Let's be honest. They referred to Scooby is 'the dog' because they don't care about him. They never cared about what makes Scooby Doo Scooby Doo. Mindy wanted to make a show to spew out how great she thinks she is, and Scooby Doo is here for name recognition.
Scooby is the heart of the group. Mystery Inc. and Be Cool Scooby Doo understood this. Scooby loves the gang, is emotionally intelligent and able to help them, even if he doesn’t always understands why they’re upset. He’s kind and sweet and loving and removing him has the same effect that removing Mushu had on the Live Action Mulan
@@Grim_Sister Mushu's absence isn't why live action Mulan is trash, and Scooby's absence isn't why this show is worse than trash. In fact, I think both would be worse if those characters weren't absent, simply because there's even more beloved characters to desecrate, insult, humiliate and completely destroy. It's the other way around. Those characters are absent because the adaptation is bad, because the producers didn't understand, or care about, their importance.
I haven't watched this show but I have watched several hours-long YT vids about it and what baffles me is that you CAN'T be right because by all accounts Velma ISN'T "great". The show itself is about how awful these characters are and goes out of its way to point out specifically Velma (the self-insert) is awful several times. I don't know what it is trying to say or prove or anything.
@@xeltanni8999 Self deprecating humor, when properly self aware, does give the writer (or whoever) a chance to let the audience know the creators think its stupid; but often obligatory via traditions and/or lack better ideas. Unfortunately for everyone, Millennials confused this as the whole joke, and its plastered all over their style of meta humor. They consider it okay, because "everyone is in on the joke". Its the writing equivalent of "I have a black friend". But what make Velma fail at even this, is that the call outs are even towards jokes. Its just mean spirited behavior, and the writers using the call out to excuse/justify doing it. Over the years we've been slowly seeing examples of creatives that can't function outside of a team. And in other cases, entire teams that can do exceptionally well in a very specific set of conditions, but are almost impossible to recreate down the line. Changes in audiences haven't helped either, as writers adapt and learn in new shows makes it harder to recreate the mindset that their older hits ran on. New Phineas and Ferb is going to be the test for Dan and Swampy, considering the original run had so much finely calibrated threads happening at once. Turn of the century story telling may be gone for good. And the main reason this feels like a different type of crisis, is that theres way more recycling going on, with per-established tone and history; rather then clearly original works that can be vehicles for new ideas and styles.
Something I find annoying is that the show plays Fred thinking Velma is Hispanic as racist. My family is entirely Indian and yet people think the women in my family are Hispanic. This is such a normal thing that other Indian and Hispanic people make the same mistake all the time. Thinking someone is a different race isn’t racist, it’s literally just that, a _mistake_
@@c-puff I admit I thought the same first time I saw your videos then you mentioned your African funny thing my buddies from South Africa sound the same as my buddies from the UK and Australia
I think the word is genres in this case, not genders! Although I like the idea of identifying as a 5 hour analysis of a bad cartoon show instead of “man” or “woman”. Describes me much better
I still find it stupid that the show says that Ammond (Velma's dad) cheated on his wife. Not only was she missing for two years, which, after 24 hours would have very unlikely been alive, but also he thought had just abandoned their family from hating her life at home. Like, it's fine for someone to move on from you when they think you're either dead or completely ditched you and your kid because you hate them.
I agree that Fred is totally the best character in the show. He's the only character that is tolerable, despite the show tried to make him unlikable. Fred was the only saving grace.
Ironic,since he was obviously THE character the audience was supposed to hate,according to the show!Just like Veronica from"Sierra Burgess is a Loser"!
The general incompetence of the writers really glows (not in a nice way like a star, more like radiation) when you notice that Fred, the straight white guy punching bag that the writers consider a "safe" target but is also lazy writing itself, ends up being more likeable than the self-insert main character and most of the cast.
@@obadakhalid713 Neither was “Velma’s” stepmom Sophie, she’s honestly a better mother then her real mother and even saved “Velma’s” life at one point. And yet “Velma” still kicks her and her own baby sister out to rot.
Velma is the show-equivalent to someone bombing on stage at a standup venue, pointing out that they're bombing, and continuing down a path of non humor and pure self deprecation anyway, then blaming the audience when they yell "get off the stage".
No... self-deprecation's funny. This is self-aggrandizement. You know, that thing bad-guy wrestlers do when they want the audience to throw shit at them. The difference is they do it to make the OTHER guy look good.
At least in stand up comedy, it's understandable. You're alone, under lights, live in front of a bunch of grumpy people. Then you just have to own it. It's an odd thing but I think stand up comedy is a profession that takes more courage than most by quite a bit. Failure is just devastating, and you have to keep performing in the moment, then get back up there at a later point.
Aside from the blaming the audience part, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how any attempt by me to do stand-up comedy would go; which is why I’ll never do stand-up comedy.
not gonna lie, I've never seen daria. but that "Distract them with your womanly attributes." "gotcha, I'll give birth" clip with completely deadpan voices actually SENT me. I think i'm gonna watch daria now.
You're doing Fred a disservice. He came up with all the Rube Goldberg machines, solved half the mysteries, and was portrayed as artsy more than a jock. A running gag was he would finish Velma's ideas or thoughts and surprise them that he had obscure knowledge.
Ironically, if anyone in the gang is the jock, it's shaggy. He was an athlete in the og show, he was the ghoul school PE teacher, he was good at mini golf in WNSD, he's been mentioned as a gymnast before, there's a whole short movie where he's in the Olympics.... Shaggy is the jock, Fred's actually more of the wierd theater kid.
My favorite takeaway from this whole thing is the accurate assessment that Fred is in fact the best detective in the series, and he's supposed to be a moron.
@@gummidon1618 because "White man bad" jokes, they wanted to ruin the Scooby Doo IP out of spite (you can tell by the overall writing and messages in the show).
He was coddled his whole life so it’s no wonder he’s so dumb, he’d never had a chance to be his own person until the series’ current timeline. Who knew there’d be any character growth
For the ‘Velma not knowing Norton’s eye color’ thing, I’m kind of surprised they didn’t make a joke about how none of the characters actually have irises, but I guess this show is too afraid of making fun of being laughed at even for something harmless
Yeah. They're so damn focused on making meta jokes in a desperate attempt to make criticisms nullified that they just missed on meta jokes that would actually be kinda funny
Fun fact - Ghandi’s remaining kidney is voiced by Michael J Fox! Fun fact 2 - Velma stole the magical cardigan bit from Clone High when Principal Scudworth uses Mr Butlertron’a cardigan to get the kids to confide in him
"Why is Fred so ripped up?" "Well, this one time Fred saw a documentary about the origin of the word gymnasium, and spent three weeks trying to learn everything about exercise -and- education. And we all know how hard habits are to break for people like Fred."
Just a thing about Daphne. She was the ATM. It was her family who funded and set up Mystery Inc (the actual LLC, so they don't risk getting sued for causing damage and tying up a person in a mask and also the Shaggy Scooby food bills and the van's fuel). The gang couldn't do anything without Daphne's deep tiny purse. Daphne probably had the most defined character in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (All the characters in that show had fun personalities).
yep i think her family just owned and ran a bookstore if i remeber right. where as fred had a few atheletic or traditional family members so was well off. daphne whos family was rich via bussiness and fashion which daphne made her own money doing as well. and shaggy whos entire family are basically modern royalty coming from such a long line of success in EVERYTHING.@@nvfury13
@@nvfury13 one of my favorite franchise wide "running jokes" (if it can even be called that) is that Shaggy has lots of rich or prominent uncles who will do things like send him letters leaving Shaggy their mansion or jewels or whatever just for a gag
@@RedKincaid We see his family in one of the early series episodes, when they visit their castle in Scotland, they are filthy rich aristocrats and Scooby’s family has belonged to them since the days of chivalry.
I was in middle school when the original cartoon came out, and I *adored* Velma, being a bookish girl who couldn't see a damn thing without my glasses. I was excited when I heard they were doing a Velma-centric show. I then watched the first two minutes, and stopped. I've never seen a show I hated quite so much. Watching this lovely South African eviscerate it is comforting, somehow.
Also about Velmas ugly lessons: Ok, suppose she succeeded and made the five girls from the hot girl list all ugly (and they stayed ugly). Wouldn't that just move five other girls to the top? And thus into the scope of the serial killer. Or is there some kind of threshhold for when a girl becomes "hot"? And if so, what exactly is it that makes a girl "hot"? These ugly lessons open up a giant can of worms that i'm sure the writers don't want opened.
I think the thing that irritated me the most about Velma is that it's from the POV of a narcissist, almost the textbook definition. The main character is someone who looks down on everyone else, their needs are more important than everyone else, they only want you around when you're useful to them, anyone who isn't attracted t them they'll faun over, but the moment they show those feelings back they lose interest, and they're never in the wrong. If they are in the wrong, they are forgiven like it never even happened and have no lasting consequences. All their flaws are over looked or completely downplayed. You could remove everything else from the show that people are saying as woke and if you keep these traits in combined with any meta commentary humor being constantly interjected as well as everything happening for plot convivence and it would still be a terrible show.
Velma's the kind of person who labels you a "bigot" or a "nazi" for calling out her shitty behaviour, then blocks you before you can tell her what a fucking idiot she is. The show actually did a good job of portraying the modern day far-leftist accurately.
@@princembatI'm not sure how in rooms full of writers, voice actors, editors, reviewers, and the like that NO ONE said to Mindy that "Hey... your character is an asshole. And not like a fun asshole like Peter Griffin or Archer but genuinely insufferable."
@@grandempressvicky6387 Well, she did sexually assault a co-worker and then threaten others to fire them if they said anything on a previous project. I guess being an executive producer gave her way too much leeway there.
@@grandempressvicky6387 Oh, it's very easy to understand that. All those people didn't want to get fired, so they didn't point out that she's an unlikable fuckhead.
i'm always so happy to hear people talk about the evolution of fred's character and his autistic coding!! he's such a funny, genuine and relatable character to me, and if hbo velma has done anything good, it's helped people to revisit older media and realise how charming fred really is for all his intense interests and other fun quirks.
Dude. Fred isn’t autistic. He’s a fucking cartoon in a world where a Great Dane talks and can drive go karts and fly planes and cook 6 course meals. He’s just a normal dude. Stop it. Stop it for the love of god stop.
@@geckheck2416 Oh it's not me. They've actually done that. Producers and writers on other projects have made public statements that viewers who don't come away from their shows with the conclusions they want, aren't watching it right. You see everything is the customer's fault. The corporation is always right is the new mantra.
Honestly, something that show how it was impossible to see Velma (the character) as anything but rotten, without even watching the show, is her facial expressions. Seriously, she look so vile, her smiles, her angry faces, her annoyed ones, she can't help but looking rotten to the core. I didn't think Mindy was so stupid and smug that she brought back the old "ugliness on the outside reflect ugliness on the inside" without realizing what was wrong with it.
Totally. Even watching clips various youtubers use without sound, just watching her expression be negative **most of the time shes on screen** said enough. Frowning, yelling, rolling her eyes, being smug or superior, showing disgust or disdain or exasperation... She's just some character, some awful, unhappy character who soils the air around her, who also happens to have the same name as a beloved childhood icon. They are not the same person whatsoever!
There's just something not endearing about a dour and incredibly entitled character wallowing in self-pity and unceasingly complaining about how entitled everyone but herself is.
@@nvfury13 That seems to be the sad truth. This show seems to be the product of a horribly cynical, vitriolic, negative, self-victimizing and depressing person.
2:18:00 Suggesting that someone who wants to write Velma well should hang out with girls who write Silmarillian character analysis essays on Tumblr is... shockingly accurate. Top tier advice, can't imagine a better explanation. That's Velma, on Tumblr composing masterposts for her 12 part essay on a minor character in a fantasy novel.
Going back to one of your earlier points, Mel Brooks said the reason he makes fun of Nazi Germany a lot etc... is because when you satirize something and make jokes about it you are eroding away at the person or person's and fighting back and are able to expose them and the situation for what it is. Dark humor if done correctly can send a message about the dark situation and also be used as a tool to fight against that event and persons.
Exactly. If we are afraid to satirize the Nazties then that only cements them as something to be feared, making them seem more powerful and beyond reproach. IMO their ideas deserve to be mocked as viciously as possible. Turn funny mustache man's coffin into a rotisserie, lmao.
We have a whole holiday explaining why you should make fun of dictators and self important people (Purim). Mel Brooks, being a Jewish man post WW2, understood that. The idea is that by making fun of Haman, Mordecai takes away his power of intimidation.
