Jinkies! What the zoinks is Velma

Scooby Doo is a franchise that began all the way back in 1969 and it was a show intended for children, but could be watched by just about anyone and would still be enjoyable. Scooby Doo also had a simple plot where four teenagers and their talking dog would go around the city solving mysteries as a team. A simple premise that was kept alive for many years up to today because of its iconic characters that moulded the future of many other animated shows and simply because they were a fun dynamic to watch. But a show cannot survive this long with no changes since the public would lose interest, so they made the first remake of the show in 1972. Then there was another a couple years later. Then another and another and another until we reach today’s latest reboot “Velma”, the show that is now infamous for being one of the worst shows on any streaming platform ever.

If I were to tell you everything that makes this show a nightmare to watch, this article would be at the very least 50 pages long so I will try to summarise the awfulness of it in 3 main issues.

The first issue is the comedy. It has the most god-awful jokes that most of the time leaves the audience asking themselves: “is this even meant to be a joke?”. They decided to make “Velma” a comedic cartoon that is riddled with adult jokes that never land and potentially the worst metacommentary given in any piece of media, tossing around examples of tropes that are not used that commonly,making the viewer feel lost and confused about what has been said. It sometimes even just lies about things as an attempt to make them funny. The show is 10 episodes long but I ended up watching only 2 of them (I do not recommend continuing. It physically hurts watching these), and in these two episodes riddled with their cringe-inducing attempts at jokes, I laughed only once. These are 24 minute episodes with 0 plot and constant attempts at getting a laugh out of you and unfortunately it never lands.

Second issue is the characters. I really am not sure how they messed this up since the characters were and their personalities, looks and tropes were already there for the studio to come along and put them into a story. But they didn't feel like doing that. They felt like giving the original characters completely new personalities that do not fit any of the other Scooby Doo content ever released.It also removed Shaggy and Scooby Doo. They got rid of Scooby Doo in the Scooby Doo show. As if this was not already stupid as it is, they also got rid of Shaggy and replaced him with a character called “Norville.” They made Norville wear the same outfit Shaggy used to wear and now his whole personality is that he hates drugs. Shaggy was this disconnected and goofy character thanks to his “supposed” use of marijuana, which was exceptional social commentary from the show writer wanting to tell us how easily accessible drugs were to teenagers. But I digress; Norville is basically an anti-Shaggy that leaves us with mixed feelings since he is the only character who is actually nice. Speaking of which, the other 3 of the original characters are all abysmal. The character of Velma is extremely mean and selfish who uses her friends to get what she wants and in general insults everyone and everything. Daphne is mostly a generic high-school bully while Fred can't do anything without someone's help and has the dialogue of an 8 year old. They are one sided, cookie cutter characters that do not change throughout the show.

The last problem (stick with me here) is that the show hates its source material. A Scooby Doo prequel that constantly makes fun of and insults Scooby Doo; you truly cannot make this up. This is a sadistic joke from the writers to the fans of this franchise, making them feel stupid and hurt for simply wanting to support a franchise they saw as a child. In fact, they are punished for doing this. Punished by having to watch all of their beloved characters stripped from all of their essential parts and tossed into this pit of hatred and disgust, that causes nothing but sadness to any fan.

I went over 3 of the most important reasons for the downfall of Velma but there is still a lot I haven't even touched on. This is probably a new method of torture in some prison at this point. Do not watch Velma unless you want to cringe, feel confused or, if you are a fan of Scooby Doo, feel hollow and sad.