Velma Season: 2 (2024) – Review

With all the streaming services that currently flood the market getting a second season is almost a miracle, especially with ratings and popularity harder to track, but in 2023 HBO Max released their adult-aimed Velma and it was critically reviled and panned by almost everyone, especially Scooby-Doo fans, yet it somehow got a second season, how was this possible?

There are movies and television shows out there that people love for just how bad they are, the phrase “So bad they’re good” is almost a badge of honour among these projects, but “Hate Watching” is a little different as this is for anti-fans who derive pleasure from a piece of media that is rooted in its perceived shortcomings. But is “Hate Watching” the reason for its return? Probably not, even though HBO Max’s Velma season one had one of the lowest scores on IMDB – currently sitting at 1.6 – it is typical for animated shows to get a two-season contract as they are expensive and time-consuming. So despite the poor reviews and loud vitriolic outbursts from most viewers, season two was going to happen whether fans liked it or not. Now, the big question is “Did the producers take any of that negative feedback into consideration when they went into production for season two?”

Or is that hope as dead as Sheriff Cogburn?

Season two picks up three weeks after the events of season one, which ended with the murder of Sheriff Cogburn (Stephen Root) and now picks up with Velma (Mindy Kaling) and Daphne (Constance Wu) stumbling across his corpse while walking through the woods. Velma immediately suspects the killer to be Victoria Jones (Cherry Jones), Fred’s mother who was last season’s killer and died at the hands of Norville (Sam Richardson) – albeit accidentally – but Velma is sure that she is somehow alive and out for revenge. Meanwhile, Fred (Glen Howerton) has not only started his own mystery-solving business “Fred Jones Spooky Stuff Hunter” he’s also found religion and wants to prove that his mom was not the killer but, instead, was possessed by the ghost of Norville’s grandmother. Then there is the problem of Shaggy having massive panic attacks over accidentally killing Fred’s mother, which causes him crippling hallucinations.

“I’ll swallow your soul!”

Next, we have the startling revelation that Daphne’s parents, Donna (Jane Lynch) and Linda Blake (Wanda Sykes), are campaigning for the position of co-sheriff and have been covering up the fact that Sheriff Cogburn was murdered weeks before his body was found in the woods. Could they have murdered him for his job? Or could it be Velma’s favourite teacher Mr. S (Ed Weeks) who has the hots for Velma’s mom (Sarayu Blu) and is obsessed with the works of Edna Perdue (Vanessa Williams), Shaggy’s grandmother, whose work in the 1970s military program “SCOOBI” (Special COvert Operations Brain Initiative), where soldiers’ brains were to be placed in the bodies of meddling kids, led to the serial killing and brain harvesting of the previous season? Oh wait, he’s just been brutally murdered, guess that puts him in the clear. While the mystery formula doesn’t deviate too much from what we got in season one as it basically continues plot elements, what does change is the relationship dynamics in our little group.

Is there trouble in lesbian paradise?

Daphne and Velma had become an item by the end of season one, with poor simping Norville left out in the cold, but this budding relationship doesn’t get much of a honeymoon period as Daphne’s statement that they are “soulmates” immediately sends Velma into a “logic rage” as she points out there is no scientific basis for the existence of souls, so the idea of soulmates is ridiculous. And why would such an innocuous comment, one that even the likes Neil DeGrasse Tyson could hardly get upset about, bother Velma? The answer is easy, lazy writing. The people behind this show took a look at the original cartoon and saw Velma as the group’s resident skeptic – who was the first to believe there must be a logical explanation behind supposedly supernatural events – and then decided this means Velma is some kind of “Science Nazi” and that anything which cannot be empirically proven does not exist, but she goes further than that, telling Daphne that anyone who believes in such things is stupid. And it’s not like Daphne is a Flat-Earther she simply has romantic notions about love, something sweet and completely harmless, but Velma as Captain Science Buzzkill has to piss all over such silly notions.

“Living brains in jars I can accept, but love is not quantifiable.”

This conflict reaches a new level when Goth girl Amber (Sara Ramirez) introduces Daphne to Wiccan beliefs which sends Velma over the edge resulting in Daphne and Amber pairing off to create some more relationship drama, because if we can’t have a good Scooby-Doo mystery we may as well have lame high school drama. And this leads to the key problem with this show – which already has so many problems – is that it’s hard for us to become emotionally invested in any of these characters because they are so damn unlikable. The fact that a serial killer running around murdering people and ripping off their dicks is treated as nothing more than a distraction is a fundamental misstep that this show never recovers from, it is a failure of mystery writing 101. The only interesting development in this season is the three girls, who ended up as brains in jars in the previous season, have continued to go to class and one of them even falls in love with Norville.

“We’ve decided to go off and have our own mysteries.”