Not to mention, most things that treat the nazi's seriously, even in condemnation, has been taken by neo-nazis and effectively turned into propaganda for themselves. Because stuff like American History X makes them look bad, but doesn't it also make them look kind of bad ass? like isn't the make character an bad ass un-cut nazi alpha? But do you know what hasn't be taken by them? Springtime for Hitler from The Producers, or anything else Mel Brooks has made involving them. Because it treats them with as much respect as it should, which is none at all. Point and laugh at them for how silly and hateful their ideology is. Point out how stupid their propaganda is if you take it even slightly out of the very specific angle they want it to be seen at. Show them how weak minded and pathetic they are.
I find that the central issue to Velma is spite. The creators have made it clear they did not want to make a Scooby Doo show, and you can feel that hatred for the IP with every second. From describing the mystery machine as 'Fred's weird sex van' to mocking the logistics of characters switching costumes in under a second, to skipping the talking dog entirely. This is the kind of show where you can feel the original creators turning in their graves.
What's ironic about this take is that in *every* single interview, the show leads talk endlessly about how excited they were to do this show and what big fans they are of the original. The voice actress for Velma, whom I'm convinced lied about both watching the original and relating with Velma, was part of the team.
I was also the person who pretended I was a cat in elementary school. I only did for a year though and it was because my child nemesis pretended to be a dog.
@@c-puff It's actually hard to say. It was kinda really a mutual thing we started at the same time to get attention from the teacher who was super cool. He turned out to be an alright person who I wish I tried staying friends with more. As for why we were nemeses, we had the same name but different nicknames, and I was a very obnoxious, socially oblivious person. The dumbest person you ever met. And I thought he was a mean egghead, unhelped by his egg shaped head.
Olive is easily the most likable character in the show and yet it’s very clear that the writers didn’t want you to like her at all. Tho maybe that’s just because of the scene where Olive tells off Velma.
I just dont understand how many times this show will have a character spit an entire paragraph about why Velma sucks, using completely reasonable and straightforward explanations of her actions, and then have none of that dialogue matter as they just go back to being her friend
I totally stan Fred as a wholesome autism coded himbo, and while they did him dirty in Velma, he's still the best character. The show just makes you feel sympathy for him.
It took me some time to realize this but, in the scene where Daphne's moms confront her dad, who is an escaped convict holding a gun to their daughter's face. In that scene, they give a warning shout to alert him of their presence, yet in the scene where Velma breaks into Fred's house they shoot Fred in both his knees without warning even though Velma is the intruder and there is no clear sign of danger besides Fred reaching into his inside robe pocket.
Fred saying "I'm going to do to you what I did to Brenda" to Velma was supposed to be "basically confessing to the murder." That's not what it is at all, but that's what the writers were going for.
im assuming its a reverse racism joke since poc get shot without warning (or with warning, they comply, and get shot anyways) and white people get coddled even if they killed people 🧍♂️
I thought Velma in Mystery Inc was standoff-ish because she was trying to be something she wasn't. So she projected the control she was imposing on herself onto her friends
you know fred has probably the most character development out of the whole franchise! it is surprising how much a person can do with even a simple trait like being obsessed with an obscure or highly niche interest like fred and his traps
Hi I just wanted to point something out. You mentioned clone high and here’s something else: the entire “cardigan = truth” joke is literally exactly from clone high but somehow clone high makes more sense because they’re all about random stuff so magical cardigan is funny rather than confusing in clone high. But in Velma, it’s dropped like immediately after they make the joke
Remember: Scooby Doo was always progressive. They were originally Draft Dodgers, at least Fred and Shaggy, and obviously hippies, based on Daphne and Velma 's attire, part of the counter culture in their own way. The idea that bigots would hate this new version but not older versions that treated everyone with equity and stopped old white scammers with the help of the Harlem Globetrotters is ridiculous. This show is regressive and spiteful.
It's a very easy thing to point out, but whenever someone attributes their creation's criticism to "the critics are *ist", it's always to cover their ass There are plenty of instances of things from the past doing the same exact types of characters (female, black, whatever), and yet those are beloved - Scooby Doo, Alien, Terminator, Star Wars, Star Trek, what have you - while modern pieces of media (be they of those franchises or not) fail to do be so because they think that just including XYZ type of character is enough to get good ratings, and not the actual writing
@@Hegataro Correct. It's the tokenization problem. They create uninteresting characters because they use superficial traits as a stand-in for personality or character. It's creatively lazy at best, and swapping existing character is a sure sign of it.
To me velma has the same vibes as steven moffat's "sherlock" because both shows both hate the source material make fun of their fans for even liking the genre and then have the balls to say they're better than what's come before them when in reality it's all been downhill since the start of episode one where the viewer made the mistake to click on the show
@sparksparkle Sherlock also took advantage of its queer audience by gay-baiting the crap out of the show so they could trick them into keep watching it. So the fans who most loved it were willing to ignore or deny the show's flaws until it was over and they couldn't keep being strung along by malicious show runners.
He was cocky, overconfident to a fault, and had an annoying voice. But he wasn't ever manipulative or actively trying to be mean or hurtful. I still don't like him. But you're right, compared to Velma's Velma he's fantastic.
@@Shenaldrac A friend of mine once told me "There're no bad characters. Just bad writers." Scrappy can be a good character in the hands of a competent writer, just like how Velma ended up being one of the most despised characters in modern media due to insanely piss poor writing.
The problem was the design and casting. If it were me, I’d make him with bigger eyes and a sweeter face, and cast someone who can pass as a child. Because that’s what he is: a puppy. With the voice and current look, he looks and sounds like a miniature Great Dane with a bad case of dwarfism. Heck, he seems older than Scooby, and he’s supposed to be his nephew. It just doesn’t add up. If he’s a pup, he should look and sound like one
The biggest issue that Scrappy had was oversaturation. While he was added to the cast to help appeal to a younger generation, his schtick got repetitive and annoying. Didn't help that over time more and more of the main cast was cut, and he got more screen time as Fred, Velma, and finally Daphne were deemed unessential to the plot.
Scrappy actually saved the franchise by just existing. He brought in a ton of new viewers when the series was going to be cancelked. Unfortunately there was a lot of executive meddling that tied the writers hands that lead to him becoming an annoyance. Possibly the only executive meddling as bad as Janine from Real Ghostbusters.
I really think that Daphne’s hair color could’ve been an incredibly interesting character point had it not been natural in the show (though of the two episodes I’ve seen, “why is my hair the color of buffalo wings” actually got a laugh out of me). A lot of female East Asian characters are given a colorful streak in their black hair because its natural state is considered “boring”, and if Daphne wanted to be part of the popular girls, who, let’s be real, tend to be depicted as all white in most media, she could’ve chosen to dye her hair a more Eurocentric color in order to fit in. Then over time she could learn she’s beautiful the way she is and over time have her hair grow back naturally. Alternatively it could’ve been dyed because she felt it was one of the few things she had control over, considering she had no control over her parents abandoning her and she doesn’t have much control over her friend group. If this show wasn’t so hellbent on being so acerbically ironic then certain choices could’ve actually had meaning lol, but god forbid characters do things that speak to issues in a way that’s not wildly shallow
And also the smoking thing like... it's not funny? Like at all. It's such a weird non-joke. I mean so many of the shows smokes but that one really just had me like the ??? meme guy. How would her smoking make Daphne's hair red? That's not a thing. In fact it seems to have very little effect other than low birth weights. So why smoking? Why??
@@alice88waI can only assume it was meant to be either stupid for stupid's sake or some weird "I cheated on your dad and has been telling him this lie for years", because that would work with a character who is willing to abandon her baby like she did. The way it's presented in the show is simply ignorance and lack of understanding of what a birth defect is. Unless this is the weirdest, worst written "gingers have no soul" kind of jome
@@JDM-is-my-name Ok the 'I cheated' one I can actually fully support because I have a pet theory, partially due to that stupid 'joke', that someone else is Daphne's father and that will be a big part of season 2.
About year and a half ago men' room in my favourite bar started migrating somewere. First the soap dispenser pump bailed. About month later paper towels stand. As you cac guess, toiled flush handle was a matter of time. What I didn't expect, however, was the whole toilet cover. I enjoyed that downgrade to pissuar while it lasted, knowing every piss could be the last. At least situation got a little bit less worrying, when unpredictible unseen villain took care of mirror as next item instead. Last time I visited the place door with a lock turned to be just a door. I dared not to visit the cursed toilet again since, knowing there were only three components left, along witg certain doom directly tied to the loss of even one of them.
Not to mention the part about "Oh wow, a bunch of hot girls are all hitting on me all of a sudden when I became a man! Being a man is so easy!" Which is made even more ironic since every single main character in the show already has the hots for her mini fridge-shaped ass.
Fun fact, my wife and I did a drinking challenge to this show. Take a shot every time there's a terrible joke. My wife had to bail after 5 shots in less than 3 minutes. I had to bail before even 5 minutes after like 10-11 shots. It was seriously like one after another.
yeah, they try to be funny with hateful words but it just flops because 1. its literally just not funny 2. its hateful, and therefore, again, its unfunny and 3. its too repetitive (if i remember correctly, theres a bunch of "fred has a small penis" jokes and hes in general the butt of a lot of jokes)
@@kaitlynmorgan4613 Oh yea, Fred was constantly the butt of the joke, either cause he had a small penis, or because he was white, or stupid or any number of other things.
Yeah sometimes a show it's unfunny but is trying or is unfunny and simply boring. Velma? Velma is straight up hateful it feels like every single person involved in this project was miserable doing it,to the point I just MUST ask why the fuck are you doing it if you hate it so damn much
I think Shaggy is a "nice guy" because of Velma. Velma is very manipulative and they have been friends since they were children, so Shaggy had this awful friend he liked so much, and with that constant back and forward of "you are such a good friend" and "you are useless to me" Velma puts on him, it think would not be so strange to think that Velma was his only friend because she needs him for her selfish purposes and because of that he kind of started mimicking her behavior. I think that if Shaggy went a little bit to therapy and stopped trying to have a girlfriend, he could be such a better person, because he has his good moments, like when he was very interested on hearing how Daphne discovered things about her past, or practically his relationship with Gigi, which I know he kind of messed up in the carnival/celebration/whatever-that-was, but they were fine the next episode until they broke up because he couldn't stop thinking about Velma. I cannot help but to feel sorry for the guy, and maybe I am very biased because Shaggy was my favourite character in other Scooby Doo shows, but I think that the main cast would probably be better people if it wasn't for Velma.
A little biased maybe, can’t blame Velma for all his bad personality traits. Shaggy in the normal series is actually a good character so it’s easier to wanna somewhat like him. Velma was likeable too but they made her the worst character so it’s easier to blame her
@@liyah. Oh but of course I am biased, just look what they did to our little boy! Just do not worry, because that is not how I see and judge people in real life haha. Have a nice day!
Velma treats the relationship as completely transactional, it's no big surprise that Norville does the same. Should he be doing that? No. Am I going to make excuses for him because Shaggy is my favorite character and I love hi so much? Absolutely.
@@Jormundgandr-jg5xgboth comments were very accurate and on point tho. In this show she's terrible and on the real show shaggy is cool😎 Lastly I'm pretty sure both of them understood you.
Love how the characters that are meant to be likeable like Velma are unlikeable, and that the characters that are MEANT to be unlikeable are actually the most likeable characters (Fred, Gigi)
Another reason why Velma is getting a 2nd season is probably the popular practice of greenlighting a show for 2 seasons right off the bat, then ordering more if the show does well, or if they believe in what potential the show has. I doubt that Rise of the TMNT or The Owl House would have gotten a Season 2 if it weren't for the binding contract being signed by the showrunners, thanks to those meddling executives.
A lot of people hate-watched this show and I'm seeing a few people in the comments who even watched it more than once despite not liking it. That's why this show got another season
“This show is too self-conscious to allow itself to be laughed at, which - considering it’s trying to be a comedy - is a problem.” This is the best summary of Velma from anyone I’ve seen so far. I think you really got at the heart of why a truly diverse set of people find this show to be a waste of time. Ironically, while it’s trying to portray teenagers in a satirical and self-aware way, I can’t picture anything more teenage than the level of social awkwardness and mishandled anxiety present in the writing of this show by a set of presumably fully grown adults.
