Velma Episode 8

[Elwanda Menhennett]

Velmais an American adult animated comedy mystery television series based on the character Velma Dinkley from the Scooby-Doo franchise. Developed and created[1] by Charlie Grandy for HBO Max, it stars executive producer Mindy Kaling as the voice of the titular character, with Sam Richardson, Constance Wu and Glenn Howerton in supporting roles. Grandy also serves as the showrunner of the series. It revolves around Velma Dinkley and the other human members of Mystery Inc. before their official formation, making it the first television series in the franchise to not feature the character Scooby-Doo.

The series premiered on January 12, 2023. A second season was released on April 25, 2024. Velma received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the voice acting and animation, but were divided towards the humor and criticized its meta storytelling, characterization, writing, and departures from the traditional Scooby-Doo format. Audience reception was overwhelmingly negative.

The series serves as an alternate universe origin story for Mystery Inc., pitched as a "love quadrangle" between them.[2] It primarily focuses on Velma Dinkley as she tries to solve a mystery regarding the disappearance of her mother, as well as the murders of local teenage girls.[3]

The series was first announced on February 10, 2021.[15] On July 11, 2022, the trademark for the series was listed as abandoned,[16] only for HBO Chief Content Officer Casey Bloys to confirm the series to still be in production in an August memo,[17] with the series previewing at New York Comic Con on October 6, 2022.[18]

Some of the characters are notably raceswapped. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mindy Kaling explains that "the essence of Velma is not necessarily tied to her whiteness. And I identify so much as her character, and I think so many people do, so it's like, yeah, let's make her Indian in this series."[19] Unlike most Scooby-Doo incarnations, this series does not feature Scooby-Doo himself due to studio mandates,[nb 1] combined with the crew struggling to come up with an adult take on the character.[20] Matthew Lillard, the current voice of Shaggy Rogers in most Scooby-Doo media, expressed his support for the cast of Velma as opposed to his disappointment of not being cast in Scoob![21][22]

The first two episodes of Velma were released on January 12, 2023, on HBO Max,[25][26][27] with the rest of the episodes being released in weekly pairs until February 9, 2023. Notably, the series broke HBO Max's record for the biggest premiere day of an original animated show.[28] The second season was released on April 25, 2024.[29]

Velma has received mixed reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 39% approval rating with an average rating of 5.9/10 based on 36 critics. The website's critics consensus reads, "Jinkies! This radical reworking of the beloved Mystery Team has plenty of attitude and style, but it doesn't have the first clue for how to turn its clever subversion into engaging fun".[30] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 54 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[31]

Liz Shannon Miller of Consequence criticized the show's unbalanced tone, lack of focus, absence of Scooby-Doo, and overstuffed narrative. She also stated the series "feels a bit PG in comparison to other adult animation currently in the works." Conversely, Miller praised the voice acting as well as some of the gags, ending the review by hoping for a second season to iron out its flaws, having noted the show takes a "the first season is really the pilot episode" approach.[35] In a mixed critique, Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter praised the "thoughtful, emotionally honest" portrayal of Velma herself, but made note of how the show loves to poke fun at televised tropes, yet "seems somewhat less sure of what it has to offer in their stead." She stated how the series' "insistence that it's not like other shows grows thin" and criticized how the cast feels more like "joke machines" than individual characters.[36]

Audience reception to Velma has been overwhelmingly negative.[42][43][44] It became one of the lowest-rated television shows on IMDb,[45][46][47] receiving similar low scores from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes and Google.[42][43][48]

Asyia Iftikhar of PinkNews noted in her reflection of audience reception that the show had been "accused of perpetuating stereotypes against South Asian women, criticised for poor attempts at self-aware comedy and slammed for losing the essence of what people love about the Scooby Doo gang."[49] Brahmjot Kaur of NBC News wrote that the accusations of stereotypes had been rebutted by some who noted characters in other television shows invented by Kaling shared similar personality traits to the titular protagonist, while citing Kaling's past influences.[45] Wired's Amos Barshad wrote that while there were likely still reactions of a racist and homophobic nature targeting the show, the main complaints were for it addressing diversity issues in a "flat, one-note manner", and that the "flippant" portrayal of Velma's sexuality had divided fans.[50] However, when discussing the issue of racial stereotyping in Velma, Lakshmi Srinivas, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of Massachusetts, felt that Kaling was being held to unfair standards as one of the few leading Asian figures in the entertainment industry.[45]

In March 2023, a Velma-focused Scooby-Doo cosmic horror fan film entitled Velma Meets the Original Velma, produced by Avocado Animations, went viral, receiving a universally positive critical reception.[51][52]

Episode 7 - Men are great, fact. I believe Fred's parents forced him to stop all the feminism stuff. This one was pretty funny for the done of overly sexist jokes.

Episode 8 - Oh great, annoying Velma is back.

Overall all of these characters are vulgar, manipulative and self-centred, I can't wait until this cesspit of a show is over. There have been a few redeeming qualities but overall plot wise it has been a total mess. Velma's mother is either the killer or we'll end up with some cliche hypnotised ending no doubt. But who knows, maybe the final 2 episodes will have a decent surprise. I also don't like how they constantly bash the original show and it's formula for laughs, it's extremely disrespectful in my eyes.

I completely agree with you about the characters. I hope it's not a cliche hypnotized ending, but I wouldn't be surprised with this show's track record. Yeah, the constant bashing of the original formula is too much. Them showing Scooby's skeleton is particularly disrespectful and takes it too far IMO.