Stray Observations:

• Goth Girl Amber is the daughter of Thorn from the Hex Girls, who has retired from music to open an occult book store. I guess they are completely doing away with any kind of continuity or timeline from the other Scooby-Doo shows.
• Last season Velma suffered crippling guilt-based hallucinations over the disappearance of her mother, now we have Norville dealing with the same affliction over his killing of Fred’s mom. That she turns out to be a ghost does not stop this element from feeling tired and lazy.
• Fred telling Velma “Real faith is knowing something’s true when it’s verifiably false” is one of the few nice moments of pointed societal awareness that this show sneaks in.
• We get a whole subplot about Norville’s dad forcing him to take marijuana to help him with his guilt complex, not only is this from a parent but a school employee and is one of the dumbest of dumb elements in this show.
• The kids are forced to take detention in the school library in a Breakfast Club fashion but the writers attempt to take this homage/rip-off into meta-commentary territory with the characters being aware of the nostalgia bait. It doesn’t work.
• This series continues to drop in “Hey do you remember that” moments by tossing in updated versions of characters like Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races.

“I’m edgy and dark which means I’m cool…right?”

As with the first season Velma, this second instalment continues still fail at feeling like a Scooby-Doo cartoon, and the edgy elements remains overused clichéd remain unfunny, and while some of the more egregious aspects that made season one so awful are toned down here it still a far cry from the mystery solving gang we all know and love. On the plus side, while Velma is still a narcissistic asshat Fred is given an interesting character arc where he goes on a journey to discover that “Maybe my mother was an awful person and I don’t have to be” and his exploration of religion provides a few genuine laughs. Then there is the subplot of Norville falling in love with one of the brains in jars, which began somewhat interesting, with it exploring the obvious theme of “loving someone for the mind and not their body” but then it fell victim to self-sabotaged at the end so he could remain alone and humiliated. Do you get the impression that the writers of this show don’t actually like these characters? But what about the mystery itself? Who is responsible for a series of brutal and dick-removing murders? Spoiler Alert, it’s fucking Scrappy-Doo. And didn’t we already do this in the first live-action movie?

“It’s not my fault, the writers made me this way.”

The Scooby-Doo formula has always been a fairly basic one; the Scooby gang would arrive on the scene, look for clues and uncover a bunch of suspects until eventually pulling off a mask to reveal it was “Old man Smithers!” the entire time. That isn’t quite the case here. As this show has ten episodes to fill and only one mystery there are going to be a lot of subplots – most of which won’t go anywhere – but the biggest problem here is that the gang doesn’t seem to be doing much in the solving mystery area, they just run from one chaotic scene to the next and only uncovering information after it’s pretty much fallen in their collective laps. The critically praised series Mystery Incorporated also had an over-arcing plot but it also had stand-alone mysteries as well, stuff for the gang to solve along the way before the reveal of the season’s Big Bad. Not so much here, season two of Velma doesn’t just have one villain, instead, there are a half-dozen characters involved in a vast cover-up conspiracy.  To say the plot was more complicated than it needed to be would be a vast understatement.

“Unmask me at your peril, it will only piss you off.”

Aside from frivolous subplots and a convoluted collection of “villains” we also have to suffer a series of heavy-handed “messaging” such as pointing out the evils of social media, as if dozens of shows haven’t already covered this topic and a lot better. Velma season two’s shallow attempts at social commentary brings nothing new to the subject matter and we get nothing but empty diatribes by two-dimensional characters. We get such startling revelations that being pretty doesn’t necessarily make your life easier and “Maybe you should try and walk a mile in my shoes” which this show illustrates via brain swapping, so I give them points for that, despite this already having become a clichéd topic at this point. That said, the animators on this show do some nice work as the overall animation quality is quite good, if only as much work had been put into screenwriting as is found in the art direction, then maybe we good have had at least a halfway decent show. Sadly, that was not to be.

“How’d it get burned? How’d it get burned?”

Overall, season two of Velma is another example of a show trying to be dark and meta while stuffing gore and some kind of social commentary into the proceedings and then failing miserably to make any of it work. It’s not funny, it’s not edgy and worst of all it’s not Scooby-Doo. That said, I will say this is a slight improvement over the first season – Velma isn’t such a hateful bitch – and the art direction while not on par with Mystery Incorporated still delivers some nice visuals. It should also be noted that HBO Max dumped all of season two episodes at once, unlike season one’s once-a-week formula, which I’m fairly certain means they are cutting their losses and hoping everyone soon forgets this show ever existed. They can count me in that group as well.

Note: This season ends with a pretty brutal cliffhanger and while the show wasn’t renewed for a third season they did put out a Halloween special, sadly, it was also pretty bad and even added a new never to be resolved cliffhanger as a final “screw you” to its viewers.

You can find all my reviews of the various Scooby-Doo shows and movies collected here: The Wonderful World of Scooby-Doo.