Happy early Valentine's Day to everyone! One of the major criticisms a lot of people had of Velma was that the romantic drama was not handled well. Given that and the fact that it's nearly Valentine's Day, I thought it might be interesting to do a poll about what people's favorite romantic pairing was in the franchise. I know many people feel romance has a history of being done very poorly in the franchise, so I'll be very interested to see what wins here!

To keep the poll at a manageable amount of options, I did not include implied romantic pairings or the gang briefly having a crush on someone outside the gang (i.e. Scooby and the sled dog in "A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright"). Thankfully, that will also save us from having to acknowledge the awkwardness that is Scooby-Doo's crush on Scooby-Dee in "The Chiller Diller Movie Thriller" lol.

Our results for the Best Haunted House Winner's Circle poll are in, and here's what you guys voted! Surprisingly, "Night Terrors" came in last with just 10 votes, and "Bravo Dooby Doo" was just ahead in second place with 16 votes. As expected, "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" was our winner for best haunted house episode, amassing a total of 43 votes!

On Twitter, one of the writers for Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Pups, Roger Eschbacher, has posted a piece of news on the series. Roger shared that the writing for the full show is about finished. He also mentions that the writing process for the show took about a year to complete Presumably, this means the series will probably only be a season or two. Here's Roger's full tweet:

The writing on "Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups" is winding down, and I'm looking for a new gig. This is how it works for actors and freelance writers. No complaints--super fun show, awesome colleagues, almost a full year of work. This is the way. So...who's hiring?

It’s hard to believe these are the final episodes! In addition to reviewing both of the final episodes, I will also give an overview of my thoughts of the series in general at the end of this post.

I didn’t really like episode 9 all that much. I felt the humor got a bit worse again with this episode, and it felt like there were more jokes per minute. The jokes also seemed even more try-hard than the last few did, especially stuff like the “steal her style” thing spotlighting the brains, where the host cut her head off with a saw to try to match the brains’ style. There also felt like there were more “Twitter one-liner” type jokes, such as the “there’s lots of opportunities these days for fugly babies. She could be a meme!” I have never found the jokes that feel like one-liners you’d post on Twitter to be funny in this show, so the fact that there were so many of them here made this episode quite dislikable. However, I’ve gotten used to the fact that the humor in this show is overall pretty crappy, so the humor wasn’t the major problem for me.

I felt this episode brought Velma to a new low, which is definitely saying something since she is already an awful character. Literally the entire episode is her lying to her family and friends to get what she wants, and treating those around her like garbage. The episode centers around Diya having 72 hours to remember who the killer is, or she will lose her memory forever. Diya returns home to see Aman having an affair with Sophie, and sees their baby. This makes Diya furious.  Instead of telling the truth, Velma covers for her dad by lying and saying Aman and Sophie’s baby is hers, and that Norville got her pregnant. I suppose if you were very generous, you could look at this as a positive because she’s protecting her dad. However, Velma continues lying to her mother throughout the entire episode about everything that happened when she was kidnapped. She forces Norville to make her a fake report card, so that her mom won’t see that her grades slipped, and then yells at him because he didn’t do it fast enough for her liking. She also demands Norville follow her charade of pretending that he is the baby’s father. She also accuses Shaggy’s father of being the serial killer because she finds a welder’s mask in his office, and calls in a SWAT Team of tanks to destroy Norville’s house before having any evidence whatsoever that he was the killer. At one point, Sophie was trying to build a crib for the baby, only for Velma to storm in the room and shout “you’re taking too long,” as she smashes the crib with a hammer. Worst of all, Velma drops the baby twice, and sends the baby rolling down a busy street in heavy traffic, causing several car crashes. As she sends the baby rolling down the street, Velma also admits to attempting to sell the baby on the dark web, so she didn’t have to take care of her. Sorry to be so negative here, but I thought this episode took Velma being a garbage human being to a whole new level. This whole episode was one instance after another of her treating her friends and family like trash, and doing several things that could have easily killed the baby.

In addition to Velma being terrible, I also found Aman to be equally as awful. It is horrible that rather than admitting he had an affair while his wife was kidnapped, he would allow his wife to think that their daughter had a baby. Moreover, at one point, Aman says to Velma “your mom already had one unwanted baby!”, meaning that he is telling Velma she was an accident and they didn’t actually want to have her. That is an absolutely horrible thing to tell your child, so while I know the show was going for a shock value joke there, it made me really hate Aman as a character for being such a jerk to his daughter. While Diya wasn’t a horrible character, the interactions between Velma and Diya also feel stilted IMO, which also contributed to my dislike of the episode.

