Reviews WesternAnimation / Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated

The franchise finally embraces itself

There's been a trend over the past decade or so where every new piece of Scooby Doo media takes cheap shots at the past—how dated things like the Mystery Machine and Fred's ascot are, and the silliness of the old Catch Phrases, things like that. It'd gotten to the point where it almost seems like the franchise is ashamed of itself, ashamed of its past, which would be fine if it was doing anything to improve on it.

Mystery Inc. does a great job sidestepping this. The show is set in an Anachronism Stew, the catch phrases are played totally straight. Because it sees the problem with the franchise in a way recent installments didn't: the issue was never the datedness or how cheesy the old show was. It was that the premise was nonsensical and that the characterizations made planes look three-dimensional. And rather than mocking that it goes in and fixes both, without particularly heavy damage to either. These are still the characters we know and love, doing the things we're used to them doing, but for far better reasons and with much more sentiment.

If the show takes cheap shots, it's at Hannah-Barbera's hackery rather than at the franchise itself. There are endless cheap shots at the quantity of rip-offs the show spawned and the endless attempts to "retool" the franchise without fixing anything, and how it came at the expense of moving forward and acknowledging the modern kids-animation landscape. The show embraces the past, but also takes its first steps into a century that has gradually been ratcheting up how much characterization and continuity we let into our kids shows.

I hope that this is a trend that continues, that future incarnations of the franchise learn from this installment. Because there's an important lesson here: all you need to do to revitalize Scooby Doo is write it well.