It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine

It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine is the fifth episode of the first season of What's New, Scooby-Doo?.

Premise
When Scooby, Shaggy and the rest of the gang are chased by their van, the Mystery Machine, when it goes "rogue", they must get to the bottom of the mystery before someone gets hurt.

Synopsis
Shaggy and Scooby are strolling down a street, when their van, the Mystery Machine, suddenly comes to life. At first they think it's Fred giving them a lift, but they quickly realize that nobody is driving. The van turns around and plays a spooky music riff. The two run for their lives.

The rest of the gang are having drinks when the other two burst in hysterically. They claim that the Mystery Machine is chasing after them. They go and investigate and find that the van isn't moving and still waiting in the same spot. But then, while Fred is driving, it suddenly takes over and they head straight towards a road barrier and almost crash until Scooby releases an installed parachute. They thankfully stop before colliding with the barrier.

They go to see Murph, a mechanic, who seems keen on buying the van for a reasonable price. The gang refuse. Abruptly and without notice, the van pulls out of the garage and drives away with oil leaking onto the road. The gang follow this trail of oil and it leads them to a house. They knock on the door and a woman answers. She turns out to be the mother of the Mystery Kids, Andy and Mandy Dinwiddie. She seems keen on bringing them back to life in the music world. The kids don't seem so enthusiastic.

The gang are told by the Kids and their mother about Flash Flannigan, their late pianist who stormed off stage during a performance. They say he went to 'Rock and Roll Heaven'. When leaving, the gang bump into a brother of Andy and Mandy that Susan didn't mention. He says that he's working on a science project.

The gang head into the city center, but they are followed by the Mystery Machine, which attacks them, glowing eerie green lights and playing spooky music riffs. Luckily, the gang manage to escape. They find a cab and head towards the university where Randy is working. He explains that he's working with animatronic mechanisms, that allow him to control anything wirelessly.

Seeing that Murph seems the only person capable of helping them, they go back to the garage and find a 'private' back room, which happens to be filled with Mystery Kids merchandise and videos. When putting one of the films on, it talks about how Flash Flannigan disappeared and how a flower appears on his gravestone. The gang decide to investigate the graveyard.

When there, they see Andy and Mandy kneeling next to the grave of their friend. Fred suspects something. The Mystery Machine suddenly arrives and starts chasing the gang, until it finally nets Shaggy with the doors. On their scooters, the gang chase the van down the wrong side of the motorway. The Mystery Machine stops and a policeman gives Shaggy and Fred a warning for the trouble caused.

When the Mystery Machine is kept in custody with the police, the gang head to see the mystery kids prepare for their show. Murph happens to be there. Velma decides to hold a seance and Daphne improvises by pretending to call to Flash in the spirit world. The Mystery Machine coincidentally arrives, to Daphne's surprise. Velma has a plan ready though and drops a lead-lined cover over the van, meaning that wireless control doesn't work. When they pull back the table cloth, the culprit turns out to be Susan Dinwiddie who had been controlling the machine using a wireless control, which she learned while helping Randy with his homework.

It turns out that she only wanted the Mystery Kids to return to fame. Andy and Mandy disagree, and then drop their instruments and join Randy. Murph offers another price for the Mystery Machine. Once again, the gang refuses.

The gang heads to a drive-in movie theater to celebrate getting their Mystery Machine back. Just then, the gang thinks the van is haunted again and run off, when it's actually driven by Scooby.

Characters
Main characters:
 * Mystery Inc.
 * Scooby-Doo
 * Shaggy Rogers
 * Fred Jones
 * Velma Dinkley
 * Daphne Blake

Supporting characters:
 * Murph
 * Mystery Kids
 * Andy Dinwiddie
 * Mandy Dinwiddie
 * Randy Dinwiddie

Villains:
 * The Mystery Machine
 * Susan Dinwiddie

Other characters:
 * Smoothie shop partons
 * Piano student
 * Taxi driver
 * Rewind the Music narrator
 * Flash Flannigan
 * Police officer
 * Auto impound guard

Locations

 * Movie theater
 * Smoothie Shop
 * Murph's Rod Shop
 * Basement
 * Dinwiddie home
 * Studio
 * Defries Technical Academy
 * Graveyard
 * Flash Flannigan's grave
 * City Park
 * Auto impound
 * Drive-in theater