I don’t feel there’s too much to discuss with Norville outside of what I already did, since he and Velma’s plots are quite intertwined in this episode. He still remains to be the only main character who isn’t a complete jerk. You could argue him speeding away in his car when Velma said he was the father to be mean, but honestly, I don’t blame Norville. Velma was putting him in an extremely toxic situation, so it makes sense he wouldn’t want to be involved. That being said, I completely agreed with Norville’s decision to dump Velma as a friend, and honestly it’s about time he did after all the crappy stuff she’s done to him. It’s pretty sad when you’re actually happy that the main character loses a friend.

Daphne and Fred’s plot is a little odd this time. The disembodied brains of the killers’ victims return to school in their jars, and remain popular. They oust Daphne and Fred from being popular, so the two of them devise a plan to pretend to go out with each other. As per usual with this series, Daphne and Fred were very manipulative, and basically are using each other to get what they want. The realness of Daphne and Fred’s relationship is challenged by the brains at the dance, and they are dared to kiss, and they do. Velma then barges in and gets mad when she sees them kissing, because Daphne and Velma had kinda implied that they were girlfriends, but it’s never officially confirmed in the show. The relationship drama continues to be done in a cringey and unlikeable way IMO. It almost feels like the writers are trolling the audience, because we see all this hopeless pining and teasing of romantic pairings, but then they don’t actually contribute to the plot in any meaningful way. We also see Daphne being offered an internship with Fred’s mother at Jones Gentleman’s Accessories.

I thought Fred practicing getting swirlied by drowning his own head in the toilet was perhaps one of the oddest jokes of the series. Probably the one joke of this episode that I found to be funny was Daphne saying she couldn’t sit out in the sun, as she points to a guy who burst into flames from being out in the sun too long. It was so random that it caught me off-guard a bit. 

Moving on to the finale, I also was not really a fan of the ending. I’ve been trying to keep the reviews mostly non-spoiler, but I can’t really review the finale without spoilers since the whole episode was about wrapping up the overarching plot. If you’ve been reading these reviews without having watched the episodes, I’d recommend you skip to the *end spoilers* tag unless you don’t care if the ending is spoiled.

*spoilers*
True to this show’s form, I thought too much of the ending was based on cringey social commentaries, which have almost never landed for the entire series. We start the episode off with Velma’s mom being arrested for being the serial killer. I did find the bit funny where one of the options on the female guilt admission form was “you know how we get!” Velma’s mom reveals that she wanted to put a popular girl’s brain inside Velma. I was desperately hoping that they weren’t going to make that the culprit’s rationale, and thankfully, the show did come through where it came up with an ending that was at least somewhat clever. It turns out that Velma’s mother was hypnotized by the real killer, as was Velma when she was younger. Velma tries to get herself arrested by having Fred (a white man) say that she’s bothering him, and is successful. I thought that social commentary was extremely cringey. I’ll talked about it a bit at the beginning of this review, but one of the biggest things I dislike about this series is that they use social commentaries to advance the plot. Almost none of the social commentaries are ever funny, so it has felt increasingly cringey that the show continues to do that. Velma is able to talk to her mom, but the sheriff takes her away to be put on death row before she’s able to finish the conversation. Velma does some piecing together of the mystery, and finds some more clues in her room and at school. Once again, I was not a fan of the whole “the answers have been right in front of me all along!” thing. It would work if it was done sparingly, but it feels like this show has regularly prioritized the crappy humor over developing the plot in an interesting and engaging way. Nearly every single clue has been way too easy for Velma to find in this show, where it’s either right in front of her all along, or she looks up the answer in two seconds online. Part of what makes a mystery engaging is the difficulty and adventure in finding clues, so the fact that Velma keeps finding all the clues she needs in three seconds is incredibly lazy on the writers’ part. I did like how the writers seem to reference their own corner-cutting during the shower scene when one of the girls says “Where did Velma’s phone come from? We’re all naked! On the other hand though, the meta joke right before it where one of the girls says “don’t you hate when shows have characters that don’t talk much?” was painfully unfunny. I don’t understand why the writers are obsessed with these meta TV writing jokes, because over the series’ entire 10 episode run, zero of those jokes have been even the slightest bit funny.

