What Makes Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated The Best Scooby-Doo?

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is a two-season, 2010 comedy-drama television show (currently on Netflix) that follows the well-known and well-loved mystery gang: Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, Velma, and the titular Scooby-Doo. The gang are high school students who live in the small town of Crystal Cove, which attracts tourists as the “Most Hauntedest Place on Earth.”

It’s a monster-of-the-week show where each episode the Scooby gang solves a mystery and unmasks a monster. There’s always a new villain sabotaging themselves with their theatre kid antics instead of committing regular crimes like the rest of the world.

Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated stands apart from other Scooby-Doo media, because it has an overarching plot which often veers into the horror genre. While the episodes are styled as monster-of-the-week, there are multi-episode story arcs in the background of each one, requiring the viewer to watch the episodes in order. Just as the gang foils some professor’s ploy to disguise its secret gold mine by dehydrating people with frozen yogurt every week (an actual episode plot), they also get one step closer to discovering the evil at the heart of Crystal Cove.

The Horror!

Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated takes the established setting and plot structure of the Scooby-Doo franchise and inserts genuine fear. The monster designs are more grotesque in this show. It doesn’t matter if there’s someone behind the mask, because the mask itself is terrifying.

It doesn’t rely on jump scares like the classic Scooby-Doo episodes, instead, it creates an atmosphere of uneasiness and apprehension which leaves the viewer constantly on edge. The show even includes a large number of classic horror references, including nods to The Shining, Twin Peaks, famed horror actor Vincent Price (Vincent Van Ghoul in the show), and horror writer Harlan Ellison.

Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated is a genuinely scary show sometimes. It pulls no punches in its depictions of horror, as it includes houses swallowed up by the earth, Lovecraftian-inspired monsters, and a series of underground tunnels occupied by a terrifying monster known as “The Freak of Crystal Cove” (who gave me nightmares for a week as a kid). These longer, more gruesome stories are offset by standard one-off monsters, who often veer towards the ridiculous.

The show mixes horror and humor well by balancing darker moments with the goofy antics Scooby-Doo is known for. In a single episode, the show skillfully transitions from the exploits of a robber calling himself the Dandy Highwayman who takes people’s money and wives to Scooby-Doo having a prophetic nightmare about the end of the world. The comedy of a talking dog and a bunch of high school detectives gives the show a lot of entertainment value, however, the darker elements give the show more weight.

The horror elements and comedic elements are both enjoyable and coexist well with each other. For example, Crystal Cove canonically has an Animal Asylum for the Criminally Insane, which contains the most dangerous animals in Crystal Cove, including a giraffe named Mr. Bendy and a turtle named Snappy Jack. This asylum also contains the main antagonist of the entire show, a parrot named Professor Pericles who has a scarred eye, a vague German accent, and wears scarves (when he is not in a little animal straight jacket in the Asylum).

It may seem funny that the big bad guy is a tiny bird, but Professor Pericles also canonically kills multiple people. The audience is able to laugh at the absurdity of the situation while simultaneously being unnerved by his bloodthirsty ways. Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated elevates the Scooby-Doo premise by being goofy enough to be funny, and serious enough to be scary.

Avoiding The Riverdale Mistake

The Scooby-Doo premise has captivated audiences for decades throughout its various iterations. It’s a simple concept that is easy to create content for, because there’s already a tried and true formula, so all that’s left is to customize the monster or setting. It is similar to the Archie comic books, which also rely on established character archetypes in a familiar setting: an all-American town and high school. The only thing an Archie writer has to do is switch up the situation. They are both enduring children’s franchises with a long history and a large presence in popular culture.

Riverdale and Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated both portray a darker take on the classic franchises. Riverdale, however, made an enormous mistake in their adaptation of Archie, which has led to hundreds of cringe videos on YouTube. Riverdale‘s main problem is that it abandons its source material, distancing itself from the original Archie comics in almost every way. The Archie comic books are about teenagers and their relationships in a stereotypical high school, not gangs, drugs, or serial killers. The foundational elements of Archie’s story are missing, which is what makes Riverdale unsuccessful as an Archie adaptation.

Where Scooby Works, Riverdale Doesn’t

Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated gets it right where Riverdale fails, as it is the highest-rated Scooby-Doo series (( IMDB at 8/10 )). Mystery Incorporated also takes a classic, children’s franchise about teenagers and darkens the tone, but it remains faithful to its origins. Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated builds and improves on the concept instead of burying it. It’s fundamentally still a show about kids solving crimes and revealing that it was actually the janitor who pretended to be a whale to steal oil!

Riverdale has worked hard to ground the show in our reality, peppering it with pop culture references and addressing more difficult topics like drug addiction and gang violence. Mystery Incorporated, on the other hand, grounds the mystery gang in their own reality. While some of the things they do in the name of mystery-solving seem silly and implausible in our reality (for example, dressing Shaggy and Scooby-Doo in drag as a disguise), it seems completely plausible in the Scooby-Doo universe.

Even though Mystery Incorporated adds in more ghastly mysteries than the classic Scooby-Doo shows and movies, the show is aware of its roots. Scooby-Doo is still a talking dog, and there are still dozens of people who decide the best way to commit crime is to dress up like it’s Halloween. Mystery Incorporated includes the key aspects of the original Scooby-Doo premise: the unmasking of monsters, the kitschy nature of the criminals, and the teenage sleuths trope. Mystery Incorporated remains Scooby-Doo at its core, so the darker plot points read as an extension of the original material rather than an abandonment of it.

The Kids’ Show For Adults

The continuous nature of the plot gives Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated space to develop the Scooby-Doo premise into a more three-dimensional concept. The characters become more than their archetypes. Velma goes from a stereotypical smart girl to a teenager who struggles with issues of self-worth and wants to be thought of as more than just ‘brainy.’

Rather than beginning the show with Fred and Daphne as a couple, the audience watches as Fred slowly comes to terms with his feelings for Daphne and struggles with how to express them. Mystery Incorporated takes the static Scooby-Doo premise and puts actual character development behind it.

Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated appeals to both your inner kid and your adult sensibilities. It has enough sophistication in its plot and horror themes that it doesn’t feel entirely like a kids show, but it still has familiar nostalgic qualities. I love watching their goofy hijinks, like sneaking into a fancy French restaurant all dressed in striped shirts, drawn-on mustaches, and carrying baguettes. It’s something I can laugh at without thinking too hard about it.

I also enjoy the scenes which require more social awareness, like the one in which the local sheriff rants “Every time I think it’s the guy and I arrest him, it always ends up being the wrong guy! Do you know how many wrongful arrest lawsuits I have pending? A lot!” Whether you preferred the wacky antics of a bunch of teenagers or the more ominous and dreadful monsters in your Scooby show, Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated has you covered.