I finally watched it!
Well, I finally got around to finishing the illegal Canadian run of Mystery Incorporated and....well...I'm having trouble expressing my thoughts succinctly. So I asked the gang to help me out!
Fred? Daphne? Velma? How do you feel about this series overall?
...okay. But what about Shaggy and Scooby Doo?
Hmmm, looks like Shaggy is a bit more forgiving than the rest of them. That, or he awarded the show a point solely because it allowed him to touch Velma's boobs on camera.
OK, seriously...
This show is, by far, the biggest example of wasted potential I have EVER seen! On paper, it had everything going for it (good writers, actors, cool Hanna-Barbera throwbacks, beautiful design and atmosphere) and the first episode was amazing. But it slowly degraded in quality with each successive episode until it was just a badly written, sexist, plot hole ridden, childhood-memory-destroying mess.
First off, the over-arching storyline (the thing that was supposed to be this series' main draw) has dozens of plot holes that were left hanging. Just off the top of my head...
1) Mr E was omniscient/powerful enough to pass messages to the gang wherever they were, control half the town without anyone finding out who he was, rope Angel into helping him even though she didn't want to, etc, etc. And yet, he couldn't solve the Big Mystery and unmask The Freak of Crystal Cove without the aid of a bunch of dumbass, hormonal teenagers!? This makes no sense!
2) If the original Mystery Inc was just as good at mystery solving as the current one; shouldn't they have been able to figure this case out themselves within the past 20 years? I know their families were threatened; but being threatened by psychos is a daily occurrence for the current gang and it never phased them! Heck, both Fred and Velma saw family members get attacked by suspects in the mysteries they were solving, and they never once thought of quitting the team. Then again, Fred and Velma are also huge assholes in this show; so maybe that explains why.
3) If the gang's safety was the only thing Angel/Cassidy cared about; why wasn't she straight with them from the get go? It's clear she no longer has any love for Ricky/Mr E; so she wasn't blindly following his orders out of love/trust for him. I suppose Mr E had something on her that he was able to use to blackmail her into cooperating (some old copies of her gag-inducing love poems to him, perhaps?), but that's never confirmed. So we're left to assume that Angel is merely an idiot who blindly follows the man in her life just like every other woman in the show (with the exception of Velma's mother).
The writers for this show have no idea how to write romance
None of the characters act believably or consistently when it comes to the romances in this show...
1) Fred: He starts out with the perfectly reasonable fear that entering a romantic relationship with Daphne will screw up their friendship and that he should love all his friends and family equally. Then, toward the end of the series, he says that Daphne is the only one who has always been there for him (I guess Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma are chopped liver on account of the fact that they refuse to hump his leg 24/7 like Daphne does) and he impulsively decides that he and Daphne should get married after a whopping two months of dating in High School! That's a pretty big leap to make in a ridiculously short amount of time!
2) Daphne: Early on in the Fred/Daphne relationship; she showed some assertiveness and insisted that Fred make compromises on her behalf to make their relationship work. Then once he admits that he loves her, she goes into full doormat mode and tolerates behavior from him that, in real life, would get a man arrested. I'm honestly surprised that Daphne's parents never issued a restraining order against him. God knows they had more than enough evidence to make their case!
3) Velma: She constantly jumps between being madly in love with Shaggy, hating Shaggy's guts, and wanting to salvage a platonic friendship with him. I had hope for her when Shaggy said he wanted her back and she appeared to do the dignified thing and say that maybe they're better off as friends. But those hopes were dashed when the following episode showed her bitterly telling Daphne that she only did that as a "Fuck You!" to Shaggy for choosing Scooby and nothing more.
4) Shaggy: He told Velma he broke up with her because of the Scooby thing and also because he wasn't ready for a girlfriend. He then proceeded to kick Scooby to the curb and try and climb into the panties of a girl Velma had befriended (presumably to fill the hole that was left when Daphne decided that Fred was the only person who mattered in her life) and seemed to really like. Thus making himself one of the biggest douchebags in this show! And then, after Velma's gal pal dumps him, he realizes that he still loves Velma when he lands on top of her in the backseat of the Mystery Machine (I'm not kidding!).
The Shaggy/Velma/Scooby thing was ENTIRELY POINTLESS in the end!!!
Back in the Renaissance Faire episode (and in other episodes, too), it was heavily implied that Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma's issues were integral to the overarching plot because they mirrored Ricky, Pericles, and Cassidy's issues (and said issues played a role in dooming the original Mystery Inc.). Well, the show is over now. And aside from that old diary full of bad poetry, we never see any signs that Cassidy and Ricky (aka Angel and Mr E) ever liked each other at all! We don't see them show affection to each other in the modern day scenes nor the flashbacks to their youth. And we also find out that the old gang disappearing was all Mayor Jones' doing anyway.
Sure, you could theorize that Pericles decided to screw his friends over because Ricky chose Cassidy over him. But that's just a theory because the show itself doesn't tell us squat!
