Nancy Doesn't Need No Man

Photo credit: The Puzzle Warehouse

Did anyone else grow up on a steady diet of teen sleuth novels?  I owned and read the entire blue-covered series printed in the 1960s (I later sold them for pennies at a garage sale). I loved the series created in the late '80s and early '90s—which makes sense because I was the target audience. I read many of the books printed in the 2000s with my daughter. I'm an unofficial fan, but always wanted something darker and more twisted from good old Nancy.

 I couldn’t put my finger on it, but Nancy was too perfect and prim in a way that I recognized even as a ten-year-old. She was one dimensional and annoying. She needed a gritty character flaw. Maybe Nancy should deal drugs to earn some spending money? Get a face tattoo? Steal a car or light some fires?

 For those of you adult Nancy fans that also wish she had more of an edge, this series on The CW is for you.

Nancy and the gang have been soaked in a vat of teen angst, CW style, and that means some TV-14 nudity. The first episode opens with Nancy having sex with Ned Nickerson in his garage…so aggressively that the banging rattles items off a nearby shelf.

 For me, all it took to round Nancy out as a believable character was to see her in black lingerie. The CW Nancy has sexual needs, but she is also still an independent, resourceful, and inquisitive detective.

 However, for my daughter, something was still missing. During the sex scenes, she shook her head and said sadly, “Nancy doesn’t need no man.” And so, the next generation of Nancy Drew fans live on, not quite able to put their thumb on the character flaws of Nancy Drew