1:19:20 Speaking of HBO Max (now just "Max", what a dumb name change), there was a GQ article that was very critical about Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and the decisions he's made up to now. The article was posted Monday, but since it made critical observations and was being mean to such a little guy like a CEO, the article was edited by GQ to be more favoring towards Zaslav, the author Jason Bailey didn't approve of the edits and asked for his byline to be removed, then GQ decided to remove the entire article. Of course, the Internet never forgets; archived versions of both the original and revised versions of Jason's article were circulating on social media, and even The Washington Post included links to both in a piece covering the situation. Pure Streisand Effect. You love to see it.
the bit where velma barges in with a swat team reads like AI wrote the script. I notice some writing AI tends to forget the sequence of events and add escalation without making it make sense, sometimes teleporting the cast, adding new characters, etc... a good example is sonic destruction on snapcube's channel.
@@JustinCoasters I've heard different things about Season 2, some say it's coming, some say it was actually cancelled. I'm not sure which I'm rooting for more. 🤔While I hate the show and won't actually watch it. I do enjoy the reviews of it.
Apparently the second season is out now. I’ve only watched other people react to it, but I think we can say it’s just as bad. Interestingly, it’s seems that Fred is still the most likable character. (Or at least the least hate inducing)
Watching this whole saga again, it baffles me how the entire series of events happens because one woman didn't raise her son properly, blamed HIM for it, then decided that the only possible solution was to swap his brain for someone else's. I can't help but feel for his dad. Dude married her because he loved her (the flashback where he asks "you love me, right?") and probably realized how insane she is and that trying to divorce her would make her act out in "revenge." Rewatching his scenes, I can't help but have the impression that he was trying to undo Fred's mentality... which means she turned him into that on purpose. So, she was pissed that her kid was a boy instead of a girl, apparently? Dear god, this show gets worse the more I think about it. Love your videos tho! Your voice is very nice to listen to
I think I speak for all of us when I say: We need more of the sockpuppet strawman. Still such a missed oppurtunity to not say: Her mom is missing and she's sad about it.
I really appreciate how she's one of the few who could actually go in and give a detailed explanation as to why something doesn't work and how it could've worked while admitting the parts that he does right so many others would just say this is bad and just leave it at too meta and too mean and while there are some who give unique perspectives so many leave it at that
So I’m gonna be honest, I’ve watched the show like 3 times. I still can’t get over how the story was “okayed” when they explicitly say that Velma’s mom went missing 2 years okay but in the flashbacks she’s shown to be like… idk 5ish? But now she’s in high school. Most egregious crime I swear Edit: okay rewatching the clip she’s def older than what I originally thought but no way it’s only been 2 years
2:44:15 Daphne's literally been nothing but high risk up until this point. I can't believe you didn't notice. Selling drugs when her parents are literally cops, the aggressive fighting in the self-defense tournament, breaking curfew when there's a killer on the loose, the Crystal Cove investigation. All high risk behavior. It's just that the show hasn't focused on her so it's all been B plot which is a shame because they had the makings of a really good character with her.
3:44:45 I’ve heard about a serial killer that confessed to a lot of murders that he didn’t do which resulted in it becoming harder to actually convict him of the ones he did kill since he had confessed to so many that weren’t true.
All I cam really say about this show is that if Velma *IS* a self insert of Mindy, then that alone sadly says an insane amount about her, none of which is good
This show brought a bit of pain to me, really they had the possibility to make a slightly more adult version of the gang, maybe it would have fit better if they made them all adults having to, like the audience who grew up with them, deal with adult problems along with managing their PI business! Instead they made a cancer growth with just as much enjoyment and utility!
Judging by how every single moment of need between characters is met with a required transaction and a total lack of humanity, it really just feels like the director and/or writers have never had a meaningful friendship that didn't require a cost for aid.
I'd have to look up the exact quote, but Totally Not Mark recently made a series reviewing the live action Fullmetal Alchemist Trilogy of movies and at some point (during the video aptly titled *Netflix's Fullmetal Alchemist LITERALLY Broke Me* ) while he was watching the last one he just went, "What am I doing here?"and turned it off. When he got to that part of his review he literally went 'what else can I say? It's just bad, please just do yourself a favor and watch something you'll enjoy.' Anyway with that in mind, please don't feel pressured to cover season 2 when it comes out
I gotta give a shout out to the live chat for all the ways it showed this show’s plot to be even more broken than I thought. Also I gotta wonder what they can even do with a season 2 when virtually all plot threads are already finished.
Not that I want this garbage to get a season 2, but I think it's pretty easy to do if they want. I mean, Scooby Doo in most incarnations is episodic. Season 2 is the gang getting together in the "pedo coded" mystery machine for a road trip. Maybe some school project or some shit since the show keeps acting like these characters are in college instead of high school given the sexualization of the girls. They're traveling and bam! Come across some new mystery! Again, I don't _want_ this to happen. But it doesn't seem hard to me to just come up with a new plot. After all, they still have to show the gang getting together and forming and developing into a mystery solving machine like the original series because they want this to be canon and actually how these beloved characters met and oh god I think I'm going to vomit.
What a wild very deeply thought-out and insanely well put-together video essay. Full marks to you!!! Fan-freaking-tactic content!! Additionally, my ADHD-ridden ass loves long videos with engaging content that I can dip in-and-out of when I feel like it, but always be able to come back to the exact spot I left. This vid feeds me, bro
To be honest you can have unlikeable characters but they have to have some redeeming qualities and none of Velma's characters does and even when they learn something or complete a character arch it is often forgotten by the next episode and they turn back into their old shitty selves
As someone that has Aspergers, that section about Fred was very interesting. His stramge hyperfixations on random things is something I'm very guilty of as well, as well as others on the spectrum. Maybe its a weird trait to give to Fred of all people, but I sorta identify with it, so its kinda cool.
tbh the headcanon that Fred is prone to hyperfixations is one that’s always made sense to me. it feels like a part of his character, at least in the past couple of decades-I mean look at that boy and traps. let him make snares
The big difference in comedy is more simple, one is mean spirited and spiteful, while Clone High is more innocent and having fun. Although the reboot is treading the line and may eventually fall into the same style of comedy.
You know what I hate the most about this show? It’s Daphne’s design. It’s not bad by no means but as an artist who loves drawing female characters I so envy the artist who drew Daphne’s design because it’s the kind of design I wish I could create. Everything from the hair, to the face/head, the body, and even the clothes is great to me. Maybe one day I’ll make a design just as good.
my biggest hate thing is that i can see that there was potential there, the animation for velmas halucinations is great, the character designs are good and in the few moments where it seems like mindy missed a page of the script you can even see that they had to have at least one competent writer somewhere that tried to make something work. but then everything else is piled onto that and everything i spot that is well made just makes me angrier that its in this horrible show. I mean give those animators and sound designers a few decent writers and put them on another project and it could be fantastic but no, that talent is thrown into the fire to stroke the ego mindy in her endless quest to justify why being a shitty person isnt her fault
@@Sootielove If I had access to the level of animation and art this shit show had I can guarantee you I could write and make a far better show than Velma. I already have story ideas drawn up.
I only recently discovered your channel, and I'm pleasantly happy with the work I found! This review as well as the High Guardian Spice review really were extremely well written, reasonable and nuanced. Though I wanted nothing to do with the subject matters in question, your presentations were great to listen to, and how they were written and read made me stick around and learn more about them without having to go through the torture of watching any of them. You. Earned. A sub my South African friend! And good luck on all your future work!
C-Puff, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for adding the names of every song you include. I have found so many of the songs that put me in a writing mood because of you.
I'm shook over the whole show, but I'm more shook over what they think adrenaline is. Like, if someone is having a panic attack, something that involves a massive spike of adrenaline, WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THEM MORE?! ALSO allergic reactions aren't treated with adrenaline, she'd use an epipen, which is mostly epinephrine. With the writer's understanding of medicine, I'm gonna need some adrenaline, because the horrible misunderstanding of it is causing me unreasonable stress. The kind where someone is explaining how to use a ladder properly according to OSHA regulations but they're doing it wrong because they're supposed to maintain three points of contact at ALL times and while they're explaining that they're only maintaining two! Yes this is a very uncommon situation, and yes it made me unreasonably mad when it happened. And I never corrected them, because it was an employee training video, and she probably broke her neck years ago bc she wasn't holding onto the rail like she was supposed to and she fell. May she rest in peace, she had the spirit, but just couldn't count right.
Same show that has characters claim smoking while pregnant causes red hair. Just like... WAT? I'd hope that that's meant to be a setup that the person Daphne thinks is her dad isn't actually her dad but... it's Velma, come on.
First: Scooby Doo meets Kiss fan! A woman of taste! It’s like the writers saw Jelloapocalypse’s video on how to make a good Scooby Doo show, then decided to do the exact opposite of that Edit: Mindy trying to make fun of mythology and Tolkien is hilarious to me, because I’m imagining Steven Colbert just running into the writers room especially just to punch her in the face. Good times E2: See, when you establish a role in your world, you need to follow it through: Water benders can control blood during the full moon, magic in dragon age can’t reverse time, Quaraians are never seen outside of their suits. If a rule is established, you must follow through with it. You showed that snapping one’s fingers gets someone out of a trance. NOW USE IT E3 (last one, I swear) : Sometimes people write about terrible characters to process terrible things that happened to them by those people (see I’m Glad My Mom Died, for example). It’s healing through a creative outlet. Coincidentally, Tolkien did it too
Cool I sure hope this lady becomes better and stops sexually assaulting men and threatening to have potential whistleblowers fired now that she's made a garbage awful TV show to work through what a garbage awful person she is.
Colbert kind of shot his credibility in the foot when he gave a softball interview to the Rings of Power cast and writers -- a show that, like Velma, deviates so much from the source material that the only thing it has in common is the proper nouns.
Ok, quick fire: Watch Scooby Doo Moon Monster Madness. Has Jen Hale in a double role. She does the Commander Voice in one of them. - The whole show could have been filmed in live action. No Scooby means no CGI, the hallucinations are in like… 3 episodes for half a minute or so, and it’s clear Mindy wasn’t using the advantages the medium of animation provides (Animaniacs, for example, used it wonderfully in their recent reboot, such as playing with perspective, turning the characters into Anime characters for an episode and even doing a homage to those episodes of Looney Toons where Daffy and Bugs torment each other. There are fun things you can do with this. Just… Think outside of the box, dammit!)
"we dont have a gender pay gap in my country" God the fucking comedic timing on that, the blank eye stare, the perfect amount of silence afterward. Lovely joke, enjoyed it alot.
“We dont have a wage gap in my country” (1:47:20) Took me right out and confused the hell out of me. bc every reputable journal i’ve seen states definitively that while the gender pay gap decreased (from 40% to 15), it has not completely gone away. so i’m very confused what this youtuber is using as a basis for the statement. Im no expert, so open to hear new insights, but it seems a very confident and odd statement to make with no sources when University of Cape Town publishes a paper in 2020 directly refuting it. there’s also some bits about SouthAfrican tax law I did not read too closely yet in which a few abstracts stated that women are somehow taxed more than men so the gender pay gap may be wider than initial investigation reveals? idk. makes me a bit wary of watching more. any insights from other south africans reading this?
South African here, I was also confused about this remark as we do have a gender pay gap. I personally know women who are paid less than male counterparts for the same job, at same levels of experience. There's still a very prevalent belief that men need to earn more because they're the breadwinners of their household.
@@emmabosman3716 I assumed it was a sarcastic "joking to cope" type thing. Isn't there quite a bit of income inequality in general? So much so that it's claimed to be (at least among) "the worst in the world?"
I just wanted to say how much I enjoy that you put in dives into each individual character between the different episode segments. It's all extremely well thought out and really brought me back into the Scooby Doo phase. This was really well written and the world owes you an apology for all the research you had to do into the show TToTT
3:31:20 Better than her husband cheating on her? It’s not like she disappeared for a couple years without saying anything to anybody. It’s totally normal to expect your spouse to remain faithful after you vanish on them and don’t even seen them a message for a couple years.
Eh I feel like most people who really care for their spouse would try and file a missing person’s report first and investigate, mourn the potential loss before moving on. Especially if that’s not typical behavior for them to just disappear especially with a whole child there.
@@liyah. Velma was a literal nightmare to her mom. Given what was shown I’d assume that she just abandoned them because she couldn’t deal with it anymore.
