Velma

Everything you've heard is true - this is vile trash made by hateful people. It actually plays out like an OTT satire of the recent glut of woke reboots ("Make this classic character black! Make that classic character gay! Mock the straight white male at every opportunity!"), only this isn't a goof - it actually means every bitter, spiteful thing it says, none of which are actually funny. A failure on every possible level. Of course it's getting a second season.

The wall to wall backlash and brutal reception actually made me check the pilot out myself for the sake of morbid curiosity. Does that make me a sucker? Almost certainly.

Woof. Is what Scoob said reading the script, so he didn’t bother and left his franchise to go star in indie dramas for A24. But really, it’s almost remarkable how bad and lazy the humor is, and they had to somehow spritz the lazy and bad with an unbottomingly vile and mean tone. Every joke and plot twist is unredeemably bitter and hateful. It seems laced in its own sense of faux-virtue to the point where it’s defined by narcissistic victim-baiting, and not by, jinkies, solving mysteries.

"Velma" represents unadulterated misunderstanding and hatred towards animation, adult animation, coherent storytelling and Scooby Doo. The art style is great but that's the only good thing about it. Mindy Kaling's anger and frustration drips through the show, the political correctness and non stop pointing to who's black or white, the over the top of the top meta aspects and the lack of actual stories with or without mysteries, ghosts and monsters, makes this the first real train wreck of 2023.

What makes Velma obnoxious is that it has a pretentious conceit of self-awareness on being above conventional tropes (assuming they don't just make those up) while lacking the self-awareness to realize they still play these tropes straight, further worsen by pretending their characters are supposed to be likable. It's also painfully unfunny, where most jokes rely on a seething dislike for whatever Velma finds disgust in and the hyperbole lacks the logic to justify its punchline.

I don't think it's quite as terrible as so many people have said, but it's just unremarkable. There are moments here and there that are fun, and I think some of the differences from the usual Scooby stories make the show more interesting, but the story itself here just isn't that great overall, and it's not quite funny enough to make up for that either.

2 Episodes & a lot of controversy; Velma is a middling show. A few amusing jokes, a few bad ones and plenty of inane dialogue. It's an interesting take on the Mystery Gang, though admittedly not a faithful one. Thematically, Velma seems more a criticism of 4th/5th wave than a homage to it.

I will never understand why people make remakes of franchises they clearly hate.