You've probably seen everyone talk about the recent HBO Max series "Velma", most of which has been negative to varying degrees of scathing. As of this writing, the user-generated imdB score is at a rock-bottom 1.4 out of 10, the lowest of any animated series. And it's already become the butt of countless jokes to so many different online circles. It's been quite a minefield of a topic, to put it lightly, but I feel like I should throw my hat in the ring because I have a lot to say about what I personally think about all that went down. This is not gonna be like a lot of my other reviews, in either video or blog form. Because frankly, I'm not too interested in going particularly in-depth into the series itself. Plenty others have, and I don't feel like I'm in the most qualified position to judge it after only one watch. I'm more interested in tossing in all the perspective I have had in my time watching the show and all the overwhelming discourse surrounding it.
So, I'm just gonna say it - I hated watching the first episode. I went in with the most open mind I could, but even I couldn't defend the excessive amount of wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments that not only felt really tired and unfunny, but at times seemed to punish people for trying to get invested. Lines like Fred saying "now I am engaged in your character and understand why your story has stakes" feels patronizing, and this example directly follows Velma starting to give her backstory. There were definitely some interesting ideas in the story, and I didn't exactly mind the changes they made to the characters (Norville being literally the opposite of who Shaggy is normally is certainly a more clever idea than just going full-on stoner), and of course everyone in the art team gave it 100%, but it all seem so buried under the writing that you can tell was from people who've never written an animated project before.
It made me very hesitant to continue on, but even I couldn't get behind the visceral hatred it was gathering from all over the internet. The fact that people were relentlessly shitting on the series around artists talking about their work on the show, either directly or through backhanded compliments that don't hit the way they think it does. There was also such tactful behavior as mask-off racism against Indian people because this show happened to race-swap the lead, so many big profiles very clearly and intentionally fanning the flames whenever they could, and even attacks being thrown at people just for watching it, particularly after it was revealed to have the most successful animated launch on HBO Max. It's when the terminally online really showed their worst and seemed to forget that people can watch maligned shows for reasons other than to hate on it - which, don't get me wrong, did happen to some degree with "Velma", but it alone wouldn't add up all that much in official views.
Not to mention all this was happening when only the first two episodes were out - which, considering this was decidedly taking a serialized approach and was playing the long game with the characters - wasn't exactly making for a fair judgement. Like, yeah, Velma is a big killjoy and really unlikable, but how do we know this isn't deliberate and she'll develop over the course of the story, and then end up as a better person? There's also stuff like Velma's panic attack in the first episode being resolved by laughing at Norville's compliments, thinking he's joking. When that made the rounds on Twitter, everyone - especially those who did suffer panic attacks - felt incredibly offended by it because of how unrealistically she got over it. I seemed to be one of exceedingly few people who felt taking the scene at face value may not end up being a fair assessment, given the kind of show this is. So that basically was what motivated me to keep going - to give it the fair chance few others seemed to be doing.
Sure enough, the more I watched, the more I could see the writers trying to find their footing, especially with the story. It quickly become apparent that their vision was to create a dramatic, character-focused deconstruction of the standard Scooby-Doo formula - with season 1 serving as an origin story for a warped version of the gang.
That's not to say I think it does a great job at this. While the actual mystery is engaging enough and takes a lot of interesting turns, most of the development and progress within isn't spaced out well. A lot of the time you have Velma stumbling upon a clue (often through accident or another character explaining something to her) and it being used to connect some of the dots mere minutes later, before the audience really has any chance to guess where it could be going. This does have the benefit of keeping the plot on the move, but it results in it all feeling rather spoon-fed, which for a franchise that always prided itself on saving its cards for the climax, does feel like a letdown for a more adult take.
This goes double for the characters, because I generally like what the crew is going for with them but they more often than not fumble the bag. With Velma, she's meant to be a traumatized killjoy who - through the comfort of others - learns to open herself up. But the show doesn't commit itself to this arc all that much; while you do end with the impression she's changed, her development barely comes across in the moment and the show keeps flip-flopping between when we're supposed to hate her and when we should sympathize. Similar can be said for the others; Fred is a spoiled, privileged 1% type who must stand up to his parents, Daphne is the popular girl who realizes what's really important to her, and Norville is the smooth-talker who doesn't know how to approach people. The way everyone is written feels very haphazard, like a lot of what they say was written without any real regard to character consistency, which would be fine for a sitcom like "Family Guy" but not in, as I said before, a dramatic character-driven story.
But even with all this said - I think calling this lazy is being disingenuous. The writing does seem to opt for the easy joke too often for its own good, but it still does put enough focus on the story where I get the impression they genuinely did want to tell it. Messy as the character journeys were, the series' developers did clearly want them to grow on some level. And the more the show goes on, the more they seem to try to iron out the rough parts and deliver a thrilling experience to the audience, even if the quality isn't quite a straight upwards line. I think a more accurate word to describe the execution would be 'unpolished', cause they had all the right ideas to really deliver something unique and great - perhaps a real standout in adult animation, even - but it didn't spend enough time in the oven to reach its full potential. Just one more rewrite to fix the character inconsistency and to better balance the humor probably would've gone a long way, but it is what it is.
As it is though, while I can't exactly say the show is good, I stand by the internet far overblew it with their complaints. Not to say you can't hate on this show, of course, but I just knew that people were being very disingenuous in how they approached it. This was visible even long before we saw any of the show, specifically when Velma was first announced to be South Asian, with an uncomfortable number of people calling that alone enough grounds to be against this iteration. Speaking of iterations, I found it very bizarre how many people treated this as some franchise killer when a new, kid-friendly iteration comes out at least once every couple years. Sure, Scooby himself not being in the show is a questionable decision, but the dog ain't going anywhere. The way people talked about that, you'd swear he got sent to pasture and shot or something.
While it's really easy to think this began as an original story that had Scooby shoehorned in for corporate sake, I personally believe this wasn't the case with how frequently it draws vague but unmistakable connections in terms of plot beats and character types. It's still more focused on parodying high school CW dramas than anything else, which don't get me wrong does still feel a tad jarring, but it's not without some Scooby flavor - especially by the end where you see more of the famous tropes play out (some as a joke, but others played completely straight). Again, I'm won't pretend it's done great, but it's not in total disrespect like people who only saw the beginning (or even just the trailers) would think. I know there comes a point where something becomes so detached that you shouldn't bother, a principle that I agree has strong merit, but when it's a 50-year old franchise that was never considered high art anyway, I think some wiggle room can and should be allowed - especially if it's, at the very least, an interesting diversion.
In the end - yes, you could say the show was in general a letdown from what it could've been, that the writing was clumsy and unfocused, and the way it attempted to shoot down racists misguided at best. This show really did go wrong in a lot of places, and even watching it, it hurt a bit to see the show at times get dangerously close to being a somewhat solid experience only to undermine it with some developments or moments that take a lot of that goodwill back. It's also fair to think (albeit not say to their faces, mind you) that all the incredible talent put into the visual work deserved a better project to be attached to, but it was by no means a dishonor for them to work on. They had the freedom to go whole hog on some of the imagery - especially Velma's hallucinations - and all the work they put in will be sure to glow up their portfolios, hopefully ensuring strong careers for them down the road.
As Anton Ego said, "the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so". And no matter how much you disapprove of what this series did, the "Velma" experience proves that not enough people out there seem to take this remark to heart, and I believe that we need to work on that going forward. We can demand better as an audience, we can rip a piece of media into shreds, but we also can and should not be assholes about it.