...so, basically, Velma's character was dragged through the dirt (and, to a lesser extent, so were Shaggy and Scooby's), transformed into an unrecognizable shrew, stripped of the character traits that made her lovable and unique lo these 40 years (i.e. her intelligence, confidence, and sweet demeanor), and used as this show's token emotional punching bag just so the writers for this show could amp up the angst and the drama on a whim. The main plot would have been COMPLETELY unaffected if Velma and Shaggy had remained platonic friends for the duration of the series. So why did the writers bother changing this beloved character so drastically in a way that all but guaranteed the audience would hate her? Do they hate this character because they can't fap to her the way they do with Daphne? Did Mindy Cohn do something to piss them off and this show was just an elaborate attempt to punish her?
The thing that gets to me the most - both as a feminist and a person who grew up loving and relating to Velma's "classic" characterization - is the fact that her character was twisted and warped into a crazy, vindictive, boy-crazy, bunny-boiler twit who tolerated being treated like shit by a boy she was crushing on in the hopes that said boy would make her life complete by sticking his penis in her. We very rarely got to see her acting smart (and, no, typing on a computer while vomiting up exposition doesn't count. Even Shaggy was able to do that!) or showing interest in things that weren't connected to Shaggy's dick. Even after he broke up with her; she constantly whined about how not having a date on Saturdays made her a loser. As if a girl is NOTHING without a boyfriend on her arm!
And the cherry on top was the fact that Velma's appearance was regularly the butt of jokes (for example: Fred teasing her about her ugly skin) despite the fact that Mystery Incorporated's Velma design is by far the slimmest one to date (outside of the live-action movies, of course). The show made it very clear that Velma has severe body image issues (i.e. confirming that she wears her trademark turtleneck to cover up her "neck waddle"). And then it all but confirmed Velma's belief that she's a hideous she-beast by making her this show's butt-monkey while Daphne obtained the perfect, Twilight-style love life she always wanted simply by wearing slutty outfits in front of Fred until he realized he loved her (and her skinny Asian friend won Shaggy away from Scooby by virtue of being...skinny and Asian, I guess).
Honestly, the treatment of females in general in this show bothered me. But I can go on about that forever, so that's a rant I'm saving for another day.
Long story short, there's no way I'm touching season 2 of this show unless they get a team of writers who are self-aware enough to know their limitations. And, if they insist on staying with the romance angle, they'd damn well better hire some new writers who can handle a simple romance without reducing all the female characters into either desperate shrews or doormats. Though I doubt even the best writer can salvage the mess that's already been made unless they open with a Dallas-style "last season was just a dream" ret-con.
Fred? Daphne? Velma? How do you feel about this series overall?
...okay. But what about Shaggy and Scooby Doo?
Hmmm, looks like Shaggy is a bit more forgiving than the rest of them. That, or he awarded the show a point solely because it allowed him to touch Velma's boobs on camera.
OK, seriously...
This show is, by far, the biggest example of wasted potential I have EVER seen! On paper, it had everything going for it (good writers, actors, cool Hanna-Barbera throwbacks, beautiful design and atmosphere) and the first episode was amazing. But it slowly degraded in quality with each successive episode until it was just a badly written, sexist, plot hole ridden, childhood-memory-destroying mess.
First off, the over-arching storyline (the thing that was supposed to be this series' main draw) has dozens of plot holes that were left hanging. Just off the top of my head...
1) Mr E was omniscient/powerful enough to pass messages to the gang wherever they were, control half the town without anyone finding out who he was, rope Angel into helping him even though she didn't want to, etc, etc. And yet, he couldn't solve the Big Mystery and unmask The Freak of Crystal Cove without the aid of a bunch of dumbass, hormonal teenagers!? This makes no sense!
2) If the original Mystery Inc was just as good at mystery solving as the current one; shouldn't they have been able to figure this case out themselves within the past 20 years? I know their families were threatened; but being threatened by psychos is a daily occurrence for the current gang and it never phased them! Heck, both Fred and Velma saw family members get attacked by suspects in the mysteries they were solving, and they never once thought of quitting the team. Then again, Fred and Velma are also huge assholes in this show; so maybe that explains why.
3) If the gang's safety was the only thing Angel/Cassidy cared about; why wasn't she straight with them from the get go? It's clear she no longer has any love for Ricky/Mr E; so she wasn't blindly following his orders out of love/trust for him. I suppose Mr E had something on her that he was able to use to blackmail her into cooperating (some old copies of her gag-inducing love poems to him, perhaps?), but that's never confirmed. So we're left to assume that Angel is merely an idiot who blindly follows the man in her life just like every other woman in the show (with the exception of Velma's mother).
The writers for this show have no idea how to write romance
None of the characters act believably or consistently when it comes to the romances in this show...