Been watching this video through several days of taking breaks, but I am astonished by the sheer quality of your videos. I've seen several people's comparisons and commentary on this show, but not one of them have really put it into such a way that my brain clicks into it as well as you've done. Plenty of kudos for giving me a perspective that was incredibly interesting to hear! I think it helps that you're using other shows as proper comparisons, using even entire scenes that this show was attempting to do in their own style, but seeing how it is done in a more correct format. I lost it at the My Immortal reference though. Wasn't ready for that. xD
I do think its important for some people to understand that even though some people use "woke" to mean "literally any american left social commentary" the way most people use it is intended to be "american left social commentary that is heavy handed, in your face, and presents itself as being wholly correct and might not even serve any real story purpose." Velma is woke because it just starts spitting out all these takes that literally don't matter to the story and only exist so the writers can say "these things I believe are right." Also, still super annoyed no one calls Velma "bi" and always insist on using "gay" or "lesbian." Velma has always gone back and fourth between men and women and its so weird that every studio is absolutely terrified of having a bisexual character.
It's not "woke", it's "bad". "Woke" as a criticism is a meaningless non-word that's a dog whistle for "too many non-white / non-straight / non-male people in this show". Doesn't matter what it started out as, the term is irredeemably poisoned.
cause they don't make bi characters(those that are attracted into both women and men), they make gays that "could have" gone for the "straight" option(dating the opposite sex). If they did the actual bisexuals dumbasses would burn their own asses in anger, which actually happened(no joke, good part of "lgbt community" tried to throw put bisexuals that "went the straight way")
I'm pansexual and I used to think I was bi, the fact bisexuality and pansexuality are so hated on and misrepresented just because people think "we can't pick one side" is so insulting...
@@corahtheskeleton8062 ok, as a pan can you please explain what's the difference between you and a bi? I tried to understand on my own and found literally no difference
@@Dozarman bisexual, as in "attracted to two genders" won't be attracted to anything other than male or female, while pansexuals don't find any difference of attraction depending on the gender of the person, whether it be male, female, non-binary, trans or others like intersex That doesn't mean bisexuals can't be attracted to trans people of course, but they'll be less likely to be attracted to non-binaries or people that are intersex
the way you talked about Fred having a weird hyper fixation kinda feels like his character was molded into someone who just didnt have someone to share them before meeting the gang. Would work really well if he was hiding that hes really passionate about building stuff but awful at business and his mother (a controlling bitch) cannot accept her son following a path she doesnt want, this would also give a reason as to why shes doing all of this, she just needs someone easy to brainwash but good at business. (Which she might think its Velma or it actually is Velma)
I think the thing with inclusive content, is that most of the times they just focus on that. On being inclusive. And forget that a movie or series needs a strong story to capture the audience. A good example is Steven universe. It’s inclusive, but the story is fleshed out, and the inclusive characters have more to give then just being representation to a group. You see them grow. As for the political and social jokes, they felt more like the show nagging the viewer rather than making a joke to get the point across. Lastly, if you’re going to make a character a jerk, don’t expect people to like them. And if you do want them to be liked, make them relatable in some way. Example, House. Complete jerk, but has moments of humanity (in his own way)
The reason jerks like House are liked IMO is not because of their humanity...or at least,that's not the main reason...the main reason is that they're super-competent in what they do. House is a jerk but he's a great doctor(somehow). Tyrion can be a jerk,but he's smart. Wednesday is a jerk but is super-skilled in many things(except for detecting). Rumple from OUaT is a jerk but he's a master of manipulation and he's great at obtaining what he wants. This Velma is a jerk and *it's not even competent!* She sucks as a detective,she has no other specific skill and there's *nothing* that qualifies her as a"cool"character,she _thinks_ she's cool,but there's nothing that proves she's right!As we would say in Italian"she sings it and she plays it all on her own"(I think in English is"she marches to her own drum")!X-P
@@Nicamon exactly!! They were jerks, but got stuff done. Some moments of humanity also help. It’s like that teammate you can’t stand, but you know he’s gonna do the work
Dan Vs. Dan is a jerk, even his shirt says Jerk. Just a terrible person you'd never wanna meet in real life. But the point of the show is that he's never in the wrong. Something happens to incite his anger, which is often stupid and coincidental in a way that make him seem cursed. His plans usually fail comedically, but seeing him fail so many times makes us want to cheer him on. Then he usually wins at the end. But the show doesn't take him seriously. When he deviates from his revenge plot, or gets too serious, he gets his comeuppance. Also, he's not completely evil, he's shown to at least care about his friend Chris in some way, and he's very sweet to his cat.
@@SP-ny6pk Right. This Velma,instead,is like Joffrey...universally hated because *there's no reason why you shouldn't!!* He's the most awful person ever and he's also a brat and a coward! At least Ramsey Bolton was intimidating...Joffrey is only with those who are unfairily underpowered compared to him so whatever superiority he shows doesn't feel earned and that's why everybody hates him.
Yes! Inclusivity for its own sake is little more than a crutch for lazy writers so that they can turn around and say "you just don't like the story because it features certain minority groups as the main characters" when it goes over like a lead balloon! And I for one can love a main character that's unlikable - Yuri Orlov from "Lord of War" or Louis Bloom from "Nightcrawler" come to mind right away. Hell, I myself have been writing an unlikable protagonist for a little webnovel titled "The Economic Woes of the Lord of Evilland" that's basically an adult comedy set in a dark fantasy universe: the main character is a stereotypical fantasy evil overlord that executes people on a whim and has nearly bankrupted his kingdom waging genocidal wars on his enemies - at no point are you supposed to look at this character and think "what a great guy." But whoever wrote "Velma" doesn't seem to get this...
Love how you speak about the music and art direction in Velma's hallucinations. It makes it clear that you're giving an honest and fair review rather than just blindly hating- what's done well is good, what's done poorly is bad. Simple as. No bias.
I appreciate the comparisons to Daria, not only because Daria is one of the greatest TV shows in history and one that had a huge influence on me watching it as a teen, but because it really highlights the difference in how to do this sort of concept right and how to do it wrong. I think the major difference is that as cynical as Daria was, it was never _hateful._ Sure, it liked to satirize the more absurd aspects of society, but it was never trying to vilify anyone's lifestyle or belittling people for liking what they like. It also helps a lot that Daria wasn't always depicted as being in the right. There are many episodes in which rather than lecturing others, she is the one learning a lesson and when people call her out, she takes it to heart and tries to improve as a person. I remember one episode in particular that's stayed with me is one where she realizes that her attitude is making her parents incredibly worried, thinking that she's depressed or something. This realization absolutely stuns her as she thought all she was doing was being herself without bothering anyone, so it never occured to her that people even cared about her and her feelings, and wants to find a way to alleviate people's worries while staying true to herself. And again, a really good aspect of the show and the character is that Daria _gives a shit_ about other people's feelings. She'll mock their more superficial or hypocritical aspects, but she's not going out of her way to hurt people and generally still tries to be supportive, and she tries to make things right when she realizes she does hurt people. Meanwhile, Velma is constantly wagging its finger at the audience, presumes to lecture everyone on every social issue imaginable despite clearly only caring about them on a superficial level, Velma's attitude is almost never called out and she seems downright offended at the notion that she might have to do some personal growth. Its idea of social satire is to just insult and vilify people who dare deviate even slightly from its own moral compass, showing to be worthy of nothing more than hatred and humiliation and on top of it all, unironically insults and mocks people because of their ethnic and/or social background, which is the exact opposite of progressive.
Velma was somebody's very specific and very entitled wish fulfillment. It watches exactly like the kind of thing someone would write when they were 12 and wanted to have a story where no matter how badly they were portrayed because of their own actions and beliefs, the story still insisted they were always right, and all the people they hate have bad things repeatedly happen to them. I feel like I over explained that... this show may have made me dumber.
Yes, it's too bad that it's impossible to have a show that has a talking dog that is not only VERY funny and satirical, but also heartfelt and poignant at times. There's no way a talking dog can appear in a show like that *cough coughMr.Peanutbuttercough cough*
Another comment because its another topic Velma-Shaggy relationship in Mystery INC was *supposed* to feel wrong. They got together *exactly* because they were both single, and Velma didn't figure her sexuality yet. That's why its meant to feel wrong - it was wrong, they were not a proper fit. Compare and Contrast with her partner later.
Mindy just rode inside the Scooby Doo Ip like a trojan horse carrying her various prejudices, perverse views and lack understanding of comedy, entertainment and mystery solving.
absolutely loved the mean girl trope dissection nested within this four and a half hour review. I’m glad it’s brought up, because. why is Daphne a mean girl in this when they took out being RICH-her most consistent character trait other than pretty girl??
What a fantastic video!! I enjoy the Velma commentary, but the true value of your video (for me, at least) is the insight you provide on narrative structure. You defined story construction in a manner that aids story writers' own works. Thank you!
Let's be honest. They referred to Scooby is 'the dog' because they don't care about him. They never cared about what makes Scooby Doo Scooby Doo.
Mindy wanted to make a show to spew out how great she thinks she is, and Scooby Doo is here for name recognition.
Scooby is the heart of the group. Mystery Inc. and Be Cool Scooby Doo understood this. Scooby loves the gang, is emotionally intelligent and able to help them, even if he doesn’t always understands why they’re upset.
He’s kind and sweet and loving and removing him has the same effect that removing Mushu had on the Live Action Mulan
@@Grim_Sister
Mushu's absence isn't why live action Mulan is trash, and Scooby's absence isn't why this show is worse than trash. In fact, I think both would be worse if those characters weren't absent, simply because there's even more beloved characters to desecrate, insult, humiliate and completely destroy.
It's the other way around. Those characters are absent because the adaptation is bad, because the producers didn't understand, or care about, their importance.
I haven't watched this show but I have watched several hours-long YT vids about it and what baffles me is that you CAN'T be right because by all accounts Velma ISN'T "great". The show itself is about how awful these characters are and goes out of its way to point out specifically Velma (the self-insert) is awful several times. I don't know what it is trying to say or prove or anything.
@@xeltanni8999
Mindy has so little self-awareness that she didn't realize that. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
@@xeltanni8999 Self deprecating humor, when properly self aware, does give the writer (or whoever) a chance to let the audience know the creators think its stupid; but often obligatory via traditions and/or lack better ideas. Unfortunately for everyone, Millennials confused this as the whole joke, and its plastered all over their style of meta humor. They consider it okay, because "everyone is in on the joke". Its the writing equivalent of "I have a black friend".
But what make Velma fail at even this, is that the call outs are even towards jokes. Its just mean spirited behavior, and the writers using the call out to excuse/justify doing it.
Over the years we've been slowly seeing examples of creatives that can't function outside of a team. And in other cases, entire teams that can do exceptionally well in a very specific set of conditions, but are almost impossible to recreate down the line. Changes in audiences haven't helped either, as writers adapt and learn in new shows makes it harder to recreate the mindset that their older hits ran on. New Phineas and Ferb is going to be the test for Dan and Swampy, considering the original run had so much finely calibrated threads happening at once.
Turn of the century story telling may be gone for good. And the main reason this feels like a different type of crisis, is that theres way more recycling going on, with per-established tone and history; rather then clearly original works that can be vehicles for new ideas and styles.
Something I find annoying is that the show plays Fred thinking Velma is Hispanic as racist. My family is entirely Indian and yet people think the women in my family are Hispanic. This is such a normal thing that other Indian and Hispanic people make the same mistake all the time. Thinking someone is a different race isn’t racist, it’s literally just that, a _mistake_
It's not race related so maybe it's not the same, but I think about how people often mistake me for Australian due to my accent.
@@c-puff I admit I thought the same first time I saw your videos then you mentioned your African funny thing my buddies from South Africa sound the same as my buddies from the UK and Australia
@@c-puff We hear South African people speak way less often here in the US so I almost made the same mistake too tbh.
@@c-puff Even if it's not "race" related it is a similar phenomenon so I'd say it counts.
So weird reverse of this: A high school friend of my best friend is Hispanic, but so dark, he gets mistaken for Indian all the time. 😅
Shout out to youtube videos that explain why bad media is bad for several hours, gotta be one of my favorite genders
Long Man Good
I think the word is genres in this case, not genders!
Although I like the idea of identifying as a 5 hour analysis of a bad cartoon show instead of “man” or “woman”. Describes me much better
@@analyticaltomato (that is the joke/meme format)
Ahh bad media analysis, my preferred gender!
Good rat yes
I still find it stupid that the show says that Ammond (Velma's dad) cheated on his wife. Not only was she missing for two years, which, after 24 hours would have very unlikely been alive, but also he thought had just abandoned their family from hating her life at home. Like, it's fine for someone to move on from you when they think you're either dead or completely ditched you and your kid because you hate them.
"If I die, or just leave you, I want you to never move on and remain sad and lonely forever"
-Mindy Kaling, probably
I agree that Fred is totally the best character in the show. He's the only character that is tolerable, despite the show tried to make him unlikable. Fred was the only saving grace.
