Max
Alright, ready those tomatoes and warm up your pitching arm because I’ve got something to say: Max’s Velma series is fantastic. In a world where people have some grace and proper consideration for new things, loving the adult-oriented spinoff about the Scooby-Doo franchise’s devoted brainiac wouldn’t be such an outrageous take. But, much to my chagrin, we don’t live in that universe.
Most people actively despised the first season of Velma, and largely for the wrong reasons. Some critics deemed it uneven, having too many flat, throwaway punchlines. (Not an unfair opinion, I echoed something similar in my own review.) Others didn’t see the point at all, willfully misunderstanding the series’ clever subversion of audience expectations. The clickbaity headline of Velma’s existence is, essentially, “Woke Hollywood Made Velma Non-White and Gay,” which almost everyone with an X account and your emphysema-ridden grandpappy bought into.
Some even went so far as to call the show’s execution ironically misogynist in its attempts at parroting liberal ideologies. And then there were the racists, who simply hated Velma because, in this iteration, Velma Dinkley is Indian, and voiced by Mindy Kaling. If you’re curious what the losers who sit in a soundproof closet in their Studio City sublet recording YouTube rants are up to these days, just know they’re already harping on Velma’s second season, which dropped on Max April 25. (“Woke Velma” would be such a beautiful name for a baby girl.)
