Velma Review - How the Hell Did This Get a Second Season?!?

 

First off, let me just say this is the one and only time I'll ever talk about this show. It's gotten enough attention from bigger names than mine. Second off, with the second season arriving I'm going to be discussing the build-up to this show, reviewing it's quality, tell you about the backlash, and then, tell you how this even got a second season. Let's begin.

Velma is an adult animated mystery show based on the Scooby-Doo character, Velma. It's produced by Charlie Grandy Productions, Kaling International, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Animation and distributed by Max. Velma is created by Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy.

The story is, while trying to solve the mystery of her mother's disappearance, Velma soon stumbles upon another mystery regrading the strange murders of the local teenage girls. Velma comes to realize that both these crimes share a connection.

The Build-Up

Know maybe it was just me, but outside an announcement I didn't hear much. Things changed when this image surfaced.

Yeah, to say this image wasn't well received would be an understatement. Now I didn't agree with every single comment, but I do agree this image wasn't the best one to use. Sure we already knew it was gonna be an adult oriented, but the pic did give the impression that it was trying too hard.

Later on images of what Shaggy, Daphne, and Fred were released and here's what they look like.

Now Velma's race swap wasn't a shocker, the first image pretty showed us she was gonna look like Mindy Kaling, but you'll notice something very different about Daphne and Shaggy, oh my bad, I meant "Norville". Yeah, it's very clear that we were gonna get a show that was primarily based on getting ESG/DEI money. Also, why is Fred in a different art style compared to Daphne and Norville? That always bugged me.

Then the teaser trailer was released.

Did you love that whole joke about Judy Jetson still being white? Get it? Because the race swapped character is glad a character didn't get race swapped! HA! Comedy gold! Yeah, the jokes just get worse from here folks, and I haven't even gotten into the story yet.

Review

Now I'm gonna split this into two pieces. One for characters and another for the story. Let's get to it.

The Characters

Velma - Let's start off with our title character. Holy shit! I don't who this girl is, but she's NOT Velma. This "Velma" was just an unlikable asshole. She's always insulting people one or another, she always thinks she's intellectually superior to everybody, and above all else, she's just a terrible person. The very first action we see her do on the show, is sneak up behind Daphne while she was already in a fight with another girl, then hit her with a cane. You could argue she was doing it to help the other girl, but no, "Velma" primarily did it because she thinks Daphne's a bitch. What a likable character. And let's not pretend otherwise, this is clearly Mindy Kaling's self-insert. You could tell because not only was she voicing the character and the design looked like her but in Velma cosplay, but also Velma is treated like the smartest person ever on the show and there's the whole thing of the entire mystery gang falling in love with her, I'll get into that later. Oh and I almost forgot, this Velma eats fries from the vacuum cleaner and dumpster. To think, when promotions were going on, Mindy said this Velma was gonna be an icon for young gay women.

Daphne - This verison of Daphne is a Mean Girls rip-off. Which I don't understand why they did that? Yes Daphne was the more popular, trendy one as a way to counteract Velma's more dorky, booky type girl, but she wasn't mean spirited (by the way if you see reviews for this show, get use to seeing and/or hearing that word), despite being the popular one, she was still nice. And when she's not a mean girl, she's a drug dealer. The reason why she's selling drugs is so she can get enough money to find her birth parents. Which doesn't make any sense. Because she's got two parents who love and spoiler her and would do anything for her, and their both detectives! Sure they're dumb detectives, but they would still have connections to investigators who are better than them. So Daphne could've easily asked them for help and boom, problem solved. There's a good possibility that I'm wrong, but it felt like they only made her a drug dealer, to not only be "edgy", but so they gave the character something else to do, other than be a Mean Girls wannabe and be one of three of Velma's love interest.

Norville - Simp. I'm not using that word incorrectly like many other people do, no, this guy is a simp for Velma. Everything he does is to simply get with Velma, nothing else. He's even willing to put himself in harms way for the end goal to be in a relationship with Velma. The only reason he gets involved in the mysteries is because of Velma. There have been times when Shaggy and Velma have been together as a couple, Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated comes to mind. But the funny thing is Shaggy was in relationships with women because he was just he's usual food loving self, he never pathetically worshipped the ground the woman walked on.

Fred - What. Did they. Do. To my boy! I don't know what the original Fred did to piss off Mindy and her ilk but they can't stand this guy. Not only did they make him so incapable of being his own man, to the point where he needs somebody else to cut his food for him, but for some reason this Fred is obsessed with his self-image even when it comes to social media. I mean it, the first time we see him he's taking a selfie and posing like a male model. And of course, he treats everybody else like garbage, because God forbid we have one likable character. Much like every other character in this show, I don't understand this decision. Fred wasn't a jerk, he was actually pretty wholesome and was a great friend. Oh and this Fred has a tiny baby carrot size dick. If you ever watch this show, don't know why you would torture yourself like that, get use to that "joke".

