Velma Series Review: Velma, the Scooby Doo gang’s brainy and bespectacled teen sleuth, has always had an air about her. A Scooby Doo film released in 2022 finally put an end to decades of fan theories about Velma’s sexual orientation.

The iconic character from the Saturday morning cartoon is back, complete with his signature pumpkin-colored turtleneck and potbelly as well as a new pair of glasses à la Martin Scorsese and as the main attraction of an eight-episode spinoff series that is both chaotic and hilarious.

In the most recent adaptation, the sexuality plot is treated with disdain. The new Velma, directed and voiced by Mindy Kaling, is just too quick and dry-witted to get bogged down with the yearnings of a cartoon character — or, for that matter, with any single issue.

Life is too brief to swear fealty to big concepts or plots, and Kaling’s reworking of Velma, who is crudely drawn but highly enjoyable, is proof. Kaling, who is used to working quickly and freely (she published The Sex Lives of College Girls and Never Have I Ever during lockdown while also starting an imprint with Amazon and having her second child), brings her A-game to this silly project she made with her longtime collaborator Charlie Grandy.

Velma Series Review: The Deceptive First Episode

A bunch of teenage women start out the story by having a shower together. Daphne (Constance Wu), a rival of Velma’s and a potential romantic interest, wonders aloud,

“Include you ever noticed how pilot episodes of TV shows generally have more gratuitous sex and nudity than the remainder of the series?”

It’s a hot, if unoriginal, introduction that reminds me of how Mike White begins each season of his White Lotus series with a body, before plunging headfirst into the far more enjoyable waters of acerbic conversation and character study, at which he shines. Before Velma could find its footing, it would have to shed its mediocre sex jokes and campy excess.

Velma Series Review: The Second Episode

The show’s scary plots (Kaling’s mother is a missing mystery writer, there’s a criminal underworld, and a serial killer is on the loose) provide her with ample opportunity to spend hours delivering her signature witticisms.

Scooby devotees won’t be let down by the show’s colour scheme or the abundance of cobwebs; it’s not only for Kaling aficionados. Kaling, however, interweaves comedy about the contradictions inherent in femininity, sexism, and power against this retro-drippy setting.

She mocks both the wine-obsessed motherhood community and the inanity of the internet. She has the guts to poke fun at the trend toward minority-owned businesses and Velma’s brown skin (a running gag in the show is that no one can figure out Velma’s race).

Minority Representation in ‘Velma’

All of the members of the redesigned gang are minorities except for one character, Fred Jones, who is white, which is probably even more daring on Kaling’s part because she does not provide any meta commentary on this decision.

Due to difficulties obtaining the necessary permissions, the dog is no longer a member of the band; instead, a dog that bears a striking resemblance to him appears in a humorous scene involving a plein-air painter who wears clogs.

With the help of her lawyer father and Fred, Velma keeps busy ostensibly looking for her missing mystery writer mother, but really, just ignore the bugs that are having babies and the baby carrot anatomical jokes, okay? Velma is a gloriously wild supernatural satire.