Meanwhile, we find out that Norville hates Velma so much he transferred schools. While we don’t see a ton of Norville at the beginning, we get quite possibly one of the most cringey scenes in the entire franchise. Velma finally listens to all of Shaggy’s voicemails which she has ignored for two years. As she listens to these voicemails, she begins to tear up and fall in love with him, while the song “I Will Remember You” by Sarah MacLachlan plays in the background. The show tries to present it as a sweet moment, when it’s not; in fact, it was nearly intolerable to watch. Velma has been the most shitty friend ever for this entire show, so her finally appreciating him is literally doing the bare minimum that any good friend would have already been doing. She is not a “cool boss ass bitch” as she calls herself at one point in the episode; she is behaving like a jerk with zero empathy. Moreover, since she’s been treating him like garbage this entire show, it makes no sense for her to go from that to suddenly being in love with him. Perhaps this would have been a little sweet in another show, but Velma has behaved like such an unbearable jerk to him over the course of the entire show, that her finally realizing how she’s in love with him is almost unbearable to watch. What’s even worse is that she doesn’t even learn her lesson about appreciating her friends, because five minutes later, she interrupts Fred and Daphne when they’re trying to explain the villain’s motive and yells “stop talking before I think less of you!” At the end of the episode, Velma watches a movie with her mom, as she locks her dad and Sophie out of the house in the cold, proving that she’s just as crappy of a person as she ever was. We also get to see the disgusting scene where Norville is vomiting and there’s blood spraying everywhere, while Velma twerks over a crushed dead body. Honestly, I am not really shocked or offended by this, I’ve gotten to the point where I just think it’s dumb how hard this show is trying to convince us of its edginess. We also see Velma become a detective for the police department at the end of this episode, which wasn’t all that clever, and sadly they end the show where the sheriff makes a sexist comment about women being better than men. The ending where Edna’s ghost is real honestly wasn’t done all that great either; it just felt cliche tbh. That type of ending has been done better in so many other shows and movies, and it wasn’t at all clever or intriguing.

Fred raging out was honestly weird to see. I absolutely hated the origin story for the Mystery Machine, which is that Fred is driving around a “trashy pedo van” with the company’s logo (the classic Mystery Machine orange flower) on it to trick teens, because it’s what all the fashion companies are doing. Again, I have gotten to a point where this show where I don’t find offense in any of the shock humor here; it’s honestly just stupid to see how hard this show is trying to force its edginess. The joke about Fred liking the bats pulling at his crotch was similarly stupid. Fred’s ending being a “spooky stuff hunter” wasn’t done well; it just kinda came out of nowhere and didn’t fit with anything.

The story with Daphne’s internship and Fred’s mom being the culprit was at least somewhat creative, I’ll give the show that, because I was thinking it was going to be Velma’s mom. Once they revealed it wasn’t Velma’s mom that was the culprit, it became kinda obvious that Fred’s mother was the culprit. Her motivation for doing it being to switch Fred’s brain with a more creative mind was at least somewhat interesting, but they kind of ruined the surprise by faking the audience out first with Velma’s mom saying she wanted to switch Velma’s brain with a more popular girl. I felt the Daphne and Velma drama where Velma says “Norville” when she’s kissing Daphne was also cringey. None of the romantic stuff in this show makes any logical sense; it feels like the writers are just forcing stuff to happen so they can advance their cringey love rectangle plot. Speaking of Norville, it was surprising to see him kill Fred’s mother. I admittedly did not see that coming! I strongly disliked Shaggy’s ending where he’s clearly experiencing trauma and his dad tells him to try some marijuana to calm down. This show seems fixated on two-dimensional stereotype characters though, so I can’t say it surprises me that they would end his character arc by drawing upon the stereotype that he smokes weed.

*end spoilers*

Moving into my overall thoughts on the series, it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following these reviews that the show was not so good lol. As I’ve processed these episodes each week, I feel the forefront of my concerns is the characterization. Velma is just an insufferable jerk throughout the whole series, and she only gets worse as the series progresses. At her best, she’s selfish and judgmental, and at her worst she’s emotionally abusive to her friends and family. I did warm up a tiny bit to Fred as the series went on, but it was more in the sense of finding certain bits so stupid that they were funny to me, rather than liking his character. Daphne was also similarly unlikeable in the sense of being mean and self-centered. The only character who I found likable was Norville, but he wasn’t really all that funny. Velma, Daphne and Fred’s terrible personalities aside, the character development is honestly just bad. We go from moments where the characters are awful to each other, like Velma and Daphne beating each other up in episode 3, or Velma and Daphne trying to kill each other in episode 8 and then minutes later saying they’re girlfriends; to moments like Velma suddenly realizing her feelings for Norville with zero context as from how we got to point A to point B. Speaking of which, I didn’t mention it before, but Velma and Shaggy are now randomly in love with each other and now going out at the end of this episode. This would be cringey enough on its own due to the lack of explanation and development, but we also get no resolution to Daphne being in love with Velma, and Shaggy’s girlfriend Gigi literally doesn’t even show up in these two episodes, yet Shaggy is apparently with Velma now. The characterization is off-the-charts level of poor in this show, where characters will just do nonsensical stuff that completely contradicts what we’ve previously been shown, for no reason at all.

