![]() ![]() When characters do grow, the evolution is inconsistent or simply played for laughs. They tease each other by pointing out the stereotypes they embody, flattening everyone into the very archetypes they’re skewering: Daphne is a hot girl obsessed with being popular, Fred is a womanizing rich kid with daddy issues, Norville is a loser who can’t get laid, and Velma is a hypercritical outcast. Kaling and the rest of the cast deliver enthusiastic performances, but their animated counterparts never come across as actual teenagers or coherent characters. Worse, such moments reduce the ensemble into static joke-delivery machines. But when it comes to truly crappy parents, no one beats my dad.” The monologue is unfunny, unsubtle, and completely unnecessary. They’re either lying to us, or trying to change us, or hiding some dark family secret. “We’re all really just paying for the sins of our parents. “If there’s one thing teen dramas get right, it’s that nothing is ever actually a teenager’s fault,” she says. ![]() In an upcoming episode, for instance, Velma explains her relationship with her father in terms of television history before the scene plays out. ![]() Characters constantly pause the action to call out and summarize narrative tropes rather than letting the story unfold. The show follows Velma as she attempts to find the serial killer targeting high-school girls, searches for her missing mother, and tries to overcome nightmarish hallucinations that occur when she pursues cases-storytelling beats meant to parody dark teen dramas such as Riverdale. The issues begin with Velma’s overreliance on meta jokes about television in place of a compelling plot. Read: 13 feel-good shows to watch this winter member rummaging around in the dark for her glasses, the series is unfocused, confused, and desperately lost. But the real problem with Velma isn’t that its updates make Euphoria look like child’s play it’s that its edginess comes at the expense of its own characters and punishes the audience for being invested. Other viewers say that the show is too vulgar, transforming Velma and the gang into characters they no longer recognize. Many complaints are-as is frequently the case with projects that change the ethnicity of originally white characters-knee-jerk, racist reactions to seeing well-known figures in a new context. Since Velma began airing on HBO Max this month, audiences have pummeled the series with negative reviews. “We didn’t want to just kind of take these beloved characters and put them in outrageous or gross situations and say, ‘Isn’t it crazy you did that to Velma?’” “We wanted to be respectful,” he explained. The creator, Charlie Grandy, argued that the writers’ alterations-including excising Scooby from the gang, reimagining Velma as a misanthropic South Asian teenager, and incorporating grotesque gags-felt authentic to the spirit of the original series. And in the months leading up to Velma’s debut, the creative team seemed to anticipate backlash to the bold changes they’d made. Meddling kids getting into wacky mysteries with their dog, this show is adamantly not. Scenes of gratuitous violence pad almost every episode: Limbs get severed, corpses roll out of trash bins, riots break out in prison. ![]() Shaggy (Sam Richardson), known by his birth name, Norville, tries to sell a kidney on the black market. Fred (Glenn Howerton) gets shot in both legs. Velma (played by the show’s executive producer, Mindy Kaling) and Daphne (Constance Wu) sell drugs. In Velma, HBO Max’s adult-oriented Scooby-Doo spin-off, familiar faces get involved in all sorts of gritty, R-rated activities. ![]()
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