![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brendalaJinkies! It's been a while since I did one of these!
As much as I love doing reviews of Pup Named Scooby Doo episodes, I thought it would be fun to do an episode re-cap from a Scooby show that isn’t clouded by my nostalgia goggles. What’s New Scooby Doo is a decent show; but I found it to be VERY hit-and-miss. It got some big things wrong (I’ll get to them later on). But one of the things it did right was making Fred and Velma fun and interesting without flanderizing them too much. And this particular episode was all about Velma and the one bizarre phobia that was strong enough to make her play hooky during a mystery…
Our episode begins at a mini-golf course after closing time.
Two random children are breaking in because the little boy wants to get a free game token by sinking a hole-in-one on the clown course.
Since this is the opening to a Scooby Doo episode, the golf game doesn't go well for these poor children.
Seriously, this scene is surprisingly creepy considering the fact that What’s New is specifically aimed at a very young demographic.
After the innocent children are gobbled up, we cut to the peppy theme song!
Cut to the next day.
Our Heroes are chilling out at the mini-golf course. Turns out Shaggy is competing in the mini-golf national championship. His competitors are White Tiger Woods (he’s given the name “Cougar Forrest” here. But he's basically White Tiger Woods)
…and a little girl at least half his age named Miranda Wright (**insert Bonkers joke here**).
Miranda acts like an annoying brat. But I think she’s kinda justified. I know golf isn’t exactly a contact sport; but it still seems unfair to make a little girl compete against two grown men in a sports competition (especially when one of them is a professional athlete).
Anyhoo, while Shaggy, Miranda, and White Tiger Woods are playing; Fred, Velma, and Daphne wander around sticking their noses where they don’t belong. This annoys the moody groundskeeper.
Our trio proceeds to pester the poor dude for details while he’s trying to do his job until he relents and allows them to hang around the crime scene (as long as they promise to help him out by moving a large tarp).
When they remove the tarp, the giant clown head is revealed. This causes Velma to freak out, jump into Fred’s arms, and go into PTSD flashback mode.
Cut to a flashback to Velma’s 5th birthday (and the main reason I chose to review this episode)…
PUP REFERENCE!!!!
Yup. The flashback uses the Pup Named Scooby Doo character designs! I’m not crazy about the colors (they look bad with the Pup outfits) and Frank Welker and Mindy Cohn are terrible at imitating kiddie voices; but the reference is so cool I can get over those things.
Anyhoo, we find out that Little Velma was permanently traumatized when the birthday clown her parents hired threw her birthday gift (a full set of encyclopedias) into a wood chipper to make confetti. So not only did this clown leave an innocent child with permanent psychological damage, he ruined what must have been a very expensive birthday present. I hope Velma’s parents sued him.
The horror.......
END FLASHBACK
Daphne calms Velma by assuring her that they’ll make sure to stay far away from where the giant spooky clown is. And they go back to the other side of the course to cheer Shaggy on.
Cut to the competition
Surprisingly, little Miranda is having trouble keeping up with two men who are TWICE HER SIZE AND AGE and is sitting in last place.
This doesn’t make her happy (seriously, would it have killed the mini-golf higher ups to have separate competitions for children and adults!?)
Meanwhile, Scooby is having troubles, too. He’s freaked out by the haunted house course and is having trouble fulfilling his caddy duties because a lot of the holes have spooky themes (and the lack of opposable thumbs probably doesn’t help either).
Just as Shaggy is moving into first place, guess who shows up…..THE CLOWN!
Shaggy shows uncharacteristic bravery and creativity by hitting a bag of popcorn into the clown’s face (which causes birds to surround it and chase it away).
When Daphne and Fred comment on how bizarre it is to see Shaggy show off his cajones in front of a monster, Shaggy tells them that he’s spent years working his way up the championship and he’s not about to let some robot screw him out of it (who knew Shaggy was so competitive!).