My second main criticism of the show is the overall writing. Similarly to what I just talked about with the characters, plotlines will be dropped inexplicably and then randomly picked up again. The writers seem to be weirdly fixated on making certain ideas happen, even if they don’t fit with the plot, which causes them to squander plotlines that would have been interesting to dive deeper into. A great example of this is “Fog Fest,” where the show sets it up really nicely to focus on the serial killer, but the killer only shows up in the last four minutes, and we instead get a cringey social commentary about Velma experiencing male privilege. The pacing of the show is also so far off. We’ll get full episodes that are sitcom-like social commentaries, and then they’ll cram major plots into an episode or two, like Daphne’s birth parents. The writing is jumpy, inconsistent, and at times, even seems to troll the audience.

I feel many of the show’s problems can be attributed to the over-focus on and try-hardness of the humor. I’ve said it all along, but the show is so determined to be “edgy” that they sacrifice what could have been an interesting mystery for the sake of making more jokes that weren’t even funny in the first place. Moreover, even if the humor wasn’t affecting the development of the plot, it still wouldn’t be all that funny most of the time. I did not find any of the social commentaries particularly funny. A big part of it is something I saw in another review that I thought was phrased really well; that the writers are obsessed with social identity. The writing presents social identities as a universal concept, i.e. “all police hate women and black people” and “all white men are stupid and uneducated,” when it’s simply not that two-dimensional. Yes, police brutality is a very real thing and there are plenty of racists out there, but this show boils down characters’ entire identities to these weird, overly simplistic views of social identity, and then they become obsessed with making dozens of jokes about it per episode. As a result, it makes the social commentaries unfunny, and they come across like one-liners people would post on Twitter.

I did like the mystery and found some of that development interesting, but I wish it would have felt like such an afterthought. It did feel like the show had at least a little bit of potential in terms of the mystery, but the easy-to-find clues and the humor kinda overshadowed it for me. Episode 3 and 4 remain least favorites for me; the intense focus on the comedy was over-the-top and almost unbearable to get through. I will say though that episode 5 and 6 were my favorites of these episodes, because it didn’t feel like they were trying quite as hard with the humor. I laughed at several of the jokes in that episode, moreso than any other episodes, because the overall plot was finally getting the focus it deserved, and the humor was toned back a bit. It’s too bad the toned-down humor didn’t last though, as I felt like they dialed it right back up for the last couple episodes. Either way, it at least shows that the show did have some potential, but it needed to have more of a balance between the mystery and the humor, and the humor needed to be far less cringey than it was.

It’s been a wild ride, and it’s hard to believe we’ve seen all 10 episodes after 2 years of anticipating this (actually, it will be 2 years to the day tomorrow, since we got the announcement on February 10, 2021). I would be surprised if we get a second season to this. Since it’s been so critically torn apart, and somehow it seems to have united both sides of the political spectrum in hatred against the show, it seems like this would be the end of the show. However, the EIDR database lists a record of Velma season 2 being "in development," but when you click on the listing, it says "deleted," so who knows.  In my opinion, this was a misfire for WB, but I’m glad I sat through it and gave it a chance, even though it was pretty bad. Overall, while there was some potential with the mystery, the show’s intense prerogative to position itself as “edgy” and “adult” ultimately worked to its detriment, both in terms of the most people’s reaction, and the fact that the writing was rushed as a result of overfocus on edgy comedy. I will be very interested to see how this affects us getting mature Scooby stuff in the future, or if it causes WB-Discovery to lean more towards super safe content due to the intense backlash this got.

I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts in the comments, and here are my final rankings of the show:

Rankings:
1. The Sins of the Fathers and Some of the Mothers
2. Marching Band Sleepover
3. A Velma in the Woods
4. Fog Fest
5. The Brains of the Operation
6. The Candy Man
7. Velma
8. Family (Wo)man
9. Velma Makes a List
10. Velma Kai

There are so many incredible settings within Scooby-Doo! We've been doing a lot of settings polls on here recently, and I recently was thinking that it might be cool to come up with a list of my favorite settings of the entire franchise. I had never really thought deeply about what my favorite settings within Scooby-Doo are, so this was a really fun project to decide on my favoirtes. I've been doing a lot of favorite/least favorite lists lately, but for the settings, I'm not going to do a least favorite post. The reason for that being I don't really feel that I dislike any episodes based on setting alone (there's even that one Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode that takes place in a garbage dump that's pretty good lol). Usually, if I dislike an episode, it's because there are other elements that also were not so good, like the tone, the villain, the characterization, etc. 

