Scooby-Doo: Where Are You! Episodes 22-25 – 1970 – a Hanna-Barbera cartoon – Starring Don Messick, Casey Kasem, Frank Welker, Nicole Jaffe, Heather North.
With four episodes included on disc 4 of the SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! DVD collection, the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo’s existence have come to an end. Unfortunately, the episodes largely end with a whimper in four largely non-descript episodes that rely far too much on lame musical numbers. Anyone hoping for any kind of “final episode” are sure to be disappointed as there’s no discernible difference in how episode 25 operates from how episode 1 or 7 or 18 operates.
Season 2 (1970)
Episode 22: “Haunted House Hang-Up”
Monster: The Headless Spectre
Life Lesson: Honestly, if you go into a creepy, allegedly haunted house to get a bucket of water to cool down your overheating van, you pretty much deserve to be chased around by a ghost.
The gang is on their way to a rock festival when the Mystery Machine decides to crap the bed. Almost out of gas and overheating, the gang stops in at a haunted mansion to ask for some water. At this point it gets a little unbelievable that the gang doubts Shaggy and Scooby when they tell them they saw a ghost. Not that the ghosts every really turn out to be ghosts, but you’d think that Fred and Velma would welcome these pronouncements because they get off on solving these mysteries.
The silly musical numbers have run their course, too. I like Scooby-Doo for the mysteries much more than the wacky slapstick.
Episode 23: “A Tiki Scare is No Fair”
Monster: The Witch Doctor
Life Lesson: Villains like to exploit local legends for profit.
With this episode we’re back to a greater emphasis on mystery and for the one and only time all season long – NO MUSICAL CHASE SEQUENCE. There are, however, a whole lot of human skulls on pikes, which maybe isn’t the best visual for a Saturday morning, eh?
What’s most interesting about “Tiki,” however, is that it’s one of the episodes that leads you to think Velma has a thing for Shaggy. Moments like this pop up throughout the first two seasons of Scooby-Doo, and here we’ve got Velma both giving Shaggy a dig and then hula dancing right in front of him with a bikini top and grass-skirted bottom. At one point, Shaggy says, “I fell for that trick” in a self-deprecating manner and Velma replies with a curt, “Naturally,” with a tone that says she’s talking about Shaggy missing a lot more than that trick. At the end of the episode, Velma is totally presenting herself to Shaggy, but he’s too interested in eating food to notice.
Episode 24: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?”
Monster: A Werewolf … who’s also a ghost
Life Lesson: Wolves eat sheep. Werewolves stick them in barrels, float them down river, and then sell them on the black market.
Not that you expect a lot of serial storytelling in a Saturday morning cartoon, but it’s nice that after almost two full seasons Shaggy finally notices that Fred is always taking the ladies when he splits the group in two to investigate a mystery. Unfortunately, that’s all this episode has going for it as it contains the two worst elements of SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU!: the musical chase sequence and Shaggy and Scooby play dress up to trick the enemy. Here, they pose as barbers to give the werewolf ghost a haircut.
And then we find out that the pretend werewolf is a sheep smuggler, which I’m pretty sure even kids in 1970 was lame.
Episode 25: “Don’t Fool with a Phantom”
Monster: The Wax Phantom
Life Lesson: Dance contests at failing television stations are naturally going to lead to danger.
A rather blah ending to the series. The Wax Phantom is a nice enough villain and the television station angle is a nice one, but this episode never really comes together. The prime suspect is a creepy curator at the local wax museum but he’s so obviously a villain that he’s obviously not a villain. Fred and Daphne do their herky-jerky dancing routine but then Shaggy and Scooby enter the contest as a couple, leaving Velma on the outside.
Honestly, this series should have ended with Velma going, “You know what? F*ck you guys. I’m outta here!”
And that’s it for one of the greatest, most influential American cartoons of all-time. There’s a season 3 of SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! but it was made 8 years later, after several other iterations of the show had been broadcast.
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SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU! Review Index:
Episodes 1-7: Let’s Split Up and Search for This Ape-Man Who Eats Hamburgers
Episodes 8-13, 15: You’re the First Clam Dog I Ever Heard Of
Episodes 14, 16-21: How was the Magic Show at the High School, Freddy?
Episodes 22-25: How Can You Have Heads and Tails on a Slice of Bologna?
You know what I find really hilarious? I’ve never met anybody who has ever admitted to watching either SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? or THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW but somebody has to have watched the damn things since they’ve both been on for something like 30 years now. And yes, I watched SCOOBY-DOO as a kid…although I liked THE AMAZING CHAN & THE CHAN CLAN a whole lot more. And once in a while I’ll turn on SPRINGER if I’m doing chores and want entertaining background noise.
I love Scooby-Doo. Star Blazers was probably my favorite cartoon as a kid, but Scooby-Doo was second. I was surprised to find out WHERE ARE YOU! was on only 2 seasons because Scooby-Doo was always on, but I guess as a kid I didn’t notice the difference between all the various Scooby-Doo shows – it was just “one with Scrappy-Doo,” or “one with Batman” and such.
I never watched a ton of day-time talk shows but I’ve seen enough Springer to get the gist and Springer always seemed like a cool guy to me so I never begrudged him any of his success.
Jerry Springer strikes me indeed as being a cool guy. He has a fascinating background as a campaign advisor to RFK, mayor of Cincinatti and political reporter that for me his is truly an American success story. But the main thing I like him is that he never seems to take himself too serious and has his role in American culture in its proper perspective.
Agreed. I don’t have cable so I miss a lot of reality shows but from what my friends tell me, Springer was incredibly likable and down to earth on Dancing with the Stars. One of the benefits of these reality shows is that, even if they’re staged and scripted to a large degree, they do allow for actual personalities to shine through. It was nice to hear that Springer was such a good guy.