Shaggy tells Velma that he needs her to stop cowering behind Fred and help them solve the mystery because the competition will be cancelled if the clown keeps eating people.
Velma responds by making up a BS story about needing to attend a book fair that day and Scooby, seeing an opportunity to play hooky (and hang out with his runner up BFF), runs off with her.
Double glasses: And adorableness ensues
Personally, I don't think they even needed Velma anyway. They could have quickly and easily solved this problem if they had just hired Wakko Warner:
Cut to later:
Fred, Daphne, and Shaggy are clue hunting. And Shaggy’s OOC behavior (like turning down food to keep working) is freaking Fred and Daphne out. After a minute, they end up eavesdropping on an argument between the Groundskeeper and the Mayor (who wears a helpful sash to remind people who he is).
Things learned from Scooby Doo...Mayors make bad parents
The trio finds out two importantred herrings clues
1. The Groundskeeper’s dream is to compete in the golf tournament and he’s really bitter that it hasn’t happened yet.
2. The Mayor is the Groundskeeper’s father. And he’s ashamed of his son and his son’s stupid dream (I guess that’s why he refuses to wear his “DAD” sash)
After the Mayor and the Groundskeeper leave, the trio enters the Groundskeeper’s private office without permission (our heroes, everybody!) and find a creepy shrine dedicated to our favorite beatnik.
Cut to Scooby and Velma:
Velma is taking lessons from Scooby on how to goof off and avoid getting involved in solving the mystery. And she takes to it pretty quickly. However, since neither of them are smart enough to just leave the park altogether, the mystery eventually finds them.
They spot Miranda working on some mysterious mechanical device and spouting exposition about how her “device” will ensure her victory. Velma knows that she should tell her friends about this clue; but she fears that doing the right thing will only increase their chances of running into the Clown Monster. So she asks Scooby for his advice on the best way to avoid getting anything productive done. His answer: BATTING CAGES!
Cut to Batting Cages:
While at the batting cages, Scooby bonds with Velma by teaching her how to catch a flying pizza with her teeth (no really). They’re having a great time until the monster finds them and starts chasing them down. When this happens, Scooby has to be the brave one because poor Velma can't stop freaking out.
Awww, remember when Scooby was chivalrous and sweet and not a VIOLENT, SEXIST F&%($*!?
Lucky for him, the rest of the gang hears Velma’s cries for help and follows them into the arcade. This leads us to a musical chase sequence. The music isn’t worth noting because the music in What’s New wasn’t very good (mostly generic sounding bland pop). But at least the visuals are fun......
We even get to see Scooby rescue Velma by improvising an ice cream gun!
After the gang evades the clown with their clever disguises…
…they spot White Tiger Woods and Shaggy concludes that he MUST be the culprit. Just as he finishes listing the evidence against him (he hates competition and no one can lose if the tournament is cancelled), the clown pops out of the bushes and eats the poor guy
So much for that theory. This is why Shaggy never gets to solve mysteries
After the gang manages to lose the clown, they walk in on the mayor’s press conference. Now that a celebrity has been gobbled up, he has FINALLY decided to close the park and cancel the tournament (because I guess two children disappearing without a trace just wasn’t motivation enough).
Miranda is suspiciously happy about White Tiger Wood’s disappearance (and surprisingly calm about the giant clown with an appetite for golfers and children roaming around the park).
Shaggy is distraught about the contest being cancelled (kinda insensitive considering at least three people have presumably been gobbled up by a killer clown robot) and insists that they must solve this case before everyone leaves the park. Because, gosh darn it, he will NOT allow that clown to deprive him of a chance to wipe the floor with a little girl who is both half his size and half his age! HECK YEAH!
