Jinkies! Mindy Kaling’s Velma is back for seconds
The divisive animated series is still doing its spooky stuff hunting
TV News Velma
Gas up the Mystery Machine because Velma’s coming back to streaming. Executive-produced by and starring Mindy Kaling, Velma follows
the exploits of everybody’s favorite teen forensic scientist as she sets
about losing her glasses and unmasking the elderly owners of haunted
amusement parks. Following a divisive first season, the show returns for
season two this month.
This still isn’t your granddaddy’s Velma Dinkley, though. Kaling’s take on the
character is more modern and meta, an approach that rankled some fans
when the first season premiered in January 2023. There was an attempt to create a Scooby-Doo show that would appeal to older viewers. However, aspects like the
characters’ races, the show’s self-aware humor, and the lack of
Scooby-Doo shocked audiences the way only a Scooby-Doo spin-off could. For the record, The A.V. Club’s own Saloni Gajjar praised the show’s “nuanced characterizations” where the characters’ ethnicities aren’t “a defining attribute” but rather a feature that “adds unexplored layers to a known world.”
Velma, the character, isn’t letting all that bother her, though. In Crystal Cove, she’s more popular than ever and on the hunt for a new killer that’s targeting her male classmates. Meanwhile, the various romantic entanglements within Mystery, Inc. continue to complicate the group’s dynamic. If only they could get the Harlem Globetrotters back to town to help clear some of this up.
Velma returns to Max on April 25.
76 Comments
I’m into it
Tells you how crazy things have been…I thought this show premiered years ago, like in the heart of the worst of COVID. Yeesh.
I’m not sure I’ve read a single good thing about this show.
You should read some of the early reviews here, which try so, so hard to like to the show.
Well yeah, but have you considered that you hate women?
I mean , no not this time, this show is just AWFUL.I’m honestly amazed anyones defending it.
Considering it now. Will this show swing me one way or another?
Mystery Incorporated was a far superior modern take. I wish they’d just continue that series instead.
I mean if you still think it’s hilarious that Mindy Kaling is a nebbish Indian American lady with a fetish for mean preppy white dudes you might love it? I got the message after like, 2 or 3 other Kaling shows, but maybe you’re in the market.
It was cat shit. And I wanted it to be good, I wanted to shove it in the face of racist that Velma was brown like me now. But the show was trash and was trash for the sake of showing us all how much better they are than anything else.Best thing to do is not watch season 2 (idiots hate watching it just make the network think the show is good).
almost as though diversity and quality are two completely separate unrelated issues.
I’m in the same boat where I wanted it to be good, and something deconstructing the old “teen mystery solving group with a gimmick” formula could have been pretty fun. It started off okay with a few clever bits making fun of modern teen mystery dramas (like all the CW stuff) but it never got past some very surface level jabs. It really feels like they came up with the premise of the whole show to be a parody of CW teen mysteries, and then slapped the Scooby IP on it last minute.Also the main voice cast was delivering their lines so fucking terribly that even when you did get a good joke, the delivery ruined it. These were all people who are pretty good voice actors too, so I’m guessing the director was just shit or they just were too lazy to do multiple takes.
Thats a good point, the voice actors are awful.
I miss Westworld so much. Keeping that show around would cost less money and be a better net good to humanity than being reminded Velma was ever made let alone committing resources to make more seasons of it.
While we’re sending wishes out into the universe, just a reminder that there’s three whole books left of The Expanse series left for adaptation.
Just sayin’
It’s very common for animated shows to order a new season well in advance, due to the time needed for an episode to be completed. If you want your season to premiere approximately one year after the previous one, your order must come at least a year before. Velma was panned almost everywhere, except by the reviewer here, but season 2 was already in production at this point.The big issue for the final three books of The Expanse is that they take place three decades after the event of book (and season) 6, as a new generation comes back from a gate. Unless you change significantly the plot, you either have to hire a whole new cast in the same parts or you put your actors under a heavy layer of aging makeup. Westworld cost a premium to produce. The first three seasons cost around $90-$110M (for ten episodes, except season 3). Season 4 cost more than $160M (for eight episodes), while casually killing off most of the characters people cared for (Bernard or Maeve, for instance, even if replicas could still get produced) and getting ratings that were a fifth of what they were during season 1. It was more expensive than Game of Thrones in its final seasons ($15M by episode), more than The Last of Us, more than Succession (which got more and more people onboard with each new season, the opposite of WW). Even with a revised budget, season 5 would still have cost around $80M. Warner decided instead to cancel it, even if it implied paying the salaries for the main cast, as stated in the contracts, which must have cost them something like $15M.I’m all for artists getting full creative freedom, but in the case of WW, this meant writers enjoying the smell of their own brainfarts.
Yeah, I did say it was wishful thinking.
