The Void

Lord of the Rings Cake

...winking at Shaggy’s pothead reputation. Here, the iconic slacker is presented as Norville (Sam Richardson), a clear-eyed band geek who tells Velma, “Man, if I even think about getting into 420, 420 culture or especially 420-related humor, kill me.” (The pair then clarify that 420 is “code for adults who still watch cartoons.”)

For every solid crack (“Ranking hot girls is exactly how the Trojan War and Facebook started!”), there’s an observation that feels like a repurposed Twitter draft from some harried screenwriter’s folder. “I speak truth without a filter, like every comedian before #MeToo,” declares Velma, never mind that the line doesn’t make a ton of sense coming from a proud feminist teenager in 2023. Amid the semi-topical snipes at teen rom-coms, yass-queen feminism, hairy Brooklynites and, for some reason, the movie Serpico, the future Scooby-Doo gang and their peers can come off less like individuals than joke-delivery machines.

I'm begging people. No hate-watching. No "how bad could it be, I'm curious"-watching. HBO canceled tons of wonderful unique original content in favor of a mean-spirited overly-meta reboot of an old property, resulting in a show that even the most eager-to-praise-everything publications struggled to give more than a 6/10.

They see a time skip of any length and go