The gang goes to interrogate the groundskeeper and they finally find out what the hell the creepy Shaggy shrine was about. Turns out it was a Hate Shrine. And the groundskeeper blames Shaggy for “ruining his life” because, ten years previously, Shaggy kicked his ass at the national putt putt championship and the guy never got over it. And he’s determined to get his edge back and start competing again (even if his dad disapproves). Before he leaves, he gets in Shaggy’s face and promises that he’ll “get him”. But this guy is such a pansy that he can't even intimidate the poster child for cowardice.
Shaggy takes the initiative to build the trap and elect Scooby and Velma as bait (which annoys the piss out of Freddy).
Naturally Velma and Scooby balk at the idea. Daphne tries to tempt Velma with Scooby Snacks and, when that doesn’t work, she uses a new encyclopedia CD Rom to bribe her. It’s hard to believe that Velma never replaced the books that the awful birthday clown destroyed all those years ago (I guess her parents didn’t sue him after all).
So they wait for the Clown in the Go-Cart (and for some reason, Scooby is the driver)
Unfortunately, Shaggy misses the shot that’s supposed to set off the obligatory Freddy trap. And this causes him to get eaten by the clown.
This causes Velma to get so pissed off that she ignores her crippling clown-phobia and beats the Clown Monster into submission with a golf club
**cue squeeing of Shaggy/Velma shippers**
When Shaggy emerges from the Clown’s belly, he goes on about how terrified and hungry he is (signaling that his temporary bravery has officially faded). Velma then proceeds to open up the control panel to reveal the real culprit…
THE MAYOR!!
This confuses the gang because they were sure that his son (the Grumpy Groundskeeper) did it. But it turns out that Mayor McCrazy wanted to ruin the golf tournament because he hoped it would help his son get over his obsession with losing a golf game to a scrawny beatnik all those years ago. I don’t know why he thought that getting the contest cancelled for one year due to clown related disappearances would achieve that goal; but it’s Scooby Doo, so just roll with it.
Anyhoo, we cut to the Mayor giving a press conference saying he’s really sorry about scaring the crap out of everyone and he swears that his opinion of mini-golf has changed for the better and that he no longer hates his loser son. And that’s enough to get everyone to forgive him for terrorizing all those innocent people
Speaking of innocent people, you may be wondering what became of those children from the opening andWhite Tiger Woods. Well, Fred questions it after the press conference (it didn’t come up BEFORE that!?!?) and Scooby uses his nose to find them in a nearby faux castle.
After finding the kidnapped children and the celebrity BOUND AND F***ING GAGGED in a dark storage room, the gang casually lets them out and goes back to the golf tournament. Shaggy wins and everybody cheers. Everybody except the poor kids who will no doubt need years of therapy to get over the trauma of being swallowed by a giant clown, tied up by a creepy old dude, and locked in a dark closet for 24 hours.
Speaking of Mayor McCrazy, he was STILL wearing his "MAYOR" sash at the end of the episode! How the hell didn’t he at least get suspended from his mayor duties after he confessed to assault, kidnapping, and child endangerment? Is he a freakin’ Kennedy or something!? What the hell!?!?!
Yeah…that’s the one HUGE problem I have with What’s New Scooby Doo. No one EVER goes to jail in this show! It wouldn’t be so bad if the culprits only committed minor crimes; but a lot of episodes have featured people like Mayor McCrazy who commit real, horrible crimes and get away with it because they have a sob story. I know What’s New is aimed at little kids; but that’s all the more reason to showcase the consequences of bad behavior. After all, A Pup Named Scooby Doo was also specifically aimed at kids, and that show sent crooks to prison in almost every episode (heck, Shaggy's father was a cop who sometimes personally arrested the criminals that his kid unmasked)!
Kids need to learn that you can’t solve problems by assaulting people with giant clown robots and locking them in sheds. And if Scooby Doo won’t teach this lesson, then who will?
Anyhoo, if you can ignore the bullcrap ending, this episode is pretty cute. It’s funny to see Velma freak out over a completely irrational phobia. And getting to see Velma and Scooby pal around for an entire episode AND get a Pup shout out on top of it is enough to make me forgive the screwed up moral at the end.
