I was wrong about Velma...

you know what 420 is right um yeah it's code for adults who still watch cartoons I do not understand who this show is for hi everyone my name is Scott I love Scooby-Doo stuff I make a bunch of Scooby-Doo videos over here uh and then occasionally I also make videos that I pour my heart and soul into but those don't get views so here I am the first two episodes of the new HBO Max Velma series just dropped yesterday and normally it takes me a really long time to make videos I'm not one to just rush out and make something and post it like a day or two after I mean I'm literally in the middle of moving right now I've got stuff in boxes I'm supposed to be packing even more stuff tonight I'm not even supposed to be making a video right now but I have a lot to say about this series so far so this is going to be sort of a messy video I didn't write a full script I mean as you can see I really didn't put a lot of effort into anything I figured if the show wasn't going to then why should I I'm being a little harsh I know that some people really like this show so far and I don't want to yuck on anyone's yum so in the spirit of Scooby-Doo in the spirit of not wanting to be overly negative I thought I would tackle all of my thoughts in in a structure a structure of a compliment sandwich and in this case it's going to be a sandwich with a lot of layers of bread and very few actual sandwich ingredients which are the good parts I have a lot of I have a lot more bad stuff to say it's probably a sandwich that Scooby and Shaggy would skip which is unprecedented there's like a million Sirens going on right now am I not supposed to be making this video first bad thing the opening scene of this show so the show starts off with Daphne in a locker room with other friends other school students they're in high school I want to remind you that they are teenagers because the show opens up with a bunch of teenagers naked in a locker room and look I did not want to hash out how they're just drawings and they're not real or whatever I'm just saying that to me personally it was uncomfortable I watched the first episode live on my Discord which you can get by supporting me on patreon go check it out my name all right literally as soon as the show started people were getting so uncomfortable myself included that people were just leaving they were like I don't want to watch Scott watch this I don't want to watch I am Scott I don't want to watch this and they try to get around it right they try to like call it out as some sort of meta commentary like oh you know how like a lot of pilot episodes of TV shows have a lot of gratuitous like nudity and violence in the pilot episode because it's supposed to get there you know the audience's attention shake things up a little bit but also like what is the commentary here I genuinely don't get it they're just doing the thing that they are it's not it's not a commentary it's it's at best it's lamp shading trying to excuse the fact that they are doing the thing that they're trying to critique but there there really isn't any critique other than like have you noticed that this thing happens sometimes think about that and we're going to get into this a little bit more but there's a lot of messages in this show that like are so close to saying something anything and they whiff so bad but I can't go into it because we do it's a compliment sandwich I do have to say a nice thing so here's my first nice thing I really do like the casting of this show a lot I knew I would love Sam Richardson from the get-go absolutely brilliant the man crushes it and everything he does I was not expecting to I mean I love Glenn Howerton but I wasn't expecting to love him as Fred as much as I do there are moments in the second episode where he brings out that sort of like rage that he's known for in it's always sunny and he's also like he's putting on a bit of a voice too which is I you know I thought he was just going to do his own just his own normal voice but he is trying to like age himself down a little bit by having like a more higher pitched sort of voice and I don't mind it I think a lot of his moments as Fred in this series are really really funny I do think Mindy Kaling does a good job with voice acting uh as Velma I think the character of Velma not great we'll get into it but I do think the standout casting for me is obviously Sam Richardson as I said his portrayal of Shaggy or norvel in this series is I think one of the most inspired because all these other previous incarnations of Shaggy allude to the fact that he's like a stoner his version of Shaggy is very like straight laced like I would never do drugs drugs are bad and those parts didn't get a good chuckle out of me just because they do feel like the jokes that are for fans of Scooby-Doo and they're not trying to insult the characters but really just sort of Riff Off of what people might know them for they also kept a lot of shaggies like classic character traits like he loves to eat he's a little scaredy cat you love to see it but unfortunately I think those moments are quickly overshadowed by the parts of the show that uh just outwardly insult the audience they give you example I showed you the clip earlier where Shaggy is like boy I hope I never get into 420 or 420 culture then he turns to Velma and is like do you know what 420 is and she says something like yeah it's code for adults who still watch cartoons and it's like how can you have those two jokes back to back the Shaggy joke is like playing into that Nostalgia that people who do like Scooby-Doo