My TV Show Review on The Scooby-Doo Show
My 9th TV show review.
Gosh, it's been a while since I last reviewed one, I'll tell ya that.
So, today, I will be making my eighth review on a television program, and quite likely one of the shortest reviews I’ve done, by analyzing "The Scooby-Doo Show".
Here's what it's about:
In this 1970s continuation of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!", our favorite canine named Scooby-Doo (once again voiced by Don Messick), along with his human teenaged pals, Shaggy (again played by Casey Kasem), Fred (again played by Frank Welker), Velma (voiced by Pat Stevens, replacing Nicole Jaffe from the show's predecessor), and Daphne (again voiced by Heather North from Season 2 of the show's predecessor), make a comeback to the 30 minute formatting and once again travel the world, solving mysteries and hunting for ghosts and monsters.
I can definitely start off by saying that they apparently managed to kick things up a notch and I'm really proud of their successful efforts in doing so.
The storytelling for each episode was given some newly found unpredictability and thrills. As a matter of fact, when I first saw each episode, I almost couldn't tell what was going to happen next. Or if the spooks that the Mystery Inc. gang were coming across were real or fake, particularly from the episodes in the Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour DVD set. Plus, I like that they decided to have the people pretending to be the spooks not be limited to the people who tell the gang about them.
The animation in the series was also really great. Hanna-Barbara's ability to make something done with little budget look good hasn't ceased to surprise me, but here...their upgrading in technology was apparently able to make things even better for television viewing.
The music by Hoyt Curtin was pretty well-done as a plus. It has a perfect range for each episode, going from giving the audiences thrills to being pretty light for them. The only thing about it that people will likely be bummed by is the lack of songs during chases, which isn't something critical, really. It's just something that would've been fun.
Additionally, the voice-acting in the show was really spot-on. I'm especially glad that the comedic and vocal dynamic between Kasem and Messick as Shaggy and Scooby continued being awesome. The dialogue of the characters was creative as well.
Unfortunately, while I do commend this series highly, there were some negatives that I didn't find myself comfortable with.
The voice direction used in the show seemed to have made the performers sound too whiny. On my side, it particularly made me wonder if something was wrong with my ears.
The only other thing I didn't like was how forceful and mean Fred, Daphne, and Velma were towards Shaggy and Scooby at making them help solve the mysteries.
In conclusion, though, despite the setbacks I just mentioned, "The Scooby-Doo Show" does prove itself to be an excellent successor to the "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" series.
So, I rate "The Scooby-Doo Show" four out of five stars.