As much as I love doing reviews of Pup Named Scooby Doo episodes, I thought it would be fun to do an episode re-cap from a Scooby show that isn’t clouded by my nostalgia goggles. What’s New Scooby Doo is a decent show; but I found it to be VERY hit-and-miss. It got some big things wrong (I’ll get to them later on). But one of the things it did right was making Fred and Velma fun and interesting without flanderizing them too much. And this particular episode was all about Velma and the one bizarre phobia that was strong enough to make her play hooky during a mystery…
Our episode begins at a mini-golf course after closing time.
Two random children are breaking in because the little boy wants to get a free game token by sinking a hole-in-one on the clown course.
Since this is the opening to a Scooby Doo episode, the golf game doesn't go well for these poor children.
Seriously, this scene is surprisingly creepy considering the fact that What’s New is specifically aimed at a very young demographic.
After the innocent children are gobbled up, we cut to the peppy theme song!
Cut to the next day.
Our Heroes are chilling out at the mini-golf course. Turns out Shaggy is competing in the mini-golf national championship. His competitors are White Tiger Woods (he’s given the name “Cougar Forrest” here. But he's basically White Tiger Woods)
…and a little girl at least half his age named Miranda Wright (**insert Bonkers joke here**).
Miranda acts like an annoying brat. But I think she’s kinda justified. I know golf isn’t exactly a contact sport; but it still seems unfair to make a little girl compete against two grown men in a sports competition (especially when one of them is a professional athlete).
Anyhoo, while Shaggy, Miranda, and White Tiger Woods are playing; Fred, Velma, and Daphne wander around sticking their noses where they don’t belong. This annoys the moody groundskeeper.
Our trio proceeds to pester the poor dude for details while he’s trying to do his job until he relents and allows them to hang around the crime scene (as long as they promise to help him out by moving a large tarp).
When they remove the tarp, the giant clown head is revealed. This causes Velma to freak out, jump into Fred’s arms, and go into PTSD flashback mode.
Cut to a flashback to Velma’s 5th birthday (and the main reason I chose to review this episode)…
PUP REFERENCE!!!!
Yup. The flashback uses the Pup Named Scooby Doo character designs! I’m not crazy about the colors (they look bad with the Pup outfits) and Frank Welker and Mindy Cohn are terrible at imitating kiddie voices; but the reference is so cool I can get over those things.
Anyhoo, we find out that Little Velma was permanently traumatized when the birthday clown her parents hired threw her birthday gift (a full set of encyclopedias) into a wood chipper to make confetti. So not only did this clown leave an innocent child with permanent psychological damage, he ruined what must have been a very expensive birthday present. I hope Velma’s parents sued him.
The horror.......
END FLASHBACK
Daphne calms Velma by assuring her that they’ll make sure to stay far away from where the giant spooky clown is. And they go back to the other side of the course to cheer Shaggy on.
Cut to the competition
Surprisingly, little Miranda is having trouble keeping up with two men who are TWICE HER SIZE AND AGE and is sitting in last place.
This doesn’t make her happy (seriously, would it have killed the mini-golf higher ups to have separate competitions for children and adults!?)
Meanwhile, Scooby is having troubles, too. He’s freaked out by the haunted house course and is having trouble fulfilling his caddy duties because a lot of the holes have spooky themes (and the lack of opposable thumbs probably doesn’t help either).
Just as Shaggy is moving into first place, guess who shows up…..THE CLOWN!
Shaggy shows uncharacteristic bravery and creativity by hitting a bag of popcorn into the clown’s face (which causes birds to surround it and chase it away).
When Daphne and Fred comment on how bizarre it is to see Shaggy show off his cajones in front of a monster, Shaggy tells them that he’s spent years working his way up the championship and he’s not about to let some robot screw him out of it (who knew Shaggy was so competitive!).