cartoons might be wanting to see and might be appreciative to be like oh this is an interesting joke it's an interesting take out that character I thought it was really funny and then immediately pans to Velma who is like Anyway adults who watch cartoons are bad and annoying I don't know what the joke there is other than she just doesn't like them again we're going to get into velma's character traits flaws mostly flaws we're going to get into that in a little bit that exchange just left me wondering the whole time like who is this show four it's definitely not an all ages cartoon you can't there aren't adults have to watch your cartoon it's not for it's not for kids need I remind you of the opening scene and there's a lot more of that came from but then you get those jokes that feel like they are for specifically people who are nostalgic Scooby-Doo fans and and then they insult you for it in some ways to me it does feel like Warner Brothers Discovery is using the Velma show try and like critique the idea of having animation on their platform like not only are there jokes like that that insult the viewers of the show well there's also like a part at the very beginning of the first episode that feels like it's it was insulting the Harley Quinn show Sparta doesn't know how to do with himself right now even he's freaking out so like before the uncomfortable shower scene right the first episode starts with a voiceover from Velma saying that like this is my origin story which already I don't understand because as you continue to watch the first two episodes you realize that no actually there's a bunch of stuff that we as an audience uh have not seen it's stuff that's already happened and has already informed velma's character and you would consider that to be a part of her origin story but it uh we missed it so but then velma's voiceover specifically calls out that like most origin stories are about like men who are already powerful and want more power which is like you know that's a fine critique but then she says that if there are origin stories about women it's about how quote like how this hot chick became crazy or whatever which to me feels like a reference to Harley Quinn another Warner Brothers animation like are they do they just hate anime they're trying to use the animation to kill their own animation department but also I don't know if that line was meant to be a joke in the way that it was like if they were trying to call out Harley Quinn that's one thing but also this show this show that is not supposed to be like that it's not supposed to be like all those other origin stories it's not like those other girls this show is about discovering a mystery to why Velma is having panic-induced hallucinations is that not an origin story of a woman who is going through some mental struggle like it's they're the same thing this sandwich is getting too bready I gotta say something nice again there are a handful of moments in these first two episodes where the visual humor did get some genuine Chuckles out of me the book titles that Velma has on her shelves they're pretty funny but I think for me the the scene in episode two where they're just like rushing past all these School clubs has a lot of very good visual jokes in the background and even in the foreground I like the idea of having a debate club and then a better Debate Club I just think that's really funny and then there's a bit where they're going by like an archery club and it cuts to Daffy having an arrow through her head but it's not a real Arrow it's one that just sort of it's like a prank it's supposed to look like it because there's also a practical joke club that right there is a joke I would expect to see in something like what's New Scooby-Doo right that would fit in perfectly just in a Scooby-Doo cartoon and it worked and it's for me it works that being said most of the other humor of this show is I don't want to say it's not good it's not for me it's not for me it's not humor that I personally enjoy see I'm like pulling back I feel I felt myself being too mean and being too negative earlier I'm pulling back I'm trying to be a little bit nicer so yeah the humor's not for me most of the jokes either fall flat entirely for me or they're completely overbearing they also just feel like relics of a TV show that was made in the early 2000s which was on which was 20 years ago I don't like saying it but it's true there's a lot of like vernacular in here that is extremely Millennial and I'm a millennial but this feels like elderly Millennia they're not even jokes really it's just the way that people talk is like yes people in their late 30s wrote this obviously comedy is subjective I'm not going to spend too much time on this if you like it that's great but we do have a small problem with my compliment sandwich idea which is that I am running dangerously low on compliments so since we're about halfway through this compliment sandwich I figured it would be a great time for me to throw out some not positive things not negative things some extremely neutral things some feelings not even feelings some some things that I observed I've talked about this a lot in previous videos I have no problem with them uh changing races or sexualities of any of these characters I feel like the Scooby-Doo cast is incredibly malleable and if you think that any member of Mystery Inc has ever been straight you're wrong you're just wrong another thing that I'm very neutral on is the fact that there are tons of Easter eggs and like references to other Scooby-Doo stuff in this show if they were trying