HBO | Animation | Television
Velma Is Better Than Your Favourite Show
And that is a fact, the same way the sun will always rise in the East
Breaking Bad. Peaky Blinders. The Boys. The Sopranos. The Walking Dead. What do they all have in common? These shows are all award-winning. They’ve got brilliant actors and sets that make you feel like you’re right there with your favorite characters. But what does any of that matter? They all have their critics who breathlessly detail how they all falter in one way or another.
But Velma doesn’t have either of those problems. HBO’s Velma does everything right, and that’s why critics and audiences have agreed that this show is spectacular!
Velma is based on the popular Scooby-Doo franchise, a juggernaut that’s been running since September 1969. For the uninformed, Velma is the girl wearing the bright orange jumper and never mind her race. That doesn’t matter.
What really matters is that Velma transcends the silliness of Scooby-Doo. In fact, they are so adult (seeing that it’s an adult animated show) that they removed Scooby himself because nobody wants a talking dog in an animated show. Oh, no, that’s far too silly.
Then there are the jokes. They are hilarious. Tear-spilling, side-achingly funny, and Mindy Kaling shows her writing prowess once again in the opening scene of the show.
We come across a group of teenagers (fifteen-year-olds) in the showers, all nude, as people usually are when showering, who very jokingly quip about how teen shows all start with excessive nudity. And don’t you get it? It’s a show about teens, and they’re all naked, and now these underaged teenagers are posing for us because of the joke? It’s brilliant, really.
Especially when a side character tells Velma and Daphne that they should kiss so there’s a good hook in the pilot, and (spoilers) they end up kissing later. For the uninitiated, that is foreshadowing.
Then you have the characters. Scooby-Doo’s characters are iconic. Everybody knows the talking dog, the stoner (Shaggy), the damsel (Daphne), and the leader (Fred). For most of us, they are ingrained in our childhoods. But the show manages to spin them around for the modern audience, making them far more relatable.
Don’t you like 420 jokes? Well, Shaggy explains what they are, and I think it was a very articulate way to poke fun at his character and show us a new angle of who he really is as a person.
Fred is a joke, but that’s because he’s a rich white boy, which makes it okay for all the jokes to be directed at this teenage boy’s penis. He’s stupid (because he’s rich and white, by the way), and can barely feed himself.
Daphne is much the same, although she’s got two mothers and was abandoned by her real parents, which doesn’t really matter for the plot. Don’t worry about that, it’s all for sympathy points. Because she’s no longer charming. Why should she be? She’s independent and smart and also a drug dealer, but it’s for a noble reason.
So remember, if you ever need money to pay for your pet’s surgery, just sell drugs and destroy someone’s life. It’s very morally acceptable, and Daphne doing this is very brave and very interesting considering she’ll eventually have to face the consequences of her actions. Will her police officer mothers have anything to say about it? Will they have a fracture in their relationship? Wait and see in season 2!
Lastly, there are the massive views. Only award-winning shows have views as high as Velma, no less on HBOMax. The specific numbers have been lost to time, but it became the platform’s highest viewed animated show ever, which is fantastic considering there aren’t any other original animated shows to compete with.
And because of this, HBO might greenlight more animated shows considering all the success Velma has brought to the streaming giant. This show, mark my words, is a place-holder in HBO’s successful history, right alongside Game Of Thrones and The Last of Us.
But in all seriousness, don’t watch this show. HBO might just order a second season of this debacle, but it’s quite the beast of a show for it to unite people of different genders, political views, and countries. We have all come together to drive this show’s IMDB rating to an astounding 1.3/10.
Mindy Kaling has finally produced a show that has united the world.
