Velma review: Zoinks! Mindy Kaling’s Scooby-Doo prequel is a (mostly) fun time
HBO Max's animated comedy explores the teenage years of the beloved Scooby-Doo characters, minus a certain Great Dane
TV Reviews Scooby-Doo
Velma launches with punchy narration that makes explicitly clear this isn’t a version of Scooby-Doo characters the audience is already familiar with. “I’m Velma Dinkley, and this is my origin story,” Mindy Kaling’s voiceover proclaims as the first episode begins. She continues: “Normally, origin stories are about tall, handsome guys struggling with the burden of being handed even more power. And if they are about girls, it’s usually like: Hey, what made this hot chick go crazy?” This isn’t entirely true, of course, but it’s a vivid snapshot of the type of story Velma strives to tell. Thankfully, it’s told amusingly, even if the show tends to get trapped by the same YA tropes it tries to poke fun at.
HBO Max’s animated comedy re-contextualizes in a new light the four humans who will eventually go on to create Mystery Inc. and adopt the iconic talking Great Dane. (Since it’s a prequel, the show doesn’t have a Scooby-Doo just yet). At its best, Velma is a meta coming-of-age tale for the titular star along with Daphne (Constance Wu), Fred (Glenn Howerton), and Shaggy Norville (Sam Richardson). It’s a frothy mix of murder mystery and soapy teen drama that never takes itself too seriously. The eight of 10 episodes watched for review run less than 30 minutes each, so Velma boasts a well-structured narrative with jokes, suspense, interconnected plotlines, and evolving relationships instead of a “case-of-the-week” format and various monster antics.
At worst, the show doesn’t feel entirely fresh despite approaching beloved characters in a distinctive light. The animation style isn’t distinctive either, but at least it feels like a pointed homage to the cartoon that inspired it. Velma beckons comparisons to everything from Harley Quinn to Riverdale, from Supernatural to Kaling’s own Never Have I Ever. In fact, the similarities between Velma and NHIE’s Devi are often striking: Two selfish but relatable winsome teens burdened by the loss of a parent, and grief becomes a strong motivator for their actions.
As with any Kaling-created TV series, including The Mindy Project and The Sex Lives Of College Girls, the writing here is sharp and full of quips. Velma will leave an enjoyable imprint if you’re already a fan of this other content. The show thrives on mile-a-minute jokes, but they don’t all land equally. Expect a plethora of pop culture references. (Less than two minutes into the pilot, I counted nods to—whether subtle or obvious—Riverdale, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and House Of Lies, and that’s only the beginning). The show is clearly catering to viewers who are well-tapped into the zeitgeist.
Underneath the buzzy one-liners is a generic but fun mystery or two. Velma is trying to find her missing mother, Diya (Sarayu Blue), who vanished a couple of years ago. She’s convinced something terrible happened to her mom. Her dad, Aman (Russell Peters), believes Diya abandoned them, so he moves on with the local diner’s vain waitress/owner Sophie (a delightfully acidic Melissa Fumero). Velma is pathologically obsessed with figuring out what happened to Diya, so she usually disregards people unless they’re useful to her quest. The suspense deepens when a masked serial killer begins targeting popular girls at Crystal Cove High. Naturally, this puts Daphne in grave danger.
Don’t worry, though, because Daphne is more than a damsel in distress. She’s essentially the second lead, voiced pitch-perfectly by Wu with a blend of menace and vulnerability. Adopted by a lesbian couple (played by Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes), Daphne sets out to learn more about her birth parents as the season evolves. The show’s remarkable contribution to Scooby-Doo lore is developing Velma and Daphne’s captivating dynamic. They go from childhood buddies to frenemies to a potential romance without contrivance.
