#I'M SORRY THIS S SO LONG SJLAKDFJLSKADJFK

[scoobydoozies]

the racism was uncomforable in the headless horror my other problem with it was how the guy just took his wife putting him in the hositpal as no big dea.... it just felt so unbelievable..

relationships in this show are very..strange to me... we got velma abusing shaggy/ velma the smart one being jealous of scooby/ fred showing zero interest in daphne until the plot demands it/ daphne/velma alone come off too pushy that it gets uncomfortable/ and thats just season 1

season 2 i wont spoil much cause im not sure how far ya are. im only about 5-6 eps in but i ididnt want to see a jealous fred act like a crazed ex but they decided woo its comedy to kidnap your ex girlfriend/ and again we have a women being weird to shaggy but an old women so its 100 times worse and just played off as a joke.. this show is just mean to shaggy

so how this show was recommended after velma is beyond me.. at best the background animation is good and we got the voice of kronk/ and frank welker is having fun i think tis amazing he can still do him so well at 70 / but they can only do so much to make it bearable with all the romance drama/ plot twists it reminds me of a cw show but animated

yeah like that's what i mean when i say this show really just isn't written well. there are some really cool concepts, but rarely are they executed to their fullest potential. characters make choices not based on their own personality and goals, but for the convenience of the plot and creation of conflict, which often leads to some really unfortunate side effects when you actually think about what's happening. as an example i wanna break down the fred and daphne thing, but this kind of writing is present throughout the whole first season (which is all i've seen so far, though i've heard a decent amount of things about season 2, but i'll try to stick to what i've personally watched for the most part)

like, at first fred shows no interest in daphne beyond friendship, but is a pretty good friend to her, while daphne is head over heels for fred to the point that she has basically no personality outside of that. yet, there isn't anything about fred that she actually likes. in the first episode she says that he's like one of those geniuses that's isn't appreciated in their time, but it's clear from later episodes that her and the rest of the gang think that he's stupid. beyond that, everything he says is annoying or boring to her unless it's him showing her romantic affection, and even then, only in certain ways.

later in season 1, fred suddenly switches from having no romantic interest in daphne to being in love with her, for no discernible reason. we know he didn't just secretly have a crush on her before, because we know that when he shows interest in someone he becomes incredibly jealous and possessive, and in episode 3 (before he liked her) he was totally supportive of her going on the date with rung. she ends gets so upset about him not reciprocating her feelings in the way she wants (as if she's owed that or something) and for having the audacity to like things that aren't her, that she writes a diss track about him and rejects him when he actually DOES reciprocate her feelings.

then there's that whole thing where he asks her on a date to the trap museum, and she gets really mad about it… for some reason? it's apparently because he makes everything about traps instead of her? she then gets all googly-eyed over a teacher, fred gets jealous, and then daphne says that she has the teacher's phone number and that they're planning on going on a date… at the trap museum. which either means: 1. she doesn't actually mind learning about traps and she's just annoyed that he's continuing to have an interest in the thing he's interested in for no reason, or 2. she's lying about having a date with the teacher, and is just saying that to hurt him. also, side note, the show never addresses or even implies that there's anything wrong with the teacher/student relationship aspect of all this. like, at all. the issue being presented here is that daphne's making fred jealous, because they liiiike each other~. at the end of the episode he calls her his girlfriend, and suddenly she's totally not mad at him anymore and is like "oh i would LOVE to go to the trap museum with you"… even though he was LITERALLY asking her out on a date at the beginning of the episode! which means he thinks of her as his girlfriend! nothing changed! she just changed her mind because it was time for that conflict to be over.

then fred and daphne are together and it's pretty much fine for a while, but then fred starts acting really controlling about her, almost verging on stalker territory. he starts making a list of all her habits and whereabouts, keeping track of her schedule and trying to control her and their relationship. she becomes (rightfully) uncomfortable with this, and says to velma it's giving her trust issues. she doesn't really talk about it to him directly, instead she asks a spirit board about the issue in front of him and he notices. later they actually DO talk about it, he apologizes for his behavior and it's chalked up to him being overprotective because of his issues over his absent mom. the one that scooby said was hot. that part's not relevant but i think it bears mentioning. anyway i actually felt like the way this conflict between them was handled fairly decently for this show. fred has an obsessive personality so this being a character flaw makes sense, daphne not talking to him about it right away and being a little immature about addressing it makes sense fits because she's a teenager, and they did talk about it and work it out. the problem doesn't come from this specific episode but the fact that fred… doesn't actually stop being controlling about daphne in later episodes (like i know about the kidnapping thing and doll with her real hair and the getting mad at/bullying marcie for not being daphne… ugh. don't even get me started on the way the gang treats marcie.)