Ironic,since he was obviously THE character the audience was supposed to hate,according to the show!Just like Veronica from"Sierra Burgess is a Loser"!
The general incompetence of the writers really glows (not in a nice way like a star, more like radiation) when you notice that Fred, the straight white guy punching bag that the writers consider a "safe" target but is also lazy writing itself, ends up being more likeable than the self-insert main character and most of the cast.
Fred wasn't malicious, he was just ignorant of what he was doing. The wrote him so incompetent and low IQ, you felt bad for him.
Gigi was also not that bad
@@obadakhalid713 Neither was “Velma’s” stepmom Sophie, she’s honestly a better mother then her real mother and even saved “Velma’s” life at one point. And yet “Velma” still kicks her and her own baby sister out to rot.
Velma is the show-equivalent to someone bombing on stage at a standup venue, pointing out that they're bombing, and continuing down a path of non humor and pure self deprecation anyway, then blaming the audience when they yell "get off the stage".
No... self-deprecation's funny. This is self-aggrandizement. You know, that thing bad-guy wrestlers do when they want the audience to throw shit at them. The difference is they do it to make the OTHER guy look good.
At least in stand up comedy, it's understandable. You're alone, under lights, live in front of a bunch of grumpy people. Then you just have to own it. It's an odd thing but I think stand up comedy is a profession that takes more courage than most by quite a bit. Failure is just devastating, and you have to keep performing in the moment, then get back up there at a later point.
Aside from the blaming the audience part, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how any attempt by me to do stand-up comedy would go; which is why I’ll never do stand-up comedy.
not gonna lie, I've never seen daria.
but that "Distract them with your womanly attributes." "gotcha, I'll give birth" clip with completely deadpan voices actually SENT me.
I think i'm gonna watch daria now.
You will absolutely not regret that. That show is a total gem, even decades later. I think I will give it a rewatch too.
....wait can women _not_ just give birth on command?
Daria is the best.
Peak Janeane Garofalo was iconic.
It has one episode that is purely a musical and it’s considered one of the better musical tv episodes out there
You're doing Fred a disservice. He came up with all the Rube Goldberg machines, solved half the mysteries, and was portrayed as artsy more than a jock. A running gag was he would finish Velma's ideas or thoughts and surprise them that he had obscure knowledge.
Ironically, if anyone in the gang is the jock, it's shaggy. He was an athlete in the og show, he was the ghoul school PE teacher, he was good at mini golf in WNSD, he's been mentioned as a gymnast before, there's a whole short movie where he's in the Olympics....
Shaggy is the jock, Fred's actually more of the wierd theater kid.
@@jlwiseman98 That would so much sense especially due to all the running Shaggy done and never gets tired from it.
My favorite takeaway from this whole thing is the accurate assessment that Fred is in fact the best detective in the series, and he's supposed to be a moron.
(Insert look how she massacred my boy meme here)
Right like how’d they mess him up so hard
@@gummidon1618 because "White man bad" jokes, they wanted to ruin the Scooby Doo IP out of spite (you can tell by the overall writing and messages in the show).
@@inactivehorse9753 it’s just unfortunate that’s what they decided to do cause that’s not how Fred is at all
He was coddled his whole life so it’s no wonder he’s so dumb, he’d never had a chance to be his own person until the series’ current timeline. Who knew there’d be any character growth
Fred still ends up being the best character “all I can think about is the gender pay gap” killed me
Justice for Fred and Ken.
"is it funny?" well maaybe a little
For the ‘Velma not knowing Norton’s eye color’ thing, I’m kind of surprised they didn’t make a joke about how none of the characters actually have irises, but I guess this show is too afraid of making fun of being laughed at even for something harmless
That's honestly what I expected too. For how addicted to meta humor they are they really missed the chance for a good meta joke.
Yeah. They're so damn focused on making meta jokes in a desperate attempt to make criticisms nullified that they just missed on meta jokes that would actually be kinda funny
Fun fact - Ghandi’s remaining kidney is voiced by Michael J Fox!
Fun fact 2 - Velma stole the magical cardigan bit from Clone High when Principal Scudworth uses Mr Butlertron’a cardigan to get the kids to confide in him
"Why is Fred so ripped up?"
"Well, this one time Fred saw a documentary about the origin of the word gymnasium, and spent three weeks trying to learn everything about exercise -and- education. And we all know how hard habits are to break for people like Fred."
We stan fred's overfixation. Neurodivergent coded king.
You just know that’s exactly what happened. Fred didn’t even realize he became a hunk until the rest of the gang pointed it out
@@Grim_Sister the best kind of hunk: the wholesomely-unaware hunk
@@brose-bg3ks Yes, the Krunk form of hunk.
“I wanna stay in shape and somehow became swoll” type
Just a thing about Daphne. She was the ATM. It was her family who funded and set up Mystery Inc (the actual LLC, so they don't risk getting sued for causing damage and tying up a person in a mask and also the Shaggy Scooby food bills and the van's fuel). The gang couldn't do anything without Daphne's deep tiny purse. Daphne probably had the most defined character in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (All the characters in that show had fun personalities).
though shaggy also definitly could have helped if they gang needed it as his family was also UBER rich.
and famous too
In the original runs, it everyone in the gang but Velma had massive family money, and she had a good nest egg from patents she’d come up with.
yep i think her family just owned and ran a bookstore if i remeber right.
where as fred had a few atheletic or traditional family members so was well off.
daphne whos family was rich via bussiness and fashion which daphne made her own money doing as well.
and shaggy whos entire family are basically modern royalty coming from such a long line of success in EVERYTHING.@@nvfury13
@@nvfury13 one of my favorite franchise wide "running jokes" (if it can even be called that) is that Shaggy has lots of rich or prominent uncles who will do things like send him letters leaving Shaggy their mansion or jewels or whatever just for a gag
@@RedKincaid We see his family in one of the early series episodes, when they visit their castle in Scotland, they are filthy rich aristocrats and Scooby’s family has belonged to them since the days of chivalry.
I grew up identifying heavily with Vilma, as a nerdy and bookish girl. This whole show felt like a slap in the face
I was in middle school when the original cartoon came out, and I *adored* Velma, being a bookish girl who couldn't see a damn thing without my glasses. I was excited when I heard they were doing a Velma-centric show. I then watched the first two minutes, and stopped. I've never seen a show I hated quite so much. Watching this lovely South African eviscerate it is comforting, somehow.
Also about Velmas ugly lessons: Ok, suppose she succeeded and made the five girls from the hot girl list all ugly (and they stayed ugly). Wouldn't that just move five other girls to the top? And thus into the scope of the serial killer. Or is there some kind of threshhold for when a girl becomes "hot"? And if so, what exactly is it that makes a girl "hot"? These ugly lessons open up a giant can of worms that i'm sure the writers don't want opened.
I think the thing that irritated me the most about Velma is that it's from the POV of a narcissist, almost the textbook definition.
The main character is someone who looks down on everyone else, their needs are more important than everyone else, they only want you around when you're useful to them, anyone who isn't attracted t them they'll faun over, but the moment they show those feelings back they lose interest, and they're never in the wrong. If they are in the wrong, they are forgiven like it never even happened and have no lasting consequences. All their flaws are over looked or completely downplayed.
You could remove everything else from the show that people are saying as woke and if you keep these traits in combined with any meta commentary humor being constantly interjected as well as everything happening for plot convivence and it would still be a terrible show.
Velma's the kind of person who labels you a "bigot" or a "nazi" for calling out her shitty behaviour, then blocks you before you can tell her what a fucking idiot she is. The show actually did a good job of portraying the modern day far-leftist accurately.
not to mention how utterly manipulative she is at every given chance
@@princembatI'm not sure how in rooms full of writers, voice actors, editors, reviewers, and the like that NO ONE said to Mindy that "Hey... your character is an asshole. And not like a fun asshole like Peter Griffin or Archer but genuinely insufferable."
@@grandempressvicky6387 Well, she did sexually assault a co-worker and then threaten others to fire them if they said anything on a previous project. I guess being an executive producer gave her way too much leeway there.
@@grandempressvicky6387 Oh, it's very easy to understand that. All those people didn't want to get fired, so they didn't point out that she's an unlikable fuckhead.
i'm always so happy to hear people talk about the evolution of fred's character and his autistic coding!! he's such a funny, genuine and relatable character to me, and if hbo velma has done anything good, it's helped people to revisit older media and realise how charming fred really is for all his intense interests and other fun quirks.
You're the kind of person they would tell is watching the show wrong.
Dude. Fred isn’t autistic. He’s a fucking cartoon in a world where a Great Dane talks and can drive go karts and fly planes and cook 6 course meals. He’s just a normal dude. Stop it. Stop it for the love of god stop.
@@bad-people6510 what's your damage??
@@geckheck2416 Oh it's not me. They've actually done that. Producers and writers on other projects have made public statements that viewers who don't come away from their shows with the conclusions they want, aren't watching it right. You see everything is the customer's fault. The corporation is always right is the new mantra.
@bad-people6510 how high are you?
Honestly, something that show how it was impossible to see Velma (the character) as anything but rotten, without even watching the show, is her facial expressions.
Seriously, she look so vile, her smiles, her angry faces, her annoyed ones, she can't help but looking rotten to the core.
I didn't think Mindy was so stupid and smug that she brought back the old "ugliness on the outside reflect ugliness on the inside" without realizing what was wrong with it.
Totally. Even watching clips various youtubers use without sound, just watching her expression be negative **most of the time shes on screen** said enough. Frowning, yelling, rolling her eyes, being smug or superior, showing disgust or disdain or exasperation... She's just some character, some awful, unhappy character who soils the air around her, who also happens to have the same name as a beloved childhood icon. They are not the same person whatsoever!
There's just something not endearing about a dour and incredibly entitled character wallowing in self-pity and unceasingly complaining about how entitled everyone but herself is.
Velma is a self insert for Mindy, who is like that in reality.
@@nvfury13 That seems to be the sad truth. This show seems to be the product of a horribly cynical, vitriolic, negative, self-victimizing and depressing person.
2:18:00 Suggesting that someone who wants to write Velma well should hang out with girls who write Silmarillian character analysis essays on Tumblr is... shockingly accurate. Top tier advice, can't imagine a better explanation. That's Velma, on Tumblr composing masterposts for her 12 part essay on a minor character in a fantasy novel.
As a hobby, in downtime while her programs compile or the rocket design she is working on runs through simulations.
Going back to one of your earlier points, Mel Brooks said the reason he makes fun of Nazi Germany a lot etc... is because when you satirize something and make jokes about it you are eroding away at the person or person's and fighting back and are able to expose them and the situation for what it is. Dark humor if done correctly can send a message about the dark situation and also be used as a tool to fight against that event and persons.
Exactly. If we are afraid to satirize the Nazties then that only cements them as something to be feared, making them seem more powerful and beyond reproach. IMO their ideas deserve to be mocked as viciously as possible. Turn funny mustache man's coffin into a rotisserie, lmao.
We have a whole holiday explaining why you should make fun of dictators and self important people (Purim). Mel Brooks, being a Jewish man post WW2, understood that.
The idea is that by making fun of Haman, Mordecai takes away his power of intimidation.
One does not kill with anger but with laughter.
Not to mention, most things that treat the nazi's seriously, even in condemnation, has been taken by neo-nazis and effectively turned into propaganda for themselves. Because stuff like American History X makes them look bad, but doesn't it also make them look kind of bad ass? like isn't the make character an bad ass un-cut nazi alpha?
But do you know what hasn't be taken by them? Springtime for Hitler from The Producers, or anything else Mel Brooks has made involving them. Because it treats them with as much respect as it should, which is none at all. Point and laugh at them for how silly and hateful their ideology is. Point out how stupid their propaganda is if you take it even slightly out of the very specific angle they want it to be seen at. Show them how weak minded and pathetic they are.
Holy crap, I’m so happy to find another Mel Brooks supporter. We are few and far between, these days.
I find that the central issue to Velma is spite.
The creators have made it clear they did not want to make a Scooby Doo show, and you can feel that hatred for the IP with every second. From describing the mystery machine as 'Fred's weird sex van' to mocking the logistics of characters switching costumes in under a second, to skipping the talking dog entirely. This is the kind of show where you can feel the original creators turning in their graves.
What's ironic about this take is that in *every* single interview, the show leads talk endlessly about how excited they were to do this show and what big fans they are of the original. The voice actress for Velma, whom I'm convinced lied about both watching the original and relating with Velma, was part of the team.
