History Incorporated

It’s no mystery that I am a purist.   I love my favorite shows and movies right where they were, in the past.   Remakes. Adaptations.  A purist craves not these things.  That’s how the blog started.   Someone in Hollywood was making a remake or something and I felt a great disturbance in the pop culture force.  I opened an email and began typing furiously to… no one.  Then, I joined blogger and shared all the crap that’s inside my head.  Now, five years later, you’re all worse people for enjoying it.  ;)

However, there are few times when something gets remade or rebooted and it is phenomenal.   It doesn’t happen very often.  It’s about as frequent as Haley’s comet around here.  But it happened recently and I cannot be happier with the results.

Let’s go back to the 60s. 

A little cartoon came along about a mystery solving gang and their beloved Great Dane.    Scooby-Doo Where Are You? debuted in 1969 and has run in some incarnation all the way through 2013.   That’s 44 years.    And while some instances weren’t all that great, *cough*Flim Flam*cough*Scrappy-Doo*cough* the show has managed to maintain a central theme since the original show.

It’s one of the few shows I have been able to enjoy all over again, thanks to my kid and DVD collections.  She loves the old episodes along with the Blue Falcon ones, as well.  But when Mystery, Incorporated came on Cartoon Network in 2010, I was skeptical.   It was the first time a Scooby-Doo show didn’t take place on Saturday Mornings.  Not only did it not serve as a continuation of the original series, more of a reboot, which angered me, but it also introduced elements of relationship drama that never existed before.   It used to always be the running gag that Fred would go off with Velma and Daphne, leaving Shaggy and Scooby to fend for themselves, cementing Fred’s pimp status.  And if he didn’t take Velma, it was a joke that she was a nerd and therefore, Fred wouldn’t be interested anyway.   However, in the new series, the relationship between Fred and Daphne is laid out, humorously at that and the real triangle occurs between Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo, oddly enough.  Nothing disgusting, more a “Bros before Hoes” mentality.

I gave it a shot, though.  My daughter and I would load up some OnDemand Doo and watch.  While she just enjoyed the show, I carefully scrutinized the plot and the connection to the canon of Scooby-Doo.

I.  Became.  Hooked.

Not only was this new incarnation smart and witty, but it dovetailed into the old series nicely and stood as a companion to the old episodes.   The only thing that changed was the timeframe for Mystery, Inc. coming together.  They made nods to every old “guy in a rubber suit” character and even self deprecated themselves by calling out how bad Scrappy-Doo and Flim Flam were perceived by fans.

The show also makes a lot of pop culture references to other movies and television shows that aren’t so blatant that you go “I see what you did there”.   It’s more like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe they worked that into the plot.”  For example, a recent episode saw Scooby-Doo attending a side-kick competition with all of the other Hanna Barbera side-kicks like Jabber Jaw and Speed Buggy.  There are other cross-over episodes, just like the older series, but with a twist.  Instead of the usual Blue Falcon persona, we are given a somewhat bad ass  ex-security guard turned vigilante.  The real twist is that Dog Wonder’s cybernetic components are a product of Quest Laboratories.  He still retains the somewhat dim personality.    In the same episode Zin shows up. 

Even the voice casting is a reference in and of itself.   While Matthew Lillard reprises his Shaggy from the Live Action films, Casey Kasem plays his Dad.  Grey DeLisle reprises Daphne, and Mindy Cohn reprises her role as Velma, but Linda Cardellini, who played her in the movies, becomes the hilarious Marcy Fleach/Hot Dog Water.  Jeffry Combs from the Re-Animator shows up as H.P. Hatecraft.  Even Vincent Van Ghoul comes back, albeit voiced by cartoon everyman Maurice La Marche.

The show also introduces an arc, which crosses the complete series.  A mysterious artifact seems to be tied to the history of Crystal Cove as well as the emergence of mystery solving teens, complete with an animal companion, in various decades.   There is even an overall villain, the previous Mystery Solving Club’s anthropomorphic side-kick, Professor Pericles, played by scenery chewing Udo Kier.

In the end, though, the storyline comes to a close and manages to effectively tie in all the history surrounding the various incarnations of the show.   They’ve been here before.   In each generation, the mystery solving group has never been able to free the demonic entity controlling their fates.   Much like the ridiculous plot to LOST, the latest version of Mystery, Inc. serves to meet that end, and they do.  But they also defeat the demon and reboot their own history.   All of the bad things never happened.  All of the masked monsters never got caught because they were not brought together to solve mysteries.  They were just kids in a town that was no longer the Most Haunted Town in America.  Except that Harlan Ellison, playing himself noticed, as did they.   He said they changed something that affected them remembering the alternate timeline.   He asks them to come to… get ready for it… Miskatonic University.  So, in essence, they set out on the road, just like they did in every iteration of Scooby-Doo.   Sometimes they are with Fred and Velma… sometimes they are with Flim Flam or Scrappy-Doo.  Sometimes they are with guest stars.   In any case, the explanation for all the different versions of Scooby-Doo cartoons are contained in this one episode. 

Pure. Genius.