Despite the thrills and gore (the killer slices their victims’ heads open, Fred’s mansion hides creepy secrets, etc.), the show’s driving force is its nuanced characterization. After it was announced that Kaling was developing Velma,
longtime fans criticized the character’s depiction as a South Asian bisexual teen as opposed to, well, how we’ve known her for decades. Additionally, Daphne is also Asian, and Norville is Black (and not a goofy stoner without his pet pooch/BFF just yet). So, yes, Velma takes creative liberties. But they’re not used for surface-level hype. We still get the origin story of “Jinkies!” and the Mystery Inc. van. The protagonists’ ethnicity isn’t a defining attribute; it adds unexplored layers to a known world.
In this case, the world of Crystal Cove is cartoonish and wholesome at the same time. All four kids struggle in their interpersonal bonds—Velma has a crush on Daphne and Fred, remaining oblivious to Norville’s affection toward her. They’re dealing with complex parent-child issues that Velma slowly fleshes out. The seriousness is balanced with plenty of self-referential humor, sometimes exasperatingly, but it mostly works as a joyride.
Velma’s suspense isn’t gripping on its own, but it doesn’t matter. The voice performances make the brief lulls worth it. The actors are clearly having a ball, with the warm chemistry between Kaling, Wu, Richardson, and Howerton shining through even though they don’t appear on screen. The supporting cast is equally charming, including Yvonne Orji and Fortune Feimster as the hot, mean girls at school. This isn’t the Velma we’re used to, but it’s the Velma we deserve to enjoy today.
Velma will premiere on HBO Max with two episodes on January 12
145 Comments
Making Velma into a little person is quite a choice.That art though: mid ‘00s web animation called, it wants its style back.
It looks like a flash game from 2005.
find me a modern cartoon that DOESN’T look like this. hate that we landed on this so much.
Axe Cop and Black Dynamite
+1 sucka!
I blame Steven Universe. Not only does every new animated show look EXACTLY like it, they all traffic in the same performative virtue signaling and corporate faux-wokeness
A) This looks nothing like Steven Universe. If anything, I’d say it looks closer to Venture Brothers.B) People have been complaining about how “all cartoons look the same these days” since long before Steven Universe.C) I know there’s all sorts of drama surrounding Steven Universe involving toxic fans and such but I’m old enough that I wasn’t really exposed to any of it. My wife likes it, and from what I’ve seen I’d say it’s a pretty sweet and genuine show. Can’t say I’ve noticed any “performative virtue signaling” or “corporate faux-wokeness.”
In your last point, considering the hell Rebecca Sugar and co went through to get LGBTQ scenes approved and what they sacrificed to make it work, I think it’s safe to say SU was anything but ‘Corporate faux-wokeness”. The CN executives are as bad as Disney’s to a degree.
Before you say that, you might want to check this video about Steven Universe out:
Ok thank you. I feel like I’m going crazy when people say things like all cartoons look the same and then point out two very different looking shows. Are they just referring to the fact that all cartoons are in fact drawings and not live-action?
I think that person is trolling a bit when they say Velma looks like Steven Universe, but there IS some truth to the idea of a lot of cartoons from that era looking alike. There’s even a name for the specific style:https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/calarts
It’s just a troll doing the same weird little troll dance because they’re mad cartoons acknowledge gay people openly now.
“Virtue signaling” and “wokeness” are basically dog whistles at this point for “acknowledging LGBTQ+ and POC exist.” I’m seeing it used a lot in this sense. When you push people on this, they usually say “I’m not against these people, it just feels ‘forced'”
honestly i blame family guy.
Zombie College or Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln?
Hard Drinkin Lincoln for sure!
I liked Garfield without Garfield, but I don’t think I’m going to like Scooby without the dog.
Idunno, I always liked the mysteries, but thought Scooby was annoying and bizarre.
I have always detested Scooby and always bounced off every version of Scooby-Doo that I have been told is ‘really good’ because the world’s most exhaustingly stupid talking dog is in it.
Then I dunno make a new show instead of butchering an existing one?
You don’t want to see Shaggy just talking to himself?
.