Honorable Mention: The Secret of Shark Island
This is one of the best hotel settings of the entire franchise, although we actually will have another hotel episode appear later on this list. The tone of the episode and the vibe of the hotel is super spooky, and it makes it even more foreboding that the gang is quite literally trapped on this isolated island due to flooding.

10. Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders
Something about the setting of Roswell, New Mexico is just so peaceful to me. The gang exploring the small town feels very atmospheric and homely. The animation of this film is absolutely gorgeous and really brings you into the setting. I also love the scenes exploring Scorpion Ridge as Crystal and Amber are trying to take pictures. The fact that much of this movie takes place out in nature makes the film feel very Earthy and peaceful.

9. A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle
Like I mentioned in my favorite episodes post, I absolutely love how it feels like this episode is built around the setting by slowly taking us through the castle. This is easily my favorite castle setting in Scooby-Doo, which is a high bar because I tend to love nearly all the episodes with castle settings in general. The basement with the hidden passages and rooms that could cave in at any moment add an extra layer of creepiness to an already amazing castle.

8. The Spooky Case of the Grand Prix Race
I don't usually particularly love racing settings, but this episode does the best job out of any episode making a very normal setting seem creepy. The race happening on a dark, foggy night creates a very unsettling tone, and the fact that the fog serves to allow the Phantom Racer to capture people without anyone seeing him makes it even more terrifying. Season 2 of The Scooby-Doo Show certainly had some dark episodes, and this is one of the two darkest settings of that season.

7. The Loch Ness Mess
This feels like such a classic Scooby-Doo haunted house to me. Everything about this setting screams "Scooby-Doo." Uncle Nat's old house is super creepy, and while the lake isn't as creepy, I do feel that those scenes are quite atmospheric. As I believe I've mentioned before, the scene where the ghost with the lantern disappears into the night is one of the most memorable scenes of the franchise for me. While this is far from the darkest or most atmospheric episode out there, the reason this ranks so high to me is because the setting feels like it captures the essence of Scooby so well. It won't quite make this list, but shout out to "Wedding Bell Boos" for also capturing this New England atmosphere really well.

6. Night Terrors
I was just talking about this with a few people in the comments for our poll this week, but I feel like "Night Terrors" is one of the best haunted house settings in the entire franchise. This episode transcends the traditional haunted house setting in the sense it's kind of framed as both a library and an old creepy house on a hill. However, I feel the plot helps create a super creepy setting that make this one just as much of a classic as some of the other haunted house settings. Horrifying things randomly happening throughout the episode make this setting feel absolutely nightmarish. In addition, the fact that even the gang has no idea what's going on until the last few minutes of the episode really helps build one of the most suspenseful and surreal atmospheres in the entire franchise.

5. Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats
We have arrived at the other hotel episode and the other Scooby-Doo Show season 2 episode I mentioned earlier! This is one of the darkest episodes in the entire franchise in my opinion. The animators did an incredible job making the hotel backgrounds have a super spooky, dark feel to them. The whole plot of the gang wandering the halls of a dark hotel at night with a vampire on the loose is super creepy. Some of the scenes in particular, like the Lisa turning into a vampire scene, and the scene where the vampire calls Lisa from a dark room in the middle of the night, do a great job of constructing the creepy aesthetic in this episode. Speaking of dark episodes, shout out to "The Harum Scarum Sanitarium," which didn't quite make the cut for this list, but is another amazingly dark episode that really pulls you in with how foreboding the tone is.

4. Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers
​This is another one of those settings that just feels so authentically Scooby-ish. Uncle Beauregard's mansion has such a creepy atmosphere around it, and even the outside of the house when they're walking in the caves or woods feels super creepy. The old creaky floorboards and the fact that it's run down, as well as all the secret passages, really enhance the setting to me. This feels like one of the most classic Scooby-Doo haunted house settings out there, and that's a big feat given there are so many of them.

3. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
What else do I need to say? It's Zombie freaking Island lol. In seriousness though, the background animation in this film is easily better than any other film or movie out there, in my opinion. Mook Animation makes everything look very realistic and mature. The creepy setting of the island has a very unsettling feel to it, and of course, the setting is greatly enhanced by how dark the film is.

2. Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost
Although you could argue it's slow to start, I love how the audience is gradually introduced to the setting during the slower exposition at the beginning of the film. I absolutely love the peaceful, relaxing feel that the setting of Oakhaven has, and it feels like that extra time was very well spent creating an atmosphere and letting the audience really become immersed in exploring the setting with the gang.

1. Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner?
It will likely come as a surprise to people that this is above Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost lol. When coming up with my list, one of the first questions I asked myself to determine my all-time favorite setting was "which setting best captures the essence of Scooby-Doo?" While the settings Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost are immaculately done and arguably have the best animation of anything in the franchise, I feel like Captain Moody's house best captures the episode of a Scooby episode. Ever since seeing this episode for the first time when I was a kid, this feels like the most classic Scooby-Doo haunted house setting I can think of. It does the same thing as "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle" and Witch's Ghost where the episode's structure slowly leads you through the setting, which allows the audience to become more immersed in the setting. I love how creepy and dark the first quarter of the episode is, with the gang being lost and stumbling upon Captain Moody's house, then becoming trapped in the basement. The second quarter of the episode focuses mainly on the main floor, where we're introduced to Homer Pipsqueak and all his disguises, and the third quarter focuses on the top floor of the house where the bedrooms are. This episode is a perfect example of how to use a 43-minute runtime well, because it uses that runtime to gradually lead the audience through the house and slowly introduces you to the atmosphere. Some of my favorite episodes and films are the ones that give the plot space to build atmosphere, and this episode does it best in my opinion.

In making this list, I found that episodes that slowly but steadily build atmosphere were among my favorites. Moreover, I also tended to gravitate towards episodes that completely immerse you in the setting, and this was an especially prevalent feeling for me when being immersed in the setting led to the episode/film feeling darker. Lastly, episodes that can only be described as feeling "authentically Scooby-ish" also tended to make this list quite a bit. I feel like "Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner?" is the best example of this because it perfectly represents all three of these phenomena.

The Ghost of Dead Justice's bullets from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated's "Dead Justice" have a striking similarity to Bullet Bill from Super Mario.

Thanks to Shadowscooby for suggesting this fun fact!

We've been doing the best haunted house polls now for the past three weeks, and now, it's time to pit all the winning options against each other! Before we do that though, we need a dramatic reveal for the final winning option haha. The votes were quite spread out this time.

Quite a few episodes didn't do so well in the last poll. "Hollywood Knights!" got an abysmal zero votes, and "The Internet on Haunted House Hill!" didn't do much better, with only one vote. "Mystery of the Missing Mystery Solvers" was barely ahead of that with 2 votes, and "A Haunting in Crystal Cove" were just ahead of that with 4 votes.

There were several episodes that weren't close to winning, but did quite a bit better than the 1 and 2 vote episodes. We had a three-way tie for seventh place, between "House of the Nightmare Witch," "When There's a Will, There's a Wraith," and "The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall!", each getting five votes. "Nightfright" came in sixth place with 6 votes.

Our top five were the main contenders, and it was so close than any of them could have won had they gotten a few more votes. "Scoobynatural" came out fifth with seven votes. "A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!" was our fourth place choice with 8 votes. "High-Tech House of Horrors" came in third with 9 votes. "Escape from Mystery Manor" got 11 votes and came in second place. That means "Night Terrors" is our winner this week with 12 votes!

Now, it's time to pit all the winners against each other to find out which episode you all feel best executed the classic Scooby-Doo haunted house trope. It's "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" (which won our 60s/70s round) versus "Bravo Dooby Doo" (which won the 80s/90s round) versus "Night Terrors." I have a feeling "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" is going to come out way ahead as our winner, but it will be interesting to see how close it is in the end results!

My first note for episode 7 is “this clown appears to have hung himself.” I would say that’s a great metaphor for how WTF this episode was. Surprisingly, for once it was not WTF in the sense that there was over-the-top edgy humor or the characters doing shocking things; it was more in the sense that the writers made a lot of really odd decisions with the plot.

After the end of last episode, I would have expected this episode to be mainly centered around the killer, but it isn’t hardly at all. The killer shows up for a single scene that lasts only a few seconds up until the last four minutes of the episode. We had quite a few different developments happen in this episode, but many of them were very random.

