 I quite enjoyed this episode overall. I'll admit I was surprised how much Batman was played up for comedy, but nonetheless it was still an entertaining half-hour.
Atmospherically, this felt a lot different than previous episodes of Guess Who. I've heard that this episode was the series premiere in other countries, which leads me think maybe it was made first. I enjoyed the overall location of Wayne Manor in terms of it feeling sufficiently spooky. Batman was an enjoyable guest star, even if he was a bit zanier this time around. I really enjoyed that they used a different villain than Joker and Penguin this time, especially given the monstrous qualities of the Man-Bat, so I was a bit disappointed that it just turned out to be the Joker again. In terms of the characters, I thought Daphne's relation to Alfred was unnecessary. The gang being related to every single guest star on the planet doesn't seem necessary, and I wish the writers would come up with a different reason for the gang to be teaming up with these guest stars. Scooby's monologue-length comments in this episode really irritated me. I've mentioned it before, but it's so out-of-character for him to be speaking constantly. Maybe this is just me, but it bothered me that Scooby was so upset over his phone breaking, and the fact that he had a phone in the first place. It feels weird to think of Scooby obsessed with his cell phone haha. Overall, this episode was pretty solid though it wasn't my favorite of the series. The reference to the first episode's title was fun, though the extraneous comma in the title card ("What a Night, for a Dark Knight!") is odd. I'm not sure if this is truly the end of season 1, or if Boomerang is just calling it that. I'm not sure if anyone remembers, but with Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Cartoon Network claimed that episode 13 was the end of season 1, and episode 14 began season 2. Officially, season 1 of SDMI lasted 26 episodes, so I'm not sure if that's the case here too. Let's update the scoreboard for one last time this season! Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! (Favorite episode) 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! 4. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 5. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 6. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 7. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 8. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 9. Quit Clowning! 10. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 11. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 12. The Fastest Food Fiend! 13. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided (Least favorite episode) Overall, my season-end thoughts are that while I enjoyed the series, I felt the writers were trying a bit too hard sometimes to be nostalgic and it just didn't work for me. I would really like to see them try something new, or explore some new aspect of the franchise rather than just trying to make it a carbon copy of how the original show was. I don't think we'll get it with this series, but I truly hope that they choose to branch off into a different direction in the future, even if just slightly.
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 "Quit Clowning!" turned out to be a great episode in some ways, but a very poor one in other ways.
First off, the location and atmosphere of this episode really makes it feel like a classic New Scooby-Doo Movies mystery, more so than any of the previous episodes IMO. Fred, Daphne and Velma acted a ton like they did in the New Scooby-Doo Movies. The villain, Pazzo the Clown, was genuinely super creepy and I like how it looked similar to the Ghost Clown from Where Are You. The references to Thundarr the Barbarian and the Herculoids on the wall of the TV station were really cool as well! I thought it was super cool they had Daphne wear Jeannie's costume as a disguise. Jeannie appeared in "Mystery in Persia" from the original The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which is a pretty obscure reference and I'm impressed they went with it! I didn't enjoy Kenan Thompson though. His jokes were painfully unfunny, and I think I may have lost an IQ point or two listening to his poor attempt at rapping. His charisma and personality were good, but all his jokes were very cringeworthy. I would have enjoyed the episode more if a different celebrity than Kenan was in it, as he really dragged the episode down IMO. No other complaints with the episode really, other than Velma's hearty laughter at the kid getting pied in the face was a bit awkward. It really wasn't funny at all, so I'm not sure what the writers were thinking there. I'm putting this one just above "Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors," but Kenan really dragged this episode down from being any higher than that. I feel bad ranking him above Wanda Sykes, who was actually a good celebrity, and Ricky Gervais, who wasn't as offensive as Kenan, but I'm ranking it here solely due to the rest of the episode being pretty good. "Quit Clowning!" is also a pretty dumb title IMO. