As a youth, I loved watching the cartoon Scooby-Doo and anything involving him. I did prefer the shows that included everyone though, which included Fred, Daphne and Velma. So I knew that I would be checking out the new HBO Max series Velma. I have now seen the first two episodes and I am unsure if I will be watching any more of them. I did not like these episodes much at all.

Let me make this clear. I did not dislike this show because of what the haters on the Internet may say. I’ve said how much I hate the term ‘woke’ before and anything that might be connected to those arguments are not he reason I found this show lacking.

I did not find the tone of the show funny. I did not like the new takes on the characters. It felt like some kind of amalgam of TV’s Riverdale and Netflix’s Big Mouth. That just did not work for me.

There were a couple of giggle worthy moments, but. outside of that, it felt like the humor did not fit with these characters. I did kind of find the mystery surrounding Velma’s mother to be interesting and the development of the relationship between Velma and Daphne was intriguing (though it felt very rushed). There were also some decent meta-jokes that were okay. They did not elevate the show above the disappointment, but it is there which means that it perhaps could improve.

Mindy Kaling is the voice of Velma. The voice acting of the show has been decent so far. The look of the show and the animation has been fine too. It just does not fit together at this point yet. It feels as if HBO Max thought that they had such a success with the adult animated Harley Quinn that they could do the same with another IP. This feels like the wrong IP to use.

I may try to stick it out until the character voiced by “Weird Al” Yankovic makes his appearance. According to Wikipedia, Al is playing a character named Dandruff Tuba and I do not remember seeing this character as of yet.

After the first two episodes, Velma has a ton of work to do if it intends to keep me as a viewer. Apparently, the series broke HBO Max’s record for the biggest premiere day of an original animated show. I am intrigued to find out if it will be a show to maintain that viewership because the reviews have not been positive and the online vitriol is active.