The Story

Now at first, the story is about Velma searching for her missing mother, but then she has to solve that mystery to solve why young girls are being murdered by having their brains removed. Soon Velma finds out a secret government project is somehow connected to her mother. Later it's learned her mom was working with the doctor of the project, and their lab is located underneath the Jones' mansion. They later find the lab but almost killed by a collapse, but are luckily saved by Velma's mom. But then there's a whole new mystery as to why her mom can't remember her disappearance and why her memories are gonna be gone forever in three days. When they finally do get her memories back, she says she's the serial killer, but Velma notices her answers all seem mechanically, and comes to the conclusion she's hypnotized. Velma figures out the hypnotizing is connected to the murders, and also figures out the killer is no other than...Fred's mom, I'll get to that problem later. After finally escaping, Norville unintentionally kills Fred's mom (I forgot what her name is so I'm just calling her that) and Velma twerks over her dead body while Fred kneeling right next to said dead body, most likely traumatized for life. Once again, Velma is so likable.

Now at the first the mystery is just fine, nothing to really roll your eyes over, but it falls apart when the person committing them is Fred's mom. It makes no sense. I'll forgive the fact we barely see her, that can be chopped down to her keeping a low profile, but this doesn't work because there were no hints to indicate that Fred's mom was the killer. And no, the lab being under the Jones' mansion doesn't count. You need more than just that. But when we're not dealing with the case, then we have Velma's love life. Now having romance in a story isn't always a bad thing, it just depends on the quality of the story, too bad the quality of this story sucks. We don't care about Velma's relationships. Once again, this Velma is a terrible person, we don't want to see her happy with someone else. She doesn't deserve it! But even if we try our damnedest to ignore that fact, some of the romance aspects also don't make any sense. Daphne just all of sudden falls for Velma in the second episode, even though in the first episode they couldn't stand each other, and why would Fred fall for her? Sure he learned about inner beauty, but all Velma has ever done to him was insult him on every level, and almost put him in prison for crimes he didn't do. I know this Fred's an idiot, but even he should know not to being anywhere near her.

Then there's the humor....uuggghhh. The jokes in this show are beyond awful. None of them land. The show's adult humor is everything you fear it to be. It's almost every sex, drugs and violence joke cliché you can think of. So much so, ya would've thought this was a terrible parody of adult animation, but it's not a parody, it's 100% legit. Not too mention, but these "jokes" have barely any space between, so there's no breathing room. And if they're not relying on sex, drugs, and violence to be the punch line, then it's pop culture references and memes. The latter of which I'm sure didn't become outdated by the time the season one finale wrapped up. Then when it's not pop culture and memes, it's meta and fourth wall breaking. Those wouldn't be a bad thing, but the show uses them so much, even Deadpool would be telling them to knock it off.

The Backlash

The critical and audience reception universally negative. A lot of people have even said it's one of the worst shows of the 2020s, and some people have even said they couldn't get the either the first or second episode. The funniest thing to me about this backlash was even the wokes hated it, and Mindy and her group were clearly trying to pander to that group what with the race swapping, the same-sex relationships, and the heterosexual white guy [Fred] always getting unnecessarily bashed. Somehow the Velma show brought groups of all walks of life together in hating it. Pretty impressive when you think about it.

How Did This Get a Second Season?

So, with the poor quality and poorly received reviews, how in the blue hell did this show get a second season? Now some people blame hate watching but I don't believe that's the case. People hate watched Disney Plus' Willow series and that was canceled after one season. People also hate watched Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop series and that got canceled after one season.

So what happened? Well there's two luckily causes. One, this was a contractual obligation. Warner Bros. had no choice but to give Mindy and her team a second season because they signed on the dotted line and agreed. So while  season one was airing on Max, production was being worked on for the second season. Then there's the second probability, that being season two was meant to be part of season one, but WB split them up. You'd think that be ridiculous but then you turn to Netflix and their biggest culprit, that being their infamous reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Some of you are probably wondering why would they do the whole split thing? It's simple really, it's cheaper.

Glimmer of Hope?

Let's end this on something that could be a possibility of good news. On Mar 22nd, Max uploaded a video titled "What's New in April 2024", with a snippet of season two of Velma included. I bring this up because I said that was uploaded on Mar 22nd and the second season arrives on Apr 25th, that's four weeks apart. And the trailer for season two wasn't released until Apr 15th, which is ten days away from the season premiere. This lack of marketing speaks volumes. It seems Warner Bros. has given up on the show, which in return could lead to it rightfully being canceled.

Anyways, that's all for now. Come back on Saturday, Apr 20th, for my review of Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.