The Flickering Torch Mystery

It has been a long time since I saw this episode. I did not remember much of it so it was as new to me. It is totally sad to be reminded that Rick went down in a plane on fire, similar to the plot of this show. Getting past that, I will go on....

I don't agree at all that Rick's acting was so poor. He was a quiet man with a shy type personality. He was well-known for his acting in movies like Rio Bravo with John Wayne and Dean Martin, and The Wackiest Ship in the Army with Jack Lemmon. Of course, we gotta remember him on his parents' show the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, plus a few other movies and tv specials. Most of us remember him as a "rocker". Yes, some of his music of that time was on the new country side. Billboard's side trade magazine, Amusement Business, commented in the '80 that Rick's music may have been the best on the road.

As for the plot, I didn't understand why the Hardy boys didn't try to jump the intruder. Sure, it would have been risky, but they needed to catch the culprit. They almost lost their lives in the fire. The show was good enough to keep my attention to solve the mystery of the missing man and the connection with the plot to kill Tony Eagle (played by Rick Nelson).

Frank and Joe are looking into the disappearance of a sound engineer who just happens to do work for one of their favorite rock singers, Tony Eagle. What the boys uncover, they think, is a plot to kill Tony. The boy's father, Fenton Hardy, is handling security for Tony's concert and the boys are convinced that someone has planted a bomb at the show. Is there a bomb at the show? Is someone really trying to kill Tony? Where is the missing sound engineer and how is his disappearance tied to alleged plan to kill Tony?

I was (and still am) a fan of The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries. However, some episodes are better than others. The Flickering Torch is not among my favorites. I have a few issues, but my main grip is with the casting of Rick (or Ricky) Nelson as "rock star" Tony Eagle. It's ridiculous. In the episode, we are treated to concert footage of Nelson singing, amongst other songs, his hit Garden Party from 1972. I doubt you'd have called this mellow bit of music "rock" in 1972 and you surely wouldn't have in 1977. It's more folksy / country than anything else. The over-the-top crowd reaction shots do not mesh with the song or with what Nelson is doing on stage. It all ends up being funny, which I'm sure was not the intention. And then there's Rick's (or Ricky's) acting. Lousy doesn't begin to describe the performance. I've seen oak trees that are less wooden. I have other problems (the ineptitude of the local police, Joe and Frank acting on gut instinct instead of any real clues garnered from detective work, Fenton and the boys doing concert security, etc.), but Rick (or Ricky) is my chief complaint. Still, I've rated The Flickering Torch a 5/10. On my rating scale, that means it's pretty average - not horrible, but not great either.

Finally, what's with the name The Flickering Torch? I know what it meant in the Hardy Boys books, but I'm not sure how it fits in here. Did I miss something? It seems like an arbitrary name for the episode.

The name of this series is "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977–1979)". The odd number episodes in a series are with the Hardy Boys and the even number episodes are Nancy Drew episodes.

I found this episode "The Flickering Torch Mystery" unusual. Ricky Nelson the singer was in this. He was handsome and very young. I guess as he got older he used Rick instead of Ricky.

The story is about him as a singer that travels with his group around the world performing at concerts.

This episode starts off with the Hardy Boys flying their airplane and coming across another airplane in the sky whose controls do not work. They guide the pilot down to a safe landing.

In the course of the story it is found that someone is trying to kill Nelson and the Hardy Boys think it is going to be on stage. They later find out it is on the airplane he will be piloting to another concert for him to perform.

The ironic thing about this is that Ricky Nelson and some of his band members were on a plane that crashed in 1985. Him and a number of his people were killed.