I feel one of the biggest reasons Charles Grandy and Mindy Kaling’s new show Velma for HBO Max has gotten so much talk surrounding it is because on paper it’s a concept that could more than easily be entertaining with the right approach. The weird culture war-ish discourse surrounding it to me distracts from not just the missed potential, but how it also kinda doubles down on a number of meta comedy tropes that are starting to get overdone.
Also, we’ve seen the Scooby Doo franchise get subverted before. Say what you will about James Gunn’s live action Scooby film, it had an edge, but at the time those kinds of satire felt fresher. Kaling voices Velma Dinkley, an unpopular high school girl who’s looking to crack the cases of both random teenagers popping up dead around town along with where her mother vanished, and is also suffering from bizarre nightmare visions spawned from her emotions.
Often it comes off like this series badly wants to be the Rick & Morty of Scooby Doo in how nihilistic and crude its humor and characterization can get, as it’s implied through a series of flashbacks that young Velma was such a little hellion that her mom was eventually just “nah, I’m out, peace”. Now I’m usually on the outside looking in when it comes to Scooby as I’ve never been a diehard fan, but far from a disliker either. Most of the non-Flim Flam parts of 13 Ghosts of Scooby were good, Mystery Inc. and Pup Named Scooby are cute shows.
I’m not going to spend too much energy on some of the wild theories I’ve heard about the creative process when making it, I’ll just state that no, the show isn’t some sort of “psy-op”. Velma is, or at least it believes, that it’s forward thinking, the writers are going out of their way to be hip. Desperately. And badly. The point, I think, is for Velma to be cutting down the morons around her, but her approach is written so abrasively that it’s a wonder why anyone would want to hang around her for five minutes. Much of her attitude is birthed from a now-ended friendship with Daphne Blake, who Velma accuses of ditching her for the popular clique. In contrast, previous versions of Velma definitely had their sarcastic sides, though they didn’t have any of the bitter overtones featured in this show.
The supporting cast doesn’t do much to keep the stories above the water. Norville Rogers, voiced by Sam Richardson, suffers from what you’d call “Nice Guy Syndrome”. His one main characteristic outside of his affinity for snacks across the globe ( the one thing he has in common with his original Shaggy incarnation) is a creepy love for Velma from afar, leading to bizarre schemes on his part to gain her affection. (And to be honest, the way Velma laughs off the idea of Norville having feelings for her just comes off callous.)
Daphne is voiced by Constance Wu, and she has a Helga Pataki-ish crush-hate relationship with Velma, lending her the ability to halt Velma’s hallucinations with kisses on the mouth (also, she’s a drug dealer). And as talented as Glenn Howerton is, the problem with his Fred Jones is that this pampered rich heir version of him (his father runs an ascot shop empire) doesn’t really feel like an actual character. Rather he comes off more like a stand-in straw man for a specific type of dopey white guy that Kaling’s apparently dealt with throughout her history in the industry.
I’m not claiming Mystery Inc. is some grand masterpiece of writing, but at least the creative team was able to subvert the usual tropes of Fred’s personality while also keeping him endearing. Oh, and Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes are aboard as Donna and Linda, two bumbling detectives and Daphne’s parents performing what’s basically the old Naked Gun routine. Needless to say they’re one of the show’s few marginally passable bright spots.
So given the fact that a second season, regardless of how we feel about it, is in the pipeline, I’ll put some focus on what I feel the show should try in order to change the narrative around it.
First off, and this is imperative if you guys want *any* sort of hope for season three: you’ve got to tone down some of the hostility in the jokes and writing. If the intent is for Kaling’s Velma to capture that Daria-style vibe where she’s a sardonic smart teen in a dopey town, go back and watch Daria- she was snarky, but neither she nor her series was aggressively as mean as this Scooby spin-off. The tone here comes off more in line with flops like Allen Gregory, Sit Down Shut Up, or other failed caustic cartoons from the late 2000’s/2010s.
Second, y’all need to decide exactly what this show is about. Is the second season going to feature the cast maturing, or are they going to be protagonists that we enjoy seeing suffer? What works about Charlie, Frank and the Sunny gang, as well as Peter from Family Guy, is how their creative teams fully committed to making these characters total piles of garbage. If that’s what Velma wants to do, fine. That could work and make the show audaciously dark but entertaining. But the writers have to pick a direction because since we’re obviously supposed to like and root for Velma here, that means they can’t have it both ways.
So is Velma the worst adaptation of a major property I’ve seen? Hardly, it’s not quite as wretched as the Halle Berry Catwoman. But with Kaling’s take on Scooby Doo, it’s hard to figure out who it’s meant to appeal to since the characters feel so alien from what any fan of the series might recognize.
At points, the urban legend around it secretly being an original IP with a Scooby skin slapped on the cast and plot feels somewhat credible. The only way I’d recommend even watching one episode is for aspiring comedy writers looking for examples of what *not* to do when they’re trying to reach out to a younger demographic (and let’s be real, this show is desperately reaching for that HBO Harley Quinn crowd). It’s a hoot that Velma has a “fellow kids” joke when that’s pretty much the whole attitude of this cartoon.
But that’s just how I felt about it. If you loved or hated it, maybe you disagree with me or not, let us know your opinions as usual on FAN’s spots on Twitter and Facebook!