Looking first at Velma, Velma is upset about the sheriff’s law that all women need to be accompanied by a man to the Fog Fest dance. We have a brief detour where Velma investigates what the word “Jinkies” means, which was written on her mom’s note that Velma found at the end of last episode. Velma quickly realizes that her mother’s script which she’d been using to kill spiders had all the answers, and even had the killer’s phone number written on it. Personally, from a creative standpoint, I found this to be very lazy. A consistent issue I’ve had with this show is that it often uses really lazy plot devices to advance the story rather than actually creating an engaging mystery. Velma then calls the killer at the number on the script, and they breathe heavily into the phone. I thought that scene was decently creepy, even if it wasn’t amazingly done.

The episode then switches a completely unrelated plot where Velma dresses up as a man to get around the sheriff’s law that women need a chaperone. For most of the rest of the episode, we get this weird social commentary plot where Velma realizes that the qualities she is chastised for as a woman are celebrated by people when she is dressed up as a man. We also are shown some weird cutaways in which Velma experiences male privilege, such as handing her potential employer a resumé that just reads “I’m awesome” written sloppily in marker, and the employer delightedly responds by handing her a huge sack of money with a sign reading “you’re hired!” I did want to find that funny, but with that particular joke, I feel like it’s been done a zillion times, and I’ve seen the same joke done so much better, so it wasn’t the groundbreaking, edgy joke that the writers expected it to be. I will admit I laughed at the cutaway where Velma exaggeratedly exclaims “oh yeah!” and puts her thumbs up after peeing in a urinal.

Before moving on to the other characters, I want to talk about the humor for a moment. Like last episode, the humor felt much more toned down and not as in-your-face as previous episodes have. There were certainly a few edgy jokes, like the “nut tap” one was weird, but it seems like the writers have realized that they don’t need to try so intensely hard to be edgy every second. I have to say, that’s a nice change and even if some of the humor is still cringey, I appreciate the fact that it’s no longer constant.

I’ll move onto Daphne next. Daphne’s plot was kind of weird this episode. She becomes depressed and begins binge drinking at the fog fest. Given what she went through with finding her parents, it’s kind of understandable…but it felt like the show made some leaps. She seems kinda content at the end of last episode, so how she went from that to suddenly becoming a heavy drinker is really confusing and feels like it needed some more development. While Daphne’s drunk, she runs into Velma (under her alternate persona “Manny” the man), and starts getting a crush on her. This creates a lot of drama as Velma realizes this is a chance to act on her crush for Daphne. Personally, I still don’t feel the drama is done well. It seems very random and is not developed at all. In general, this show seems to have a way of forgetting about certain aspects of the plot, and then randomly bringing them up again at a later point with no explanation as to why they ignored it for a few episodes. Also, for all the crappy social commentaries in this show, I have to admit I found Daphne’s remark “I’d punch you if men didn’t sexualize women fighting” to actually be a pretty good social commentary. It’s one of the very few in the show that worked IMO.

Moving on to Norville, Gigi and him broke up off-screen (illustrating my point perfectly about how this show is really random and nonsensical with plot threads). Noriville tries to win Gigi back by asking her to the Fog Fest, and instantly does. They end up going to the Fog Fest and Gigi gets mad at Norville again…but then instantly backtracks without Norville even saying anything, and says she loves him because he treats her well. In particular, that end scene where she’s mad and then instantly falls in love with him again is really odd. Sometimes it feels like the writers just have something in their mind that they want to happen, and then they’re like “we’re gonna make this happen no matter if it makes sense with the plot or not!” Honestly, just as a side note, I feel like that was something I didn’t really care for about this episode in general. The writers were so determined to make a social commentary about male privilege that they just randomly shoved it in here, and as a result, squandered an opportunity to make an episode that focused on the mystery and the killer, in a creepy setting like the Fog Fest no less.

Fred’s main plot line is that he wants to be the Fog Fest King, and is mad that Shaggy is appearing to be the front runner. They’ve completely dropped the plot where he’s learning about feminism for some inexplicable reason, which was strange. Without getting too political, there have been some theories that Velma is a right wing sysop. Honestly, Fred’s comment where he says “the serial killer is whatever you need it to be” kinda felt like something right-wing people would typically mock left-wing people with, which gives a little bit of validity to that theory. I won’t comment on the political aspect of it any further, I just thought it was interesting.  There wasn’t really much notable about Fred, so I’ll just talk about his scenes with the killer. The last four minutes of the episode features the gang being chased around the Fog Fest by the serial killer, while classic Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? music is played. Personally, I felt the music was a bit forced. It didn’t really fit, and kinda screamed Mindy Kaling thinking “woah, wouldn’t it be awesome to have the gang chased by a serial killer over the classic score?” It just felt unnatural and did not really work IMO. Also, I never thought I’d hear Fred say “Damn girl, how’d you get all that ass in those little slacks?” to himself in the mirror lol.

