T.V. Review: Velma (2023)
Screenshot: HBO Max
“Velma has just landed on HBO Max and Mindy Kaling’s animated reimagining of Scooby-Doo is already drumming up a lot of buzz online…most of it negative. Is Velma as bad as everyone is saying? In short, yes it is.”
Synopsis (Spoiler Free)
Velma stars Mindy Kaling (The Office (2005-2013)) as the titular character, Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians (2018)) as Daphne Blake, Glenn Howerton (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-2022)) as Fred Jones, and Sam Richardson (Harley Quinn (2022)) as Norville Rodgers (aka Shaggy.)
Velma presents itself as an alternate universe retelling of the origins of Mysteries, Inc., from the prospective of Velma Dinkley. In Kaling's iteration, Velma is ethnically Indian but maintains many of the same visual attributes as her 1969 counterpart. In this story, Velma's mother went missing when she was very young and Velma blames herself for her disappearance. Ever since her mother's disappearance, anytime she attempts to solve a mystery she is struck by horrible hallucinations that incapacitate her. This has caused her to steer clear of solving mysteries, until the murder of several girls at her high school draws her back in.
Velma must not only solve the mystery of the murdered minors, but also pick up her mother's cold case to hopefully understand what happened to her mother all those years ago.
Verdict: 1/10
Review and Analysis (Spoilers)
If you read the synopsis above, coupled with the list of talent lending their voices to this show, you'd likely be dumbfounded by Velma's 1.3/10 on IMDb and 52% on Rotten Tomatoes (audience score 6%.) Search #Velma on Twitter and you'll find almost nothing but vitriol for the show. So what went so wrong?
Velma attempts to be an edgy show aimed at young adults to cash in on nostalgia from the Hanna-Barbera classic. Think HBO Max's Harley Quinn, but not funny. The show pays little to no respect to it's source material which alienates a good portion of the fans, spams the audience with the same meta and pop culture jokes for the entirety of each episode, and then makes you forget that we’re supposed to be solving a mystery.
The issue for many, myself included, is that Velma from the original Scooby-Doo was a very friendly and likable, while still being witty and sarcastic. Velma was highly intelligent and the only thing standing in her way was her glasses falling off. Kaling's Velma mistakes sarcasm for crassness and wit for hurling cheap insults. I've yet to see any hint that she is intelligent at all. We're told she is but it hasn't appeared to be relevant even once in the first two episodes.
And here's the rub, I enjoyed Mindy Kaling in The Office, I loved Sam Richardson as Swamp Thing in Harley Quinn, Constance Wu was great in Crazy Rich Asians, and I love IASIP so much I subscribe to the podcast just to hear more from Glenn Howerton. But the writing in this show is so weak, it's hard to imagine these voice actors are the same funny people we have become familiar with over the years. The jokes are ham fisted, and despite what other reviewers may say about the voice acting being good, I think it's subpar at best. The dubbing is awkward, and you'd almost forget that Kaling was in Pixar's Inside Out with how bad her delivery is in Velma. One of the cringiest lines comes from episode two where Velma says, "that's right I spit truth without a filter, like every comedian before hashtag "Me Too"." She literally says the word "hashtag". The delivery of this line was poor and clearly no one cared enough to provide any direction to Kaling to correct it.
All the characters feel hallow, and that's due to lazy writing. Insults, spite, and breaking the fourth wall without alienating your audience takes nuance, something this show sorely lacks. There’s no arcs that can be gleaned from the episodes we’ve received so far. The show gives no inclination that it knows how to make a cohesive mystery solving show despite the fact Scooby-Doo episodes exist.
And let's address the elephant in the room. Velma is Indian, Daphne is Asian, and Shaggy is black. No issue there. Fresh take, no biggie. The “wokeness” isn’t ruining this show for me. It’s more so the gall of this show to assassinate these beloved characters. Of course there are internet trolls, but a large part of what has caused the backlash against Velma is how unlikable all of the characters are. And the bigger issue is that these character are beloved characters. Instead in Velma, Fred sucks, Daphne sucks, and worst of all Velma (*cough* your protagonist) really sucks. It's just not fun to watch, the delivery of the jokes is just not funny. The only redeeming character in the show is Shaggy and they don't even call him Shaggy and he doesn’t have any of goofiness that made his character work in Scooby-Doo. I feel like you're supposed to like the protagonist in shows, but Velma is easily the most unlikable characters I've seen on HBO since Joffrey Baratheon.
The show doesn't know what it wants to be. Are we an edgy Scooby-Doo (like what people thought they were getting), or are we a crappy Harely Quinn ripoff? Definitely the crappy one. This show presents itself as being the origin story of Mysteries, Inc. from the perspective of Velma, but there is no reason to believe these people will ever work together in any meaningful way towards a common goal. Furthermore, there's no mystery solving. Velma is spoon fed information and fingers the wrong guy (Fred) for the murders in episode one and is no closer to solving the case in episode two. What does she do in episode two? She sells drugs crudely named after things from the original Scooby-Doo (Mystery Machine, Zoinks, etc.)
There are better shows to watch right now. Watch Wednesday on Netflix if you want a show that revolves around a mystery. Watch Harley Quinn on HBO Max if you want an adult humor animated show based on an already existing property. I've also heard nothing but good things about Invincible on Amazon. And if you like animation and brilliant voice actors, watch the Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon. Don't support this show. It's trash. There's a reason lefties, righties and all those in-between hate this show. It's because it sucks. Leave it to HBO to make a Scooby-Doo spin-off without Scooby-Doo.
Lastly, this rant isn’t nearly as large as the other movies/shows/games I review specifically because there’s nothing redeeming about this show. It’s not funny, it’s not fun to watch, and all of that has to do with writing that is so poor, I’m not sure how you fix it. I am well aware I am releasing this review on the eve of a new episode, but based on what I’ve witnessed from the first two, I will not be wasting my time.