then fred ends up proposing to daphne out of nowhere (they're still in high school btw), saying he wants her to solve mysteries with her forever, and she's over the moon about it. she gets really into it and starts planning right away, wanting to one-up her sisters and all that. when she tries to talk to fred about wedding stuff though, he's totally disinterested, and she continues to be disinterested in anything about him that doesn't revolve around her. great basis for a future marriage /s. they end up telling their parents who don't approve, velma and shaggy get mad at them for not telling them about the engagement, yada yada, whatever. at the end of season finale when the truth comes out about fred's past, he calls the engagement off completely because he wants to find his real parents, alone. the guy who is supposedly all about the team and wanted them to all move in together after high school and to solve mysteries together with daphne forever… wants to solve the mystery of locating his parents on his own. why??? well obviously because the writers want to separate them all for the dramatic ending, of course! and they didn't bother to set up any real justification for that beforehand that would actually make sense.

what's worse though is if you think about that ending from a totally in-universe perspective, it makes fred look REALLY bad. like, he proposed to daphne to keep her bound to him forever, but the second it felt more convenient to not have her around, he throws her in the garbage? AND continues to be obsessive and controlling about her later?

i think fred being controlling can be a good character flaw to have, in fact be cool scooby-doo did that really well in my opinion, but when you apply that character flaw to a romantic relationship, i think you have to be REALLY careful about how you portray that, and the show doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to condemning toxic behavior like that. plus, the level of control can only go up to a certain point severity and persist for a certain amount of time before it stops being an innocent mistake.

and this is just. how the show is written. in general. characters do nonsensical things for the convenience of the writers, which often paints them as being petty, fickle, and shallow. they often do mean or selfish things purely for the purpose of creating conflict and nothing else, which makes them come off as being bad people. im not opposed to shows where the characters are deeply flawed or even the villains, but it really doesn't feel like it's on purpose with the main 5. their bad behavior is often justified or left uncriticized or unpunished

when velma's hitting shaggy (and doing so hard enough to hurt him) for talking the way he talks, fred and daphne completely ignore it. the only one who cares about it is shaggy, who's later villainized for breaking up with the girl who abused him, demeaned him, and tried control him, after she gave him an ultimatum to get rid of his best friend! a member of their team! do fred or daphne ever tell her, "hey, scooby's our pal, and asking shaggy to get rid of him is really selfish of you"? nope! she continues to go on and on about how "he left her for a dog" for the whole rest of the season, and plenty of other characters throughout the show sympathize with her or mock shaggy for his (correct) choice. nobody ever stands up for him or defends him at all.

there's not even any discernible reason why any of them are interested in each other romantically. hell, there's no discernible reason why any of them are friends at all! well, besides velma and daphne bonding over their shared entitlement to the boys they're into, and similar shallow romance drama and other stereotypical ~girl things~. i wouldn't even say they all share a love for mystery solving-- shaggy and daphne don't seem like they could care less about that, and even fred and velma don't feel like they like it as much as every other iteration of those characters i've come across. fred mostly just cares about setting traps and nine times out of ten velma would rather angst over shaggy or get a pedicure with daphne than focus on the mystery. they solve mysteries together because that's what's dictated by the show they're in. that's it. they're not even very good at it! in the first half of season 1 mr. e is holding their hands, guiding them through some of the most obvious and clear-cut mysteries i've seen from this franchise. the writers try to make them look smarter by deliberately not showing key clues to the audience (who can probably figure it out anyway by ruling out the obvious red herrings and paying attention to the basic structure, even if they're given 0 clues or motives that actually incriminate the character), and this just makes the reveals feel cheap, and further highlights how ridiculous some of the explanations are.

and i could just keep going, really, but i won't because this is already getting really long.

like i said, there's some cool concepts and ideas here, and every once in a while there will be an episode or scene or line that's pretty good. the backgrounds are nice, same with the designs of a lot of the monsters. i liked the episode with the orc biker gang, i thought the frighthound was really creepy, i like there being an overarching plot and getting to see the gang's school and home lives, i like there being an old mystery incorporated, i like fred being autistic (even if the representation there is flawed), i love fred jones sr (i guess since they make all the characters selfish assholes, it turns out that when that's what they're supposed to do, they do a pretty good job), etc. if this show had different writers, ones that think things through, can write women, that don't perpetuate toxic relationship dynamics or sexualize teenagers, that know how to craft mysteries with proper pacing and intrigue, that have a grasp on humor beyond cynical mean-spiritedness (which sometimes bleeds into outright bigotry), it probably WOULD be the best scooby-doo show.

and yeah, it's really ironic that this was the show everyone was recommending as an alternative to hbo's velma, because it seems like they share a lot of the same problems, velma's just a lot less subtle about it.