Maybe Shaggy is constantly high on ‘shrooms and is the only one who actually sees Scooby.
This is the first review of this show I’ve seen that actually liked it, I’d definitely take this recommendation with a grain of salt. It seems to basically just be a Mindy Kaling self-insert show with a recognizable IP slapped over it, which doesn’t sound like a good time.
I have heard it described as “Scooby-Doo for people who hate Scooby-Doo” and I can’t figure out if that’s referring to the show or the dog. Could be either, I suppose.
IGN also seemed mostly positive, with a few expected complaints.I also think it’s funny that people are acting like this was Mindy’s idea. It was something she got approached to do *as a voice* and then got more involved after.
Give me Scrappy or give me Puppy-Powa?
Scrappy Doo is pure crap. The kind of turd in the punchbowl that can ruin a franchise.
I mean, it’s way more likely that Scooby is just a grand hallucination that Shaggy is having… You think he and his friends REALLY go around in a psychedelic van solving mysteries that always involve old people in masks complaining meddling kids? Fred is obviously a stand-in for his dad, Daphne is his stepmom who broke up his family, Velma is his dutiful mom that always gets tossed aside. Shaggy is just tripping balls in the back of the Mystery Machine an imagining it all.
They kinda did that with the Venture Bros. spoof, where the Shaggy character is the only one who can hear the dog and is on the brink of sanity because of it.
Just pretend you’re watching Speed Buggy without the Buggy, or Jabber Jaw without the Jabber.
Room a zoom zoom…gone? 🙁
That’s like Hong Kong Phooey, but without the dog and kung fu.
It seems to be going without recognition that, yes, Garfield Without Garfield was completely brilliant.
For me, it’s the lack of Jerry Reed, Sandy Duncan, and all the other celebrity cameos who were well past their prime by the time I actually watched the show (with a slight caveat of Sonny & Cher, due to his politics and her forcing auto-tune on the masses).
Just do what I plan to: take it for what it is, a new show. This isn’t “Scooby Do”. By virtue of who the characters are, it can’t be. It’s an original series cosplaying as an existing one. It should be judged as such.
F-find young women, invite them over. R-remind them of “the implication”E-ease your way into their heart, but make sure you also bang them. D-dump them.
And when she’s in the Mystery Machine, she’s not gonna say no, she’d never say no…because of the implication.
But it sounds like she doesn’t want to be on the Mystery Machine…
Fred has been the star of Scooby Doo since A pup named Scooby Doo and then in Mystery Incorporated as well! But yes, Fred has alot of Dennis energy to him! Well done.
It’s fine making Shaggy Black, but making not a zonked-out stoner is a bridge too far.
Isn’t it a long-running thing from old shows that Shaggy is actually really smart and accomplished, but then just lost interest at some point and became a stoner?
It’s called burnout, and it’s very real.
It’s so hackey at this point.
You’re thinking of James Ignatowski.
Im sure there will be an episode where he discovers… Sandwiches.
Big.Fucking.Sandwiches.
Yeah wtf. One of the only reasons I can see even making an adult oriented version of Scooby-Doo is to play up the weed humor.
Apparently that’s what James Gunn’s first script for the 2002 film was like. It was written as an ironic, adult-oriented take on the series, ala The Brady Bunch Movie or Addams Family Values, with a PG-13 or R rating in mind. Unfortunately that version of the script is now lost, but it allegedly leaned HARD on the weed references.
He should have been Lebanese, given that he was originally voiced by the late great Lebanese-American D.J. Casey Kasem.
“Hi kids, I’m Shaggy Black! And today me & the gang are going to learn some important lessons about safety and grammar!”
They’ve made Velma a brown, openly gay character.Tucker Carlson could easily spend a whole week talking about this.
It’s an extremely boring and homophobic choice to make Velma a lesbian. Daphne the lesbian would have been the gutsy choice. Or gay Fred.
