As I mentioned in the previous top 10 settings article, I didn't think "Worst Settings" would make a good companion article for this, since I can't think of any instances where I disliked an episode based on the setting alone. So instead of that, I used an idea suggested by Matt, a regular commenter on the blog, and decided to pick out 10 episodes where I feel the setting is great, but isn't talked about very often. It was genuinely pretty tough to try to condense my list into just 10, but it was a fun challenge nonetheless. I don't have an order for these, as I don't really have a sense for which of these settings are more underrated than another. I feel all of these are underrated. Theater of Doom I mentioned this one in the comments but it was not mentioned in the actual post. I honestly think the episode in general is very underrated. I love how atmospheric the episode is in the sense all 22 minutes either takes place on the tiny stage, or in the creepy backstage-like basement. Having such a focus location greatly enhanced the plot and the creepiness of the mystery, and I don't think this episode gets enough recognition for that. The Exterminator In general, I think The New Scooby-Doo Movies is underrated for its settings as a whole, but this is one of the episodes that really stands out to me for its setting. It's not talked about much as a haunted house episode, but the creepy house on the hill makes a great haunted house. I also particularly like the inclusion of the paintings. The fact that several of the paintings and statues (like the bird with the piggy bank, for example) can suddenly move and grab you at any time makes the setting even more spooky and disturbing. Scooby-Doo, Where's the Crew? I don't hear this one talked about very much, but the ship's setting is so dark and terrifying. I would argue that this episode is as dark as any of the season 2 episodes. The gang being trapped on a ship lost at sea with three ghouls is really creepy, since there's literally no way they can escape. The atmosphere of the whole episode feels really dark in a way that not a lot of Scooby episodes do. Scooby's Peep Hole Pandemonium For an episode that has a very odd title, it has a really good setting; arguably the best of any of the 7 or 11-minute shorts. In comparison to the other series, it's not among the all-time best settings in the franchise, but I like how reminiscent this feels of a classic Scooby-Doo haunted house. The way this episode is able to do that despite the very different tone of the series from the 1960s and 1970s is definitely notable, and deserves more recognition than it gets. The Hand of Horror On that same subject, "The Hand of Horror" is another underrated setting. The Von Gizmo Estate presents another example of a setting feeling very atmospheric and being developed very well despite the short runtime. The Weird Winds of Winona This is another underrated The New Scooby-Doo Movies setting. The fact that this town is completely abandoned makes it feel foreboding, both at the farmer's house and the town hall. Admittedly, the short bit we get in the caves at the end of the episode isn't anything special, since this series seems to overuse caves a bit in my opinion, but the other two settings aren't talked about enough IMO. Night on Haunted Mountain I don't really know if "underrated" is the right word to describe this setting, but I never really hear anyone talk about this setting. The gang venturing up the mountain feels quite ominous, and the old ship remains have a very creepy vibe to them. I especially like the bit at the end with the El Aguirre's ghost showing up. I honestly wish he would have gotten his own episode, because his design is so amazing! The Ghostly Creep from the Deep This is the second-to-last New Scooby-Doo Movies that will appear here. I really like the setting of the old inn here. The fact that it is abandoned and in the middle of a swamp obviously enhances the setting quite a bit, but I also like the level of detail put into the outside of the inn. The inn looks very run-down and like it hasn't been used in years, which bumps this up a couple levels further in its spooky factor. The Frickert Fracas This episode is underrated in general, but I feel like a large part of that is the setting. Maude Frickert's farm has a very dark, spooky feel to it, and it's very challenging to do that with a simplistic setting like a farm IMO. The fact that most of the episode takes place at night adds to the creepiness of it, since the gang is walking around in the dark in a cornfield, where anything could jump out at them at any time. The farm itself is done in a very atmospheric way that really pulls you in, unlike "The Ghost of the Red Baron" a few episodes later, which kinda falls flat in comparison. This episode did an amazing job of using the farm to its full potential. The Beast Is Awake in Bottomless Lake
I notice that the settings I like best create a dark and foreboding atmosphere, and this is one where I feel it's done really well. Similarly to "The Weird Winds of Winona," the town being basically abandoned and the whole thing taking place at night creates an atmosphere with a creepy vibe. Moreover, the Beast appearing seemingly everywhere amps up the terror even further, which I love. Also, this doesn't factor into my feelings on the setting, but it never fails to amuse me that Canada puts up a cheap wooden sign that says "Welcome to Canada" at the border. No other tourist information or a fancy sign at all, just a little wooden sign haha. It was tough to condense my list into ten settings, but I hope you enjoyed reading this list! If you have any settings that you feel are underrated, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
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The Hodag from "The Hodag of Horror" in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is a mythical cryptid that dates back to the Paul Bunyan stories. The first instance of a Hodag sighting was in 1893. Land surveyer Eugene Shepard from Rhineland, Wisconsin, made the report in the daily newspaper. He reported that he and a group of friends had to use dynamite to lure the hodag out. The photograph of the Hodag from Eugene Shepard was shared in the newspaper. Shepard reported catching another Hodag in 1896 using chloroform and displayed it at the Oneida County Fair. Thousands of people came to see the Hodag. At the Fair, Shepard informed visitors that the Hodag's food source was all white bulldogs. A group of Smithsonian Institute scientists announced they would be coming to Wisconsin to inspect the creature. Eugene Shepard then revealed that it was all a hoax he'd made up. The creature was merely a stuffed trophy animal that Shepard had rigged up with wires so it would look like it was moving. Despite the fact that it was a hoax, the Hodag became the official symbol of Rhinelander, Wisconsin due to the mass fame the publicity had brought the town. In addition, Rhinelander High School's mascot is the Hodag. To commemorate the hoax, a local artist named Tracy Goberville created a replica of Eugene's fake Hodag. Moreover, the Rhinelander Ice Arena features two hodags; one full creature and a trophy head that blows smoke out of its nostrils. Thank you to Drakosleuth for suggesting this fun fact idea for me to research! I thought it might be fun to do a completely different type of poll this week. Despite that you think it would be talked about a lot, I've only had this conversation a handful of times with people in the fandom, so I thought it would be fun (and maybe even facilitate some interesting conversations) to see how often people on this blog watch Scooby!