to court me with those references and try to make me like this show more they failed because yeah there are things where a character say I would have gotten away with it if not you know blah blah blah all of these usernames on screen are references that I enjoy there's a lot of drug use in this show and pretty much all of the drugs are references to the gang's catchphrases like jinkies and Jeepers and zoinks and there are also some Scooby-Doo alums that that bring back their voice for this show Frank Welker the original and consistent voice actor for Fred is now Fred's father I love when they do that sort of thing I believe he played Fred's uncle in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo Gary Cole is back in the scoob universe Kimberly Brooks who played uh Luna in Witch's Ghost plays like a sort of like disheveled stoner girl or something in one of the episodes there's a lot of stuff like that some of them are more creative than others there are wanted posters here in the police station that are just images of ghosts from the classic cartoon for seemingly no reason other than to say Hey you see that that one's for you but that's sort of the reason why I put all these Easter eggs in the neutral category it doesn't do anything for me it doesn't enhance the overall plot of the show or really my enjoyment at all other than being like I recognize that thing anyway and the last thing that I'm just sort of neutral on is sort of the most damning which is the plot as a whole the mystery at the center of this series it's not super interesting so episode one starts with uh this murder of one of their classmates and her brains are missing her head was cut open her brains are missing and the episode ends that sort of same way they find another classmate whose head was cut open their brains are missing and throughout the first two episodes we're really just sort of evaluating suspects not really Gathering too too many Clues the clues that we do gather are sort of brushed off as oh actually that's tied to something else which is fine but it it's just in the two episodes that you could help to build this mystery I'm not really it hasn't grabbed me yet like yes there are murdered classmates but I didn't know those classmates one of them we we don't we just don't even know before they're dead I don't even know if we know the second one before they're dead they're just dead they're just corpses right but then there's this other mystery as well of like what happened to velma's Mother she's missing is that tied into anything at all why is Velma having these hallucinations what's causing them what does it mean but it's see this is my issue right the hallucinations don't feel like anything to me they just sort of feel like a way to Halt the plot once we're starting to pick up even a little bit and start uncovering a little bit more of the mystery Velma will have a hallucination which will mean that she can't further investigate anything and no one else can really do anything either so it's like what's the point it's more frustrating than it is fascinating which I do think could also be a good tagline for this show in general so I know that sounds like I was being negative but remember that was my neutral category hello I'm finishing up what are your thoughts about about the Velma show here you take my chair you're the new star of the channel unscripted thoughts on Velma is it feels like it would be better if it wasn't based around Scooby-Doo characters even better thank you it feels like the characters that they have on this show don't even feel really inspired by the Scooby-Doo IP and so it kind of they bring out these extremely negative qualities about them and I don't know it's only two episodes like maybe they're like trying to propel them in arcs and things and give them a little bit of direction to go with growth but it just feels like they're just so hateful to each other and like not fun and it doesn't bring a lot of Joy to the series and for an IP that for pretty much its entirety has based been based around like friendship and loyalty and working together and being a team it doesn't feel like it cares about any of those kind of qualities and it makes it difficult to root for like I don't know who the audience for this show is she certainly didn't really feel like female positive at any point she didn't really feel positive towards any character in the show like she's really hateful towards norvel she's really antagonistic towards pretty much every female character other than her mom like she's really hateful to her to her dad's girlfriend for like no discernible reason other than she's like maybe chewy I mean like I wouldn't be friends with this film to be friends with a lot of other velmas okay that's it can you tell people to like And subscribe please like And subscribe please watch our video about Whisper of the heart please watch our video about Whisper of the heart we both did Emily worked really hard on it and also I did I'm back like I said we're in the process of moving right now so I did have to get up and do things other than this there's lots of packing and painting and my current landlord got a flat tire so he made me show this apartment to the people who might replace me here like it's my job and then when I did sit down earlier to record the second half of this review I didn't have my microphone on so that was really depressing and I did spend some time stress eating peanut butter but I think I'm back now and it's giving me time to ruminate on my thoughts about this show and I am just and I'm just I'm so frustrated