Bedlam in the Big Top

Bedlam in the Big Top is the tenth episode of the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.

Premise
Fred, Daphne, Velma, Scooby and Shaggy stumble upon a circus that is supposedly haunted by a ghost clown that starts to hypnotize each of Mystery Inc. with a gold coin.

Synopsis
Mystery Inc. are driving through the woods and encounter two carnies experiencing bike trouble. Samson the Strongman and Max the Midget introduce themselves, and explain they are leaving the circus because of strange happenings. Mystery Inc. goes to the circus and talk with the manager, Mr. Barnstorm. Mr. Barnstorm tells the kids there is a ghost clown haunting the premises and warns them to leave. Freddy, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy leave, but Scooby is mistakenly left behind and hypnotized by the ghost clown with a gold coin.

The rest of Mystery Inc. arrive and split up to look for Scooby. Velma and Shaggy find Scooby balancing across the high wire in a trance. They manage to save him. Fred and Daphne go into the costume tent, and Fred is locked in a trunk by the clown. Daphne is then hypnotized. Velma and Shaggy find her riding a unicycle. They save her as well, thanks to the spray of an elephant, and rescue Freddy. Then the gang set up a trap to capture the ghost clown in a cage, but it backfires, when the clown hypnotizes Shaggy and sets him taming lions, but Scooby saves Shaggy and they flee, the clown in pursuit. They manage to lead the clown into the cage, but he vanishes from inside it.

Fred's frustrated cry unlocks Shaggy's memory; the clown uses a gold coin to hypnotize his victims. Going out again, the clown tries to hypnotize both Shaggy and Scooby, but the two counter-act with a mirror and trick the clown into hypnotizing himself into acting like a chimp. They lure the chimp-clown into a cage and then unmask him as Harry the Hypnotist. Harry used to be a hypnotist in the circus act, but he was caught stealing, and was fired as a result. He came back to get revenge and dressed up as the ghost clown to do so.

Villains

 * Ghost Clown/Harry the Hypnotist

Suspects
None

Locations

 * Circus

Notes/trivia

 * This episode was loosely adapted into the Gold Key's Scooby Doo comic issue #9 The Phantom Clown; one of the differences is the Ghost Clown's colors on the front cover.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * When Shaggy says "Don't tell me that there are two of them", his head is up instead of right.
 * The Clown's mouth is coloured red but when hypnotizing Daphne, it turns the colour of his skin.

Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * It is revealed in this episode that Daphne can't even ride a bicycle. However, she rides one in one of the new Scooby-Doo movies very proficiently(ref needed), although she could have practiced a lot since then.
 * As proven in the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode, A Terrifying Round With A Menacing Metallic Clown, Velma has had a phobia of clowns since her childhood, but in this particular story, she has no known phobia of clowns whatsoever.
 * When the gang (minus Scooby) were leaving the circus, it showed the gang from left to right: Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy, with the steering wheel in the wrong place.

Home media

 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons DVD set.
 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: Volume 3 - Hello Mummy DVD.
 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series DVD set.
 * Scooby-Doo! and the Circus Monsters DVD compilation set released March 12, 2013.