I think this episode was a slight improvement upon the Joey Chestnut one, but not much. The plot was completely reused from "Ready to Scare" from What's New, Scooby-Doo?, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I didn't feel like too much original was done with it that hasn't already been done before, however.
I liked the element of Gigi Hadid being Velma's friend from criminal psychology class. Overall, Gigi was a pretty good guest star! I got annoyed by the "Gigi Hadid!!!" song with holy music playing in the background. That could have been a one-time joke, and didn't need to be done over and over like they did. I enjoyed how they started out with the gang already working to solve the mystery, instead of them running into it. It provided a nice change of pace. On the other hand, the mystery did seem a bit rushed in this one and some of the jokes (especially the monkey ones) seemed a bit kiddish for my liking. I'm also still not enjoying the constant door scenes every single episode, but I imagine that will probably be a trope throughout the entire series. Overall, this was a decent episode but was middle-of-the-road for me and not anything super special. Ironically, the episode lands right in the middle of my current rankings, at #16/31. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. I Put a Hex on You! 2. The Last Inmate! 3. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 4. One Minute Mysteries! 5. Dance Matron of Mayhem! 6. The Horrible Haunted Hospital of Dr. Phineas Phrag! 7. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 8. Too Many Dummies! 9. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 10. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 11. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 12. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 13. A Run Cycle Through Time! 14. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 15. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! 16. A Moveable Mystery! 17. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 18. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 19. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 20. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! 21. The New York Underground! 22. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! 23. Hollywood Knights! 24. Fear of the Fire Beast! 25. The Hot Dog Dog! 26. Quit Clowning! 27. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 28. Space Station Scooby 29. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 30. The Fastest Food Fiend! 31. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided
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Overall, this was another average episode. I really liked the Tree Monster as a villain! As a whole, they're doing a great job coming up with some very original monsters in this season. However, Joey Chestnut kinda felt like he was just there and didn't have much of a role. He almost felt like a side character to me. Fred and Daphne also seemed to have very few lines, unfortunately. This definitely was not a bad episode, it just wasn't particularly memorable in any way.
Also, did anyone else think Scooby being in a hot dog bun was a little disturbing lol? Scooby's song with lyrics such as "boil me until I burst" was also kinda disturbing haha. On a related note, maybe I'm a monster for doing this, but honestly I like both ketchup and mustard if I eat a hot dog, not just mustard. This ranks towards the bottom, at #24/30. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. I Put a Hex on You! 2. The Last Inmate! 3. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 4. One Minute Mysteries! 5. Dance Matron of Mayhem! 6. The Horrible Haunted Hospital of Dr. Phineas Phrag! 7. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 8. Too Many Dummies! 9. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 10. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 11. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 12. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 13. A Run Cycle Through Time! 14. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 15. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! 16. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 17. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 18. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 19. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! 20. The New York Underground! 21. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! 22. Hollywood Knights! 23. Fear of the Fire Beast! 24. The Hot Dog Dog! 25. Quit Clowning! 26. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 27. Space Station Scooby 28. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 29. The Fastest Food Fiend! 30. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided I feel there are some guest stars in this show who are just kind of there without much purpose, and are kind of bland in their line delivery. Kristen Schaal was absolutely not that guest star. I felt she really shined in the role, and despite not knowing anything about her, her quirkiness and desire to try to find out which member of the gang she was most like really added a lot to the episode and made it feel cool and different. I loved that twist at the ending too where she tries to steal the van! Btw, I'd totally be down for her replacing Fred for a few episodes haha.
Other than Kristen, I thought the setting was super creepy, and the Phineas Phrag Monster design was super original. Honestly, this felt to me like it could have been an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, and it really seemed like they put a lot of love into this episode and making it true to the original tone, rather than making it seemed like forced nostalgia like certain other episodes have. I hope we see more episodes like this, and especially more guest stars as passionate about their role as Kristen. Episodes like the Kacey Musgraves one were decent plot-wise, but to me, Kacey just really didn't seem like she was into her role, and this episode shows us a stark contrast to that because of how into her role Kristen Schaal was. For these reasons, this one is another really high ranking one for me, just below Maddie Ziegler's episode at #6. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. I Put a Hex on You! 2. The Last Inmate! 3. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 4. One Minute Mysteries! 5. Dance Matron of Mayhem! 6. The Horrible Haunted Hospital of Dr. Phineas Phrag! 7. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 8. Too Many Dummies! 9. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 10. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 11. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 12. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 13. A Run Cycle Through Time! 14. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 15. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! 16. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 17. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 18. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 19. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! 20. The New York Underground! 21. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! 22. Hollywood Knights! 23. Fear of the Fire Beast! 24. Quit Clowning! 25. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 26. Space Station Scooby 27. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 28. The Fastest Food Fiend! 29. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided I absolutely adored this episode! Morgan Freeman was an incredible guest star, and his narration was amazing! His narration throughout the mystery sort of served as a meta-analysis of the gang from an outsider's lens, which I found to be so cool. The setting was super creepy, and I loved the villain too! The references to The Creeper and the Jane Jetson poster were really cool, and the head nod from Captain Cutler was hilarious!
