User blog:AnimationMegaFan/Guess Who Thoughts

Hey all,

So, some quick thoughts on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? now that I’ve been able to sit and watch it all the way through.

I feel like the fact that these are half hour episodes really limited the possibilities of the series. The great thing about The New Scooby-Doo Movies was that they're hour-long shows; the plot had time to develop and the guest star was able to be introduced naturally. A lot of the SDGW episodes seem rushed to me because they have to fit a mystery plot and the introduction of a celebrity in just ~20 minutes. Regardless, I really enjoyed the setups for these shows. They did a good job at putting both the gang and the celebs in interesting settings and scenarios that fit their personalities well. Everything fits together nicely in that respect and it effectively plays to the strengths of the guest stars, fictional or non-fictional.

Some, but not all of the episodes feel mechanical to me, though, like there was a list of things that needed to happen and they went down the list to make sure they hit it all (possibly caused by the short run times). Though I'm someone who watches a lot of mystery shows and reads a lot of mystery books, I am usually content to sit back and enjoy Scooby-Doo without trying to figure out who’s behind the mask… but a couple of these episodes were so short on the plot side that I knew who the culprit was pretty quickly. The Gaffigan, Penn & Teller, and Gervais episodes were the real standouts in this respect. Still fun episodes, though.

Also, the original Scooby series, despite being created and originally running in the late 60’s and early 70’s, doesn’t feel dated. Sure, you have a flower power van and expressions like “groovy” and “far out,” but nothing else about the plots really date the shows or makes them seem “old.” In SDGW, it felt like there might be some pop culture references that won’t hold up over time, though this is also true of the New Scooby Movies in some respeocts (however, it feels more like that's an artifact of the '60s celebs than anything else).

Overall, its a fun series that does a good job at not taking itself too seriously (without going to the introspective self-aware levels of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!).

3 favorite episodes:

1) Penn & Teller (The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson!)

2) Abraham Lincoln (A Mystery Solving Gang Divided)

3) Batman (What a Night, for a Dark Knight!)

Honorable mentions:

Weird Al (Attack of the Weird Al-Osaurus!)

Sherlock Holmes (Elementary, My Dear Shaggy!)