Disaster ‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

archived 14 Jan 2023 17:10:03 UTC

archive.ph

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

People are certainly talking about Velma, that much is true. Just…not very positively. Velma currently has the lowest audience score I’ve seen for an HBO or HBO Max production, a 7%. To get that low requires not just “review bombing” but your show also likely has to be…genuinely bad.

www.forbes.com

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories​

Paul Tassi
Senior Contributor
News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.
1
New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it!
Jan 14, 2023, 10:20am EST
https://archive.ph/o/BnTyv/https://policies.google.com/privacy

Listen to article4 minutes

Velma
HBO MAX
Yesterday, HBO Max bragged that Velma, the new adult-rated Scooby Doo cartoon, was its most-viewed animated premiere ever. I’m not sure precisely what that says, given that the only other Max original animated series I can even think of is Harley Quinn, plus a bunch of other older series that WB Discovery recently murdered.


But people are certainly talking about Velma, that much is true. Just…not very positively. Velma currently has the lowest audience score I’ve seen for an HBO or HBO Max production, a 7%. To get that low requires not just “review bombing” but your show also likely has to be…genuinely bad.

And it is. Velma is very, very bad.

Velma is so bad in fact, that it’s spawning conspiracy theories that creator Mindy Kaling made what is essentially a parody of what the right wing thinks left wing comedy is like. As in, a show that not just recast most roles with new races, but also features loads and loads of “white guys, amiright?” jokes. The idea is that Kaling is a secretly conservative force in media trying to make the left look bad by making a cringey adult cartoon full of “this rich white guy has a small dong” jokes that the right can point at as everything wrong with race-recasted, social justice-influenced media.


I do not want to go down a big rabbit hole about Mindy Kaling’s personal beliefs and influences here. And yet if that wasn’t the intent of the show, it sure feels like it in practice. On one side, it absolutely is working to spark mockery from the right, exactly as you might imagine it would. But on the other, it’s just not defensible at all by those who would normally welcome a progressive series.


Take She-Hulk for example. That was a hugely controversial show where it was very explicit about roasting misogynistic comic fans, perhaps often lacking in subtlety. But I would still very much defend that show, as I think its humor and fourth-wall breaking works, and most of the people who were upset about it are the very people that it’s overtly making fun of…for being upset about it.

Velma is not that. Velma is not defensible by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just bad. Making progressive jokes is fine so long as the jokes are good. They are not good. I heard the show described somewhere as a series written by TV writers who only ever talk to other TV writers. That’s a pretty good summary. And the idea here is that it’s so, so bad at landing its jabs at right wingers that it almost feels like self-sabotage.

There is a world in which this concept might have worked. I can see an “adult” Scooby Doo series where you have an overlooked Velma attempting to claw back credit from a privileged Fred, the “leader” of the gang. And yet here it’s not just jabbing at Fred for being an overconfident white dude, it’s literally “he’s such a whiny white man baby that his mommy cuts his steak and he hasn’t finished puberty so he has a small penis.” Like just…no remote hint of subtlety or nuance or anything that could make the progressive humor work.
An easy counter-example to turn to is the R-rated Harley Quinn series, also on HBO Max, which still feels true to the characters it focuses on, is full of left-leaning messaging on misogyny an LGBTQ issues, but importantly…is funny and compelling. I mean, this show recently did a full bit about the Joker running for mayor as a progressive socialist and it worked.
Velma? I don’t know what Velma is doing. I’m not sure I subscribe to this “Mindy Kaling made a dogwhistle series for right wing trolls” theory, as the Occam’s Razor explanation is that the show is just…bad. The jokes are…bad. That’s really it.
I may continue watching out of morbid fascination, but man, this is truly one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

I'd love to know more about the development history of this turd.

Was this some random Kaling project that was turned into a Scooby-Doo show at some point?

Producers have been wanting to make an edgy adult Scooby-Doo show since the early 2000's, so did Kaling just get thrown on the project?

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

If this is a psyop, it isn't by Kaling but rather Zaslav. Remember, he shit canned the completed Batgirl movie for not being up to standards, but thought this would pass? Bullshit. Now if anyone approaches him with another pants-on-head retarded "adult reboot" he can point to this.

 

[X Prime]

View attachment 4274328
Does this answer your question?

I'm not sure what I expected.

Does this top what was in Voyager?

 

[Anasûrimbor Kellhus]

Didn't know this show existed.

Regret knowing better.

 

[TowinKarz]

Why the fuck she picked a franchise entirely built on a goofy dog main character, is the real question.

Because in her world view, an established IP comes with an insta-audience, (that you lose at light speed when you disrespect the source material like this, but I digress)

And all her ego wanted out of this was the show to be greenlit, aired, at least SOME audience watched the debut, and from there, all falling ratings can be blamed on racism, sexism or whatever you please. The fact it lived to be canceled on-air is a goal as now she has a "wrote a TV show/animated show" on the resume and her *sniff* *sniff* hard work was RUINED by those -ists and -phobes who review-bombed it off the air!