Moving onto episode 8, we once again got a clearer focus on the mystery, which was nice. The episode centers around  Norville, Velma, Daphne and Gigi all getting stuck in the woods when Norville accidentally misinterprets Gigi’s request to have a romantic weekend together. I felt there was a lot of unnecessary drama and fighting in the episode: Gigi is mad at Norville because he didn’t get her obvious signals about wanting to be alone at her cabin in the woods. Daphne is mad at Velma for faking a hallucination so that she would come to Velma to investigate in the woods, instead of hanging out with Olive, whom we learn Daphne has a crush on. On a random aside, we also see that Gigi has a bloody bear rug of a skinned bear carcass in her living room, which I thought was very bizarre.

A series of unfortunate events causes all four of them to fall into an underground cave and become trapped by a rock. They learn that one person will have to be crushed because of how tightly the rock is pinning them. I feel the characters express their worst qualities there when instead of someone volunteering to sacrifice themselves, they all immediately try to kill each other without hesitation.

Meanwhile, Fred is kidnapped by the serial killer and put into a locked room. In this room, he finds the brains of the murdered girls conserved in some sort of fluid, and they are still able to talk somehow through device. I found Fred’s antics with the brains to be kinda weird, especially all the jokes about Fred having a love affair with each of the girls’ brains. The joke about Fred accidentally almost getting one of the girls’ brains pregnant was particularly cringey and over-the-top. I did not find the police leaving Velma, Daphne, Gigi and Norville after already finding them so they could rescue Fred (because he’s a white person) to be funny. It was definitely another very cringily executed social commentary.

Velma and Daphne separate from the rest of the group as they fall into the cave, and hear Fred. They’re able to rescue him, but Velma nearly falls into a hole in the cave when the walls begin disintegrating. Velma is saved by none other than her mother, and all five of them escape the cave. I have to admit, the joke I found the funniest was Fred running through the cave (which is collapsing due to loud sounds) screaming “Help! Help!” at top volume. It was one of those jokes that was just so stupid to watch that I found it hilarious.

The episode ends with Velma’s mom going to the hospital saying she can’t remember anything about who kidnapped her, and we learn that she only has 72 hours to remember otherwise her memories will be lost forever. They don’t explain why, but I’m sure it will be for some cringey nonsensical reason lol. I'm guessing she will be the killer, and is faking the memory loss. Also, random aside, but another one of the jokes I liked the most is Velma’s shirt at the beginning of the episode, which says “Missing” has a picture of her mother holding a cat on it, and in parentheses below the picture, it says “the mom, not the cat.” It was so random and ridiculous that it worked for me.

The flashback format of this episode was interesting. I don’t know if I’d say it was super well executed, but it wasn’t badly executed either. All of the meta jokes about how flashbacks are best done in TV shows definitely gives validity to the theory that I’ve seen a lot of people say on the Internet, where it seems like many of the jokes in this show were written by TV writers who only talk to other TV writers.

Overall, I thought these two episodes were okay. I didn’t feel they were quite as strong as the last episodes writing-wise. I felt episode 7 squandered an opportunity to focus on the mystery in favor of a weird male privilege social commentary that has been done far better in so many other shows and movies. I liked that they focused on the mystery more in episode 8, so that was definitely a bonus. However, the constant fighting got old pretty quickly. I feel this show’s mystery has the potential to be interesting, but they are wasting so much time on drama and social commentaries that it is detracting from the ability to develop the overall plot.
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On the more positive side, I am glad they are toning down the humor a bit. The cringey jokes felt constant in the first four episodes, so it’s good they’ve brought it down to a more manageable level. I feel I’m able to ignore some of the more cringey jokes when they are popping up as a result, and I’m finding more jokes funny than I did in the first four. As a brief aside I didn’t mention in the main review, the one joke I felt to be extremely over-the-top in episode 8 was the joke where Velma casually asks if she can have some more edible underwear to eat, as if they are potato chips or something. I know this show loves its edgy humor, but that one stood out to me as hypersexual to the extreme.

I can’t believe we only have one more week left now! The show’s gone really fast. I’m guessing with all the controversy and how it’s been commonly called “one of the worst shows ever” by many critics, this isn’t going to be renewed, so I have to believe next Thursday is it. I’m interested to see what happens, and I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts on this week’s episodes!


Rankings:
1. The Sins of the Fathers and Some of the Mothers
2. Marching Band Sleepover
3. A Velma in the Woods
4. Fog Fest
5. The Candy Man
6. Velma
7. Velma Makes a List
8. Velma Kai