Honestly, Morgan Freeman narrating the entire episode was just so cool to me and the whole episode being structured like a documentary was such a unique and amazing idea. I want Morgan Freeman to narrate my life now lol. I did guess who the villain was, though I guessed grandson instead of great grandson, so I was slightly off haha. All I've done is rave about this episode, so does it top my rankings as the new favorite episode of Guess Who? Not quite...it's edged out slightly by the Hex Girls one. It's going to take a lot to dethrone that one for me haha. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. I Put a Hex on You! 2. The Last Inmate! 3. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 4. One Minute Mysteries! 5. Dance Matron of Mayhem! 6. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 7. Too Many Dummies! 8. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 9. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 10. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 11. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 12. A Run Cycle Through Time! 13. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 14. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! 15. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 16. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 17. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 18. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! 19. The New York Underground! 20. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! 21. Hollywood Knights! 22. Fear of the Fire Beast! 23. Quit Clowning! 24. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 25. Space Station Scooby 26. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 27. The Fastest Food Fiend! 28. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided Overall, while not amazing, I thought this was a decent episode. I really liked the the ghost of Captain Taggart's design, though IMO too much of the episode was spent just chasing around. It inhibited the overall mystery and reduced it to just the bare minimum, which is a problem that Guess Who has faced before.
In terms of Kacey as a guest star, I thought her line delivery wasn't the best. Some of her lines seemed a bit forced, though the way they worked her into the episode was interesting and enjoyable. Some of the jokes in the episode seemed also a bit forced. Fred's gag at the end where he couldn't remember his lines was not at all funny though, quite possibly the worst joke of the episode. The two in the horse costumes at the beginning were almost equally annoying to me though. I thought it was interesting how they made Scooby's catch phrase "Scooby Snacks." What I did really love about this episode though is the setting. The Country Music Hall and the showboat had a great spooky atmosphere to them, and worked well with the villain. Overall, this was a very "meh" episode for me. I certainly didn't hate it, but I didn't love it as much as some others either. This one ranks 19/27 for me of the episodes so far. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. I Put a Hex on You! 2. The Sword, The Fox and the Scooby-Doo! 3. One Minute Mysteries! 4. Dance Matron of Mayhem! 5. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 6. Too Many Dummies! 7. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 8. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 9. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 10. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 11. A Run Cycle Through Time! 12. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! 13. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! 14. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 15. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 16. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 17. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! 18. The New York Underground! 19. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! 20. Hollywood Knights! 21. Fear of the Fire Beast! 22. Quit Clowning! 23. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 24. Space Station Scooby 25. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 26. The Fastest Food Fiend! 27. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided While I don't think it's a super unpopular opinion, I argue the 1980s Scooby-Doo movies are pretty underrated. These three films, Boo Brothers, Ghoul School and Reluctant Werewolf, are generally pretty well-liked among most Scooby fans, but I definitely have gotten some surprised remarks from some fans for calling these three among the best of the best that Scooby films have to offer. Something about these three films has remained pretty much unparalleled (except the 1998-2001 films) throughout the entire franchise. In this article, I will share my opinion as to why these films remain at the top of my favorites list despite several new Scooby films coming out each year.
In general, I think Scrappy is more toned down in these films, which puts them as a lot of people's favorite Scrappy material in the franchise. Specifically with Boo Brothers, it brought the franchise back to the mystery-solving roots that it had been lacking with previous 80s content featuring just Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy. One could also argue that the large amount of villains in Boo Brothers makes it not focused enough, but honestly, I feel the numerous villains makes it better. I look at it as "you can't begin to imagine the horrors around this house" kind of way. We also really have no idea which of the ghouls are real, and which are fake, even at the end of the film, and this provides room for some deeper thinking/analysis when trying to determine which of the ghosts' appearances were real and which were fake. I still believe that the Skull Ghost was real that first appearance he showed up, and that many of Uncle Beauregard's appearances were his real ghost. One thing I really appreciate about Boo Brothers is its soundtrack. Even if you hate the movie, I feel you have to admit that this movie has top-notch background music all throughout. Lastly, I think the plot point of the scavenger hunt also provides almost a mystery-within-a-mystery, because we don't really realize that the ghosts have something to do with the scavenger hunt (and they