Keep in mind that this is not a summary of the episode, only my thoughts and review of the episode, and it is not by any means in order of the episode because my thoughts are all over the place haha.
This episode starts off with a bang...literally! The ghost starts making things explode in Nancy's house such as the microwave and TV, and lights are flickering. Bess of course believes that it's Dead Lucy trying to warn Nancy of something, but Nancy brushes that off claiming that there's a rational explanation...but she secretly thinks that Dead Lucy might be warning her that Bess is the killer. The ghostly happenings in this episode are...interesting. We seem to be having more hauntings from Tiffany now, and she seems to be trying to get Nancy and the rest of the gang's attention, probably wanting them to solve her murder. I've decided to just accept the ghosts as being real in this show, since the culprits don't seem to be the ghosts, and the show runners have made it very clear that they are indeed real. If the ghosts were the culprits, then I'd have a problem, but they seem to just want the mysteries to be solved. In many of the books and games, the ghosts are hinted to be real and not proven otherwise, which is why I'm okay with the ghosts in this show being real. Up to the last couple of episodes, Nancy has been very adamant that ghosts are not real and that there has to be a rational explanation for all the ghostly activity, which is how she's always been in the books, but in this episode we learn why she has always refused to believe in ghosts. We see Nancy at her mother's grave, talking to her mom about how she's starting to actually believe in ghosts, and how she never believed before because she always thought that if they were real..then her mother would come visit her. Now that she's becoming a believer, she doesn't understand why her mom hasn't come to see her, and wonders out loud if she's not enough for her mom to stay with her after he passing. This was honestly really heartbreaking, and gave us a glimpse into why Nancy thinks the way she does.
Many fans have been very angry over the relationship between Nancy and Carson, not understanding why they have such a bad relationship in this show when they had such a good one in the books. But many of us fans have been trying to tell them since the beginning that they're both hurting because of the recent passing of Kate Drew, and the distance between them makes sense. We've never seen her die so recently before, so we've never seen how this effects their relationship. But we're finally starting to see their relationship back on track, and in this episode we Nancy finally explains why she's been so bitter towards her father. Being at Tiffany's funeral is very hard on Nancy, because she knows that her mom is buried that as well, after trying to avoid it for a while, she finally decides to go visit her mom's grave (after a little bit of a pep talk from Karen, which was actually really nice). When Nancy gets to the gravesite, she finds her dad there, with 2 bouquets of flowers, one for him and one for her. He said that it's a sort of ritual he's been doing, and Nancy gives him a little bit of sass and then starts to leave, but Carson stops her by blurting out that he can't keep going on with this tension between them. This is what finally makes Nancy feel like she can open up to him about why she's been so hostile towards him. She tells him how never got to say goodbye to her mom the day she died, and blames her father for it because he let her believe everything was okay by not telling her what was going on, while she was out with her friends at a school dance having the time of her life. This makes SO much sense why Nancy would be so upset with her father, she never even got to see her mother one last time before she died. But now that she explained all of that to Carson, and he explained why he did it (trying to honor the wishes of his wife), I think we will finally get to see the two of them have the relationship we all love from the books. We also already see this happening when Carson announces to the people at the funeral that he doesn't necessarily believe the autopsy, which says that Tiffany's death was from natural causes. This showed Nancy that he really does value her opinions and trusts her gut. At least that's what I got from it.
Lets move on to what we finally learned about Bess Marvin...or should I say...Bess Turani. We finally learn why Bess is in Horseshoe Bay, living in a van rather than with her aunt in a mansion like she's told everyone. At first when Nancy found out that Bess isn't a Marvin...I was honestly kind of mad, how could the people behind the show make it so Bess Marvin doesn't even exist? But then when Bess tells Nancy that she thinks she is a Marvin, and is here to find out...I feel a little better about it. Also very interesting that they actually made her from England, just like the actress who plays her. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with this storyline. I also liked that this episode was very much a Bess episode (with a little bit of Ace mixed in), it seems like each episode kind of focuses on one character along with Nancy, which is a cool way to introduce each of them, and hopefully soon we'll get to see all of them truly bond together.
