So I have a bit of a confession to make...I screwed up. In the sports winner's circle poll back in May, a few people mentioned in the comments how surprised they were that "Scooby Pinch Hits" won the poll for best baseball episode. I was looking back through some of the old polls recently so that I could organize all the poll questions in a single list for quick reference, so I didn't ever accidentally ask the same question twice. In doing this, I unfortunately discovered that those of you who were surprised were right... "Scooby Pinch Hits" did not win the poll for best baseball episode. It actually won the poll for the WORST baseball episode lol. To my surprise, I realized that somehow we never actually did a best baseball episode poll. So sorry about mixing that up! Now, we're going to do what we should have done this spring and finally have a best baseball episode poll lol. I haven't decided whether to re-do the Winner's Circle poll with that option added in, but if anyone has any opinions on if they want to re-do it, let me know in the comments!

"Creepy Cruise" comes out on top as last week's winner with 20 votes! But Scooby-Doo and Courage the Cowardly Dog came straight outta nowhere to take second place with 11 votes, tied with "When the Cicada Calls." "The Creepy Creature of Vulture's Claw" came in third place with 9 votes, but Scooby-Doo in Where's My Mummy? was close behind in fourth place with 8 votes! "The Exterminator" came in fifth with 6 votes, "Greece Is the Word" sixth with 4 votes, Ghoul School was seventh with 3 votes, and "The Bee Team" was eighth with 2 votes. In last place, there wasn't even a shadow of a chance of "Me and My Shadow Demon" winning, as it only received a single vote.

Despite yesterday's announcement about WB shifting to a more "cost effective" model, a listing on Amazon France seems to say that an hour and twelve minute animated feature, Scooby-Doo, Trick or Treat will be released on October 26, 2022 in France. The page lists that the directors are Audie Harrison and Sam Register, which would rule out this film being a repackaging of Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo. In the past, listings for future DTVs have popped up on some of the international Amazon sites a week or two before appearing on the US Amazon site, so it is possible that we may be getting an announcement for this DTV in the coming weeks. Last year's DTVs were announced 11 weeks before their release, and if this is being released the week of October 26, that would mean we would likely get an announcement and trailer next week (the week of August 9).

DVD Land out of Australia also lists a description, although this site lists it as Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! (Thanks Scoobyverse for bringing this link to my attention)
Mystery Inc. has cracked the case to top all cases! They've tracked down Coco Diablo, the head of the notorious costume crime syndicate that colludes The Black Knight, Space Kook and the Ghost Diver. With Coco and her kitty in prison, Mystery Inc. thinks that they can finally enjoy a break. Wrong! Suddenly, menacing doppelganger ghosts of the Scooby crew and favorite classic foes show up in Coolsville to threaten Halloween. Now it's up to the meddling kids - and their unlikely new partner Coco - to unmask the latest scoundrel and save Halloween! For Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, with trick-or-treating on the line - this time it's personal!

A big thank you to Gross108 for sharing this information with me.

The holidays are cancelled.

Or at least, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Scoob! Holiday Haunt's release has sadly been cancelled. This is due to budgetary restrictions that arose with the recent Warner Brothers Discovery merger. The film's budget was 40 million dollars, but Warner Brothers executives determined that they could no longer justify the funding for this film, and thus pulled the film from the lineup of HBO Max's original programming. It is unknown if Velma will be affected by this announcement of cutbacks and budgetary restrictions. However, this could provide some insight into why we have not gotten any announcements for DTVs, since perhaps WB felt they could not justify releasing direct-to-video films when they are financially struggling due to the merger.

Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav shared with the press that Warner Brothers is currently attempting to shift to a "cost savings" model, focusing more on theatrical films rather than streaming and direct-to-video projects. Zaslav stated he feels that the majority of streaming projects "no longer make financial sense" under the new vision for Warner Brothers. Batgirl, another big budget film ($90 million dollars) was additionally scrapped despite that filming had been completed.

Over the years, members of the gang have been pigeonholed and retconned into fitting certain stereotypes; Shaggy as a stoner and Velma identifying as a lesbian being the two most prominent examples. However, one stereotype is often thrust upon a member of this gang, but has not been explored in much depth over the years. Fred is sometimes labelled as a jock, despite not really displaying any athletic ability and being quite quirky at times.

In many of the earlier series, although Fred is the leader of the gang, he displays a number of quirky traits. He seems to really enjoy being the glue that holds the gang together, and is the type of person who enjoys structure. Typically, at least in the early episodes, he's the one who always suggests the gang split up. If you look closely in the early episodes, he's almost always got his hands in his pockets, which is an interesting little quirk in itself. Occasionally, he'll seem somewhat fixated on things, for example, in "The Ghost of Bigfoot," he mentions going skiing at least a dozen times. In these early episodes, we never see Fred wanting to play sports or displaying the traits of the stereotypical 'macho man.' However, it's perhaps worth pointing out that when Frank Welker first auditioned for the role, he was told to "think Jack Armstrong! Channel the All-American Boy!", which he revealed in a recent interview.

It is also worth noting, however, that Fred seems to go through a bit of a phase in season one of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. In the first episode of the series, he makes an odd joke out of nowhere about women, saying "This desert is like a woman...it goes on and on and on!" Besides this, his general behavior in some episodes is very odd. One example of this is in "Wednesday Is Missing," in which Daphne asks where a door goes. Fred tries to open the door, and when he realizes it's locked, he says "we'll never know!" in a very serious voice. In "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall," Shaggy says that he doesn't know if he has the spine to deal with the hauntings, to which Fred very sassily replies "What spine?" Perhaps most prominently in "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall," he acts as if he's only half listening to what Jerry says, which I detailed in my review here. Fred also lashes out at Shaggy inexplicably when Shaggy is scared of a dummy head falling down the stairs, shouting "You oughta be ashamed of yourself!" While perhaps the writers just had a different vision for his character in this season, it could be argued in-universe that Fred was perhaps going through some sort of mental health issues in this season, further showing his three-dimensionality beyond the two-dimensional "jock" stereotype.