And their reason for excluding Scooby? They claimed that a talking dog was "too childish" for a mature cartoon. So much irony.
@@FoxMoon89actually Warner bros denied them access to Scooby. Good call IMO
I was also the person who pretended I was a cat in elementary school. I only did for a year though and it was because my child nemesis pretended to be a dog.
dsjksdfhj being a cat out of spite is AMAZING
@@c-puff It's actually hard to say. It was kinda really a mutual thing we started at the same time to get attention from the teacher who was super cool. He turned out to be an alright person who I wish I tried staying friends with more. As for why we were nemeses, we had the same name but different nicknames, and I was a very obnoxious, socially oblivious person. The dumbest person you ever met. And I thought he was a mean egghead, unhelped by his egg shaped head.
@@GIRGHGH that is the most cat thing ever
"having a talking dog automatically makes it a kid's show"
Family guy: no one tell him
And then they have Scrappy-Doo in the second -season- half.
Olive is easily the most likable character in the show and yet it’s very clear that the writers didn’t want you to like her at all. Tho maybe that’s just because of the scene where Olive tells off Velma.
The saddest part about this show is having to hear Frank Welker. He's too good to be part of this train wreck.
I just dont understand how many times this show will have a character spit an entire paragraph about why Velma sucks, using completely reasonable and straightforward explanations of her actions, and then have none of that dialogue matter as they just go back to being her friend
You can feel the writers screaming for freedom in those moments tbh
I totally stan Fred as a wholesome autism coded himbo, and while they did him dirty in Velma, he's still the best character. The show just makes you feel sympathy for him.
Fred with a character has been my favourite since Mystery Incorporated came out.
My little autistic heart loves little autistic Fred
It took me some time to realize this but, in the scene where Daphne's moms confront her dad, who is an escaped convict holding a gun to their daughter's face. In that scene, they give a warning shout to alert him of their presence, yet in the scene where Velma breaks into Fred's house they shoot Fred in both his knees without warning even though Velma is the intruder and there is no clear sign of danger besides Fred reaching into his inside robe pocket.
I guess cause the dad is Asian and Fred is white?
Fred saying "I'm going to do to you what I did to Brenda" to Velma was supposed to be "basically confessing to the murder." That's not what it is at all, but that's what the writers were going for.
@@bluespirit5112 That is assuming that the writers care one bit for any other message then "Man are Bad. Must hurt and humiliate man."
im assuming its a reverse racism joke since poc get shot without warning (or with warning, they comply, and get shot anyways) and white people get coddled even if they killed people 🧍♂️
Each intro animation slowly shifts in expectation from "What's gonna happen next" to "Oh god its still going"
Ah yes, a longer video to fulfill the sadistic need of watching someone in pain from a show that is legally torture.
I thought Velma in Mystery Inc was standoff-ish because she was trying to be something she wasn't. So she projected the control she was imposing on herself onto her friends
you know fred has probably the most character development out of the whole franchise! it is surprising how much a person can do with even a simple trait like being obsessed with an obscure or highly niche interest like fred and his traps
Hi I just wanted to point something out. You mentioned clone high and here’s something else: the entire “cardigan = truth” joke is literally exactly from clone high but somehow clone high makes more sense because they’re all about random stuff so magical cardigan is funny rather than confusing in clone high. But in Velma, it’s dropped like immediately after they make the joke
Remember: Scooby Doo was always progressive. They were originally Draft Dodgers, at least Fred and Shaggy, and obviously hippies, based on Daphne and Velma 's attire, part of the counter culture in their own way. The idea that bigots would hate this new version but not older versions that treated everyone with equity and stopped old white scammers with the help of the Harlem Globetrotters is ridiculous. This show is regressive and spiteful.
It's a very easy thing to point out, but whenever someone attributes their creation's criticism to "the critics are *ist", it's always to cover their ass
There are plenty of instances of things from the past doing the same exact types of characters (female, black, whatever), and yet those are beloved - Scooby Doo, Alien, Terminator, Star Wars, Star Trek, what have you - while modern pieces of media (be they of those franchises or not) fail to do be so because they think that just including XYZ type of character is enough to get good ratings, and not the actual writing
@@Hegataro that's like having a wrong model of physics and then getting angry when your bridge fails
@@Hegataro Correct. It's the tokenization problem. They create uninteresting characters because they use superficial traits as a stand-in for personality or character. It's creatively lazy at best, and swapping existing character is a sure sign of it.
just about all modern progressivism is regressive and spiteful when you actually think about it.
@Hegataro If you seriously believe that, then I highly advise you watch... more than 5 modern movies. Lol.
To me velma has the same vibes as steven moffat's "sherlock" because both shows both hate the source material make fun of their fans for even liking the genre and then have the balls to say they're better than what's come before them when in reality it's all been downhill since the start of episode one where the viewer made the mistake to click on the show
@sparksparkle Sherlock also took advantage of its queer audience by gay-baiting the crap out of the show so they could trick them into keep watching it. So the fans who most loved it were willing to ignore or deny the show's flaws until it was over and they couldn't keep being strung along by malicious show runners.
One thing this show did for me. It made me realize Scrappy Doo wasn't all that bad.
He was cocky, overconfident to a fault, and had an annoying voice. But he wasn't ever manipulative or actively trying to be mean or hurtful. I still don't like him. But you're right, compared to Velma's Velma he's fantastic.
@@Shenaldrac A friend of mine once told me "There're no bad characters. Just bad writers." Scrappy can be a good character in the hands of a competent writer, just like how Velma ended up being one of the most despised characters in modern media due to insanely piss poor writing.
The problem was the design and casting. If it were me, I’d make him with bigger eyes and a sweeter face, and cast someone who can pass as a child. Because that’s what he is: a puppy.
With the voice and current look, he looks and sounds like a miniature Great Dane with a bad case of dwarfism.
Heck, he seems older than Scooby, and he’s supposed to be his nephew. It just doesn’t add up. If he’s a pup, he should look and sound like one
The biggest issue that Scrappy had was oversaturation. While he was added to the cast to help appeal to a younger generation, his schtick got repetitive and annoying. Didn't help that over time more and more of the main cast was cut, and he got more screen time as Fred, Velma, and finally Daphne were deemed unessential to the plot.
Scrappy actually saved the franchise by just existing. He brought in a ton of new viewers when the series was going to be cancelked. Unfortunately there was a lot of executive meddling that tied the writers hands that lead to him becoming an annoyance. Possibly the only executive meddling as bad as Janine from Real Ghostbusters.
I really think that Daphne’s hair color could’ve been an incredibly interesting character point had it not been natural in the show (though of the two episodes I’ve seen, “why is my hair the color of buffalo wings” actually got a laugh out of me). A lot of female East Asian characters are given a colorful streak in their black hair because its natural state is considered “boring”, and if Daphne wanted to be part of the popular girls, who, let’s be real, tend to be depicted as all white in most media, she could’ve chosen to dye her hair a more Eurocentric color in order to fit in. Then over time she could learn she’s beautiful the way she is and over time have her hair grow back naturally. Alternatively it could’ve been dyed because she felt it was one of the few things she had control over, considering she had no control over her parents abandoning her and she doesn’t have much control over her friend group. If this show wasn’t so hellbent on being so acerbically ironic then certain choices could’ve actually had meaning lol, but god forbid characters do things that speak to issues in a way that’s not wildly shallow
And also the smoking thing like... it's not funny? Like at all. It's such a weird non-joke. I mean so many of the shows smokes but that one really just had me like the ??? meme guy. How would her smoking make Daphne's hair red? That's not a thing. In fact it seems to have very little effect other than low birth weights. So why smoking? Why??
@@alice88waI can only assume it was meant to be either stupid for stupid's sake or some weird "I cheated on your dad and has been telling him this lie for years", because that would work with a character who is willing to abandon her baby like she did.
The way it's presented in the show is simply ignorance and lack of understanding of what a birth defect is.
Unless this is the weirdest, worst written "gingers have no soul" kind of jome
@@JDM-is-my-name Ok the 'I cheated' one I can actually fully support because I have a pet theory, partially due to that stupid 'joke', that someone else is Daphne's father and that will be a big part of season 2.
Any woman who uses the men's room won't come out saying, "It's so easy!" but would say, "WHY WAS EVERYTHING STICKY?!?" instead.
About year and a half ago men' room in my favourite bar started migrating somewere. First the soap dispenser pump bailed. About month later paper towels stand. As you cac guess, toiled flush handle was a matter of time. What I didn't expect, however, was the whole toilet cover. I enjoyed that downgrade to pissuar while it lasted, knowing every piss could be the last. At least situation got a little bit less worrying, when unpredictible unseen villain took care of mirror as next item instead. Last time I visited the place door with a lock turned to be just a door. I dared not to visit the cursed toilet again since, knowing there were only three components left, along witg certain doom directly tied to the loss of even one of them.
@@dziewiatyholy *CRAP*
@@dziewiaty Classic bar toilet.
Not to mention the part about "Oh wow, a bunch of hot girls are all hitting on me all of a sudden when I became a man! Being a man is so easy!"
Which is made even more ironic since every single main character in the show already has the hots for her mini fridge-shaped ass.
Fun fact, my wife and I did a drinking challenge to this show. Take a shot every time there's a terrible joke.
My wife had to bail after 5 shots in less than 3 minutes.
I had to bail before even 5 minutes after like 10-11 shots.
It was seriously like one after another.
Eat Italian to help avoid alcohol poisoning and to keep drinking 😂
Me and a couple of buddies had the same contest... the hospital bill was quite painful
I think it's less that it's not funny, and more that it's actively hateful and malicious.
yeah, they try to be funny with hateful words but it just flops because 1. its literally just not funny 2. its hateful, and therefore, again, its unfunny and 3. its too repetitive (if i remember correctly, theres a bunch of "fred has a small penis" jokes and hes in general the butt of a lot of jokes)
@@kaitlynmorgan4613 Oh yea, Fred was constantly the butt of the joke, either cause he had a small penis, or because he was white, or stupid or any number of other things.
Yeah sometimes a show it's unfunny but is trying or is unfunny and simply boring. Velma? Velma is straight up hateful it feels like every single person involved in this project was miserable doing it,to the point I just MUST ask why the fuck are you doing it if you hate it so damn much
"Explaining the joke is like disecting a frog. Not many are interested in it and the frog dies of it" EB White
I think Shaggy is a "nice guy" because of Velma. Velma is very manipulative and they have been friends since they were children, so Shaggy had this awful friend he liked so much, and with that constant back and forward of "you are such a good friend" and "you are useless to me" Velma puts on him, it think would not be so strange to think that Velma was his only friend because she needs him for her selfish purposes and because of that he kind of started mimicking her behavior.
I think that if Shaggy went a little bit to therapy and stopped trying to have a girlfriend, he could be such a better person, because he has his good moments, like when he was very interested on hearing how Daphne discovered things about her past, or practically his relationship with Gigi, which I know he kind of messed up in the carnival/celebration/whatever-that-was, but they were fine the next episode until they broke up because he couldn't stop thinking about Velma.
I cannot help but to feel sorry for the guy, and maybe I am very biased because Shaggy was my favourite character in other Scooby Doo shows, but I think that the main cast would probably be better people if it wasn't for Velma.
A little biased maybe, can’t blame Velma for all his bad personality traits. Shaggy in the normal series is actually a good character so it’s easier to wanna somewhat like him. Velma was likeable too but they made her the worst character so it’s easier to blame her
@@liyah. Oh but of course I am biased, just look what they did to our little boy! Just do not worry, because that is not how I see and judge people in real life haha.
Have a nice day!
Velma treats the relationship as completely transactional, it's no big surprise that Norville does the same. Should he be doing that? No. Am I going to make excuses for him because Shaggy is my favorite character and I love hi so much? Absolutely.
@@xanthousizalith5641 finally someone gets my point! XDXDXD
@@Jormundgandr-jg5xgboth comments were very accurate and on point tho. In this show she's terrible and on the real show shaggy is cool😎 Lastly I'm pretty sure both of them understood you.
Love how the characters that are meant to be likeable like Velma are unlikeable, and that the characters that are MEANT to be unlikeable are actually the most likeable characters (Fred, Gigi)
Another reason why Velma is getting a 2nd season is probably the popular practice of greenlighting a show for 2 seasons right off the bat, then ordering more if the show does well, or if they believe in what potential the show has. I doubt that Rise of the TMNT or The Owl House would have gotten a Season 2 if it weren't for the binding contract being signed by the showrunners, thanks to those meddling executives.