Shaggy tells Velma that he needs her to stop cowering behind Fred and help them solve the mystery because the competition will be cancelled if the clown keeps eating people.
Velma responds by making up a BS story about needing to attend a book fair that day and Scooby, seeing an opportunity to play hooky (and hang out with his runner up BFF), runs off with her.
Double glasses: And adorableness ensues
Personally, I don't think they even needed Velma anyway. They could have quickly and easily solved this problem if they had just hired Wakko Warner:
Cut to later:
Fred, Daphne, and Shaggy are clue hunting. And Shaggy’s OOC behavior (like turning down food to keep working) is freaking Fred and Daphne out. After a minute, they end up eavesdropping on an argument between the Groundskeeper and the Mayor (who wears a helpful sash to remind people who he is).
Things learned from Scooby Doo...Mayors make bad parents
The trio finds out two important
1. The Groundskeeper’s dream is to compete in the golf tournament and he’s really bitter that it hasn’t happened yet.
2. The Mayor is the Groundskeeper’s father. And he’s ashamed of his son and his son’s stupid dream (I guess that’s why he refuses to wear his “DAD” sash)
After the Mayor and the Groundskeeper leave, the trio enters the Groundskeeper’s private office without permission (our heroes, everybody!) and find a creepy shrine dedicated to our favorite beatnik.
Cut to Scooby and Velma:
Velma is taking lessons from Scooby on how to goof off and avoid getting involved in solving the mystery. And she takes to it pretty quickly. However, since neither of them are smart enough to just leave the park altogether, the mystery eventually finds them.
They spot Miranda working on some mysterious mechanical device and spouting exposition about how her “device” will ensure her victory. Velma knows that she should tell her friends about this clue; but she fears that doing the right thing will only increase their chances of running into the Clown Monster. So she asks Scooby for his advice on the best way to avoid getting anything productive done. His answer: BATTING CAGES!
Cut to Batting Cages:
While at the batting cages, Scooby bonds with Velma by teaching her how to catch a flying pizza with her teeth (no really). They’re having a great time until the monster finds them and starts chasing them down. When this happens, Scooby has to be the brave one because poor Velma can't stop freaking out.
Awww, remember when Scooby was chivalrous and sweet and not a VIOLENT, SEXIST F&%($*!?
Lucky for him, the rest of the gang hears Velma’s cries for help and follows them into the arcade. This leads us to a musical chase sequence. The music isn’t worth noting because the music in What’s New wasn’t very good (mostly generic sounding bland pop). But at least the visuals are fun......
We even get to see Scooby rescue Velma by improvising an ice cream gun!
After the gang evades the clown with their clever disguises…
…they spot White Tiger Woods and Shaggy concludes that he MUST be the culprit. Just as he finishes listing the evidence against him (he hates competition and no one can lose if the tournament is cancelled), the clown pops out of the bushes and eats the poor guy
So much for that theory. This is why Shaggy never gets to solve mysteries
After the gang manages to lose the clown, they walk in on the mayor’s press conference. Now that a celebrity has been gobbled up, he has FINALLY decided to close the park and cancel the tournament (because I guess two children disappearing without a trace just wasn’t motivation enough).
Miranda is suspiciously happy about White Tiger Wood’s disappearance (and surprisingly calm about the giant clown with an appetite for golfers and children roaming around the park).
Shaggy is distraught about the contest being cancelled (kinda insensitive considering at least three people have presumably been gobbled up by a killer clown robot) and insists that they must solve this case before everyone leaves the park. Because, gosh darn it, he will NOT allow that clown to deprive him of a chance to wipe the floor with a little girl who is both half his size and half his age! HECK YEAH!
The gang goes to interrogate the groundskeeper and they finally find out what the hell the creepy Shaggy shrine was about. Turns out it was a Hate Shrine. And the groundskeeper blames Shaggy for “ruining his life” because, ten years previously, Shaggy kicked his ass at the national putt putt championship and the guy never got over it. And he’s determined to get his edge back and start competing again (even if his dad disapproves). Before he leaves, he gets in Shaggy’s face and promises that he’ll “get him”. But this guy is such a pansy that he can't even intimidate the poster child for cowardice.
