Let’s talk about suspension of disbelief and Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Seems a fair topic ahead of Halloween. Why not?
Hack comedians have been speculating on Fred and Velma’s respective sexual identities for years. We’re not here for that. Nor are we here to crack tired groaners about how Shaggy is a pothead.
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I want to know where they get gas money for the Mystery Machine, for starters. Remember this was 1969. There was no Etsy, Only Fans or Marketplace. You had to have a real job or run a Ponzi scheme in which you made money by suckering others. Or sold drugs.
I’m thinking Fred, judging by the ascot, was probably a trust fund silver spoon guy who bought the van on a whim, had it painted by his metal arts teacher from school who was on shrooms, and set off on the road to find himself. Along the way he met Daphne and Velma, who were at some hippie festival and thought it would be fun to go on an open-ended road trip. Daphne was sick of being a Mad Men receptionist anyway and Velma was a sucker for true crime and wasn’t using her English Degree from Brown. Besides, I mean, a rich blonde bro in a sweet van—what could go wrong?
As for Shaggy and Scooby I’m not convinced they weren’t actually narcs deep undercover working for the Nixon administration who spotted this groovy van coming, made an assumption, and hitchhiked successfully with the original trio. Why else would they try to get out of every mystery by “bumbling?”
So here’s where suspension of disbelief comes in.
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? asks you to believe that this motley assortment of young adults could somehow manage to find a never-ending series of mysteries in which a string of old men, acting independent of one another in different locations, would get up to some masked mischief and would somehow…
Somehow…
When unmasked…
All say the same thing:
“And I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for these meddling kids.”
Doesn’t that sound like something Richard Nixon would say faced with a counterculture element like the Mystery, Incorporated gang and their K-9 undercover drug dog? There’s no way Old Man Jenkins wasn’t a Nixon voter. Same for Old Man Barnaby and so on.
And exactly when did Fred incorporate Mystery, Inc.? Did he call his trust fund lawyers from a pay phone in Modesto and assign the work? And then ask them to wire him his monthly payout via Western Union?
Who is Velma’s eye doctor and why can’t he get her frames that fit? Do none of them have a change of clothes? When was Scooby’s last heartworm pill?
It’s all suspension of disbelief, my friends.
By the way it’s a known fact that years later Norville “Shaggy” Rogers would get caught burglarizing the Democratic Party office at the Watergate Hotel working for Old Man Liddy. They probably would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Shaggy’s “bumbling,” which was now so deeply engrained after years undercover he couldn’t shake it.
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