by this cartoon I feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place for this show right like I've made several videos about the show before it came out trying so hard to be optimistic and hopeful that maybe it might be good I wanted to combat some of those like early toxic hate videos about the show and I did go into these two episodes genuinely wanting to like it I'm a Scooby-Doo fan I love Scooby-Doo I make videos about that dog as often as I think people will tolerate I've said it before and I stand by it I do think Scooby-Doo is a very malleable franchise you can do a lot to experiment with the formula experiment with the characters change things up be creative and if you like this show if you like Velma then honestly that's great and I'm so glad that you I'm genuinely so happy that you like this show I just don't think it's particularly good and normally I would I would just leave it there I wouldn't even make a video about it but I'm here because I I feel like I have to be as I alluded to the loudest most annoying people on the internet have also latched onto this show and have also come to the conclusion that it's bad but the the way they got to that conclusion is wrong I mean this cartoon right that was about a hippie youths in the 60s encouraging skepticism and defeating greedy capitalists they took that concept and they made it political they made Scooby-Doo woke now it's too progress It's too woke like is it though because I'm a little Lefty boy and I gotta tell you there were moments of this show that I really genuinely thought they were going to say something they were gonna have some sort of commentary some sort of criticism some critique of the the modern landscape and then they just sort of they just they fumble it so bad let me give you an example and this was like the most infuriating part of the series to me so far again we're only two episodes in things could get worse so in the first episode we get to know Fred a little bit but he's definitely like holding stuff back right he's afraid to show emotions he feels like it's very wimpy to to have feelings he feels all this pressure from his dad to be this very like hyper masculine sort of like manly man I am real A real man father so there are elements here that feel like it might touch on a little bit of like toxic masculinity right this is something that Scooby-Doo monsters unleashed did that I think is really good as well there's like a whole mini Arc in that movie where Fred has these similar thoughts right he thinks talking is for whims he doesn't want to show his emotions he wants to just do stuff right he's all about doing not talking not feeling and then he has to come to terms with that that actually no it's okay to express yourself it's okay to feel feelings you know in fact later in that episode of Velma we even see that Fred has like perfectly smooth legs and like I thought okay maybe this is you know he's keeping it secret from people because that's not a traditionally masculine thing to do to like shave your legs and maybe he just likes the way that it feels but he's embarrassed to share that with people and and he has to come to terms with you know expressing himself and being himself in his own skin forget about what his dad thinks that a man should be Fred has his own ideas of who he wants to be and he wants to explore that and I thought I all of this that I'm saying is stuff that the show doesn't do but I was like projecting like okay I can see where some with some good messaging might be in here and then in the second episode Fred is accused of uh murdering the other classmates at his school and then it the show again it only it's so close to doing something Fred's entire legal defense is basically they're trying to convince the public that he couldn't have possibly murdered those girls because well he's just a sweet little boy and you can sort of see where there could be something there where it's a commentary about how the media portrays white male criminals as like oh you know they're young they've made mistakes we've all made mistakes yes he brutally murdered two of his classmates but like we've all been young before we've all been full foolish little children and look at how sweet he is and look at how cute he is it's so close it's so so close to anything but nope throw all of that out the window because the real reason that's revealed to us why Fred couldn't possibly have murdered his classmates the real reason why he has all of these emotions he's overly emotional and even the real reason he has smooth legs still you know why they're all connected and it's a very funny reason and it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna bust you up when I tell you it's gonna be so good are you ready for this one it's it's very good it's very funny the reason for all of those things you see is because it's uh Fred has a he's got a small Fred is a small ding dong he's got a his penis is small it's so tight he's got a tiny little Willy and that's why and that's the joke it's the funny joke that's pretty good let's see if we can line it up here where's our guy you don't need to move the magnify oh there it is uh I'm gonna zoom in because it's so small so can you like understand my frustration a little bit here people might be shouting that this show is like overly woke and Progressive but like did we watch the same show I mean just like isolating that whole scenario with Fred feels like it has some like body shaming stuff it has some like puberty shaming thing I don't even know if that's a real thing but it feels like it is thanks