A lot of people hate-watched this show and I'm seeing a few people in the comments who even watched it more than once despite not liking it. That's why this show got another season
@PuttyGod the second season was announced before the first was even out. Hate watching didn't effect it.
I'm bookmarking this comment on the chance season 3 came out.
Because boy do I wish High Guardian Spice got the same 2 season treatment
@@PuttyGod That is incorrect. Movements on the internet always overestimate their own importance. You are a case in point.
Especially common in animation, because the process is slow. Although I thought a lot of people liked the Owl House?
“This show is too self-conscious to allow itself to be laughed at, which - considering it’s trying to be a comedy - is a problem.”
This is the best summary of Velma from anyone I’ve seen so far. I think you really got at the heart of why a truly diverse set of people find this show to be a waste of time. Ironically, while it’s trying to portray teenagers in a satirical and self-aware way, I can’t picture anything more teenage than the level of social awkwardness and mishandled anxiety present in the writing of this show by a set of presumably fully grown adults.
1:19:20 Speaking of HBO Max (now just "Max", what a dumb name change), there was a GQ article that was very critical about Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and the decisions he's made up to now. The article was posted Monday, but since it made critical observations and was being mean to such a little guy like a CEO, the article was edited by GQ to be more favoring towards Zaslav, the author Jason Bailey didn't approve of the edits and asked for his byline to be removed, then GQ decided to remove the entire article.
Of course, the Internet never forgets; archived versions of both the original and revised versions of Jason's article were circulating on social media, and even The Washington Post included links to both in a piece covering the situation. Pure Streisand Effect. You love to see it.
the bit where velma barges in with a swat team reads like AI wrote the script. I notice some writing AI tends to forget the sequence of events and add escalation without making it make sense, sometimes teleporting the cast, adding new characters, etc... a good example is sonic destruction on snapcube's channel.
After this video, you can finally put this awful show to rest. This is the end of a saga.
Godspeed C-puff!
Until Season 2
@@JustinCoasters That’s going to suck.
@@JustinCoasters I've heard different things about Season 2, some say it's coming, some say it was actually cancelled. I'm not sure which I'm rooting for more. 🤔While I hate the show and won't actually watch it. I do enjoy the reviews of it.
@@LWolf12 Last I heard, it was officially announced at Annecy this year, so for the time being it seems to be in production.
Apparently the second season is out now. I’ve only watched other people react to it, but I think we can say it’s just as bad. Interestingly, it’s seems that Fred is still the most likable character. (Or at least the least hate inducing)
Watching this whole saga again, it baffles me how the entire series of events happens because one woman didn't raise her son properly, blamed HIM for it, then decided that the only possible solution was to swap his brain for someone else's.
I can't help but feel for his dad. Dude married her because he loved her (the flashback where he asks "you love me, right?") and probably realized how insane she is and that trying to divorce her would make her act out in "revenge." Rewatching his scenes, I can't help but have the impression that he was trying to undo Fred's mentality... which means she turned him into that on purpose.
So, she was pissed that her kid was a boy instead of a girl, apparently? Dear god, this show gets worse the more I think about it.
Love your videos tho! Your voice is very nice to listen to
Hm, at least William gets a bit of positive development in the second half - which is more than can be said for the majority of the characters.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: We need more of the sockpuppet strawman.
Still such a missed oppurtunity to not say: Her mom is missing and she's sad about it.
I really appreciate how she's one of the few who could actually go in and give a detailed explanation as to why something doesn't work and how it could've worked while admitting the parts that he does right so many others would just say this is bad and just leave it at too meta and too mean and while there are some who give unique perspectives so many leave it at that
So I’m gonna be honest, I’ve watched the show like 3 times. I still can’t get over how the story was “okayed” when they explicitly say that Velma’s mom went missing 2 years okay but in the flashbacks she’s shown to be like… idk 5ish? But now she’s in high school. Most egregious crime I swear
Edit: okay rewatching the clip she’s def older than what I originally thought but no way it’s only been 2 years
Why on earth did you watch it the second and third times? Are you ok?
@@Vegas242 debatable honestly
Honestly I get that, you are so dumbfounded at what you saw you want to make sure that your place in reality is really happening
Yeah are they trying to tell us she was 13 then and now she's 15 *because that's so weird in my opinion*
My God.
2:44:15
Daphne's literally been nothing but high risk up until this point. I can't believe you didn't notice. Selling drugs when her parents are literally cops, the aggressive fighting in the self-defense tournament, breaking curfew when there's a killer on the loose, the Crystal Cove investigation. All high risk behavior. It's just that the show hasn't focused on her so it's all been B plot which is a shame because they had the makings of a really good character with her.
Ohh yeah you’re right! That is some very high-risk behaviour!
3:44:45
I’ve heard about a serial killer that confessed to a lot of murders that he didn’t do which resulted in it becoming harder to actually convict him of the ones he did kill since he had confessed to so many that weren’t true.
All I cam really say about this show is that if Velma *IS* a self insert of Mindy, then that alone sadly says an insane amount about her, none of which is good
They never got to Velma sexually assaulting someone and threatening them to silence, but yeah.
This show brought a bit of pain to me, really they had the possibility to make a slightly more adult version of the gang, maybe it would have fit better if they made them all adults having to, like the audience who grew up with them, deal with adult problems along with managing their PI business! Instead they made a cancer growth with just as much enjoyment and utility!
Judging by how every single moment of need between characters is met with a required transaction and a total lack of humanity, it really just feels like the director and/or writers have never had a meaningful friendship that didn't require a cost for aid.
I'd have to look up the exact quote, but Totally Not Mark recently made a series reviewing the live action Fullmetal Alchemist Trilogy of movies and at some point (during the video aptly titled *Netflix's Fullmetal Alchemist LITERALLY Broke Me* ) while he was watching the last one he just went, "What am I doing here?"and turned it off. When he got to that part of his review he literally went 'what else can I say? It's just bad, please just do yourself a favor and watch something you'll enjoy.'
Anyway with that in mind, please don't feel pressured to cover season 2 when it comes out
I actually love explanation videos that last like 6 hours. That way I can do my chores or anything else I don’t wanna do😌
thanks! And same. I didn't plan for it to be this long but I'm not disappointed either.
I gotta give a shout out to the live chat for all the ways it showed this show’s plot to be even more broken than I thought. Also I gotta wonder what they can even do with a season 2 when virtually all plot threads are already finished.
Not that I want this garbage to get a season 2, but I think it's pretty easy to do if they want. I mean, Scooby Doo in most incarnations is episodic. Season 2 is the gang getting together in the "pedo coded" mystery machine for a road trip. Maybe some school project or some shit since the show keeps acting like these characters are in college instead of high school given the sexualization of the girls. They're traveling and bam! Come across some new mystery!
Again, I don't _want_ this to happen. But it doesn't seem hard to me to just come up with a new plot. After all, they still have to show the gang getting together and forming and developing into a mystery solving machine like the original series because they want this to be canon and actually how these beloved characters met and oh god I think I'm going to vomit.
What a wild very deeply thought-out and insanely well put-together video essay. Full marks to you!!! Fan-freaking-tactic content!!
Additionally, my ADHD-ridden ass loves long videos with engaging content that I can dip in-and-out of when I feel like it, but always be able to come back to the exact spot I left. This vid feeds me, bro
7 am, looks like im gonna have go to sleep at an appropriate time for once
not all heroes wear capes. thank you for making it so i didn’t have to watch this godawful show.
To be honest you can have unlikeable characters but they have to have some redeeming qualities and none of Velma's characters does and even when they learn something or complete a character arch it is often forgotten by the next episode and they turn back into their old shitty selves
It doesn't help if the show tells you they are justified when the definitely are not.
As someone that has Aspergers, that section about Fred was very interesting. His stramge hyperfixations on random things is something I'm very guilty of as well, as well as others on the spectrum. Maybe its a weird trait to give to Fred of all people, but I sorta identify with it, so its kinda cool.
tbh the headcanon that Fred is prone to hyperfixations is one that’s always made sense to me. it feels like a part of his character, at least in the past couple of decades-I mean look at that boy and traps. let him make snares
The big difference in comedy is more simple, one is mean spirited and spiteful, while Clone High is more innocent and having fun. Although the reboot is treading the line and may eventually fall into the same style of comedy.
This show really exemplifies why good art can only come from the heart.
You know what I hate the most about this show? It’s Daphne’s design. It’s not bad by no means but as an artist who loves drawing female characters I so envy the artist who drew Daphne’s design because it’s the kind of design I wish I could create. Everything from the hair, to the face/head, the body, and even the clothes is great to me. Maybe one day I’ll make a design just as good.
Me too
my biggest hate thing is that i can see that there was potential there, the animation for velmas halucinations is great, the character designs are good and in the few moments where it seems like mindy missed a page of the script you can even see that they had to have at least one competent writer somewhere that tried to make something work. but then everything else is piled onto that and everything i spot that is well made just makes me angrier that its in this horrible show. I mean give those animators and sound designers a few decent writers and put them on another project and it could be fantastic but no, that talent is thrown into the fire to stroke the ego mindy in her endless quest to justify why being a shitty person isnt her fault
The art and animation is genuinely great, it's wasted on awful writing T_T
@@Sootielove If I had access to the level of animation and art this shit show had I can guarantee you I could write and make a far better show than Velma. I already have story ideas drawn up.
I only recently discovered your channel, and I'm pleasantly happy with the work I found! This review as well as the High Guardian Spice review really were extremely well written, reasonable and nuanced. Though I wanted nothing to do with the subject matters in question, your presentations were great to listen to, and how they were written and read made me stick around and learn more about them without having to go through the torture of watching any of them. You. Earned. A sub my South African friend! And good luck on all your future work!
You actually made it. You went trough hell and manage to came back. Lets hope to have long break before next blastphemy.
45:00 your analsys of freds character being developed over the years was so accurate. I also think it works very well.
im looking forward to the season two so I can watch your descent through it lol
C-Puff, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for adding the names of every song you include. I have found so many of the songs that put me in a writing mood because of you.
I'm shook over the whole show, but I'm more shook over what they think adrenaline is. Like, if someone is having a panic attack, something that involves a massive spike of adrenaline, WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THEM MORE?! ALSO allergic reactions aren't treated with adrenaline, she'd use an epipen, which is mostly epinephrine. With the writer's understanding of medicine, I'm gonna need some adrenaline, because the horrible misunderstanding of it is causing me unreasonable stress. The kind where someone is explaining how to use a ladder properly according to OSHA regulations but they're doing it wrong because they're supposed to maintain three points of contact at ALL times and while they're explaining that they're only maintaining two! Yes this is a very uncommon situation, and yes it made me unreasonably mad when it happened. And I never corrected them, because it was an employee training video, and she probably broke her neck years ago bc she wasn't holding onto the rail like she was supposed to and she fell. May she rest in peace, she had the spirit, but just couldn't count right.
Same show that has characters claim smoking while pregnant causes red hair. Just like... WAT? I'd hope that that's meant to be a setup that the person Daphne thinks is her dad isn't actually her dad but... it's Velma, come on.
First: Scooby Doo meets Kiss fan! A woman of taste!
It’s like the writers saw Jelloapocalypse’s video on how to make a good Scooby Doo show, then decided to do the exact opposite of that
Edit: Mindy trying to make fun of mythology and Tolkien is hilarious to me, because I’m imagining Steven Colbert just running into the writers room especially just to punch her in the face. Good times
E2: See, when you establish a role in your world, you need to follow it through: Water benders can control blood during the full moon, magic in dragon age can’t reverse time, Quaraians are never seen outside of their suits. If a rule is established, you must follow through with it. You showed that snapping one’s fingers gets someone out of a trance. NOW USE IT
E3 (last one, I swear) :
Sometimes people write about terrible characters to process terrible things that happened to them by those people (see I’m Glad My Mom Died, for example). It’s healing through a creative outlet. Coincidentally, Tolkien did it too
Cool I sure hope this lady becomes better and stops sexually assaulting men and threatening to have potential whistleblowers fired now that she's made a garbage awful TV show to work through what a garbage awful person she is.
Colbert kind of shot his credibility in the foot when he gave a softball interview to the Rings of Power cast and writers -- a show that, like Velma, deviates so much from the source material that the only thing it has in common is the proper nouns.
@@robertbryant4669 Colbert killed his credibility long before Rings of Power was a thing.
Ok, quick fire: Watch Scooby Doo Moon Monster Madness. Has Jen Hale in a double role. She does the Commander Voice in one of them.
