No mystery here. Mindy Kaling’s Velma is pretty terrible and neither critics nor audiences are pulling their punches.
The first two episodes dropped on HBO Max over the weekend and according to HBO, “Velma is an adult animated comedy series telling the origin story of Velma Dinkley, the unsung and under-appreciated brains of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang. This original and humorous spin unmasks the complex and colorful past of one of America’s most beloved mystery solvers.”
Sounds like it should be good, right? Wrong. The show is almost unwatchable and the internet is ablaze over it. The biggest problem with Velma is that it feels like it’s trying to be diverse and inclusive and if it feels like it’s trying, it’s doing something wrong. The weird thing is, Kaling is no stranger to diversity and inclusion! The Mindy Project, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Sex Lives of College Girls, and Never Have I Ever effortlessly have very diverse casts and are LGBTQ+ and disabled-inclusive.
None of those shows feel forced, especially in your face “woke,” but Velma, on the other hand, is extreme, and viewers have noticed.
The critics’ reviews aren’t quite as brutal as the court of public opinion, but those who panned it didn’t hold back. Currently, the show has a score of 57% rotten based on 21 reviews with an audience score of 6% based on 5687 ratings.
While it’s entirely possible that the alt-right has an army of bots set up to review-bomb the series, it really is actually pretty bad.
Darren Franich from Entertainment Weekly said, “Velma mostly replaces the old silly sensibility with crass name-droppy pointlessness.”
Richard Roeper from Chicago Sun-Times said, “Jokes become exhausting in the meta, not-for-kids Scooby-Doo prequel.”
Gwen Ihnat from TheWrap didn’t mince words when she said, “You have to wonder, in the development of Velma, where did everything go so horribly wrong?”
Brian Lowry from CNN.com agrees, “Sporadically witty but ultimately rather tedious, the HBO Max comedy leverages more than a half-century of name equity to yield an animated prequel that’s definitely not for kids, meddling or otherwise.”
Joshua Alston from Variety also is not a fan, “It’s been done before, and much better, using unique takes on the gang that maintained their essence, so Velma is never as groundbreaking as it seems to think it is. More than that, these characters are just really unpleasant to spend time with.”
Liz Shannon Miller from Consequence gave Velma a C+ and said, “While Velma certainly suffers in comparison to HBO Max’s Harley Quinn, the series’ problems are entirely its own, perhaps the biggest one being a failure of tone and balance, as there’s too much jammed into this series and no clear focus.”
The Twitterverse did not hold back and the overwhelming consensus is that the show is abysmal. This one tweet sums up the show,
Many others shared their frustration with the show:
REELated:
It’s so unfortunate that this show is so ridiculously awful. It has Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) voicing Fred, Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians) voicing Daphne, with Sam Richardson, Sarayu Blue, Melissa Fumero, Jane Lynch, and Wanda Sykes. With the overwhelming majority in full hate-mode, Velma actually received a few good reviews from top critics!
Candice Frederick from Huffington Post seemed to enjoy it and said, Teen and genre lore is so seeped into each line of dialogue in Velma that it’s impossible not to enjoy it in spite of its shortcomings.
Proma Khosla from indieWire agrees, “Velma is doing a lot — possibly too much — but there are emotional beats and comedic gags that do land amid a saturated creative canvas, including arcs for the future Mysteries, Inc gang that combine existing backstory with eclectic Velma flourishes.”
Lauren Mechling from Guardian said, “Look past the copulating cockroaches and anatomy jokes that hinge on baby carrots, won’t you? Velma is a supernatural spoof at its most beautifully chaotic.”
Saloni Gajjar from AV Club gave Velma a B+ and said, “Velma boasts a well-structured narrative with jokes, suspense, interconnected plotlines, and evolving relationships instead of a case-of-the-week format and various monster antics.”
Believe it or not, there are positive posts about Velma on Twitter:
It is unclear what Kaling’s intentions were with this show. Does she hate Scooby Doo for some reason and she felt the need to fling excrement all over it? Does she have a secret vendetta against David Zaslav, the President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery and she’s intentionally trying to make him look bad? Did her incredible cast of voice actors lose a bet against her and she’s making them pay up by putting them in the worst TV show of all time? Is she intentionally going overboard with the “wokeness” to a fault in order to attempt some level of satire that’s going over all of our heads?
The one thing Kaling has successfully done is unite the country against her and the new Velma TV series, which seems like a weird goal to have.
With 5687 ratings, Velma has a 6% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Velma has a 0.4/10 in user reviews on Metacritic (a 59/100 from critics)
With nearly 24,531 votes in, Velma has a 1.3/10 on IMDB.
Velma airs exclusively on HBO Max, with two new episodes dropping each Thursday until February 9.
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It’s pretty clear that Velma is no Harley Quinn, HBO Max’s other raunchy animated comedy.
