Mindy Kaling’s Scooby-Doo prequel, Velma, wants to be Harley Quinn meets Riverdale, which, frankly, sounds awesome. Throw in Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes as Daphne’s moms, a friends-to-enemies-to-crushes romance between Velma and Daphne, and three-quarters of the main Mystery Inc. players becoming POC? It should have been the easiest slam dunk in history! Candace Parker on a six-foot hoop! The reviews were so bad the first weekend — 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest rating I’ve ever seen — I simply refused to write about it. I felt hopeful it would get at least a little better. Alas.
We’re now six episodes into HBO’s much-hyped adult cartoon, and instead of uncovering things to like because the show is finding its footing, Velma is somehow getting even less interesting and even less funny. Every episode is a cringy, eye-rolling slog that doesn’t seem to have any idea who its audience is, yet seems to despise them all the same. Where Harley Quinn — and even last year’s Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, the animated movie where Velma finally came out as a lesbian — found great success lovingly poking fun at their source material and characters, Velma seems to just want to be mean to everybody. Velma herself is the show’s main punching bag; the series is full of swipes at Indian girls, not-thin girls, nerdy girls, and queer girls. Outside of mocking Velma, the jokes that aren’t straight-up assholery sound like some 13-year-old Redditor’s attempt to parody Cancel Culture, or a couple of veteran TV writers going back and forth about the industry while they’re high and everything stupid sounds hysterical.
Seriously, let me tell you everything gay about this show. Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes, like I said. Cherry Jones as Fred’s mom. Nicole Byer as Shaggy’s (Norville’s) mom. And Fortune Feimster as Olive. Daphne says she was “baptized on the set of Ellen,” and the way she distracts her moms is to send them on wild goose chases all over town looking for cats that need help. And then there’s Velma and Daphne’s Regina George/Janis Ian dynamic, but actually gay. They were best friends who fell apart when Daphne got hot and popular, and Velma started hallucinating mystery monsters after her mom disappeared. But there’s a sizzle between them that confuses and intrigues them both; every time they touch hands or get their faces near each other, they blush and bumble. They even kiss on the mouth. Right on the mouth! It is, as Lizzie McGuire once declared, what dreams are made of. But it’s impossible to even enjoy it because the show dives right back into making fun of Velma as soon as the lesbian lip smack is complete. (Well, Velma and any viewer who is excited that Velma is canonically gay now.)
In her review of Never Have I Ever, published three years ago, our own Himani expressed dismay about Mindy Kaling’s writing for POC characters, especially Indian characters. It’s become a common refrain online, spilling over into Kaling’s work on The Sex Lives of College Girls and now Velma.
“Many critics found Never Have I Ever’s high school setting relatable,” Hiamni wrote, “but Kaling’s depictions traffic far too heavily in damaging stereotypes for my taste. It seems like every character other than Devi and her two love interests are flat caricatures. What’s more, I can’t believe that in 2020 we’re still making fatphobic jokes on TV… Kaling’s depiction of Indian community isn’t as superficial as her other representations, but it’s equally thoughtless.”
There’s also the fact that Kaling recently liked a JK Rowling tweet in which she answered the question “how do you sleep at night” with the quip “I read my most recent royalty cheques and find that the pain goes away rather quickly.”
It’s more baffling than the ingredients in a Scooby Snack! I really wanted to love Velma, but now I don’t even know if I have the fortitude to finish the first season.