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 8. Quit Clowning! 9. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 10. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 11. The Fastest Food Fiend! 12. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided  I must say that this was an excellent episode! One of my favorites so far. Weird Al was a great guest star. His accordion songs were all pretty funny and didn't get old, and I particularly liked when he started playing the theremin instead. I'll admit I'm a fan of Weird Al in general, so this episode just worked for me. The dinosaur was a pretty cool-looking villain. I enjoyed the twist at the end where there were actually two dinosaurs, though it of course made it pretty easy to guess the culprits. Nothing much to say about the gang this week, other than it seemed fitting for Shaggy and Scooby to be fans of Weird Al. It bothered me a bit though that Shaggy kept repeating some variation of "It's that crazy dinosaur!" Just seemed like lazy writing to me. I enjoyed the location of the camp, and especially the mines. Definitely was a good setting for a villain such as this. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, but Boomerang and TV guide sites have screwed up on the titles of both of the last two episodes now. The title card reads "The Fastest Food Fiend!" for episode 9, though Boomerang and other sites call it "The Fastest Fast Food Fiend!" (there was no extra "Fast" in the title). With this episode, Boomerang and other TV guide sites have been referring to it as "Attack of the Weird Al-Losaurus!" (with an extra 'l'), though the title card clearly says "Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus!" with only one 'l'. Always frustrates me when they mess up stuff like this, since you know the wrong title is probably going to be the one remembered and included in show records a decade or so down the road. And also makes it tough for me, as I've had the incorrect title now for both episodes and then later had to change it to the correct one once I saw the title card. Now it's time to update our Star-Studded Scoreboard! Note that since this review did technically go up 2 days after episode 11's, you can check out the now-updated scoreboard on that review post. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 8. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 9. The Fastest Food Fiend! 10. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided And to make up for the fact that this review is posted a bit late, and out-of-order, I'll tag two of my favorite Weird Al Yankovic songs on to the end of this review. Enjoy!  Before you ask, yep, I do know I haven't posted a review for episode 10 yet. I typically watch these on WatchCartoonOnline, though they've been extra slow in posting the Weird Al episode for whatever reason. I know it is available on KimCartoon and other such sites, though I don't really trust those sites anymore. A Scooby fan friend of mine claimed to have gotten a virus off of KimCartoon last year and had to pay $200 to get the virus removed, so ever since I've been a bit skeptical of it. WatchCartoonOnline doesn't seem to have any pop-up ads so I've stuck with that one.
Anyways, this was a sort of 'meh' episode for me. I had heard of Sia previously, and had listened to some of her more famous songs such as "Titanium," "Wild Ones," "Chandelier," "Elastic Heart," "Bang My Head," "Cheap Thrills," "The Greatest" and "Thunderclouds." I'll admit, with the exception of "The Greatest" I was never a huge fan of her music. In this episode, I thought it was a bit odd how wacky she was with her urgent pauses, and various wacky antics such as bouncing on a large ball down the hallway. Those gags got a bit old after a while. The villain, however, was super cool and creepy. The scene where she's in the bedroom with Scooby and Shaggy was legitimately pretty terrifying. It was once again super easy to guess who it was, however. The atmosphere itself was definitely spooky, given it was night time. I love when they use big haunted mansions in Scooby as the location, so that was a big plus for me. The gang was once again very two dimensional, particularly Daphne, Velma and Fred, who went back to almost being interchangeable in dialogue again. This episode wasn't particularly offensive to me and I didn't dislike it like the Funky Phantom episode, but I also felt it was very forgettable and there was nothing really special or interesting about it either. Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! 4. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 5. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 6. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 7. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! 8. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 9. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 10. The Fastest Food Fiend! 11. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided  I finished watching Return to Zombie Island on Wednesday, and I must say I have mixed feelings about this film.