Fred’s been rocking an ascot since the 70s. He has always been at least bi
Fred is obviously a TRAP
Fred isn’t gay?
No. Fred lays pipe in the new show. He fucks ‘em and forgets ‘em.
He’s a traposexual. His love of traps leaves no room for love of mere men or women.
Slow down, Bobby. HBO Max has yet to confirm a 2nd season.
Season 2 is going to be how they sexed Scooby Doo into the gang.
Cool fanfic, bruh.
Fuck you then dickhead.
That attitude is not going to get you far with HBO Max if you’re hoping for a 2nd season, I can tell you that for free.
Fred is gay, and black. It’s awful.
I thought the review was pretty clear that she’s bi.
Don’t worry. Daphne is sucking face with Velma already at the end of episode two. 😀
Jinkies
I feel like there’s nothing they’d want more than a couple of weeks in that right wing rage cycle just to drum up some interest, but I don’t think anyone will muster up the energy to care. I’m guessing this will be one of those shows that gets canceled and subsequently disappears from the service altogether.
And then the right will claim victory over another “go woke, go broke” failure. Great job, everyone! Let’s do it again tomorrow.
What do you expect, for Mindy Kaling to write a character who isn’t a self insert in some way?
She’s the frumpy nerd so she doesn’t even appear in Tucker’s field of vision. If it was Daphne who they changed though it’d be Green M&M all over again.
Oh yeah, then he would have lost it!
And the really weird thing is that the first teaser had Velma herself going on a rant about this very thing. Apparently they were going for it to be taken ironically, but just like Skips and Mudflap, the offensiveness is played so straight that it was impossible to tell and a lot of people instantly wrote the show off.
I just took it as “Look, we are being clever. So much so that we think we need to spell it out. Really loudly because you might not see the cleverness.”
Killed it for me right there.
The changing her race fits nicely into the right’s “I don’t see color nonsense.”. Whiteness is inherent to any white person, real or fictional. Treating it as a costume that can be taken off by simply having darker skin is a gross idea. Whiteness is certainly inherent to characters like Velma who always felt comfortable talking to police and calling them whenever she felt the need, without fear. Removing her whiteness is a testament to every Rachel Dolzeal moron out there, not to mention the “All Lives Matter” crowd.
You’re ignoring the whole picture of the show. That in itself is fine. Antagonizing the audience is not.
I preferred the horny as hell straight Velma that kept trying to get with Shaggy in one of the Scooby-Doo reboots. Can’t remember which one that was… We basically get a whole new Scooby-Doo series every few years.But this one…? Meh. I’m not the biggest Mindy Kaling fan, and Velma is by far the least interesting character in Scooby-Doo. Making a seemingly “woke” version of the character as the centerpiece to a series, and starring one of the worst original characters in The Office (in my opinion), is basically the media firing on all cylinders to ensure that I won’t care to watch it.The trend of “let’s make a character brown and gay” is becoming an incredibly tired trope in character building. It’s not that interesting of a character aspect when they seem to add nothing else to it. When characters like these are more organic, like Queen Latifah in Set It Off (1996), then there’s actually something to explore in their development onscreen. The film Pariah (2011) also handles this pretty well by not throwing black lesbian sexuality in your face like it’s a political move that someone came up with as a way to just stir up some buzz.I certainly don’t hate the idea of a brown lesbian Velma, but the material I’ve seen of this show lends more credence to it being a trope, rather than a real and organic reason to evolve to character—as if anyone really wanted to delve into the life of whole new Velma that much… Because honestly, without Scooby-Doo in this, I’m barely interested as is, and I have a hard time believing that little girls (the prime demographic for this idea) will also care about this without Scooby-Doo and the rest of the gang being more central. A lot of this depends on how they handle the other characters… If they start getting into this dangerous territory of warping the still white Fred and Daphne into being horrible or annoying people (while Velma is the only likeable one) then the show will become a conversation about respecting the source material, and no one really wants to go down that road.