- The whole show could have been filmed in live action. No Scooby means no CGI, the hallucinations are in like… 3 episodes for half a minute or so, and it’s clear Mindy wasn’t using the advantages the medium of animation provides (Animaniacs, for example, used it wonderfully in their recent reboot, such as playing with perspective, turning the characters into Anime characters for an episode and even doing a homage to those episodes of Looney Toons where Daffy and Bugs torment each other. There are fun things you can do with this. Just… Think outside of the box, dammit!)
1. I like your character stand-in.
2. Thanks for this 4-hour-long video; it is one of the better summaries of this show.
"we dont have a gender pay gap in my country"
God the fucking comedic timing on that, the blank eye stare, the perfect amount of silence afterward.
Lovely joke, enjoyed it alot.
Even though south Africa does have one...?
“We dont have a wage gap in my country” (1:47:20)
Took me right out and confused the hell out of me. bc every reputable journal i’ve seen states definitively that while the gender pay gap decreased (from 40% to 15), it has not completely gone away. so i’m very confused what this youtuber is using as a basis for the statement. Im no expert, so open to hear new insights, but it seems a very confident and odd statement to make with no sources when University of Cape Town publishes a paper in 2020 directly refuting it.
there’s also some bits about SouthAfrican tax law I did not read too closely yet in which a few abstracts stated that women are somehow taxed more than men so the gender pay gap may be wider than initial investigation reveals?
idk. makes me a bit wary of watching more. any insights from other south africans reading this?
South African here, I was also confused about this remark as we do have a gender pay gap. I personally know women who are paid less than male counterparts for the same job, at same levels of experience. There's still a very prevalent belief that men need to earn more because they're the breadwinners of their household.
@@emmabosman3716 I assumed it was a sarcastic "joking to cope" type thing. Isn't there quite a bit of income inequality in general? So much so that it's claimed to be (at least among) "the worst in the world?"
@@bad-people6510show me the studies you took this from
I just wanted to say how much I enjoy that you put in dives into each individual character between the different episode segments. It's all extremely well thought out and really brought me back into the Scooby Doo phase. This was really well written and the world owes you an apology for all the research you had to do into the show TToTT
3:31:20
Better than her husband cheating on her? It’s not like she disappeared for a couple years without saying anything to anybody. It’s totally normal to expect your spouse to remain faithful after you vanish on them and don’t even seen them a message for a couple years.
Eh I feel like most people who really care for their spouse would try and file a missing person’s report first and investigate, mourn the potential loss before moving on. Especially if that’s not typical behavior for them to just disappear especially with a whole child there.
@@liyah. Velma was a literal nightmare to her mom. Given what was shown I’d assume that she just abandoned them because she couldn’t deal with it anymore.
Been watching this video through several days of taking breaks, but I am astonished by the sheer quality of your videos. I've seen several people's comparisons and commentary on this show, but not one of them have really put it into such a way that my brain clicks into it as well as you've done. Plenty of kudos for giving me a perspective that was incredibly interesting to hear! I think it helps that you're using other shows as proper comparisons, using even entire scenes that this show was attempting to do in their own style, but seeing how it is done in a more correct format.
I lost it at the My Immortal reference though. Wasn't ready for that. xD
I do think its important for some people to understand that even though some people use "woke" to mean "literally any american left social commentary" the way most people use it is intended to be "american left social commentary that is heavy handed, in your face, and presents itself as being wholly correct and might not even serve any real story purpose."
Velma is woke because it just starts spitting out all these takes that literally don't matter to the story and only exist so the writers can say "these things I believe are right."
Also, still super annoyed no one calls Velma "bi" and always insist on using "gay" or "lesbian." Velma has always gone back and fourth between men and women and its so weird that every studio is absolutely terrified of having a bisexual character.
It's not "woke", it's "bad". "Woke" as a criticism is a meaningless non-word that's a dog whistle for "too many non-white / non-straight / non-male people in this show". Doesn't matter what it started out as, the term is irredeemably poisoned.
cause they don't make bi characters(those that are attracted into both women and men), they make gays that "could have" gone for the "straight" option(dating the opposite sex). If they did the actual bisexuals dumbasses would burn their own asses in anger, which actually happened(no joke, good part of "lgbt community" tried to throw put bisexuals that "went the straight way")
I'm pansexual and I used to think I was bi, the fact bisexuality and pansexuality are so hated on and misrepresented just because people think "we can't pick one side" is so insulting...
@@corahtheskeleton8062 ok, as a pan can you please explain what's the difference between you and a bi? I tried to understand on my own and found literally no difference
@@Dozarman bisexual, as in "attracted to two genders" won't be attracted to anything other than male or female, while pansexuals don't find any difference of attraction depending on the gender of the person, whether it be male, female, non-binary, trans or others like intersex
That doesn't mean bisexuals can't be attracted to trans people of course, but they'll be less likely to be attracted to non-binaries or people that are intersex
I cant wait for you to eat "season" 2 and regurgitate it back to us in an easy to watch 4 hour video, doing the lords work for real 🙌
God, a 4 and a half hours of Velma?
Well... I know what i'm doing tonight.
i hope you dont plan on doing velma
@@theresivy Friends don't let friends do Velma.
the way you talked about Fred having a weird hyper fixation kinda feels like his character was molded into someone who just didnt have someone to share them before meeting the gang.
Would work really well if he was hiding that hes really passionate about building stuff but awful at business and his mother (a controlling bitch) cannot accept her son following a path she doesnt want, this would also give a reason as to why shes doing all of this, she just needs someone easy to brainwash but good at business. (Which she might think its Velma or it actually is Velma)
I think the thing with inclusive content, is that most of the times they just focus on that. On being inclusive. And forget that a movie or series needs a strong story to capture the audience. A good example is Steven universe. It’s inclusive, but the story is fleshed out, and the inclusive characters have more to give then just being representation to a group. You see them grow. As for the political and social jokes, they felt more like the show nagging the viewer rather than making a joke to get the point across. Lastly, if you’re going to make a character a jerk, don’t expect people to like them. And if you do want them to be liked, make them relatable in some way. Example, House. Complete jerk, but has moments of humanity (in his own way)
The reason jerks like House are liked IMO is not because of their humanity...or at least,that's not the main reason...the main reason is that they're super-competent in what they do. House is a jerk but he's a great doctor(somehow). Tyrion can be a jerk,but he's smart. Wednesday is a jerk but is super-skilled in many things(except for detecting). Rumple from OUaT is a jerk but he's a master of manipulation and he's great at obtaining what he wants. This Velma is a jerk and *it's not even competent!* She sucks as a detective,she has no other specific skill and there's *nothing* that qualifies her as a"cool"character,she _thinks_ she's cool,but there's nothing that proves she's right!As we would say in Italian"she sings it and she plays it all on her own"(I think in English is"she marches to her own drum")!X-P
@@Nicamon exactly!! They were jerks, but got stuff done. Some moments of humanity also help. It’s like that teammate you can’t stand, but you know he’s gonna do the work
Dan Vs. Dan is a jerk, even his shirt says Jerk. Just a terrible person you'd never wanna meet in real life. But the point of the show is that he's never in the wrong. Something happens to incite his anger, which is often stupid and coincidental in a way that make him seem cursed. His plans usually fail comedically, but seeing him fail so many times makes us want to cheer him on. Then he usually wins at the end.
But the show doesn't take him seriously. When he deviates from his revenge plot, or gets too serious, he gets his comeuppance. Also, he's not completely evil, he's shown to at least care about his friend Chris in some way, and he's very sweet to his cat.
@@SP-ny6pk Right. This Velma,instead,is like Joffrey...universally hated because *there's no reason why you shouldn't!!* He's the most awful person ever and he's also a brat and a coward! At least Ramsey Bolton was intimidating...Joffrey is only with those who are unfairily underpowered compared to him so whatever superiority he shows doesn't feel earned and that's why everybody hates him.
Yes! Inclusivity for its own sake is little more than a crutch for lazy writers so that they can turn around and say "you just don't like the story because it features certain minority groups as the main characters" when it goes over like a lead balloon!
And I for one can love a main character that's unlikable - Yuri Orlov from "Lord of War" or Louis Bloom from "Nightcrawler" come to mind right away. Hell, I myself have been writing an unlikable protagonist for a little webnovel titled "The Economic Woes of the Lord of Evilland" that's basically an adult comedy set in a dark fantasy universe: the main character is a stereotypical fantasy evil overlord that executes people on a whim and has nearly bankrupted his kingdom waging genocidal wars on his enemies - at no point are you supposed to look at this character and think "what a great guy." But whoever wrote "Velma" doesn't seem to get this...
Love how you speak about the music and art direction in Velma's hallucinations. It makes it clear that you're giving an honest and fair review rather than just blindly hating- what's done well is good, what's done poorly is bad. Simple as. No bias.
This was a painful experience for you. Here's hoping you find a show that can be a good palette cleanser.
I appreciate the comparisons to Daria, not only because Daria is one of the greatest TV shows in history and one that had a huge influence on me watching it as a teen, but because it really highlights the difference in how to do this sort of concept right and how to do it wrong.
I think the major difference is that as cynical as Daria was, it was never _hateful._ Sure, it liked to satirize the more absurd aspects of society, but it was never trying to vilify anyone's lifestyle or belittling people for liking what they like. It also helps a lot that Daria wasn't always depicted as being in the right. There are many episodes in which rather than lecturing others, she is the one learning a lesson and when people call her out, she takes it to heart and tries to improve as a person.
I remember one episode in particular that's stayed with me is one where she realizes that her attitude is making her parents incredibly worried, thinking that she's depressed or something. This realization absolutely stuns her as she thought all she was doing was being herself without bothering anyone, so it never occured to her that people even cared about her and her feelings, and wants to find a way to alleviate people's worries while staying true to herself.
And again, a really good aspect of the show and the character is that Daria _gives a shit_ about other people's feelings. She'll mock their more superficial or hypocritical aspects, but she's not going out of her way to hurt people and generally still tries to be supportive, and she tries to make things right when she realizes she does hurt people.
Meanwhile, Velma is constantly wagging its finger at the audience, presumes to lecture everyone on every social issue imaginable despite clearly only caring about them on a superficial level, Velma's attitude is almost never called out and she seems downright offended at the notion that she might have to do some personal growth. Its idea of social satire is to just insult and vilify people who dare deviate even slightly from its own moral compass, showing to be worthy of nothing more than hatred and humiliation and on top of it all, unironically insults and mocks people because of their ethnic and/or social background, which is the exact opposite of progressive.
Honestly I'd never heard the take that Fred is neurodivergent and I'm all here for it.
Velma was somebody's very specific and very entitled wish fulfillment. It watches exactly like the kind of thing someone would write when they were 12 and wanted to have a story where no matter how badly they were portrayed because of their own actions and beliefs, the story still insisted they were always right, and all the people they hate have bad things repeatedly happen to them.
I feel like I over explained that... this show may have made me dumber.
i'm gonna complete all alignments of shin megami tensei 4 while i listen to this
Yes, it's too bad that it's impossible to have a show that has a talking dog that is not only VERY funny and satirical, but also heartfelt and poignant at times. There's no way a talking dog can appear in a show like that *cough coughMr.Peanutbuttercough cough*
Another comment because its another topic
Velma-Shaggy relationship in Mystery INC was *supposed* to feel wrong. They got together *exactly* because they were both single, and Velma didn't figure her sexuality yet. That's why its meant to feel wrong - it was wrong, they were not a proper fit. Compare and Contrast with her partner later.
3:35:53 I understood the connection perfectly: faking illness and “Velma” are both red flags for narcissism.
I just found you randomly and I have to say this is the best analysis of the show I've seen. Keep up the fine work.
Mindy just rode inside the Scooby Doo Ip like a trojan horse carrying her various prejudices, perverse views and lack understanding of comedy, entertainment and mystery solving.
I would say Mindy is a parasite to the Scooby Doo IP.
absolutely loved the mean girl trope dissection nested within this four and a half hour review. I’m glad it’s brought up, because. why is Daphne a mean girl in this when they took out being RICH-her most consistent character trait other than pretty girl??
What a fantastic video!! I enjoy the Velma commentary, but the true value of your video (for me, at least) is the insight you provide on narrative structure. You defined story construction in a manner that aids story writers' own works. Thank you!
I must say, I simply LOVE your avatar!
It's so cute and adorable. I hope that's alright to say.
Big props to the artist. ❤
Considering I am the artist thank you very much! 😆
2:19:30 YOOOOOOOOO you shouted out that old Johnny Bravo bumper! I LOVED that thing! Had it memorized for years!