Velma: How NOT to write a mystery.

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Velma is a Scooby Doo spinoff with little concern for the source material or mystery solving. Even though the main mystery has stakes and potential they mess it up by pulling a twist villain so random I can't help but feel like logically it couldn't have been her. Let's talk about it.

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[genebaker]

It would make more sense if Velma's mom was the culprit. The way how awful and vile Velma is, her mom couldn't stand having her as a daughter. Decides to go to the lab with all the equipment, spend 2 years putting the lab together and figuring out how to work with it, kidnapping and removing brains from not just pretty girls but who are also nicer. Why 3 of them, trial and error. Why 2 of them found at Velma's locker and trash bin, out of spite. Her plan is to put one of them's brain into Velma's body in hopes of having a good mother and daughter relationship that she has always wanted.

[tangroro]

I actually liked the idea her mom is the killer because she wants to put a popular girl's brain into her daughter, it would be the show finally acknowledging that Velma is so unlikable, even her own mother doesn't want her, and tries to fix her by literally putting another person's brain into her

[babbit]

Personally, you wanna know who I think made more sense as a villain?
Norville's mom Blythe. Honestly she makes more sense than Fred's mom, even down to the clues and oh my god she was totally the original villain wasn't she
As principle of the school she'd not only have access to the entire school, she'd also have the addresses of every student there, explaining how she got a body in both Velma's locker and recycling bin (additionally as a female nobody would think it odd seeing her going into the girls showers). As the daughter of Edna Perdue, she has the highest motivation to finish her mothers work, and it could even have been worked that Edna swapped her brain with her daughter's and confined her old body with Blythe's brain to the asylum in a bid to achieve pseudo immortality. Lamont is so much of a "beta" (not my words just what the show says) that even if he did catch on he'd be too scared to fight against her and would be the perfect lackey, having nigh-hypnotic powers himself and being able to learn everything about the girls at school.
"But what clues would point to her as the villain" for starters, the gold necklace that is totally a necklace and not a stupid pocket watch. Blythe is, as far as I'm aware, the only character to wear any kind of golden necklaces, and even if hers are much thicker, it's still more of a clue than the necklace suddenly transmuting into a pocket watch. Secondly, why would Blythe have continued to visit the Asylum even after her mom passed away? Simply put, she has no real reason, the show was lazy... unless you think about how obsessed her mother was with brain swapping. Maybe, in a big moment of cartoon logic, Edna Perdue removed her own brain in the asylum, and was really "alive" this whole time? Blythe would be looking for the perfect girl to put her mom's brain back into while visiting her on occasion, each one not suiting her mom's wants so Blythe "disposed" of them. Eventually though, a spark of genius overtook one of them and convinced the other to go with it: plant Edna's brain into that of Fred Jones, heir to JGA. They'd be loaded and also get their old home back.
"But why try and pin it on Velma" why NOT try and pin it on Velma? She's a friendless, narcissistic, egomaniacal, downright rude person who is known for her bursts of outrage. She made herself the literal perfect target to have murders pinned on, and the principle of the school would know this.

[giorgiapetrei]

Things that Victoria could have done instead of setting up that stupid plan:
1 Raise her son better so that Fred can become a good business man.
2 Just hypnotize Fred.
3 Don't give to Fred the company. She could just keep being the CEO and then give her place to someone more qualified (Even if Fred IS qualified but she doesn't realize that).
4 Let Fred merry a clever woman that one day could help her son run the family business.
5 If the the show really needed the brain situation to happen, they could have made Victoria kidnap only one girl (maybe Daphne) to switch her brain with her own and live forever, so that she never has to give up her place in the company (I know that would generate a lot of controversities, but it makes much sense than Victoria stealing the brains of random girls to put them in her son's body)

[insertclevernamehere]

Oddly enough, they show that Fred is extremely impressionable with the whole "reading one piece of feminist literature made him completely incapable of not being able to appreciate a woman's inner beauty" subplot, meaning that if Fred's Mom put in even the bare minimum of effort in raising him to be business-savy, he probably would have soaked it up like a sponge. In other words, she'd rather go through this whole complicated plot to effectively kill her own son and replace him with someone else than put in a smidge of time to raise him...

[baronbonblaze]

9:00 About the whole snapping fingers bit, in the middle of episode 2 while they were selling drugs Daphne snaps her fingers RIGHT IN FRONT of Velma but it didn't break the hypnosis. And like stated in the video, if Fred's mom improved the hypnosis to not get broken by a snapping finger, why not just use it on her son?

[gundamguy]

I find it kind of funny that they constantly talk about Fred's "white male privilege" and try to make him out to be pathetic and all talk compared to everyone else; then they make him suffer so much and make him grow from it that he becomes the best written and sympathetic character in the whole series (which isn't saying a lot).