I feel like the film doesn't really work at all as a sequel to Zombie Island like they set it up to be. The tone is completely inconsistent with the original, and several details, like in Curse of the 13th Ghost, have significant continuity errors. Some examples of this are Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake being a "school project," their trip to Moonscar Island as a "summer vacation" and Simone and Lena's house being a hotel with a guest book that the gang apparently signed last visit, which they didn't. However, on its own as a standalone film, the movie is pretty decent. I really enjoyed some of the references, especially the one to Reluctant Werewolf and that we got some old Zombie Island footage redone in the current animation. I particularly enjoyed Alan as a character, and the movie had sort of a spooky tone. It was cool there was at least some continuity with the last film about them giving away the Mystery Machine. One thing I hated about the film is Velma claiming everything was fake again. I don't like that they've added this to her character now. It would make sense to have her be a little skeptic, but she's so overbearing that it almost seems like she's in denial. I also didn't like the design of the zombies or cat creatures. They seemed more silly-looking than scary, which was one thing I felt did the first film a terrible injustice. I was really hoping for a sequel to Zombie Island that was similar in its dark and mature tone, but after Curse of the 13th Ghost, tbh my hopes were pretty low and they were for the most part achieved. I thought it was cool they got Elvira to guest star in this, especially after they parodied her in LEGO Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood a few years back. Overall, the film was pretty lackluster as a sequel to one of the most widely loved films of the Scooby franchise. But for the most part, with the exception of the glaring continuity errors, the film was harmless even though there was absolutely no point in doing it besides a nostalgic cash grab for the 50th anniversary. That being said, I'll just add a little disclaimer here to end my review. My hopes were pretty low for this film, but in general, I was disappointed that they didn't try to make legitimate sequels to both 13 Ghosts and Zombie Island. It seemed like WB was going for the nostalgia factor with this year's DTVs, but then wanted to put in as little work as humanly possible into making them true sequels, or even consistent with the original. My opinion is that Scooby-Doo needs a drastic shakeup in the writer's room, with some new people that truly care about the franchise and have some ideas which legitimately cater to the adults still interested in Scooby-Doo. Explore some new territory in the franchise, experiment a bit, and don't just go with safe nostalgia but not bother to put the work in. (This somewhat goes for Guess Who as well) I would genuinely like to see either completely unexplored territory in the Scooby franchise tested out, or maybe go back to some of the old stuff with some actual research done on the tone of the original work.  This was not a great episode, admittedly.
The location and backgrounds were the only thing I liked about the episode. The characters themselves were a bit bland, and I felt like Fred, Daphne and Velma's dialogue was almost interchangeable. None of the jokes were particularly funny, and knowing Jim Gaffigan's humor style from his comedy specials, this felt watered down and unlike his character. The monster was okay, nothing horrible but nothing special either. While I didn't hate this episode, I felt like this episode was just lackluster. It felt rushed, and none of the jokes were particularly funny. There was just nothing notable in this episode. And now it's time for the Star-Studded Scoreboard! Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 4. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 5. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 6. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 7. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 8. The Fastest Food Fiend! 9. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided  I've read some other reviews of this episode, and know that quite a few people were annoyed by Urkel's antics in this one. But I for one thought this was a great episode, and I'd even go so far as to say that it was one of my favorites of the series.
I've personally never seen Family Matters (the show Urkel was on), but Urkel was an enjoyable character for me. I thought the silliness he brought to the table in this episode was pretty funny, particularly the flashback to Urkel's court case and the ending of him blowing up the Mystery Machine. The location of the museum itself was pretty cool-looking, and it was perfect contextually given Urkel's habit of breaking things. I was surprised that there was an animation error in which "Coal Mine" was spelled "Coal Minn." I didn't think WB would still make such a silly mistake like that in today's day and age! The villain being a redesign of the Green Ghosts from "A Night of Fright is No Delight" was kind of cool. I can see how one might think that it was just another lazy repurposing of an original villain, but I think it fit well here and the villain being a "Technomancer" made it different enough that it worked. I've had a bit of an issue with Scooby seeming a bit off in past episodes. In this episode, I thought this issue was fixed. All the character dynamics were pretty spot on! Velma seemed a tad bit awkward at points, but it was still pretty good. Overall, while this episode wasn't perfect, I thought it was still very entertaining and a good silly episode to watch when you want to just relax and turn your brain off. For fun, I'm also going to start something new in these reviews. I'm going to give my overall ranking of the episodes from the series so far, and update the list with each review. Here's where my list, which I'm dubbing the Star-Studded Scoreboard (given this is a team-up series), currently stands (from best to worst): Star-Studded Scoreboard: 1. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! 2. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! 3. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! 4. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! 5. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! 6. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! 7. Ollie Ollie In-come Free! 8. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided!  This was an amazing episode!