Its disgusting.
mindy kaling is a wealthy heterocis terf lol
I’m still wondering when the hell we’re getting that Daria/Jodie revival.
I can’t wait to watch this because I’m a dumbass baby.
That’s a hell of a cast, if nothing else.
They really sabotaged the show with that first trailer portraying Velma as a right wing edgelord whining about how everything is woke.
imagine being a person who was legitimately angry about velma not being a straight white girl, so many broken penises
Is that the Velma Robot in that picture?
Velma boasts a well-structured narrative with jokes, suspense, interconnected plotlines, and evolving relationships inste……CANCELLED! Not only that, but Warner-Discovery also gave away the rights to ‘jinkies’ to a Peruvian sandpaper manufacturer, and any classic episodes that feature said utterance have been scrubbed from the site… which is pretty much all of them.
one of the strangest decisions i’ve ever seen was ‘we must destroy the new scooby doo movie, but we can’t possibly deny the world mindy kaling’s take on the characters’she must have just had a better deal.
It’s very simple. Movie costs much money; cheap animated series costs little money.
The deal is, they are deleting this from the servers next month, and flinging all physical copies into the ocean.
What was canceled was the holiday special, not the actual movie (which is almost certainly also canceled, but at least it’s not finished first)I’d say Velma might make it to March before being deleted to save money. Heck, it might even be successful enough to get a second season greenlit and then quietly canceled without telling the creatives.
Velma is a TV series, while the Scoob sequel was to be a direct-to-streaming movie for a company whose new management decided that all their movies should be theatrical.
all our moving must be theatrical but we also can’t afford to release any movies theatrically.
Bingo.https://deadline.com/2019/02/mindy-kaling-big-overall-deal-warner-bros-tv-group-leaves-nbcu-home-1202561887/
I like how they said you couldn’t make Scooby Doo funny in an Adult cartoon. He’s a talking dog with a speech impediment that eats comically large sandwiches with weird ingredients in one bite and is owned by a guy named Shaggy. I’m not a comedy writer but seems like you got a lot to work with there.
James Gunn did it 20 years ago. It’s considered lost media now, but his original script for the 2002 film was apparently full of adult humor and was written with a PG-13 or R rating in mind. Remember it was the style at the time to do ironic, adult-oriented takes on squeaky-clean 60s TV series–see The Brady Bunch Movie and Addams Family Values.
I’m not so sure the 1960s Addams Family were all that squeaky clean. You definitely got the impression that Gomez and Morticia fucked off camera, while most couples on TV then had basically no sexual chemistry.
I will always stump for that first live action movie, there’s a lot of good stuff in there, and making Scrappy the villain was genius.But that second one fell off a cliff, every ounce of satire and poking fun at the original show was gone and a weird reverence replaced it, they expected people to care that all the “classic” monsters were there and it just didn’t work.Although, I did appreciate how they telegraphed super hard that Seth Green was the masked villain, to the point that I’m like 70% sure he was in the costume most of the time, but instead it was somehow BOTH of the other suspects, one of whom was secretly the other the whole time.
SDMI is a funny adult Scooby Doo. In fact, it’s basically a glorious 52 episode punchline for everything that came before it.
Good show but it’s technically for children in the same way Steven Universe and Adventure Time were. Doesn’t mean adult fans like myself can’t enjoy it. This new show is strictly for adults.
Like, who would like a talking dog in an adult cartoon? That’s why Family Guy was… never mind
No Scooby, Newgrounds animation, and Shaggy’s not a stoner. Wtf.
Holy shit that looks terrible. If you have to spend the whole trailer trying to justify your blatant “progressive” changes with completely shitty and terrible “jokes” this thing will be cancelled before the last episode of the season. If you want to actually be progressive and have it be good you can’t spend the whole trailer trying to dog on people who dislike it. That is not funny, smart, or getting them….its fucking a shitty watch for those of us who don’t give two shit what sex velma fucks, or what color her skin is. Really a shame it could have been good. Who knows maybe i’m wrong and there are people who think that is top humor. You sure are sticking it to “the man” with those terrible jokes that get in the way of what could be a good show.
