Nancy Drew (no spoilers)

The pilot episode of The CW's new Nancy Drew TV series aired on Wednesday. I liked it, but I'm not sure what to make of it.

When I was in elementary school, I loved the Nancy Drew books, loved 'em. I never developed an interest in The Hardy Boys or Tom Swift, but I was fascinated by Nancy Drew's adventures. I think both the school librarian and my second grade teacher expressed their distaste for our Miss Drew, but I was a fan, just like I was a fan of Batman and Captain America.



The new TV version of Nancy Drew is certainly not the character from the books. That's not a surprise, nor is it really a problem (for me, anyway). The demands of serialized storytelling in the current TV market all but preclude a straightforward mystery-of-the-week format, and the contemporary audience coveted by advertisers expects something edgier, sexier, and more dramatic. That's the formula that transformed the familiar Archie comic book gang into the unrecognizable, soap-via-Twin Peaks figures on The CW's successful Riverdale series. The characters on Riverdale share only their names and some very broad strokes of milieu and motivation with their four-color counterparts, and Nancy Drew is likewise many degrees removed from its original source material. 

This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me. Hell, I gave Riverdale a full-season chance when it debuted, and was initially taken with it, but I grew weary of both its liberties and its execution by the end of that first season. I have not watched Riverdale since then.



I had a different issue with Nancy Drew's pilot episode. I haven't read a Nancy Drew book in decades; I occasionally watched the '70s TV series starring Pamela Sue Martin, and I saw the 2007 Nancy Drew feature film starring Emma Roberts, but I don't have any immediate, visceral connection to the specific tropes of the original. I don't remember them well enough to insist upon adherence to canon. I'm not quite tabula rasa, but I'm open-minded. Sort of.

But watching Nancy Drew, I kept on thinking of three other TV series, and those thoughts distracted me for the whole hour. I thought of Riverdale, of course, for the similarities mentioned above. Some (presumed) supernatural elements and the appearance of an ad hoc Mystery, Inc. conjured an incongruous image of the Scooby-Doo cartoon mysteries, and I'm pretty sure that's not a comparison Nancy Drew's producers would welcome. And the one other show overshadowing everything was one of my all-time favorites: Veronica Mars.




The surface similarity of two TV series spotlighting young, female detectives investigating a murder against a backdrop of angst, betrayal, emotion, and intrigue makes it difficult to avoid a comparison of Veronica Mars and Nancy Drew. You could argue that the Nancy Drew books deserve credit for doing the young female detective thing first, but you also have to concede that Veronica Mars did this first, this juxtaposition of its intrepid lead with the circumstances of a presumably normal life burning and disintegrating all around her. Veronica Mars did that really well, and it would be a daunting challenge for any show to distinguish itself in that context.



It would be unfair to expect Nancy Drew to be Veronica Mars, so I hope my mental comparison of the two recedes as I watch future episodes of Nancy Drew. As noted at the top, right before I started complaining about all of my concerns, I did enjoy the pilot, and I'm looking forward to seeing more. Kennedy McCann is well-cast in the lead role, exuding the required mix of imperiousness, curiosity, indignation, uncertainty, and hurt. The initial setup of Nancy's back story as someone who used to love solving mysteries when she was growing up (including a direct reference to The Hidden Staircase, one of the first Nancy Drew books) is told quickly but effectively, dovetailing with the now college-age character's current lack of interest in anything other than going through the motions of an anonymous life, and occasionally shakin' the sheets with her boy toy Nick (real name Ned, as in the books, though the Nancy 'n' Ned I read in the '60s never shared a connubial frolic, as far as I recall).



The pilot episode does a good job of raising the stakes, planting suspicions, hinting at more. I might like it, or I might not, but I'm more than ready to see where it goes next. I don't think my elementary school librarian or second grade teacher would approve of the new Nancy Drew any more than they liked Nancy Drew in the books at the time. Me? I love a mystery.

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