With Velma S2 now confirmed (only like 2 episodes are out now) I thought I’d give it a shot. See how it really is.
It really is bad. A lot of people call it “Woke” but no, it’s like some anti-woke person’s view on what “Woke-ness” is.
The jokes are all awful. They really are just “reference gags” a la what Family Guy or Rick and Morty does. But worse, whereas those shows at least use a pop culture reference as part of the joke (whether as the setup or punchline), Velma’s reference gags are literally just “Hey remember this thing?” They’re on the tier Seltzer and Friedberg, except whereas those hacks made “Hey remember this thing?” joke about other movies Velma does it with racial issues.
Yes, Velma managed the dubious honor of being just as bad at comedy as Seltzer and Friedberg but with the added bonus of being offensive.
And as stated the characters are all awful. Once again this is less some satirical take on their established character traits and more like some hater’s parody of them. About the only one that semi works is -Shaggy- Norville being very anti-drug, which…haha, fans have joked about Shaggy being a stoner for decades?
Of course this also means their entire personalities is that they are awful people. The most optimistic I can be is that maybe this is intentional, allowing a lot of room for character growth over the series. It’s a pretty simple narrative trick and I’d almost bet that’s what they are going for. But geez, they really started on 0 so they can have all the room for a character arc on improvement.