may not have, if they were real some of the time) until towards the end of the film. Moving on to Ghoul School, which is my favorite Scooby film to date. Hands down. Nothing compares to it. I think the amazing thing about Ghoul School is how well they integrate new characters into the plot and make us warm up to them quickly. All 5 ghouls, in my opinion, are very sweet, likable characters who many of us find adorable (especially Tanis). Though the first half of the film mainly focuses on the girl ghouls, the second half causes a questioning of everything Shaggy and Scooby have ever believed: that not all monsters are bad when Revolta and the Grim Creeper ends up capturing the girls for her evil plans, and they realize that the girl ghouls actually are the "good guys." It's a really neat plot point IMO, that I explore a bit in my fanfic Fangs for the Memories (shameless plug alert), that not all monsters are necessarily bad. In my opinion, this would have been even cooler if this was the first time Shaggy and Scooby met real monsters, as it would have caused a crisis of beliefs of sorts for them realizing that some real monsters are good. All in all, this film just has a really fun, spooky vibe to it with very relatable new characters in an intriguing situation. Reluctant Werewolf seems to get the least attention of these three. I'll admit, Dracula turning Shaggy into a werewolf to participate in a car race is a very wacky plot, but once it gets going, I find myself really enjoying this one almost as much as the others. It's a very fun, different comedy romp that isn't afraid to be a bit dark and spooky at times (particularly in the scenes with Dracula's castle, and the escape at the end). I'd say this one is probably the least memorable of the three, and Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost for sure overtake it. As for whether Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost overtake Boo Brothers and Ghoul School, I would say no. They don't overtake them, they're just like 0.0000001% below Boo Brothers and Ghoul School personally for me. A common theme within these three films is that they are a bit scarier in tone, and the stakes are far more real because the gang is literally dealing with real ghosts and monsters. Boo Brothers in particular has a very scary, dark tone to it I think, especially since most of the film is the gang walking around outside in the middle of the night, but Ghoul School kind of gets dark too in the second half with Revolta. Reluctant Werewolf is more silly, but the scenes within Dracula's Castle (especially when they wake up from their trance, the part where they're going through the secret passage, and their escape from Dracula at the end) are pretty spooky in tone. It would be amiss not to say that some of this is personal nostalgia. These three were the first ever Scooby movies I saw as a kid, so I have very fond memories of watching these when I was little. I think Reluctant Werewolf is especially nostalgia-driven for me, as it's definitely a bit more of a zany plot than the other two. In this age of sequels coming out like Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island, would I like to see sequels to these? If they could stay true to the source material, sure. I don't think Boo Brothers particularly needs a sequel since most of it's wrapped up (and I think it arguably makes it spookier to not know whether the ghosts were real in certain instances or not), but I'd be down for one if they could come up with a compelling, non-forced plot and kept it true to the original. In terms of Ghoul School, I think a sequel where Revolta returned, since we don't really know what happened to her, could be fun. Reluctant Werewolf is an absolute yes for a sequel, because it ends on a cliffhanger where Dracula and the Hunch Bunch appear at Shaggy's window saying that they're back. Again though, all of these would need to stay true to the source material. I don't want anything like Return to Zombie Island or Curse of the 13th Ghost done with these three movies, as IMO these two direct sequels have done enough damage already. I hope you enjoyed this article, and that it maybe took you on a trip down memory lane! I try to watch these three every Halloween, even though they're not specifically Halloween themed (2 of them at least, I guess Ghoul School has a Halloween scene), so I thought this would be a fun one to do given the time period. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this, so if you have any, feel free to share in the comments! The first 13 episodes of Guess Who season 2 are now on Boomerang! Check out the new episodes, the first two of which you do not need a Boomerang subscription for, including:
1. The Phantom, The Talking Dog And The Hot Hot Hot Sauce (Kacey Musgraves) 2. The Last Inmate! (Morgan Freeman) 3. The Horrible Haunted Hospital Of Dr. Phineas Phrag! (Kristen Schaal) 4. The Hot Dog Dog! (Joey Chestnut) 5. A Moveable Mystery! (Gigi Hadid) 6. The Feast of Dr. Frankenfooder! (Alton Brown) 7. A Fashion Nightmare! (Tim Gunn) 8. Scooby On Ice! (Tara Lipinski) 9. Caveman On The Half Pipe! (Chloe Kim) 10. The Crown Jewel Of Boxing! (Laila Ali) 11. The Internet On Haunted House Hill! (Liza Koshy) 12. The 7th Inning Scare! (Macklemore) 13. The Dreaded Remake of Jekyll & Hyde! (Sandy Duncan) Yesterday concluded our daily polls for Scooby's anniversary, and I hope you've all enjoyed them! The polls will switch back to being weekly, starting again this Sunday.
Here are the results for our five-in-one poll yesterday, about your favorite versions of each of the gang members! Scooby-Doo: Classic Scooby - 30 SDMI Scooby- 10 Witty Scooby - 7 Guess Who Scooby - 7 Pup Scooby - 2 Shaggy: Lillard's Shaggy - 24 Classic Shaggy - 22 Kasem's "Old Man" Shaggy - 6 Revival DTV Shaggy - 2 Young Shaggy - 1 Get A Clue Shaggy - 0 Velma: Classic Velma - 15 Revival DTV Velma - 12 What's New Velma - 10 Be Cool Velma - 6 SDMI Velma - 6 Know It All, Skeptic Velma - 4 Young Velma - 3 Pat Stevens' Velma - 1 Marla Frumkin's Velma - 0 Fred: Serious Fred - 24 Dimwitted Fred - 18 Be Cool Fred - 11 Young Fred - 0 Daphne: Quirky Daphne - 18 Mature Daphne - 12 Fashion Oriented Daphne - 8 Classic Daphne - 7 Scrappy Era Daphne - 4 SDMI Daphne - 2 Young Daphne - 1 |
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