Thursday, April 28, 2016

The Kids and the Dog and the Wacky Mysteries

I slept in again, trying to stay warm on a chilly, dreary morning. Warmed things up a bit with more Be Cool, Scooby Doo. "Me, Myself, and A.I" discusses the current obsession with technology and just how important it should be in our lives. Velma is thrilled when the gang is invited to a technology company to help them figure out why their latest creation, a robot butler, has been attacking designers. Daphne's not as happy. She doesn't like technology in general and would really prefer people didn't let it take over their lives.

Spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon writing. Leia doesn't like what she smells in the gingerbread, but Han's already eaten it. They start dancing again, this time to a slow number. They're both feeling romantic...until Han starts to fall asleep, then Leia. She realizes too late it was all a trap, especially after Vader and the Imperial army appears. They were both drugged and tricked, their fantasy ball becoming a nightmare.

Had a quick muffin and fruit lunch while doing another Scooby episode. The gang is "Area 51 Adjacent" after encountering a group of hikers who saw an alien landing in New Mexico. Daphne is determined to make friends with this strange being from another planet. Velma and Fred think there's more going on than an alien encounter. The kids run into real trouble when the government finds them snooping around and locks them up, believing them to be the aliens!

It had just started showering as I arrived at work. There was no way around it. I just got there wet. That was probably the most exciting thing that happened all afternoon. I was cashiering today, but it probably didn't matter where I ended up. We were dead for most of the day. It did pick up a bit during rush hour, but it didn't last for more than an hour at most. My relief was on time, and there were no major problems.

(The on-and-off customers may have partially been explained by on-and-off weather. It wasn't raining when I got out, and looked like it hadn't rained in a while. It did rain briefly later in the evening, but I  haven't heard anything since then.)

When I got home, I had leftovers while finishing out the Scooby Doo set. "Where There's a Will, There's a Wraith" has a similar plot to an episode of the original Scooby Doo, Where are You? Scooby Doo is once again set to inherit big bucks...provided he can stay one night with the gang in a spooky old mansion. While Daphne insists on treating it like a slumber party, the others try to figure out what happened to the other family members who were mentioned in the will.

And I have to admit, this show ended up growing on me. As much as I enjoyed Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, something didn't seem quite right with that one. Some shows just aren't meant to be multi-level epics with dark undertones and demon animals and everyone in love. Sometimes, a story is just a bunch of kids running around, pulling masks off local criminals, and that works fine, too. I also like how the kids frequently use real-life history and facts to solve crimes (see the episode about the moving gargoyle and the technology show).

My biggest complaint is the only character they didn't nail was Daphne. Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby haven't changed much from Mystery Incorporated, and Fred actually comes off a bit smarter than he has in the last few Scooby shows. Daphne, on the other hand, has become a total ditz whose only use is as comic relief and to obsess over something weird. While this is occasionally useful (she's the one who figures out how to control the alien spaceship in "A.I,", and she surprisingly didn't make a bad stand-up comedian), it mostly comes off as annoying. From what I've gathered, the show isn't even finished with its first season yet. Hopefully, they'll dial that down a bit as the series goes on.

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