With very little fanfare, Cartoon Network dumped the 2nd half of the second season of Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated! on air in April 2013 just like you and I would put out the trash. This show deserved a better send off than it got from its network hosts. In the space of eleven days, between March 25 and April 5, Cartoon Network with very little advertising showed all 11 remaining episodes of the second season, thus closing out what had, otherwise, been a delightful 52 episode run. Shame on you, Cartoon Network for doing this to one of your premiere franchises.
*May Contain Spoilers*
This post contains spoilers about Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated! You can come back in a couple of days when I can guarantee the post will not be about this Cartoon Network show. Otherwise, you have been warned!
*Contains Spoilers*
This was a fun show and one I’m sorry to see end. (And that’s something I never thought I’d say about any version of Scooby Doo.) While there weren’t as many pop cultural references in the second half of the season as there were in the first season and a half, there were still plenty to go around. From Daphne and Fred quoting Kirk and McCoy from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Mystery Machine exploded, Babylonian prophecies, string theory, Twin Peaks, Velma’s exclamation of Schrödinger’s cat and sentient plants, the final 11 episodes fired on all cylinders.
During these final episodes, the history of Mystery Incorporated from its Mayan beginnings to the present group was explored. We also learned that neither Ricky Owens (as Mr. E) or Professor Pericles were the real “big bad” of the series. Rather it was the Evil Entity, who has been manipulating all of the predecessors of Mystery Incorporated since the Mayan days. But the story editor of the series, Michael F. Ryan, saved the best for last.
In a huge shout out to Harlan Ellison’s famed Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever, after the Evil Entity is destroyed, the gang find themselves in a new world. It’s a world where all of the evil caused by the Entity throughout history has been undone. So, Fred’s parents, Brad Chiles and Judy Reeves never joined a mystery solving gang and aren’t the least bit interested in traps because they’re both obstetricians. Daphne’s parents want her to marry Fred (something they were opposed to in the other universe). Shaggy is an award-winning teen chef. Ricky Owens and Cassidy Williams are married and owners of the company Creationex and Professor Pericles is the company mascot. And Marcy (Hot Dog Water) is a very successful science student who seems to share a special relationship with Velma (adding fuel to internet speculation relative to Velma’s sexuality). But most importantly, the gang is in an alternative timeline where all the mysteries they’ve solved never occurred.
But the Ellison shout out doesn’t end here. It turns out there is a new Mr. E and he is in fact Harlan Ellison himself who slipped into the alternative timeline with the gang. He has admitted the gang into his class next semester in the college where he teaches, which by chance is located across country. So the gang fix up the van and head out of town to the sound of a laugh track and applause. At that point, you realize that you have been given the explanation for how these four humans and their dog got together, where they are going and why (and thus the origin of the original 1969 Scooby Doo, Where Are You!).
This version of Scooby Doo was never really child friendly, but it was always child watchable. This was Scooby Doo for adults and I enjoyed this program a lot. The first season is streaming on Netflix and the complete series is available on iTunes and Amazon. This, by far, was the best version of those meddling kids and their dog.