[miguelperez]

The way it sounded when they spoke about the creation of the show Mindy had an idea for a show and they told her to pick an ip to use as a fleshy skinsuit.

[TFFan]

To quote Kronk from Emperor’s New Groove…

‘By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.’

[UncensoredScion]

There's a lot of people who see this kind of thing as being deliberate and I can't really blame them, there's no reason to be spiteful here except to try and tarnish the IP, they've done it over and over and will keep doing it.

[patrickleighpresents]

Agatha Christie didn't plan the endings of her mysteries in advance, but she did make sure she thought of explanations for all the clues/red herrings that she included in the story as she was writing it so that everything would add up in the end. And, of course, she edited the story in later drafts. This show feels like it was written in a similar fashion, say for one key thing: It wasn't improved in later drafts. Clues/red herrings were included but without much thought into how they would add up in the end and they were not removed once the ending was written when those clues/red herrings ended up contradicting the conclusion. If they didn't have time to edit the script, then they should have planned out the ending beforehand so they were able to get everything right. Mystery writing is difficult, but if you're going to write one, you have to commit to doing it properly.

[DrakeSilver]

give this to literally every single other scooby-doo incarnation ever. When they say something is a clue, it actually is a clue. When they portray people doing sneaky things they tell us WHY they were acting that way, even if it's a dumb reason they still give us SOMETHING!

[annieandelsieofarendelle]

Personally, I made Diya a co-conspirator to Victoria who performed the murders themselves in exchange for framing her daughter and ruining her husband’s career since she actually hated them for in her mind destroying her life.

As for Victoria, she didn’t care about the business or anything, she wanted to be immortal by taking over her own son’s body and then her grandchildren’s body. As for Fred and being bad mother, she deliberately raised him to be as stupid and obnoxious as possible so no one would care about the real Fred.

As for William, he actually knew about his wife’s schemes and was trying to gather proof to stop her before she essentially killed Fred. He’s not a good person at all, but he doesn’t want his only child to have his brain replaced.

[liljenborg]

The Villain should have ended up being Velma. They should have had this kinda post-credit scene where Fred finds this one last clue that reveals that Velma discovered her mother's research lab years ago and we get this "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Murder of Rodger Ackroid" montage that leaves it open to the idea that Velma was the one stealing the brains all along and planting all the clues that keep pointing at everyone else because she wanted to transplant herself into a hot girl's body the whole time - and even hypnotized Fred's mom into thinking she's the real culprit.

[jjjmadness]

This is why the mystery is in this show so terrible. Not only is Victoria's plan completely asinine, finding a popular girl's brain to replace her idiot son's brain because she couldn't be bothered to teach her son to be smart, but most of her actions are convoluted.

She kidnaps people when she doesn't have to and could have simply hired Velma's mom since they both share a common interest. She brainwashes Velma to hide her crime but then tries to frame Velma, which ultimately causes more people to be about the missing girl case.

Victoria is a prime example of what happens when an idiot writer creates a mystery but is too stupid to plan it properly.

I wouldn't be surprised if Rian Jhonson wrote this mystery.

[inediblegrobb]

Mid-production rewrites. That is the only thing that could explain how inconsistent this show was, and especially why the final reveal comes so out of nowhere.

[angelsartandgaming]

I said this in a Rick and Morty video long ago (this was before everything came out and around the time I think season 5 just ended), "the problem is that [Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland] are so allergic to being predictable that they ironically make things more predictable or nonsensical by trying to be unpredictable."
That's how I feel about the Fred's Mom twist. It's like they wanted it to be Diya or William, but either in a case of Mindy feeling both of those are too predictable or making Velma's mom just as perfect as Velma Sue, they went for the least obvious twist without doing anything to literally foreshadow it.

I also said this in the Rick and Morty video and I'll say it here; predictably is not a bad thing and the audience will have a more enjoyable time figuring out the mystery as much as the characters. For example, many people got right that Grunkle Stan on Gravity Falls has a twin brother who is the author of the journals, but we got just as much enjoyment finding out his name was actually Stanford and the Stan we've been following was Stanley all along. Then when you go back to the previous episodes, it suddenly makes a bunch of sense with sprinkled clues

[OcioCamaraMx]

Another thing someone pointed out is how Velma rarely gatters clues, most of the clues are giving to her either by Daphne, Fred or Norville, she acusses a suspect twice and both times she is wrong.
I also recomend the Velma meets orginal Velma clip. In a few minutes the clip adds mistery, horror and such a deep and interesting lore this series couldn't do with 10 episodes and a millionaire budget.

[daneyal]

More like "Velma: how not to write PERIOD".

[Excaliwolf]

They somehow made Fred this really tragic and sympathetic character. That everyone universally feels bad for while at the same time making Velma the most hated character in the show. Funny.