1) Fred: He starts out with the perfectly reasonable fear that entering a romantic relationship with Daphne will screw up their friendship and that he should love all his friends and family equally. Then, toward the end of the series, he says that Daphne is the only one who has always been there for him (I guess Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma are chopped liver on account of the fact that they refuse to hump his leg 24/7 like Daphne does) and he impulsively decides that he and Daphne should get married after a whopping two months of dating in High School! That's a pretty big leap to make in a ridiculously short amount of time!
2) Daphne: Early on in the Fred/Daphne relationship; she showed some assertiveness and insisted that Fred make compromises on her behalf to make their relationship work. Then once he admits that he loves her, she goes into full doormat mode and tolerates behavior from him that, in real life, would get a man arrested. I'm honestly surprised that Daphne's parents never issued a restraining order against him. God knows they had more than enough evidence to make their case!
3) Velma: She constantly jumps between being madly in love with Shaggy, hating Shaggy's guts, and wanting to salvage a platonic friendship with him. I had hope for her when Shaggy said he wanted her back and she appeared to do the dignified thing and say that maybe they're better off as friends. But those hopes were dashed when the following episode showed her bitterly telling Daphne that she only did that as a "Fuck You!" to Shaggy for choosing Scooby and nothing more.
4) Shaggy: He told Velma he broke up with her because of the Scooby thing and also because he wasn't ready for a girlfriend. He then proceeded to kick Scooby to the curb and try and climb into the panties of a girl Velma had befriended (presumably to fill the hole that was left when Daphne decided that Fred was the only person who mattered in her life) and seemed to really like. Thus making himself one of the biggest douchebags in this show! And then, after Velma's gal pal dumps him, he realizes that he still loves Velma when he lands on top of her in the backseat of the Mystery Machine (I'm not kidding!).
The Shaggy/Velma/Scooby thing was ENTIRELY POINTLESS in the end!!!
Back in the Renaissance Faire episode (and in other episodes, too), it was heavily implied that Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma's issues were integral to the overarching plot because they mirrored Ricky, Pericles, and Cassidy's issues (and said issues played a role in dooming the original Mystery Inc.). Well, the show is over now. And aside from that old diary full of bad poetry, we never see any signs that Cassidy and Ricky (aka Angel and Mr E) ever liked each other at all! We don't see them show affection to each other in the modern day scenes nor the flashbacks to their youth. And we also find out that the old gang disappearing was all Mayor Jones' doing anyway.
Sure, you could theorize that Pericles decided to screw his friends over because Ricky chose Cassidy over him. But that's just a theory because the show itself doesn't tell us squat!
...so, basically, Velma's character was dragged through the dirt (and, to a lesser extent, so were Shaggy and Scooby's), transformed into an unrecognizable shrew, stripped of the character traits that made her lovable and unique lo these 40 years (i.e. her intelligence, confidence, and sweet demeanor), and used as this show's token emotional punching bag just so the writers for this show could amp up the angst and the drama on a whim. The main plot would have been COMPLETELY unaffected if Velma and Shaggy had remained platonic friends for the duration of the series. So why did the writers bother changing this beloved character so drastically in a way that all but guaranteed the audience would hate her? Do they hate this character because they can't fap to her the way they do with Daphne? Did Mindy Cohn do something to piss them off and this show was just an elaborate attempt to punish her?
The thing that gets to me the most - both as a feminist and a person who grew up loving and relating to Velma's "classic" characterization - is the fact that her character was twisted and warped into a crazy, vindictive, boy-crazy, bunny-boiler twit who tolerated being treated like shit by a boy she was crushing on in the hopes that said boy would make her life complete by sticking his penis in her. We very rarely got to see her acting smart (and, no, typing on a computer while vomiting up exposition doesn't count. Even Shaggy was able to do that!) or showing interest in things that weren't connected to Shaggy's dick. Even after he broke up with her; she constantly whined about how not having a date on Saturdays made her a loser. As if a girl is NOTHING without a boyfriend on her arm!
And the cherry on top was the fact that Velma's appearance was regularly the butt of jokes (for example: Fred teasing her about her ugly skin) despite the fact that Mystery Incorporated's Velma design is by far the slimmest one to date (outside of the live-action movies, of course). The show made it very clear that Velma has severe body image issues (i.e. confirming that she wears her trademark turtleneck to cover up her "neck waddle"). And then it all but confirmed Velma's belief that she's a hideous she-beast by making her this show's butt-monkey while Daphne obtained the perfect, Twilight-style love life she always wanted simply by wearing slutty outfits in front of Fred until he realized he loved her (and her skinny Asian friend won Shaggy away from Scooby by virtue of being...skinny and Asian, I guess).
Honestly, the treatment of females in general in this show bothered me. But I can go on about that forever, so that's a rant I'm saving for another day.
Long story short, there's no way I'm touching season 2 of this show unless they get a team of writers who are self-aware enough to know their limitations. And, if they insist on staying with the romance angle, they'd damn well better hire some new writers who can handle a simple romance without reducing all the female characters into either desperate shrews or doormats. Though I doubt even the best writer can salvage the mess that's already been made unless they open with a Dallas-style "last season was just a dream" ret-con.