I Watched ‘Velma’ Episodes 3 And 4 So You Don’t Have To

Velma, currently setting records for some of the lowest audience scores in TV history, is back with another pair of episodes, with HBO Max dumping two online every Thursday for the foreseeable future.

Last week, Velma was trending after launch mainly for how bad it was, which resulted in proxy trends as everyone tried to understand what Mindy Kaling was thinking with the series. But while Kaling is the face and voice of the series, she has not written or directed any of the episodes, including the two new ones today.

WB bragged that Velma was the biggest HBO Max premiere for an animated series ever. That means…effectively nothing, given that HBO Max recently killed off most of their animated originals because no one was allegedly watching them, and the only other Max original animated series that comes to mind is Harley Quinn, which technically premiered on DC Universe back when that was its own streaming service. So yes there’s some amount of spin going on here.

After two more episodes, nothing has changed my mind about this being an ill-conceived idea, though I don’t think it’s a right wing psyop to make liberals look bad. I think it’s just…normal bad. So what happened this week?

Episode 3 – Velma Kai

This episode deals with the aftermath of Daphne and Velma kissing at the end of episode 2. While some thought that this was a gateway to the reveal of Velma as a lesbian, which fans have always theorized and at one point, I think was made canon in an actual, non-Velma Scooby Doo offering, that isn’t quite what’s happening here.

Velma and Daphne agree to stay friends as they have too many mysteries to solve, but Velma makes it very clear she’s both attracted to Daphne and Fred, with the end result seeming to imply this version of Velma will be Pan or Bi. Not that Scooby Doo fans are taking much of what this Velma show does seriously, but I imagine that will produce its own layer of controversy.

The show continues to be…shockingly unfunny. In a tournament organized to find the “least vulnerable” girl in school as a serial killer prowls, at one point, Velma trash talks a girl about her Brazilian butt lift, slams her on the ground, but first, and a silicone implant pops out of her mouth. I just…I don’t know what we’re doing here.

Episode 4 – Velma Makes a List

In this episode, with a new victim killed, Fred gets out of jail and the police deduce that the serial killer is only murdering hot girls. For reasons, they task Velma specifically with making a list of the five hottest girls in school who deserve police protection. I did laugh exact one time here when Velma consults Fred about making the list, and he says he already did that last year for his science fair project.

Perhaps no episode better exemplifies the confusing pro/anti-feminist messaging of the series than this one, where the show first tries to make points about inner beauty, but then everyone turns on Velma for slut-shaming after giving the hot girls makeovers to become ugly and therefore less likely to be murder victims. The episode ends with Velma recruiting the hot girls to do a hot girl dance to clear a crowd away from her pregnant stepmother giving birth on the sidewalk. It is exactly as weird as it sounds and we seem to end with some sort of generic “be yourself” message.

Fundamentally, across both these episodes, outside of the bizarre and unfunny humor, none of the central mysteries being presented are interesting, whether it’s the disappearance of Velma’s mom, the identity of Daphne’s birthparents or even the central serial killer. For a series that was supposedly centered on mystery, that’s just not a compelling part of the experience. Not that there really is a compelling part of the experience.

I continue to remain baffled at the Norville character here, as Fred, Daphne and Velma, though rewritten in this new “adult” format, are still some variants of their old characters. I just don’t get the change to Shaggy here to transform him into effectively a 100% different green-shirted character. And yeah like, you probably need a dog here eventually.

This show is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I may be hate watching it, but I am…still watching it, so that’s something, I guess.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.