The atmosphere was genuinely spooky, and Penn and Teller were great guest stars. I'm glad we got some female minor characters finally, as I think all of them up to this point have been male. The villains were super cool looking too! Penn seemed a tad off at the beginning when he said "Ghosts aren't real." but I can't put my finger on how. I was genuinely shocked that Teller was the villain! I liked the explanation behind why he dressed up. That has to be a first in the Scooby-Doo team ups that the guest star was ever a villain! The gang's personalities were pretty decent in this episode, especially Daphne's quirks from Be Cool Scooby-Doo sort of coming back. The gang's costumes were awesome too! Honestly, almost everything about this episode was awesome! The one part I can say that I absolutely hated in this episode was the fart joke in the elevator. It wasn't even close to funny, and I was very disappointed they chose to use a bodily function joke here. Otherwise, I really appreciated everything about this episode. I'd say the Sherlock Holmes episode slightly edged it out, but not by much. Here's hoping that we get more episodes like this coming up soon!  This was a really cute episode.
This was probably one of the episodes I've enjoyed the most so far. I felt like the pacing was pretty good, the interactions between Scooby and Wonder Woman were super cute, and the villain was pretty cool. All the locations were genuinely spooky and gave a very creepy vibe to the episode. Wonder Woman seemed like a good guest star! I know some were worried about the feminist message being too overpowering, but I thought they did a really nice job with it. They had their moments of female power, which were definitely warranted given it was Wonder Woman, but it also didn't undermine the rest of the episode which was good. They also gave viewers a good message about gender equality, rather than just saying "screw the men." I did think Scooby's line "Boys' locker room, girls' locker room!" was kind of odd, just because it didn't really fit with anything unless they were attempting to introduce the issue of gender neutral bathrooms? Either way it was a strange thing to mention. All the characters were pretty on-point this time, my only criticism being Scooby's long monologue at the end. While the content of the speech itself was certainly inspiring as it was intended to be, it doesn't really fit with Scooby's character to speak in gigantic paragraphs worth of dialogue, in my opinion. Otherwise, Scooby was great in this episode, and I particularly enjoyed his and Shaggy's "truths" when they were captured by the magic lasso. One small other criticism I had was that the initial training session with the girls seemed like it was way too short. Overall, this was an enjoyable episode with a very fun, positive feminist message in it.  This was just a mediocre episode for me.
Location-wise, this episode had a really spooky feeling setting in the museum. I didn't quite understand why the gang was in Ricky Gervais's apartment, but maybe I just missed that part. My biggest complaint was that Ricky Gervais seemed to completely overshadow the gang. Most of the lines in this episode were him making jokes, none of which were particularly funny. The only two I enjoyed were him pointing out that Scooby was just saying his name, and the reference he made to Laurel and Hardy ("Ollie, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into."). I thought it was cool that they called back to The New Scooby-Doo Movies. It was very easy to figure out who the villain was. I liked the Cat-Headed Mummy as a villain, and it was fun that they referenced "Scooby-Doo and a Mummy Too" with his catchphrase being similar to the original mummy's "coin!" and a jewel/valuable item being hidden inside a statue. It was also interesting to see almost an exact replica of Professor Hyde-White from "What a Night for a Knight." Side note, I thought Fred's catchphrase officially being made "Hold the phone! was a bit weird, especially in the opening title where they say the name of the guest star. Overall, a mediocre episode mainly because Ricky Gervais had too big of a role in the episode. I'm hoping we can get back to the kind of dynamic we saw in the previous episode with Sherlock Holmes in the next episode. |
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