Fifty-Fifty-Doo time again!
She’s baaaaack!
Yes everyone, Daphne has returned after three years -- and one show’s (or version?) -- of television silence to rejoin Mystery Incorporated and our S Club-3. In her absence, she became an investigative reporter for a major… let’s say news service, and utilizes her occupation to get hot, fresh scoops involving (or discounting) the usual “bad-guy-in-costume” hoax and unusual oddity involving the supernatural. But this is Scooby-Doo, so guess what happens.
Welcome to The New (and Improved?) Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show.
We’ll get to more on Daph in a moment, but first...
As you know, the franchise has gone through a lot of changes since the addition of Scooby’s nephew Scrappy-Doo to the franchise in 1979.
- His addition
- A new name
- Less of Fred, Velma and Daphne
- The show morphing from one-story eps to a three-shorts format
- Changing from bad guys in costumes as monsters to actual monsters
- The same show and format going back to two-show hour-block form
- Fred, Vel & Daph being dropped altogether
- The change of partners of the hour-block, and
- Change in location from wherever the monster is to a detective agency
(If you think learning about all this makes your head spin, try typing it down from memory.)
Fortunately, the staff decided to cut loose the extra stuff (We barely knew ye but ye won’t be forgotten, Yabba-Doo and Deputy Dusty.) and take us back to basics here. Sure, ghosts and monsters are still around, but the “guy-in-costume” villains are back, one of the human members of the gang is back (bringing us back to half of it) and the show is now in a longer-but-now-split-in-half two-shorts format (this format was never done before), and unlike the three-shorts format I like this more because I can watch two stories in a snappier-yet-satisfying pace.
Daphne also got some major character development during her time away: she’s now the leader of Mystery Inc. and is more smarter. While she was never stupid or unaware of her surroundings before, throughout the franchise she was known by the rest of the gang as “Danger-Prone” -- as in captured by villains and monsters and used to their creepy advantage a lot. Fortunately this trait has been toned down gradually as the show(s) come and go, and Daph is more capable of taking care of herself -- as in not get herself in any major crap by the villains. Because Fred and Velma are still out of the picture, the staff decided to give her their well-known characteristics -- Vel’s intelligence and skills in analytics and Fred’s leadership and skills in driving the Mystery Machine (succeeding Shaggy during V2 ...and Scrappy-Doo [probably for the better]). Episode 4 also introduces family members of Daph’s -- her high-school-aged cousin Jennifer in “The Creature Came From Chem Lab” and her parents (along with the reveal that her fam is loaded) in “No Thanks, Masked Manx”.
(Speaking of fam, Scooby has yet another cousin in Dooby Dooby Doo as introduced in “The Dooby Dooby Doo Ado”
One thing I find weird about Daphne’s new employment here is: While she has made very clear is that she is a reporter, she never mentions which news company she works for. Even during the first episode, nothing has been mentioned there isn’t even any exposition about her rejoining Mystery Inc. The series just begins with her back in the gang as if nothing happened. I know it shouldn’t matter cause Daph is back anyway, but it’s just baffling to think about. Anyway, it's great to have Daphne back in the franchise and I think it's in a much better state since her return.
Scrappy too got some needed development: He’s also smarter and less oblivious to danger, with less of an urge to fight While he wasn’t dumb either, his new smarts are much more noticeable as he is more engaged in converstations about the monsters/villains of the week with Daphne (while Uncle Scooby and Shaggy take care of the comedy as usual). His wanting to beat monsters (and the excitement of such) also gets toned down more here, and there are even times where Scrapps even backs down from actual threats. (This trait should be refreshing to see for everyone, because that’s all people who hate him see him as -- but with more of the jittery-ness of a squirrel on LSD laced with sugar). And his adoration for his unc was toned to only when Scooby accidentally finds a clue integral to solving a mystery (which is very cute). Plus, his voice has matured along with his new characteristics, sounding much less like a child and more like a growing puppy (even if he is still a puppy height-wise).
The animation here is unpleasant to me in two ways:
--The ink and paint here look cheap and flat, like a show by DFE Films or if The Christmas Tree got a slightly bigger budget. The characters movements are wooden and robotic, the backgrounds look like they were drawn by a really talented child, and the colors look both bright and flushed. There is a positive, as the characters do look the same as before (thin outlines notwithstanding).
--Another positive, as the animators do make the monsters actually look scary and threatening. The most haunting are The Baskerville Hound (“Hound of the Scoobyvilles”), The Gremlin (“The Fall Dog”), The Chem Lab Creature (“The Creature Came From Chem Lab”), and that damn building in the title sequence.
If that ain’t the definition of chilling, I don’t know what is.
There’s a brilliant balance of comedy and mystery on this series. Since there are now four members of Mystery Inc. a split creates two teams that perfectly go their own ways. While Shag and Scoob bring the laughs as usual, Daphne and Scrappy team to scrounge for and analyze the clues, and converse about the oddities surrounding the town and people they’re visiting. It's this balance that makes this incarnation one of the best in the classic era of Scooby-Doo.
I think The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show is one of the best classic-era Scooby-Doo incarnations ever. Why? Lemme count the ways...
-Daphne returning, with bigger smarts and new reigns as leader
-Scrappy being smarter and mature
-Leaving the laughs to Scooby and Shaggy
-Going back to guys-in-costume villains, and
-Surprising us every so often
I'm surprised I didn't watch this version a lot more as a kid, because I never remembered or seen even the theme song and title sequence before. Which is a shame as Wikipedia cites this as a full series with the next series as it's second season. Maybe Boomerang skipped it from rotation or did air it in some fashion and I missed it. Speaking of…
Coming up soon, I'll review that "second season" … or full series (whatever) of Scooby-Doo, entitled The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries. We'll see if there's enough evidence to prove it's the former. (Either way, I swear at this point this franchise has become a bit of the television version of The Fast and the Furious.)
I'm Andrew Pollard saying, "Shaggy-Shaggy-D"--
I mean... "Rooby-Rooby-Roo"!
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