“its fucking a shitty watch for those of us who don’t give two shit what sex velma fucks, or what color her skin is.”Well when you put it like that it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t try to appeal to you.
This feels like one of those where a creator had a concept that they couldn’t get made, and so they grafted it onto an existing property. That can sometimes work, but hanging a lampshade on “this isn’t your grandfather’s scooby doo” in the promo isn’t the best sign.
Yes! Thanks for putting your finger on it. Its the classic “I have an idea, but if I don’t drape some known IP on it no one is going to show up.”
Given the current state of HBO/Discovery, which seem to have a feeling of disdain towards animated projects, I think we can only expect to see more of this.
It feels like a jobs program for her witless nepo-baby-writer-friend from “Office” days Charlie Grandy.
You’re KIND OF not wrong. Except that Grandy was involved in the development prior to Kaling’s involvement. He and the other producers asked her to do voice work and she got more involved after the fact.
True. That’s how we got Die Hard With a Vengeance.
All right, I think I’m ready to say goodbye to the “X is a (mostly) good show” review headline construction. At some point it just comes across like you’re hedging your bets.
It’s marketing 101. You can’t criticize diversity cash-ins honestly or you’re a bigot.
Or it’s a mixed bag review. I get your point but I also invite you to craft a headline that says the same thing, which is the headline equivalent of a shrug.
“X show has potential to be great” or “while it has its flaws, X show is still an enjoyable romp” etc. I’m mostly just tired of the parenthetical construction, specifically, which I feel like I’ve seen more and more often.
Every year I read about 180 scripts between Dec and Jan for a nonprofit. And believe me, you run out of creative ways to say “This doesn’t suck but it isn’t great either.” I don’t know that what you’re seeing is a result of slacking standards in pop culture criticism or slacking standards in film/TV or a glut of material or any combo thereof. And again, I get it.I wonder if everyone suddenly backing off on production orders will affect that.
I liked She-Hulk more than most, I think. But trolling incels for most of the runtime and ugly animation aren’t the parts I found appealing.
I think we’re in a weird period of marketing, where the large corporations are very much in on the memes and jokes and they’re trying their best to capitalize on any trend they can get their hands on.
I think there are plenty of good stories to be told here, but not so much by the billion dollar corp.
they’re also, i think, learning the hard way that most people aren’t online and don’t care about this culture war shit.
Okay, but by that same lack of data “most people” don’t have HBO Max subscriptions. And it’s wonderful if true that most people don’t care about culture wars except what do YOU mean by that term? And how do you explain just about every public policy statement by the GOP in the last decade?
Forget the killer in the show, Velma needs to have one eye open for the real danger… David Zaslav. An HBO Max original and it’s animated? This thing is throwing up death flags left and right!
Good to know that this version of Velma is canonically bi; I was worried that the queer aspect of the character would be ignored.I still personally prefer Jewish Velma, but the characters’ ethnicities doesn’t really matter. I just hope the mystery’s good. (Now, on the other hand, if Shaggy eats meat, then it’s ruined forever!)
Yet another lazy and cynical mining of Gen X nostalgia by imagination barren Gen Y’ers. I only lasted through eight minutes of the tedious cliches, plodding dialogue, and obvious jokes. This one season wonder offers no surprises or insights and may as well been scripted (and likely will be eventually) and animated by AI for all its soullessness. Do something new for fuck sake.
I didn’t know Velma was black in this version.
I’m actually okay with the changes. Honestly, I think something like those changes are almost required to keep something like this going after this many years.
Wrong. This show has been doing fine for 50 years. This is another attempt to destroy and belittle white people. They should have just made a cartoon about some brown girl. This shit will flop.
