'The Hardy Boys': Who hired JB Cox? Here's why Joe and Frank should be careful around the friendly thief
Spoilers for 'The Hardy Boys'
Joe and Frank Hardy's trip to their parents' hometown of Bridgeport kicks off with more trouble than the existing trauma in the wake of their mother's fatal accident. The titular Hardy Brothers are taken to the quaint town by their father, detective Fenton Hardy, who has been tipped that his wife's death was most likely a murder. They are put in their aunt Trudy's care as Fenton takes off to follow leads to his wife, Laura's death, but back home, the Hardy brothers don't just sit around quietly. Especially the younger one, Joe, encounters a fugitive called JB Cox, who even though friendly and the right kind of goofy, turns out to be hired by the master game planner of all that's going down.
We meet JB for the first time in a flashback where he isn't identified yet. Under a disguise, he pretends to have an asthma attack in a plane during heavy turbulence and swaps his bag with the passenger seated next to him before escaping through the lavatory's pressure vents with a parachute. We meet him again when he is harbored seeking refuge along the Bridgeport beach and is paying Biff Hooper, Joe's friend and local cop Jesse Hooper's daughter to sneak him food and newspapers from town. Joe finds out when he follows Biff one day and is immediately put to task along with her by the fugitive who keeps sending parcels and ancient artifacts through them.
JB himself doesn't know who hired him, so when the chief of police grabs one of his parcels in the drop off location, he decides to go on the run again and breaks into Joe's pace to hide the item, the Eye, he had stolen from the plane passenger's bag. Thus begins the ever twisted story of Joe and frank trying their hardest to figure what this sinister powerful Eye is all about, all the while investigating into their mother's death to find out the connection between the two. But to find out who killed their mother, they need to know who hired JB and that doesn't happen until much, much later in the episode when JB spots the Hardy boys' grandmother Gloria in the town newspaper along with a butler type man who had come to threaten JB about the job on multiple occasions.
When he connects the dots that Gloria had hired him to steal the Eye back from the tall man, who had stolen it off of Gloria's ship in the first place under Anastasia Nabokov's orders, JB sort of kidnaps Joe. Maybe it was out of desperation to get paid or because he feared for his life, but despite saving their a**es on several occasions and offering them valuable information in exchange for the help Joe and Biff lent him, JB proves to be dangerous for the young boys. He keeps breaking into their house, running off at his whim, returning unannounced whenever he wants. Its obvious JB is selfish, and even though he has some fondness for Joe and subsequently his brother Frank too, he cannot look beyond his own selfish thrill enough to not be a threat to the boys.
'The Hardy Brothers' premiered with all 13 episodes on Friday, December 4, on Hulu.