Though people can live longer in The Expanse (due to improvements in anti-aging technology), and all the main characters are still pretty much fighting fit in books 7-9, so it’d be fair to say they wouldn’t have to add much aging makeup to the current cast to make it believable.
Agreed – even if you don’t want to make the jump forward, you could still get the Jameses Corey to write more Expanse in the time it was left off at. And if you want decent animation that still deserves to be made instead of Velma…
And Venture Bros did a way more interesting take on Scooby Doo anyway. Hell, Venture Bros does unpleasant and sociopathic characters better than Velma, too.
Fun fact: that was literally the only ep not written by Doc & Jack. God bless Ben Edlund for figuring out that, holy hell, Ted Bundy, Valerie Solanas, Patty Hearst, David Berkowitz, and David Berkowitz’s neighbour’s dog make a perfect Scooby Gang. VB also did representation way, way, way, fuckin’ better, too.
Even though, against all odds, Dr Mrs. the Monarch was, at no point in her life, biologically male.
She’s just been smoking cigarettes since Marky-Mark had a Funky Bunch.
I would gladly take more Venture Bros., even if the movie put a bow on things WAY better than I expected.
Don’t forget they had a Batgirl film fully in the can, then just threw it away. Oh, and like 2 or 3 cartoons people actually liked.
pretty sure Westworld was wicked expensive.
I thought the first season was great! I truly can’t understand the hatred for this show. I mean, so many arguments against this show were clearly anti-POC ravings disguised as appeals to nostalgia, so… I guess I do understand the hatred. Read the reviews on IMDB if you want to die a little today.
I had a good time with it.
I made it through 1.5 episodes. I think all the actual ideas and concepts for the show could work, it’s just the execution was not great.
Welcome to the club! People who don’t understand why this is getting a second season also don’t realize there is a lot of regular people who liked it, it’s just that they’re not the kind of people that make an online fuss about it. My only criticism is that while most or the show’s stories and characters are good, they need to tone down the assholishness of Velma. You can make a main character an asshole, but it’s a delicate balance – Rick, from “Rick and Morty” is a perfect example of it properly done – and Velma goes too far in the show, making difficult to connect to her.
No streaming shows almost always get three seasons, cartoons even more. All the money is upfront in development and they are not ratings bound like nonstreaming shows. You basically get two seasons for practically nothing, which at the very least is just content they can show. Unless a show is massively expensive (see “Altered Carbon”) they are “renewed” even if poorly watched, if cheap. And this show is the definition of cheap to make.
The show was renewed for a second season before the first one had even aired. IF it gets renewed for a third, THEN you would have a point.
It has nothing to do with everyone’s race and everything to do with the characters being intensely unlikable and unfunny. There were a couple good gags (the fog festival being the best), but everything it tried to do was done far better by the movie Bottoms, which is essentially just the second episode of Velma extended to feature length and with actual comic timing and jokes that don’t constantly and explicitly explain their own premises out of fear the audience won’t get it.
I’d love to see the show find some sort of equilibrium between “caustic” and “enjoyable to be around”, but that’s going to depend on them taking feedback rather than doubling down on the things that didn’t work.
That would take Mindy Kahling having talent.
You’re SO BRAVE
This show honestly feels like it was written by utter sociopaths. Everyone is mean, cruel, and only cares about themselves and those like them. It honestly makes me almost believe those weird theories that this was written by crypto conservatives hoping to rage bait everyone because it honestly feels like what you would get if you got some alt-righter to write what they think is a progressive show and how they feel POC would act (my favorite example of this is the scene where Shaggy just casually suggests letting Fred get life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit just so a rich white dude can get unfairly accused for once).
The thing is, you absolutely CAN make an entire show centered around obnoxious solipsists (Seinfeld, Curb, Always Sunny), but you have to accept that’s what you’re doing and lean into it. Velma tries to hedge its bets by giving everyone emotional connections and having characters learn lessons, which makes everything so much worse. Their capacity for genuine empathy just makes you wonder what the fuck is up with them the rest of the time.
Dick Town was way funnier if you want mysteries being solved.
Try again. The show was universally hated by both sides of the culture war. Trash is trash, no matter how “Woke” you try and make it.
I didn’t think it was great, but I didn’t think it was horrible either. It had about one really big belly laugh per episode, but the remainder was very hit or miss. It wasn’t the absolute shitshow that people made it out to be, but it probably didn’t need to be renewed, either.
Can we just not talk about the racists? Are you saying the show is divisive because racists hate it? Because that shouldn’t come up when promoting this show.
You’re such a brave, good person.
the show is divisive because it’s terrible, and no amount of AVC trying to claim it’s all just racism will make that not the case
I believe they got a 20 episode order at the start, so this is the second half of that being treated as “season 2,” which is such a scummy thing companies do these days (keeps everyone from getting raises).