But like… just make something new instead. Old things don’t have to keep going.
This all seems kinda… insufferable.
Weird, because it looks shitty as hell.
Did I mias something? Didn’t Scooby and Shaggy grow up together?
I’d watch this if I had the slightest bit of confidence in the direction WB is going in. Can’t wait for this to be completely erased and made unwatchable for tax savings!
Fuuuuuuck that. Stop ruining our culture with this garbage. These people know that black people are only 13 % right? Not 70%?
I like all of the side characters, but Shaggy and Scooby are the two stars, and they chose to exclude BOTH of them? I’m still gonna watch though…
HBO Max’s animated comedyI assume it’s already been canceled and its existence wiped away from this plane of reality in the search for a dubious tax break.
“So, yes, Velma takes creative liberties. But they’re not used for surface-level hype.”They… sound just like surface-level hype, though.
Ooh she’s a lesbian now and we have changed all the races, and made them younger and… blah, blah, blah. Velma has always been thought of as a lesbian. Big deal. Now Daphne is a lesbian too and everyone covers some race so no one is left out and variations of color on screen can make everyone feel represented.Why?Does telling a new story with the original characters mean that no one can associate with them? No one would like the origin story of the original group updated to today? Velma would still be a lesbian. Shaggy should have still been a stoner. But when they made him black they couldn’t make him a stoner because that would be racist and stereo typing. If he had been white, it would have just been a loser. (Honestly, if they could write and were actually as challenging as they want to appear to be they would have left it, anyone can enjoy weed, race has nothing to do with it. Hollywood at work again.)Just we are left with another update that never should have happened, missing the center of the show, with changes meant to challenge us, but really just make us shake our collective heads.
Sure the show sucks BUT it’s gay and brown so it’s actually good.
Nice. I’m glad to see some writers (Rowling, Mindy, etc.) who aren’t afraid to upset the woke culture typical at most big Hollywood Studios reboots. Glad Velma herself isn’t “gender questioning” and you can very clearly see why Mindy et al gets along with the aforementioned famed author of the beloved children’s series.
the first two episodes were really bad, but had 3-4 good jokes, so I hope they tell more jokes
Morbidly curious about this one – the apocalyptically low audience score suggests review bombing, but even Gail Simone said she couldn’t get through one episode.
Like adding all this “fred is a white douche” and Velma is an indian who hates herself” actually makes for a fun Scooby show. But of you like injected personal piolitics checklists in old school cartoons it’s probably ace.0,5 user score says it’s getting cancelled out of the gate.
Foul, racist, mean spirited fan-baiting garbage designed to gain viewers simply through fan baiting. We live in a brief window where it’s actually a plot by showrunners to gain popularity by putting out trash that people hate. It will be short-lived, but in the meanwhile it must beat actually trying (and failing) to put out a show that is faithful and respectful to the IP from which it was conceived. This pathetic, postmodern intersectionalist woke era of western society is not going to age well.
I wish people who are hating this because it’s “not the Scooby Doo characters!” would take a cue from Taylor Tomlinson’s routine about how much she SUCKED in her twenties.I personally tend not to like shitty characters being shitty but I also think it’s unfair to hate teenage characters for not being their more mature older selves. There’s no reason to assume that this selfish asshole teenage Velma won’t eventually turn into the character you know and love. If I met high school me I’d probably find that kid pretty fucking annoying.
id agree with you, if the “new” versions of the characters retained any of their core traits. what we got was a basic resemblance to the old gang slapped on a new set of characters. and then made fucking unbearable to watch.
I couldn’t even make it through the first episode. Just tons of edgelord humor wrapped in a transparently disingenuous woke package to poke the bear and win likes on Twitter. Having garbage like this to complain about is why idiots like Tucker Carlson are popular. How about just taking something millions of people love and trying to make a good show out of it instead?
HAHAHA of course AVCLUB loves this show