Shaggy takes the initiative to build the trap and elect Scooby and Velma as bait (which annoys the piss out of Freddy).
Naturally Velma and Scooby balk at the idea. Daphne tries to tempt Velma with Scooby Snacks and, when that doesn’t work, she uses a new encyclopedia CD Rom to bribe her. It’s hard to believe that Velma never replaced the books that the awful birthday clown destroyed all those years ago (I guess her parents didn’t sue him after all).
So they wait for the Clown in the Go-Cart (and for some reason, Scooby is the driver)
Unfortunately, Shaggy misses the shot that’s supposed to set off the obligatory Freddy trap. And this causes him to get eaten by the clown.
This causes Velma to get so pissed off that she ignores her crippling clown-phobia and beats the Clown Monster into submission with a golf club
**cue squeeing of Shaggy/Velma shippers**
When Shaggy emerges from the Clown’s belly, he goes on about how terrified and hungry he is (signaling that his temporary bravery has officially faded). Velma then proceeds to open up the control panel to reveal the real culprit…
THE MAYOR!!
This confuses the gang because they were sure that his son (the Grumpy Groundskeeper) did it. But it turns out that Mayor McCrazy wanted to ruin the golf tournament because he hoped it would help his son get over his obsession with losing a golf game to a scrawny beatnik all those years ago. I don’t know why he thought that getting the contest cancelled for one year due to clown related disappearances would achieve that goal; but it’s Scooby Doo, so just roll with it.
Anyhoo, we cut to the Mayor giving a press conference saying he’s really sorry about scaring the crap out of everyone and he swears that his opinion of mini-golf has changed for the better and that he no longer hates his loser son. And that’s enough to get everyone to forgive him for terrorizing all those innocent people
Speaking of innocent people, you may be wondering what became of those children from the opening andWhite Tiger Woods. Well, Fred questions it after the press conference (it didn’t come up BEFORE that!?!?) and Scooby uses his nose to find them in a nearby faux castle.
After finding the kidnapped children and the celebrity BOUND AND F***ING GAGGED in a dark storage room, the gang casually lets them out and goes back to the golf tournament. Shaggy wins and everybody cheers. Everybody except the poor kids who will no doubt need years of therapy to get over the trauma of being swallowed by a giant clown, tied up by a creepy old dude, and locked in a dark closet for 24 hours.
Speaking of Mayor McCrazy, he was STILL wearing his "MAYOR" sash at the end of the episode! How the hell didn’t he at least get suspended from his mayor duties after he confessed to assault, kidnapping, and child endangerment? Is he a freakin’ Kennedy or something!? What the hell!?!?!
Yeah…that’s the one HUGE problem I have with What’s New Scooby Doo. No one EVER goes to jail in this show! It wouldn’t be so bad if the culprits only committed minor crimes; but a lot of episodes have featured people like Mayor McCrazy who commit real, horrible crimes and get away with it because they have a sob story. I know What’s New is aimed at little kids; but that’s all the more reason to showcase the consequences of bad behavior. After all, A Pup Named Scooby Doo was also specifically aimed at kids, and that show sent crooks to prison in almost every episode (heck, Shaggy's father was a cop who sometimes personally arrested the criminals that his kid unmasked)!
Kids need to learn that you can’t solve problems by assaulting people with giant clown robots and locking them in sheds. And if Scooby Doo won’t teach this lesson, then who will?
Anyhoo, if you can ignore the bullcrap ending, this episode is pretty cute. It’s funny to see Velma freak out over a completely irrational phobia. And getting to see Velma and Scooby pal around for an entire episode AND get a Pup shout out on top of it is enough to make me forgive the screwed up moral at the end.
