|
|
|---|
 Mystery, Inc. |  Mystery-solving girlfriends |  The brains of the outfit |  27-cent Ghosties |
|---|
Fair Use of copyrighted materials:
The material is presented in lossy JPEG format at half of its original resolution or less. No more than 5 screenshots (1 title card, 4 episode stills) are displayed on the page. No more than 1 screenshot is taken from a single episode, including telefilms.
| Frank Welker | as | Fred Jones |
|---|---|---|
| Casey Kasem | as | Norbert "Shaggy" Rogers |
| Stefanianna Christopherson | as | Daphne Blake |
| Nicole Jaffe | as | Velma Dinkley |
| Don Messick | as | Scooby Doo |
4 teenagers and their talking dog rove about in their van, solving mysteries.
The series that launched a franchise as well as an archetype in cartoon production, Where Are You! was used as the blueprint for at least a dozen "mystery solving" shows, often including a talking animal of some kind. Where Are You! was cancelled after 2 series and 25 episodes, but brought back in 1978, using the show's original formula, intro, outro, and cast of characters. The revival series competed with The Scooby-Doo Show on the American Broadcasting Company and was cancelled before the complete series could air. All 16 episodes of the revival were syndicated with The Scooby-Doo Show and were given its intro and outro.
In order to solve their mysteries, the gang have to sometimes make up their own answers, which occasionally are so divorced from reality that I can almost understand why people complained that television was rotting their children's minds. For instance, the 2,000,000-year-old caveman, or the inscription about King Tutankhamun from the 1800s. Still, I didn't care about details like that when I was watching this on Cartoon Network back in the day. I think adults simultaneously over-estimate and under-estimate children's ability to think critically, depending on the context. Honestly, it's just a show. I never cared about the plot, I just cared about watching Velma.
7 out of 10 stars
A few of these plots rely on straight-up racism. Also, a few shows casually throw around the most common slurs for the Inuit and Romani people, so be aware of that. Sexism is less of a problem in this show than others, though. Apart from that, a few episodes are unintentionally gay, which I guess is why sapphics love this show so much :P How else do you suppose Velma knows what Daphne sounds like when she's bound and gagged?