 

[Happy Fish]

No, it's not a psyop. They were being sincere.

Interesting point. Lefties like to throw around "subversive" so much like they own the word when they aren't even self aware enough to realize that their bullshit is mainstream now. We *EXPECT* the studios to fuck around with everything in order to cater to political ideals. That isn't subversive. That is overt, trite, annoying, and fucking boring. We've seen you waving your stupid flag a million times. Just shove it already.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

To those who actually watched this, which is worse; this? Or that Rogan “Santa Inc” show abomination?

 

[Changed later]

To those who actually watched this, which is worse; this? Or that Rogan “Santa Inc” show abomination?

Santa Inc had one likeable character in the form of Santa before they realised that they needed to make him an unlikeable prick too. There is not a single character in Velma who does not deserve to die screaming.

 

[TowinKarz]

I'd love to know more about the development history of this turd.

Was this some random Kaling project that was turned into a Scooby-Doo show at some point?

Producers have been wanting to make an edgy adult Scooby-Doo show since the early 2000's, so did Kaling just get thrown on the project?

Probably, what they wrote is so dissonant with the Scooby-Doo mythos that it HAD to have started as her own vanity cartoon that piggy-backed on to an IP to escape the wave of cancelations that hit "original" cartoons as the economy slowed down, like "Hey, we can retool this! honest! And you always wanted woke Scooby-Do, right? Oh, and my contract means it'd cost more to fire me than let me have my way..."

 

[Hitman One]

>scooby doo
>without the dog
I lost interest when that was announced tbh.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Only thing I managed to get out of this article is that Forbes has really no clue as to what a “psy-op“ is and think that everything that they don’t like around them is a 4chan poster.

 

[JackoVerde]

did this show have a writing team or was it written solely by one person.
if the latter, it makes sense why its so bad
in the former why did nobody speak up and say, this script is just bad.

 

[Cyborg Braphog]

They aren’t taking the L though. The main purpose of this shitshow is to ruin another IP that white people like. In that case, they succeeded. Mindy Kaling will walk away with millions and Scooby Doo now has this big steaming dump taken on it just purely for spite. It’s no different than what happened with Ghostbusters.

Mindy Kaling went back in time and destroyed my childhood. I'll never forgive her.

 

[Kulee Baba]

This is what happened, Mindy Kaling made a bunch of pitches for a show on HBO Max. Probably at least 5 concepts no idea what they are but I can guess it's something like this:

1. Mindy Kaling plays a Doctor in a workplace comedy show a direct followup to the poorly rated The Mindy Project. She also has sex with lots of handsome men!
2. Mindy Kaling in a comedy/documentary travels the world and eats expensive highend food! She also has sex with lots of handsome men!
3. Mindy Kaling plays a 40 something single woman who is still trying to find Mr. Right. She has sex with lots of handsome men!
4. Uhhh Scooby-Doo with Mindy Kaling?
5. Sex with Handsome Men?

And so the execs at HBO picked Scooby-Doo, the project she didn't really want in the first place or gave a shit about. This is what happens in Hollywood all too often, they give projects to people who don't have any passion for it. But Hollywood just wants to keep renewing their IPs. Kinda surprised the Seth McFarlane produced Flintstones series from a decade back didn't amount to anything but that would have been the same style of trash.

The animation is some of the worst I've seen so everyone knew this would suck. She should thank Vishnu that The Office's writers wrote her a reasonably funny character on the show, they had to give her something because otherwise her only memorable moment was slapping Michael Scott for literally going "INDIANS LMAO!" I mean the scene is typical racism is cringe humor but Steve Carell saying "Cookie Cookie" will always be funny.

 

[Standardized Profile]

Some time ago, HBO announced they'd be producing finales for Metalocalypse and The Venture Brothers. I guess those were canceled for this. Oh well, we'll always have the Groovy Gang....

 

[Trout P]

Nah, this isn't an Op.
They're just trying to normalize this garbage.

 

[Jason Wynn]

This has to be Birdemic or Manos levels of awful if even the cockgobbling leftoids are clowning on it. I've seen shills for crap like Rings of Power and She-Hulk, not one person I've found has anything nice to say about this, or its street shitter creator.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Some time ago, HBO announced they'd be producing finales for Metalocalypse and The Venture Brothers. I guess those were canceled for this. Oh well, we'll always have the Groovy Gang....
View attachment 4274751

Shaggy mixed with Son of Sam is one of the greatest ideas in all of fiction

 

[General Emílio Médici]

The entire thing has 0 reason to be a Scooby-Doo series at all. Nothing about it relates to the series in any way. It is 100% a self-insert fan-fic trying to pretend it isn't.

It shows how out of touch with reality Hollywood is that they thought this shit might have a audience just because they slapped the Scooby-Doo trademark on some random garbage.

 

[CarlosDanger]

I cannot wait to see what potential libshit storylines get put into a potential second season. They will introduce Scooby and Scrappy as Shaggy's pitbulls, we will find out Scooby is a p̶e̶d̶o̶ MAP who has totally consensual sex with Scrappy.