We also go to learn more about Ace in this episode. My theory that he got in trouble with the law in some way, and is now "spying" for Chief McGinnis instead of being put in jail, seems to be the case! Chief McGinnis kind of threatened Ace that if he doesn't do what he asks, he'll press charges against him for a previous crime that Ace committed. I'm very intrigued to find out exactly what he did and how this deal with the Chief came to be. I'm wondering if Ace's dad was a police officer, because Chief McGinnis said that he was going to go easy on Ace because of his father's sacrifice. So maybe Ace's dad was the Chief's partner back in the day, and he died on duty? And there was a brief mention that Ace used to be a hacker...interesting. Also...Ace has a romantic lead to Tiffany's sister, Laura...what the heck? This seemed kind of weird to me, and I have a feeling she's using him now in some way because she wants help to find out who killed her sister. She clearly got the 911 call that Tiffany made right before her death, directly from Ace. She knew he would get it for her because of his feelings towards her. I really thinks she's just taking advantage of him..but we'll see
Also It was interesting that Laura searched Ned's place, and then left with a flashdrive. This may have just been something I missed, but what's on that flashdrive? And how did Laura know that Ned had that flash drive and where to find it? He seems to be just as confused. I'm also kind of sad that we didn't get much Ned content in this episode (he's starting to grow on me), but it's understandable since the last episode was pretty much a Ned episode.
I also really liked that George apologized to Tiffany, saying that she should have been on her side all along, and that she never should have had sympathy for Ryan, since he's obviously a scum bag. This really showed that she knows she made a big mistake, and that she isn't really the type of person to sleep with another woman's husband. Everyone makes mistakes.
Okay now on to all the ghostly things. Like I said before, it looks like we have 2 ghosts now, Lucy and Tiffany. Tiffany is a violent one, the way she attacked Bess in the freezer was crazy! And then at the end when Tiffany knocked George down and then we see George scream Tiffany's last words...in Tiffany's voice. That was scary. We only saw Dead Lucy once, and that was when Nancy was on her laptop watching the video of Tiffany before her death. The video got all wonky and then suddenly we saw Dead Lucy's face on the screen, and then it cracked! Nancy noticed that the shape of the crack looked very familiar, and that it was weirdly the same exact crack that the TV and microwave had...and then she had a hunch. She pulls up a map of Horseshoe Bay and it matched up with the crack! And the base of the crack was none other than her old high school, she didn't find anything much there, other than the fact that Karen lied to her earlier when she said that she and Lucy ran in different circles when they were in high school together, because Nancy finds a picture of the two of them together. This leads me to talk about...
The nods to the books in this episode! The name of Nancy's old school is Keene High School! I thought that was super cool!! Incase you're confused, Keene is a nod to Carolyn Keene, which is the pseudonym that all the writers for the various Nancy Drew books used! Another nod to the books was Laura Tandy. Not Laura specifically...but her last name. Russell H. Tandy was the illustrator for the first 26 Nancy Drew (besides #11) from 1930 to 1949 (the original text books, not for the yellow books that most of you probably know). I loved that they did this, it really shows that they have done their research! As far as I know, those were the only blatant nods to the books in this episode, if I missed any, please let me know!!
This show just keeps getting better in my opinion, and I can't wait to see what happens next!! The next episode is entitled, "The Case of the Wayward Spirit", and apparently George is possessed by the ghost of Tiffany in this episode...which I'm not very fond of. But who knows, hopefully the episode will have a good enough mystery that I will be able to look beyond that! What were your thoughts on this last episode? Let me know!
I thought of that too, but chalked it up to grief. As though Nancy wasn’t being rational because of her grief, and could only think in selfish terms... “why didn’t my mother want to visit me...” as if she’d feel better with her legs clawed to shreds by her own mother’s ghost. I really think she’ll realize exactly your point before much longer.
i believe if nancy had listened to george's mother more closely she would realize the ghosts were just there because they were murdered and her mother had passed on in peace