Be-Cool Scooby-Doo is the most entertaining 2010′s series in the franchise
I’ve been on a Scooby-Doo mood recently because of the newest DTV coming out, and have watched episodes of the last 3 shows. For some reason, Mystery Incorporated has now gathered a resurgence on some reaction channels on Youtube. I had stopped watching Be Cool because I had no idea which episodes I had seen and hadn’t and wanted to refresh my memory. Guess Who, I hadn’t seen much of other than one off episodes since it premiered so I wanted to check it out.
Watching episodes of these iterations back to back, Be Cool was the one of them that I most wanted to keep watching
First, Mystery Incorporated, there is a lot to say about this that’s unpopular
It’s hard for me to get into because there’s way too much romance focus for the gang that takes away from the interesting overarching story. Knowing that story culminates in any bad thing that anyone did was because of an evil entity controlling everything makes the story feel pointless. Since the universe completely reset, nothing that happened in the show matters. It tried too hard to be an edgy-teen romance show that it stopped being a Scooby-Doo show. All the drama at the beginning makes you wonder how exactly they even became a team in the first place at all.
People say it gave them personality, Fred loving traps to a basically romantic level is not a personality, Daphne being head over heels and overfocused on Fred is not a personality. The Velma/Shaggy stuff is horribly written and I’m not gonna excuse it because of an instagram comment made a decade after the show aired. Velma is completely controlling and toxic towards Shaggy asking him to choose her or Scooby. When Shaggy does choose Scooby, the show frames it as if you should be feeling sad for Velma. Any tension between them in the season frames Shaggy in the wrong for breaking it up. And instead of referencing how Velma acted was wrong...they just never mention it again in S2
Then for Guess Who?
It has the opposite issue of being too safe. It has some fun moments but it’s basically just The New Scooby-Doo Movies with modern stars and in half the timeframe. When only one character is talking, the rest of the characters just stand in poses almost creepily still. Most of the designs are fine, but for some reason Daphne’s model seems weird to me. In those pose moments, Daphne will either look like she has a very wide smile or for some reason agitated.
One big issue is that this show focuses so heavily on the guest star and chase sequences that it doesn’t have time for the actual mysteries. One thing I do appreciate about this show is the unique takes on the Scooby-Doo Doors trope. They do it every episode and you can tell it’s the part the crew had the most fun doing
I will say I did enjoy the meta episode of them meeting their voice actors. You can tell the cast had a realy fun time with that one and the last line of Scooby thanking Frank Welker for everything is a really sweet note to end on.
Finally, Be Cool
This show does a really good job of keeping the episodic formulaic nature of the franchise, but keeping it fresh and funny for the modern day. Having a more wacky humor fits the very different art style it has. For me, it’s impossible to have come out of watching one of these episodes and not having enjoyed it in some way.
They do the Fred idea way better in this one, where instead of being obsessed with traps he’s obsessed with mysteries in general and the obsession doesn’t go to the weird romantic level MI does with Fred. But besides the obsession, he isn’t stupid and is the leader of the team Daphne being the wild card in the group is a lot more entertaining to watch then her MI counterpart. Scooby is kept to saying like 4 or 5 words for one-liners and it really works in his favor.
Shaggy and Scooby are at their best in this show as well, especially with the moments where they trick the creature. You can tell the writers had a really fun time with that trope.
To me this iteration feels like a real group of friends that care about each other even if they get annoyed at each other.
You can tell the crew of this show the franchise and is important to them to stay true to the original roots while still being able to be poke fun at the conventions of it, but it’s never done in a demeaning way.
The art style does take a little getting used to it, but everything else about the show makes up for it and you might even like the style. Also compared to Guess Who stock poses, the other characters actually react to people speaking instead of just standing there still. There’s always something you didn’t notice the first time around when watching these episodes.
All 3 of these shows had 2 seasons and 52 episodes, but Be Cool, Scooby-Doo is the one that I personally think deserved a longer run.