Agreed. And part of me can't decide what they're trying to do. One minute it is like we're going to disrespect and drag the show through the mud, the next it's like, oh here's a homage to x from episode x.

Yeah, it's a very weird dichotomy where it feels like they are trying to pay homage to certain villains or tropes of old episodes, and then the next moment they're actively trying to insult fans of the franchise by calling them burnouts or killing Scooby. It's bizarre.

Re Scooby's skeleton. Yep, I think it is him. The paws and bowed back legs are fairly obvious. But I certainly missed it on viewing. At least those who've argued this isn't Scooby-Doo because he isn't in it are no longer correct - on a technicality... ;)

Again I was OK with these episodes. Again, they certainly could have been better. Did enjoy the Door scene - and yes the music was a bit in your face.

We finally have a scene with just the four main characters, when they all collide during the chase scene.

As for who is the serial killer. There is one person I think is logical, and it isn't Diya. But whether I'm right, we'll see in 7 days I guess.

Glad I wasn't the only one who missed it! The door sene was pretty fun. I'm interesting to see who you think is the serial killer. It'd be funny if it ended up being Velma all along (that won't happen; would still be funny with how unlikable she is).

His parents are awful btw, not letting him in the house if he doesn't win the Fog Fest crown is extreme, and it shows in Fred's desperation afterwards.

Meanwhile, I find that the humor was ramped up in ep 8. Not only is the first third of the episode so focused on the meta commentary of flashbacks in media, it also sucks ass. There's like 30 jokes related to flashbacks in media, and they are horrible and overplayed. They get old and annoying super fast, and yet it feels like the writers thought they struck comedy gold or something. I also think them going non-linear and cutting back and forth wasn't the right choice, it added nothing of value to the storytelling other than the awful commentary on flashbacks. The special forces only caring about Fred got on my nerves too, it wasn't funny. Speaking of Fred, every scene of him and the brains had a joke every 3 seconds. So yeah, they went all in on the humor this episode imo.

"The incident" of Daphne having had a crush on Gigi a year ago and Daphne hanging out with Olive a lot went literally nowhere by the end of the episode. They only exist to create more shitty manufactured drama between Daphne and Velma and nothing else. Just unbearable and frustrating. And how they ask each other about being girlfriends minutes after attempting to crush each other to death is... I don't even know anymore. Oh yeah, that whole segment of the 4 of them being stuck is annoying in general, constant arguing, mostly about relationship drama. Very lazy reason for them falling down the pit and getting stuck too. Side note: Norville was the only one who didn't try to crush someone else to save himself from the rock. Good job for not being a horrible human being, Norville! Too bad it seems like your relationship with Gigi is down the toilet. It was getting irritating to watch their arguments anyway, not as much as Daphne and Velma's, but still. What's with the weird accusation of him still having feelings for Velma. He's shown no signs of still loving Velma. Sure, he may not be the best at taking Gigi's hints, but he's not with Gigi to distract himself from Velma. It's unclear if Fred has genuine feelings for Velma anymore too, after he hooked up with 3 girls, uh, brains. This show is a relationship clusterfuck. If the preview for next week is anything to go by, seems like Norville and Gigi are over for good, Gigi's nowhere to be seen, not even the shots of the whole gang and co together. And Norville looks upset at Velma when asked for help with something in a shot.

Why did the killer attack, capture and drag Fred out to the lab in the middle of the mountain without killing him? There's 3 jars of brains there and he has a chance to escape if he's still alive. How is the killer so dumb? So dumb that the killer also took a picture of the site where the secret lab is... the only reason the gang even found Fred. Lazy af. The scenes between Fred and the girls' brains are such a mixed bag, some of the jokes were so out there that they did get me, while others were just weird and uncomfortable. But I would say they are overall some of the better scenes in this episode, because most of the others are spent on the awful Daphne & Velma and Norville & Gigi dramas. I mean, at least these scenes didn't annoy me, I was somewhat entertained and intrigued. Are the brains still alive after getting hit by rubble? Who knows.

And finally we get to Diya coming in to save Velma. This felt like whiplash, did not see that coming. It's really odd for the show to resolve Diya's disappearance with more than 2 full episodes left. Weird-ass pacing. And now we know almost for certain that she's the killer. How would she get to the lab otherwise? She came from the direction of Daphne and Fred, which is where the door is that leads to the lab from the outside. She definitely came in clutch at the last minute as a way of getting suspicion off her back, same with her pretending to forget who the killer is and somehow having 3 days to remember or else no one will ever know. She's obviously faking it, there's no other way any of this makes sense. Her reaction when Velma asks her about the killer and Velma saying she senses a lot of lies in the preview pretty much say it all. I'd be shocked if it ends up not being Diya. Oh, and the "Mystery Jalopy" was god-awful. We now know how the gang gets its van, randomly through Velma's killer mom, yay I guess. The way they get out of the cave-in was cool enough, but the dialogue during the scene doesn't help. The way Velma and Diya talk to each other is cringy.

As far as the characters, Velma, Daphne and Gigi got even worse these episodes. Velma and Daphne showcase how shitty and manipulative they are (including with each other) in these 2 episodes, and they're right they shouldn't be friends (but they're not right they should be girlfriends). They're at their most unbearable when talking to each other, and we got that galore this week. Not that they were likable when talkin

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