Thursday, March 03, 2011

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: The Secret Serum

Directed by: unknown

First aired: 2010

Contains spoilers

This is another incarnation of Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) and I have to admit that I have only watched the vampire episode. Thus, the fact that there were on-running arcs meant little to me. There is the mysterious figure Mr E, who seems to have his fingers in the pies of the gang’s mysteries. There is an estrangement between Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Velma (Mindy Cohn) – who were, it appears, an item. Plus Fred (Frank Welker) and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) seem to have issues, making the gang drift apart in different directions by the end of this – distractions; what we want is mystery solving not soap opera teen romance. For heaven’s sake we are watching a talking dog…

Daphne's mom & friend 
The rant isn’t really over. I am not sure about the art-style either, it didn’t sit right and I am unsure about setting the entire series in the town of Crystal Cove and having the parents of the gang around. In this episode we see Nan Blake (Kath Soucie) – Daphne’s mother, debutante and centre of the mystery – and Angie Dinkley (Frances Conroy) – Velma’s mother and owner of a spooky bookstore.

the vampire appears
Now, to get to the episode… Nan is hosting a charity auction (with an auctioneer based on David Dickinson (Tom Kenny)). The lot on offer is a spooky painting. No-one is bidding on it anyway, but then a vampire appears, terrorises the attendees and steals the painting. Just a thought… it's an auction, you want the painting, do you a) bid, it is literally down to single figures, b) dress up as a vampire and steal said painting, causing a huge furore whilst doing so? Answers on a postcard, to the ‘plot makes little sense competition’.

Scooby
So, there is a vampire in town and suspicion falls upon Nan. The next stolen object is a rare orchid from the botanical gardens. The gang are splitting into disparate units and clueless until a recipe from a tabloid magazine is literally pushed in their way by person unknown that shows that these are the first two ingredients of an eternal youth serum (the perversity of having a vampire – albeit a person in a mask – search for the ingredients for an eternal youth serum is commented on).

inverted vampire
The next ingredient is a rare French wine, cue A French stereotype moment followed by them failing to capture the vampire. Leaving them with one last chance to catch the fiend and unmask her… This wasn’t very good. Perhaps my dislike of the arc and characterisation (which was less characterisation and more soap standard rubbish) was born from coming to the show at the eleventh episode but really this cannot touch the Scooby-Doo of years gone by (or even some of the previous modern interpretations). 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

4 comments:

Nicole Hadaway said...

On the other hand, my four-year-old loves it, and insists we buy the Scooby-Doo Gogurt (which now has started a trend in her preschool class and several other mothers have "thanked" me because they are now forced to buy said Gogurt, like "the Hadaway daughter" has).

Sometimes, one just needs a talking dog to forget the cares of the day ;-)

Taliesin_ttlg said...

Hi Nicole I agree about needing the talking dog - I just don't care for this incarnation - or scrappy for that matter :)

Then again, I'm glad kiddo is loving it.

Unknown said...

I really do think you should give the rest of the show a chance some day, it has a great story arc and many references to classic horror films. Watching one episode doesn't really do it justice

Taliesin_ttlg said...

perhaps one day Giovanni - and I agree, just watching the one episode of anything can do the whole an injustice.