to this show because the whole thing with Fred is that he hasn't gone through puberty yet and everyone's like making fun of him for it here I was thinking I was gonna get an interesting commentary on toxic masculinity and how guys sometimes feel like they're not allowed to express their emotions because it's not masculine enough it's like too childish and here's this show literally saying yeah no it is childish and Fred feels his feelings because he's a baby and he we should laugh at him for that that's just one example from the show and I have to move on because I realize that I've sort of forgotten my premise of making a compliment sandwich and I've inserted an entire loaf of bread into this sandwich right into the middle all filler no killer so I will say my final good thing about this show which is that I do think the animation style and the art style I think the show is really pretty I think it looks really good I really like the Retro looking backdrops of the show that sort of painted feel to them is very OG Scooby-Doo the show has a really vibrant and Eerie color palette with lots of purples and greens that I enjoy and just you know overall the animation is fine right like I don't have I don't have any beef with the animators there are some scenes in here like notably the hallucination scenes with Velma that feel really intense like real heart pounding the way that they animate the fingers like going into velma's face and her heart like ripping out it's just it is really intense and I think we're also supposed to view you know finding the dead bodies of their classmates with their brains missing like that is supposed to be a very shocking brutal scene and I do think all of that would be fine and good if the show didn't also use a lot of violence and Gore for like comedy you know there's a part where Fred cuts off a student's leg in the middle of the school and he's just like bleeding out in the hallway and it's like played for Laughs like everyone just sort of ignores him and moves on even there's a kid bleeding out in the hallway and then later in episode two they run into that same kid again and his leg comes off again and it's bleeding and they just sort of skip past it I just wish they would pick one or the other way like is it supposed to be funny is it supposed to be shocking it's hard for me to know what I'm supposed to be feeling right now at this point our sandwich is pretty big I need to close it up with with one final piece of bread and it's the bread that has that people have baked for me the most that metaphor got away from me real quick huh so there's a part of the show that I've seen people be really split on and that is of articular character Velma is Velma supposed to be likable so here are my thoughts there are some people who think that Velma is intentionally not supposed to be a likable character there are plenty of shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or a succession where the characters are not supposed to you're not supposed to like them right you're really supposed to root against them as they fight against each other as they fail their way trying to accomplish something that's you know you don't want them to accomplish whatever it is the fun part of the show is these characters are terrible and you're watching them fail and it's fun I really love Scott Pilgrim but it's mostly because I enjoy the fantasy of an awful person apologizing to his friends and then leaving them alone forever and there are swords in it which to be fair does if that is also true of Velma and so some people believe that Velma falls into this category she is a character in this show who is unlikable and that's on purpose we are not supposed to like Velma I disagree it goes back to what I was just saying if you have an intentionally unlikable character the fun part about that is rooting against them but in this show we're not supposed to root against Velma we're supposed to root for her we're supposed to want her to uncover the mystery behind you know what happened to her mom we're supposed to want her to overcome these hallucinations that she's having you know it's an origin story where the whole premise is Velma is the one that got the gang together right that's literally what they say at the beginning of the first episode and we want I want that we want that right we want Velma to succeed and solving Mysteries and bringing to her friends together like we we're rooting for her and for everyone at least I feel like we're supposed to be rooting for them based off of everything else in the show so it makes it hard when you have a main character who is just mean just so cruel to everyone around her everyone who was even supportive of her everyone who is her friend everyone who loves her it's just she Velma is it's just mean like there's no other way to put it she's just a mean person and again that's fine you can have shows where the main characters are mean but just don't ask me to root for them I'm not gonna I feel like on some level I do understand why they did this with Velma why they made her so abrasive towards other people and it really just goes to like the archetype of Velma being the smart one then the know it all and I do think we tend to associate the type of character with being maybe a little harsh a little mean you know they're fed up with other people around them who aren't as smart as they are but that wasn't always true with film all right in the original cartoon Velma was smart for sure but she never got frustrated with the people around her when they didn't know something that she knew she was