Here are the results from our Valentine's Day poll on romantic pairings last week! Thank goodness the options that nobody should have voted for got 0 votes haha. Amber/Scooby and Crystal/Shaggy - 33 Fred and Daphne - 29 Velma and Marcie - 11 Fred and Daphne (SDMI) - 10 Shaggy and Googie - 8 Shaggy and Daphne - 8 Shaggy and Velma (SDMI) - 3 Velma and Coco Diablo - 2 Shaggy and Gigi (Velma) - 2 Daphne and Velma (Velma) - 1 Fred and Daphne (Velma) - 1 Fred and Velma (Velma) - 0 Shaggy and Velma (Velma) - 0 Seems like GamesRadar+ is a bit behind on posting the May 2023 DC comic solicitations at the time of posting this but thankfully, AIPTComics has them posted. Interestingly to note, the other versions of Fred, Velma and Daphne have their races changed similarly to the recent series Velma.
THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES #8 Written by SHOLLY FISCH Art and cover by ERICH OWEN $2.99 US | 32 pages ON SALE 5/9/23 Batman's facing his most fearsome foe: the ancient Bat Spirit! If this supernatural menace has his way, all other bats will be vanquished, leaving him to rule the world. Sounds like a job for Mystery Inc.! So why is Batman working with a new teen team? IGN has just announced that Velma for being developed for a second season on HBO Max. No further details or date has been given at this time. Velma is the most streamed HBO Max Original Animated Series on the app; however, it is worth noting that there are only four other HBO Max Original Animated Series currently released, so this is not as big of an accomplishment as some news outlets have made it seem.
It's no secret at this point that Velma has been critically panned. Whether you love it or hate it, the majority of the fandom was not satisfied with this edgy adult reboot of the franchise. Now, Velma has wrapped up airing its first season and the fate of the show remains uncertain. Given I was one of those fans who disliked Velma, this feels like the perfect time to talk about the direction I would like the see the franchise go in the future. In the following article, I outlined three broad ideas I have for the future of the franchise, although I've included some concrete series premises amongst my discussion of these ideas. I organized it this way because I am honestly pretty open to new series ideas; honestly, it's the writing and character development that are most important to me.
1. A reboot that builds on Where Are You, but does not attempt to copy it One of the biggest complaints about Guess Who is that the show often played it too safe. It tried to replicate the tone of Where Are You exactly, but it couldn't quite capture that original magic. While Guess Who isn't my favorite series, I do kind of appreciate what it tried to do by bringing things back to the original tone. Guess Who's biggest fault for me was trying to force that tone to the point where many episodes were a bit stale. Although they are very different series, one way to interpret some people's dissatisfaction with the franchise as of late, is that the common theme betweenVelma and Guess Who is that both of them tried too hard to force a tone that didn't work. Expanding or taking inspiration from something is different than trying to force it. As amazing as Where Are You is, I don't think anybody would want 49 straight seasons of the exact same thing, because it would get old if there was no variety after a while. I think a reboot of Where Are You could work if it were done in a way that used the original tone, but created something new in the process of doing that. I thought Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! did a great job of using the same classic formula, and by adding a more humorous twist and developing the characters in interesting ways, the writers were able to create something engaging and different. Something like this that builds on an aspect of an old series, (whether it be Where Are You or not) but doesn't attempt to directly copy it, could be a good direction to go. For example, perhaps they create settings with a similarly dark feel to Where Are You, but show the gang members each developing as characters in different ways. There needs to be a unique defining characteristic of each series, otherwise there is no point in creating a new series if you are going to try to match the tone of a previous series exactly. 2. A mature show that does not overuse adult themes This is a broad umbrella, and I'll elaborate with some ideas for this later. One of my biggest issues with Velma is how overly try-hard the writers are about the humor. Although it is becoming more common in sitcoms for people to think of "mature" and "adult themes" as the same thing, I firmly believe that they do not have to be. I have never felt that a series needs to be super raunchy in order to for me to think of it as mature. "Adult themes" typically refers to sexual jokes, drug references, intense gore and violence, whereas mature shows can simply mean that a show is too dark for kids, or the themes might be too frightening for a younger audience. It's always been a bit perplexing to me that WB-Discovery has never looked at the overwhelming success of Zombie Island as something that would work consistently for the franchise. In my 15 years in the fandom, I've met very few fans who have a single bad thing to say about Zombie Island, and it's critically acclaimed even by folks who do not frequently watch the franchise. They could make another show with the mature