Post your thoughts, comments and reviews of The Hardy Boys (1990s) episode "The Last Laugh" here.
A couple of things to note with this episode- for one, it shares its title with #42 in The Hardy Boys Casefiles, but has nothing to do with the book.
Also, this is the first (and only) appearance of Fenton Hardy in the series. Next, Frank and Joe also travel out of the country to France in this episode. As far as I know, this is their first trip out of the USA in the series. And then too, this episode is the first and only two part episode in the series (Okay- that's sort of a stretch. I don't know that the events of this episode and the next are really related so much- maybe it's more accurate to say the next episode is sort of an epilogue or sequel, as Frank, Joe and Nancy all have another adventure in France together.) And finally, as hinted in that last parantheses, Nancy Drew makes a guest star crossover appearance from her concurrent Nancy Drew series!
So there were a lot of cool things going on with this episode. Perhaps the show's producers were trying to really boost the ratings towards the end of the 1st. Season in hopes of generating a 2nd. Sadly, that never happened. But thankfully, it did give us the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew crossover that just had to happen with these two series running concurrently then.
I also noted that this episode reminded me in some ways of "The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom" 2-parter episode of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries series from the 1970s. (Not so much in the plot of the mystery exactly- but just with the similar meetups of Frank, Joe and Nancy for a mystery solvers convention vs. criminology symposium. And the fact that Fenton Hardy was on hand to help bring both together in both episodes. In fact, in the '90s episode, Nancy Drew was supposed to meet with Fenton Hardy before the symposium and that's what initially led to her meeting the Hardy Boys, who didn't know where their father was- and they had to work together to find him. This is also similar to "The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula" 2-parter episode of the '70s series, where Nancy Drew first met The Hardy Boys in a similar manner- Nancy was supposed to meet with Fenton Hardy and came to look for him only to run into Frank and Joe and find that none of them knew where Fenton was- and then they worked together to find him.)
We've seen the '90s series pay tribute to the '70s series previously (in the "Jazzman" episode, a Shaun Cassidy album is clearly seen in Fenton Hardy's LP collection)- perhaps this episode was meant as another homage to the series.
I would say it was really well done in that regard and both these last two episodes of the '90s series with the Nancy Drew crossover are some of my favorites of the '90s Hardy Boys series. :)
A great ep. Too bad, because the show really started to hit its peak in terms of balancing the writing and the time frame, etc.
Yeah, that balancing act could only (hopefully) improve in time. A shame it wasn't given a chance to go further than it did.
I really loved that line by Frank when he asks if the shirt Fenton's wearing is really Laura's, and then Fenton's look.
lol! ;D