I usually hate this kind of thing.   You know.  The turtles are aliens.   Yeah, but it totally works in this fashion.  In fact another full length movie that came out recently was very well done.    Mask of the Blue Falcon went for that crossover feel once again, but sort of went meta on the fact that Blue Falcon was a television show in their world, but not an actual superhero that the gang interacted with, when in fact the first episode of Blue Falcon indeed had the gang helping Blue Falcon catch the same villain in this film, Mr. Hyde. 

Jeff Bennet provided the voice of an elderly Owen Garrison, a play on the name Gary Owens, the original voice of Blue Falcon.   His take sounded so much like Adam West, that I In fact thought it was Adam West.

The references to HB properties are a plenty as Frankenstein Jr. and the Herculoids make an appearance at a ComiCon style convention where Blue Falcon was featured, signing autographs and waxing nostalgic about the good old days.  The theme builds on the apathy towards remakes of old cartoons and comic books that I feel every day.

As much as I don’t like my childhood being rebooted and retconned.  I like the direction some of these folks are taking.   Perhaps one day, we can catch Hollywood in a complex trap and they can give up their crappy ways, while exclaiming they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for us pesky pop culture kids.

I Can Feel It In My DVD Player Tonight

Hmmm.  What to do?

Awhile back I went on about how I was looking for some much needed childhood nostalgia lovin'.  To appease the pop culture gods of my youth I went out and bought the Complete 1st, 2nd, and 3rd season of Scooby-Doo.

My kid watches it nonstop.  Though, lately, she's been looking towards the newer episodes to watch instead of the old ones, which she's thoroughly exhausted.   Yet, just because she's found a new 'must watch' thing, that doesn't mean I've given up the ghost... or the old caretaker dressed up like one, anyway.   I'm still on the lookout of all the old episodes with all the celebrity guests.... and the ones that weren't included on the third season disc, namely the 10,000 volt ghost and the episodes with Scooby-Dum.

However, while that's being investigated, I've come up with a new way to satiate my sappy childhood memories. 

I never watched Miami Vice in its entirety growing up, though I felt compelled to buy a stupid Miami Mice shirt when I was a kid on vacation in Virginia Beach.  I loved the music and I loved the fashions but for some reason I didn't get into watching it at any great level.  I did catch a lot of the episodes and was sucked in by the "Crockett's Turn To The Dark Side" storyline.  However, when the movie came out a few years ago, I was appalled.  It was just sad to see yet another one of my childhood memories ruined.  And to be done by the genius who brought you the show and a movie like HEAT makes it all the worse.  It was up there with Spielberg and Lucas ruining Indiana Jones with Crystal Skull.

Maybe the show won't hold up to the test of time.  We are a society that has definitely moved on in terms of good television storytelling, especially in the realm of Cop Dramas.  After shows like NYPD Blue, CSI, Law & Order, and Detroit 1-8-7 I think we have a better gritty realism than the bikini and pastel clad beautiful people of the 80s.

Still, that will probably not stop me from indulging myself and buying this box set.  So, slip on your loafers over your bare feet.  Get out your Ray Bans.  Put the top down on your '72 Ferrari.  Hold on to the 80s and feel it in the air tonight.

Oh, and watch out for alligators named Elvis. 

Childhood, Where Are You?



Yes, that is the Mystery Machine.  Yes, that is a DVD set from Amazon.com.  Yes, I did just order that.

Why?  My kid.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Actually, I've said before that I've been looking for excuses to buy up DVDs of movies and shows I watched and loved as a child.  Well, Scooby-Doo is no exception. 

I grew up on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? I grew up on the episodes with Scooby-Dum.  I grew up on The New Sccoby-Doo Movies episodes with guest stars like Davy Jones, Jonathan Winters and the cartoon version stars of Batman, Robin and The Three Stooges.  Granted, all of these were rerun as part of my Saturday Morning Cartoon veg fest in the late 70s and early 80s.   I'm only 36, ya know.  

Yes, I have seen every incarnation of Scooby-Doo known, though I try to block out Scrappy-Doo and the 13 Ghosts iterations.  However, I thought A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was pretty clever and fun to watch.  I even let it slide when my three year old caught reruns of What's New, Scooby-Doo? on television.  That's the one that had Simple Plan do the theme song as well as guest star on the show.

However, when OnDemand started carrying the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? episodes I spied an opportunity to reintroduce the real magic of Mystery, Inc. to my child.  Oddly enough, she loves it.   I have to rewind and play the same episodes over and over.  Now, when it airs on Cartoon Network, she likes to watch them and doesn't seem to notice the difference in the animation or story setup and even the old curmudgeon in me can appreciate the nods to the original series like Velma's museum that has showcased all the monster suits from the first seasons of SDWAY.

And when I found that DVD set of the complete series of SDWAY, I said, "Must have.  I will be the coolest Dad, evah!"   Of course, that just means I will have placated the little demon for a bit and she will totally abuse my gift and pay me back in attitude.   Kids.  Still, it will be a gift for me as much as her.  I get to relive my childhood and she gets a lesson in classic pop culture. 

Let's face it, the stuff that passes as cartoons these days is pretty lame.   I couldn't see the inherent value of owning a box set of new Scooby-Doo episodes as much as the ones from the early days.  And to think, the folks in charge of churning out the schlock that ends up television would have gotten away it if it weren't for my keen sense of kitsch and that meddling kid of mine.