Fred's quirkiness goes into overdrive in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, which represents him as a conspiracy theorist. In the series, Fred is regularly very invested in various conspiracy theories posed by his favorite magazine The National Exaggerator, which his Uncle Eddie owns. He is shown to have a lot of anxiety about these theories, regularly becoming alarmed about what he reads in the magazines.

The closest we've ever seen to Fred fitting this "All-American Boy" stereotype is What's New, Scooby-Doo? A recurring joke throughout the series is that Fred can bench 220 pounds. However, we still never see Fred display an overt interest in sports, besides in "Toy Scary Boo" in which Fred asks Shaggy if he watched the game last night. It may also be worth noting he wears a football helmet to cover a poodle haircut he's accidentally given in "Homeward Hound." Still, Fred is never directly shown to have an interest in playing sports. I would argue a more accurate depiction of Fred from What's New is someone who's interested in travel. Repeatedly through What's New and some of the DTVs around that time, Fred attempts to learn some aspect of the language of the place the gang is visiting, but the running joke is that his translations are awkward and often incorrect. He seems to have a wide variety of interests in this series, but he's never explicitly stated to enjoy sports.

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated provides an interesting case study, because the jock stereotype is being thrust upon Fred by his father, Mayor Jones. Mayor Jones continuously laments that he wishes Fred could be more like normal boys his age, at one point suggesting he join the soccer team. However, Fred remains interested in building elaborate traps. SDMI almost feels like a commentary on that stereotype that Fred is a jock.

Speaking of commentaries, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! provides an excellent one on Fred. In this series, Fred's leadership style expanded upon. Fred's shown to be someone who likes rigid structure, and becomes frustrated when something does not go according to plan. In one episode, "Trading Chases," he becomes so frustrated with the gang not listening to him that he switches places with a tour guide to lead a bunch of kids. Although Daphne's often given the "quirky" label in this series, I would argue Fred has his fair share of quirks. You could argue that Fred was retconned for this series, but I believe Jon Colton Barry simply amplified and expanded upon traits that were already there. Even in the early series, Fred could be a bit of a control freak and enjoyed structure. He definitely wasn't the "average boy."

Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins provides an interesting contrast here, because this is one of the few pieces of Scooby-Doo media where Fred is officially confirmed to be a jock. In this film, Fred is on the football team, hangs out with all the kids who are into sports, and struggles with making genuine friendships where he can feel open about everything. At one point, when Daphne asks how Fred could possibly be friends with a selfish jerk who's bullying Shaggy on the school bus, Fred defends himself by saying that they're just friends because this guy happens to be on the football team. Despite this defense, Fred seems genuinely uncomfortable with the fact that someone he considered a "friend" was being cruel to another person. This alludes to the fact that Fred may be having issues being in tune with his emotions and open with others.

Ultimately while I think it's an interesting plot point to explore, Robbie Amell's portrayal didn't really fully feel like Fred. A lot of people attribute it to him not being blonde, but I think part of it has to do with the writing. Making Fred a jock plays into the stereotype of the "average American boy" who likes sports, is tough and unfeeling, and can't be vulnerable with others. In my opinion, this demonstrates a superficial understanding of Fred's character. Fred is not really shown to be a leader in this film, his love of structure isn't really touched upon, and he doesn't really have of the quirks that make Fred seem like himself. The fact that Fred's character in this film feels a bit off, given it's heavily based around being a jock, goes to show that Fred doesn't really fit the jock stereotype.

A second interesting contrast comes from another live-action movie, the original Scooby-Doo from 2002. Freddie Prinze Jr. portrays Fred as the stereotypical "frat guy": full of himself, aggressive, and not in touch with his emotions at all. This made Freddie's portrayal of Fred come off almost as a parody of the character. Like Amell's peformance, it didn't really fully embody Fred as a character. It's also worth noting that the 2002 film drew upon a lot of stereotypes in general - there's a scene in which Shaggy and Scooby are having a cookout, which begins with a shot of the outside of the van in which you can see smoke coming out. The joke here is that Shaggy and Scooby are supposedly getting high in the van, but once the scene pans in, you can see it's just a cookout. There's another scene which was ultimately cut from the movie where Velma makes out with Daphne, which plays upon the stereotype of Velma being lesbian. These two portrayals of Fred provide further evidence that traditional stereotypes of being a jock (Amell) or hypermasculinity (Freddie Prinze Jr.) doesn't really fit Fred, since it comes off as a bit unnatural. 

If Fred doesn't really have the traditional characteristics of a "jock," then why do some fans see him this way? I would argue that interpretation of Fred is an oversimplification of his character based on stereotypes. Physically, he looks like the average "all-American boy," in the same way that Shaggy looks like a hippie, and a common stereotype about hippies is that they smoke marijuana. Similarly, many people assume that Velma might be lesbian because she has short hair and isn't interested in traditionally "girly" things. All of these character interpretations are based on mere stereotypes from the gang's physical appearance. However, when you really get to know the characters through the plethora of episodes and movies, you can clearly see the characters are actually quite three-dimensional, and so much more than the two-dimensional stereotypes that the general public has imposed on them.

Both Velma and her sister Madelyn (from Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo)'s voice actresses were best known outside of Scooby for being on teen sitcoms. Mindy Cohn starred on The Facts of Life from 1979-1988. Danica McKellar, who voiced Velma's sister Madelyn, was best known for starring on The Wonder Years from 1988-1993.