I thought it was the other way around. You keep people from getting raises by insisting it’s one season, but splitting into two parts, released months apart.This got a two season order from the start because that’s how long animation takes. If you don’t give it an early renewal, it’s virtually impossible to have the next season ready to go a year later.
Yeah, everything about this has always positioned it as season two, not season one part two, and the first season wrapped everything up in a nice little bow with a minor cliffhanger at the end.
Not having seen the show, I’m wondering – how well does this capture it?
Pitch Meeting usually is quite accurate.
He watches these things so we don’t have to. He really should get hazard pay.
I’ve stopped watching Pitch Meeting since he’s moved to this tac. I prefer when he satirizes good films and shows, things that I enjoy and am familiar with. I have no interest in seeing someone make fun of something I wasn’t going to watch anyway.On the other hand, when I have watched a stinker that he’s covered, I have been known to send along the Pitch Meeting to others and say “It’s like this”.
So…your main criticism of Pitch Meeting is that he can’t read your mind?
No, it’s that I find winky chiding of well-loved films, or a least widely viewed ones, more entertaining than piling on of objective bombs that no one is watching. Teasing Jurassic Park is more fun than mocking Argylle.
OK, but you really shouldn’t use “objective” like that.
Bomb is a pretty objective, measurable term. Madame Web bombed. Argylle bombed.
Counterpoint: the episode that got me into watching Pitch Meeting in the first place was for The Last Airbender. It’s still my favorite Pitch Meeting, and I still haven’t seen the movie.
Mock ‘em all, let the gods sort ‘em out.
I find Pitch Meeting exhausting no matter what they’re covering. Anything sounds bad if you attribute the worst intentions to it and voice them in the most obnoxious, self-assured way possible. Straw man stuff.
…The first Pitch Meeting was for Justice League. He didn’t “move to” this; it *started* there.
God, I love his delivery. “Is THAT how that works?” “It might be!”Also, I guess I’m gonna be the one to do it:“Well, just showing that you’re aware that pop culture exists is very meta and funny and therefore counts.”- The AV Club (but they’re slowly getting better)
It was spot on.
When hate watching leads to a renewal
I doubt it. It probably had an order for 20 episodes to begin with. I don’t recall the noise making much of an impact.
The second season was announced before the first season was finished, and was confirmed to have been ordered before the first episode aired. Hate watching had nothing to do with this.
There wasn’t anything devising about this show. It was universally hated.
Christ , practically ANY feedback about the show online I saw was that people universally HATED it, and it was one of the few times that a show didnt appeal to ANYBODY, so I’m honestly suprised to see it being defended in the comments. Oh a trotting out the ‘oh if you dont like it you’re a racist chud’ accusations is a bit weak , its just generally awful . I’m guessing this is in reality the second half of the season that was ordered , rather than a real ‘second season’ so hopefully its done after this.
Oh a trotting out the ‘oh if you dont like it you’re a racist chud’ accusations is a bit weak Eh, yeah, but thankfully that sort of stupid apoplexy can be dismissed for the banal trash that it is.
Im sure the lonely chuds who flipped their shit over the first season will continue to have a normal one.
Didn’t Mindy Kaling get canceled?
Somewhat surprised by the comments… I didn’t know this show was liked by as many as THREE people!I find Mindy Kaling astoundingly unfunny, but I guess that’s just because I have hate in my heart or something.
I loved her as Kelly Kapoor in “The Office” but I think that’s because she had such a talented set of castmates and she was just a junior writer rather than being in charge
Everything I read about the first season sounded like it was made by someone who hates Scooby cartoons and is actively mocking those who are fans. I mean, it’s a Scooby cartoon with no Scooby! WTF?
Compare this tedious cynical nonsense with something like Lower Decks, a show that:A) Gleefully mocks the source material, but…
B) is written by people who love the source material for people who love the source material, so it’s actually…C) watchable.
Heeeeeeey! Shitty Daria is back!
I made it through the first episode (barely) and stopped. Just painfully unfunny, super impressed with how clever it is, while not being actually clever. Making a joke and calling out that you’re making the joke and then chiding the audience for laughing… it was impossible.
HBO cancels some excellent shows and THIS gets renewed????
the anti-wokerati got upset over “aspects like the characters’ races”. that part’s true.but everyone else got upset by the show’s painful lack of humour and lazy attempts to make it “mature” through sex and violence. Like a parody of a parody, and therefore anti-funny.
Only for seconds? I thought she was one of the main characters, she should have more screen time than that!
This show was renewed for nothing other than because of content for MAX. It is well known it was poorly received. But all the money is spent upfront. That is why most streaming shows get two or three seasons, unless they bomb AND are really expensive to continue. Cartoons are not expensive. After three seasons, most cast and crew have to get big raises (unless some people willingly take less). So there was going to be another season whether people liked it or not. Season 2 of cartoons are basically almost free, with some minimal expenses, so even if almost no one watches it, they still break even and they get content.