Objects

 * Smoothies
 * Velma's laptop
 * Mystery Machine parachute
 * Piano
 * Scooby Snax box
 * Andy and Mandy Candy
 * Television
 * Tandem bicycle
 * Kick scooter
 * Skateboard
 * Roller skates

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine
 * Taxicab
 * Police car

Notes/trivia

 * This episode alone is a perfect example of the series' premise of Scooby-Doo being in the 21st century with modern updates of certain elements seen in the original series:
 * Like in What a Night for a Knight, the episode begins with Scooby and Shaggy walking home from the movies, with the latter complaining how late it is because the former had to see a dog movie twice in a row. Last time it was about a forest ranger-type dog and this one is about a space dog. Another difference is they're actually seen leaving the theater downtown as opposed to walking in the woods.
 * The gang seem to spend their evenings at a smoothie shop, instead of a malt shop.
 * Velma prominently carries around a laptop for research.
 * The gang solving a mystery in an ambiguous local setting.
 * This is the first (and only) episode in the series' history to give a canon backstory to the Mystery Machine's history.

Cultural references

 * The Dinwiddies seem to be a parody of the Partridge Family or the Von Trapp family. Susan, their mother, sounds somewhat like the animated Mrs. Partridge from a 70's Partridge Family cartoon, who was voiced by Joan Gerber, and not Shirley Jones (though she did the first episode).
 * A car that drives by itself and attacks may be a reference to the Steven King book and movie, Christine. Another movie called Super Hybrid also uses a similar concept to this episode.
 * Daphne makes a reference to The Wizard of Oz.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * Just before the Mystery Machine cornered the gang in the ally, the top and bottom colours changed over for a second.
 * Just after Shaggy is caught, the doors are fully blue, but when the Mystery Machine drives off, the bottom of the doors are green.
 * As Shaggy and Scooby were being chased on the stage the spare tire that had fallen off when The Mystery Machine crashed into an alleyway wall returns for a few seconds.
 * When the Mystery Machine arrives at Daphne's seance, its roof is green instead of blue.
 * Twice towards the end, the Mystery Machine is green instead of blue.

Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * The animation is different in this episode compared to rest of the entire series.
 * The entire episode is very localized so it must be set in Coolsville, but later in A Scooby-Doo Valentine it was made into a big deal about them coming back home for a break. It was also implied that it had been a quite a long while since they had been in Coolsville due to the reaction of the officer in charge who didn't want the "famous Scooby Gang" taking over a case, a likely reference to the many mysteries they solved in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (and any place else that was local) before they traveled around the world.
 * Of course, it's also incredibly convenient that the Dinwiddies' live in the same area.
 * The way the episode opens up, Scooby and Shaggy awkardly look like they're walking past the movie theater instead of actually walking out of it.
 * Mystery Machine didn't need to drive right next to Shaggy for him to realize Fred wasn't driving since it was already pretty close beforehand.
 * It's pretty presumptuous of Shaggy to think Fred would give them a lift when he was in the smoothie shop and may or may not have known where the guys were. Although, Shaggy and Scooby assumed that the rest of the gang would be in the smoothie shop.
 * Velma seems to carry her laptop around just so it can eventually get to the scene of it being crushed by the Mystery Machine. Only when it is crushed, papers fly out as if it's a briefcase exploding.
 * Andy and Mandy may have made things better with Randy, but his mother didn't especially after the only quality time they spent together was when she was only using him to gain the knowledge she needed to cause mayhem and get publicity for his siblings.

Home media

 * 🇺🇸 What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Volume 2 - Safari, So Goodi! VHS released by Warner Home Video on March 9, 2004.
 * 🇺🇸 What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Volume 2 - Safari, So Goodi! DVD released by Warner Home Video on March 9, 2004.
 * What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Volume 2 - Safari, So Goodi! DVD released by Warner Home Video on June 28, 2004.
 * 🇺🇸 What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Complete 1st Season DVD set released released by Warner Home Video on February 20, 2007.
 * Scooby-Doo! Mystery in Motion DVD released on June 11, 2012.