Will The Real Santa Claus...

Goofy, goofy, goofy. It's not unusual for shows to revamp certain elements and re-cast actors in the same part. Season 2 of Nancy Drew recast half of the regular cast but, in this goofy Christmas episode, they re-introduced the character of Ned as if he had never appeared on the show before. Ned, who shared many of Nancy's previous adventures, shows up (now played by Rick Springfield) and is introduced to Nancy for the first time. Weird. Even odder, the usually great Rick Springfield is somewhat awful in the part. His version of Ned is uptight and bossy (in an effort to have, you know, sparks with Nancy). Springfield is playing against type and it sucks.

As for the storyline: you could not get a more perfect episode for Christmas time (even if the execution is somewhat shoddy). Somebody is dressing as Santa Claus and breaking into people's house to steal stuff. In the midst of this, a travelling hobo gets wrongfully arrested for the crimes. He looks a little like Santa, and he even claims to be the real Santa. Nancy, who has faced the real thief, knows that this guy is innocent and convinces her father to defend him while she tracks the real culprit. And, at the very end, we learn that the guy is actually... - wait for it - the real Santa Clause. Unfortunately, the editing and dubbing for a lot of the scenes is awful. It seems that not enough material was shot and the editor had to make do with what he got. Nancy's Dad and Ned swap sides with reckless abandon in one scene and most of the scenes of the bad guys from early in the episode seem to be from a completely different programme. Very distracting. But, despite it's many, many flaws this is a rather sweet episode of Nancy Drew with Pamela Sue Martin being as delightful as ever in the part.

Thanks to a faulty DVD (grrrrr!) I missed the middle 8 minutes of this episode. And, boy, did it ever put me a bad mood for the rest of the evening!!!

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