tone of the Zombie Island era movies, and I think everybody would love it. Even if they made something dark not quite to that level of glory - take the Mystery Incorporated YouTube series from last year for example - I would love to see a show like that. There are clearly plenty of adult fans who still watch the franchise, and WB-Discovery knows this, otherwise they wouldn't keep referencing old stuff from the 1970s and 1980s that no young fans would recognize. Some specific, concrete ideas that would fit that tone could be a series like Wednesday. Wednesday and Velma are night and days in terms of quality. Wednesday manages to be a great mature reboot of the series that doesn't need to rely on sexual jokes, intense violence, and inappropriate humor as a crutch for bad writing. Simply having the gang solve the mystery of a serial killer in a Halloween costume of some sort could make a really good plot, especially if it was similar in tone to Zombie Island or even Mystery Incorporated (minus the romantic drama). Perhaps you could have it set at a boarding school, much like Wednesday, and have the gang meet each other through solving the mystery together. I would love to see a mature Scooby-Doo show in the vein of Wednesday. I also think this would be a great opportunity to create a universe where there is some shared lore from previous Scooby series. For example, recurring characters could show up, or aspects of the main characters from a certain iteration could be developed further. Another thing that I've talked about before on here that I disliked with Guess Who is the overuse of references, where they almost felt gimmicky. The best Easter Eggs for me are the ones that are tied tightly into the plot, rather than just "hey, there's a picture of Redbeard over there!" A mature reboot presents a great opportunity to create franchise lore based upon previous series and characterizations, rather than random references that aren't connected to anything. 3. Spinoff with Side Characters WB could also do a spin-off of some of the beloved side characters of the franchise. I've mentioned on here that I've written a Ghoul School coming-of-age fanfic for the girls in high school, and a Hex Girls fanfic about how they got started as a band. I think both of these things would make amazing TV shows as long as they stayed at least somewhat true to the original tone (looking at you, Return to Zombie Island). The Hex Girls show is long overdue in my opinion; I think everyone would like that as long as they kept the girls in-character from their previous appearances. Showing how they became a band seems like the most logical series to do, but you could do a number of different plots with the girls, such as getting them involved in some sort of supernatural mystery; the girls going up against a witch as they're exploring Wicca further; or they could even do a high school coming-of-age plot where the girls run into a mystery at their school. One could even argue that a spin-off featuring a gang member that actually keeps them true to their character would make an enjoyable show. I wrote another fanfic about Velma teaching at her sister Madelyn's school, Whirlen Merlin's, which is the vein of what I'm talking about here. I would like to see a show that actually develops the characters in a natural way that is consistent with what has been established over the past 50 years. Velma missed that mark by making the characters completely different than anything we'd seen before, and Guess Who also missed that mark by making the characters too stale. Especially at the beginning of the show, some of Fred, Daphne, and Velma's lines arguably could have been interchangeable and we probably wouldn't have even noticed. Another idea in that similar vein is a spinoff involving Scooby, or one of the gang's relatives. I'd especially love to see a show of Scooby solving mysteries with Scooby-Dum; I feel like that would be really wholesome and hilarious. The ideas are pretty endless for a new Scooby-Doo series, but these are ultimately the elements I most want to see in the next Scooby-Doo series after Mystery Pups. WB has had a history of kind of knee-jerk reactions to previous shows after the fact, and some of them have worked, and some of them haven't. The Be Cool writers have come out and said that WB told them they wanted a funny show after the dark, frightening tone of SDMI, but then they felt Be Cool didn't play it safe enough, so they created Guess Who. The preschool tone of Mystery Pups seems like a direct response to Velma being an adult show. I am pretty open-minded to new ideas; I think the most important aspects are good characterization, compelling mysteries, and an attempt to explore some new aspect of the franchise's formula that has not already been explored. Thanks to James for suggesting this week's fun fact, which is a bit of a sequel to a previous fun fact. Fun Fact #336 from February 22, 2021 mentioned Look-In magazine, which is a magazine series that ran Scooby-Doo comics from 1990 through 1994. However, James discovered that apparently there were some Scooby-Doo picture strips run by this magazine three years prior to this in 1987 including Velma and Fred, unlike the later 1990 iteration. Even more interesting, one of the issues includes a Scooby-Dum story! You can look at some of the art on Bill Titcombe's website here.
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 |
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