scott Wolf as Carson — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW
When they find out that Lisbeth lied about having to work the previous night, even Bess can’t keep coming to her defense. She and Nick set up a sting operation to try and record a confession. Bess starts asking questions and even threatens to go to the police. Lisbeth spills everything: She’s an undercover cop. She’s with the state police, investigating the Hudsons. The reason she can’t go to the local police is she thinks the Hudsons have a dirty cop on the inside. Well, that would certainly explain how a car-controlling transmitter would have disappeared from the crime scene.
Meanwhile, we’re going all in on the supernatural over in Nancy Drew’s story. Normally I’d like that, but this time it comes with a heaping side of American Indian mysticism! Thanks, but nobody asked for this! Look, I don’t claim to know anything about the writing staff on this show or issues surrounding representation of indigenous cultures on TV. It just seems like a really bad look when the show does nothing with Chief McGinnis for the entire season, and when he finally gets a big role in an episode, he can sense the spirits in the air and performs rituals belonging to a conspicuously unspecified tribe. I know the Nancy Drew books have been around for close to a century, but this story feels straight out of the 1930s.
Katie Findlay, Maddison Jaizani, Leah Lewis (Screenshot via CW)
McGinnis figures out the reason Ace is in a coma is that his spirit is lost. It can’t find its way back to his body because of all the bad spirits conjured by those coins last episode. Alright fine, let’s just go with it. They hold a ritual in Nancy’s house to send one of them into the spirit world to find Ace. The only consolation is George’s bemused reaction to finding out that, of course, it’s her who has to do all the work here. She wanders through a dark foggy world full of malicious ghosts that the show can’t even really make scary. Maybe it’s because tonight’s Riverdale was so good, but this episode seems especially bad. Usually I’m on board with Nancy Drew’s ghost stuff, but none of it’s working for me here.
George can’t find her way through the spirit world because there’s too much negative energy between Nancy and her dad. They need to go outside and deal with it for George to find Ace. The one bright side of all this is it means Nancy finally gets some answers out of her dad. The show can stop waving information just out of reach and finally cross out some names on its list of suspects. The long and short of it is that Carson didn’t kill Lucy Sable. The Hudsons sent him out looking for her, but didn’t tell him where. By the time he got to the cliff, she had already fallen. All he found was her bloody dress, which he took on behalf of his clients. Even in a cringey episode, it feels good to have at least one mystery partially solved. Oh, and the DNA evidence? Carson took it to protect Nancy. Makes sense, this version of Nancy Drew has a bad habit of leaving incriminating evidence behind.
Scott Wolf as Carson and Kennedy McMann as Nancy — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW
George finds Ace on the day he was most scared, which turns out not to be the car accident. It was the day he almost lost his dad. She finds Ace as a 6-year-old sitting outside in the cold, picks him up and carries him out. He tells her not to forget the boots he was wearing: A shiny pair of black boots with red laces, way too big for a 6-year-old. Thankfully, the episode gets decent again here. As soon as we leave all the awkward mysticism behind and start focusing on mysteries and dirty cops, it becomes an enjoyable TV show again. Nancy meets back up with Bess, Nick and Lisbeth to cross-reference their files on the Hudsons. With that, Nancy is able to bring McGinnis evidence of who the dirty cop is. Her suspicions are confirmed when he turns in a doctored examination of the wrecked car. Also, he’s wearing the boots George saw in the spirit world. So at least it all led to a fun gotcha moment. Was it worth the crap we had to wade through to get here? Not in the slightest. But I’ll take what I can get at this point.
This is not what I wanted when I hoped Chief McGinnis would play a larger role on the show. His relationship to Nancy showed such promise in the pilot. He was annoyed that this kid kept showing him up his entire career, and he has even less patience for it now that she’s an adult. There’s so much you can do with that premise and the show has thrown it all away. Instead we got… this. It’s a disappointment, to be sure. Not the best taste to leave us on before next week’s midseason finale. At least the episode tries to liven things up before the end. Nancy, Bess and Lisbeth set things up so Mrs. Hudson sees Lisbeth punch Nancy. That should be enough to keep her cover. Nancy working with an undercover cop could be an exciting direction for the show. Then the episode ends with the true set-up for next week. As George’s sister plays in the restaurant’s office, the door opens and a shadowy figure approaches her. When George returns to check on her, she’s gone. We have a new mystery to solve next week. That’s all I want from this show.
Nancy Drew airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW
Previously on Nancy Drew
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 7 recap
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 6 recap
- Nancy Drew Season 1 Episode 5 recap
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