excited to share her knowledge with the group because she liked her friends you know later interpretations of the character do start to build on that sort of abrasiveness of Velma being this the the intellector of Mystery Incorporated in Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated there are moments of the show where Velma does come across as very almost annoying sometimes antagonistic towards everyone else because she's smarter than they are and she's frustrated that they're not on her level and as a viewer I'll be honest it did get a little grating sometimes watching those episodes but the show as a whole made it serve a point right because as more Supernatural paranormal stuff starts happening Velma the the smart one the know-it-all the person who uh has this more rational understanding of the world than everyone else is coming to contact with things that are deeply irrational and has to come to terms with the fact that the things she thinks she knows about reality and existence and the natural world are just wrong and that initial abrasiveness serves that overall character Arc in that show but in this show in in Velma on HBO I mean I don't know I guess there is a little bit of that right like there's a point in episode two where Velma is incredibly judgmental to everyone around her including Daphne and then she realizes that she might have pegged Daphne wrong which is a very funny sentence to say uh knowing what happens at the end of episode two but it does sort of raise like the the bigger question though right the reason why Velma is so judgmental of other people is because she's you know she's the smart one right she's she knows everyone better than they know themselves you know so they sort of wave off that as a character trait for smart people smart people are judgmental which I don't know if that's true but also is Velma smart though I don't think she's done anything in the show so far that would demonstrate that she's smarter than anyone else like they even make a point to say that she copies off of norvel's math homework and I don't want to do our math homework together just email me your answers like always so like it's he he's this he's smarter right he's the smart one um you know what I did forget Velma does wear glasses and she owns books and so she's a gene that makes her a genius wait a minute I'm wearing glasses and I have books maybe I'm a genius I've been a genius this whole time maybe this show is for geniuses it's at this point I regret to inform you that there are two times in the pilot episode where velma's glasses fall off of her face and she just puts them back on like it's nothing she just puts him back on this show doesn't understand the characters they're working with there's no respect for history here which leads me I think to my final point which I guess would be like the olive on a toothpick that we would put on top of this compliment sandwich now that it's done why is this a Scooby-Doo show that's a question that I've been asked a lot online and offline people I just know in real life have asked me this face to face why is Velma a Scooby-Doo show I think the answer is pretty obvious right like they just wanted to capitalize on well-known IP if Mindy Kaling and Friends wanted to make a show that was similar to this but with holy original characters it probably would not have been green lit especially with all the chaos that's happening at Orange Discovery right now and their animation Department as a whole but I do just want to say in a slight defense of this show there have been other Scooby-Doo cartoons that in my opinion did not need to be Scooby-Doo cartoons this is not the first time that this has happened and I feel like maybe I will make a video about that in the future so subscribe if you want to check that out but what I will say about those shows in comparison to this one is that all of those ones had the dog in it the dog was in those shows where's the doll and I know that there have been plenty of awful awful TV shows made by straight white men so I fully subscribe to the idea that everyone else is also allowed to make bad art let people make bad stuff I'm a white guy I'm not straight but you know still I'm out here making a really messy YouTube video right now I would not care at all about this TV show if it wasn't tied to the Scooby-Doo IP but unfortunately it is so here I am like I said I streamed my reaction watching the first episode of this show on my Discord which you can get access to on patreon I'm also going to throw the recording of that reaction up on patreon and on nebula links to everything in the description including my Whisper of the Heart video that I did last week we put our heart and soul into that video it's one of the best videos I've ever made and it didn't get a lot of these because it's not a topic I typically talk about but please please check it out it would mean the world to me if you would just give it a watch okay bye bye

Channel: NerdSync

Views: 351,042

Keywords: nerdsync, superheroes, comic misconceptions, video essay, explained, analysis, Scott Niswander, Velma, scooby-doo, Scooby Doo, scoobydoo, hbo max, hbo, velma hbo max, velma show, velma series, velma review, Velma reaction, Velma explained, velma analysis, Scooby Doo explained, Scooby Doo show, cartoon, cartoons, animation, warner bros animation, warner bros, mindy kaling, sam richardson, glenn howerton, constance wu, shaggy, norville, velma hbo, Velma cartoon, review, velma pilot

Id: SBhd5qi7zqA

Length: 33min 55sec (2035 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2023