Mindy Kaling's Scooby-Doo Series Velma Has Seemingly Been Canceled By Max

I only have one criteria. Either I enjoy watching a show, or I don't enjoy it. This thing caused me psychological pain in just the first 10 minutes. I think it was at least half as bad as the worst reviews called it.

I just recently defected from reddit for the umpteenth time and it is so wild to see how normal these comments are compared to the cesspool I've gotten so used to. I was ready to delve into how abhorrently bad the show was via the comments, only to find normal people!

Bad media happens all the damn time. The degree to which this got singled out was always just weird.

The true measure of progress is when media featuring minorities can flop and not be a bigger deal than all the other flops starring white men.

I thought the consensus was pretty accurate.

Yeah, that was my take too. Interesting, and decent overall with no real high points, but it wasn't some kind of horrible show at all. Just kinda meh, more of a fanfic idea than a real show.

Didn't know it existed.

The internet has a difficult time with nuance. Edit: I was wondering why this got so downvoted, but I probably didn't get my point across. I'm not commenting on the quality of the show, I'm commenting on the internet's tendency to jump straight to "this creative work lacks any redeeming qualities and the creators of said work should be punished for their role in it." On reddit in particular, the backlash against this show was suspiciously vitriolic.

Dang, beat me to it.

This is only tangentially related to what you just said, but I find adaptations fascinating because of how permeable the concept of "staying true to the source material" is.

One of the best examples I can think of is the animated movie Nimona, based on a graphic novel (that started as a webcomic) by N.D. Stevenson. The movie changes a heckton from the graphic novel, but in a way that arguably leads to a more authentic adaptation of the "soul" of the graphic novel. An example from the inverse is Shyamalan's adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender: there were parts that were copied over, shot for shot, from the animated show, and even this segments that closely followed the source material just didn't work — things that worked in animation don't work in live action and vice versa.

I don't think there's any one interpretation of what the "soul" of a piece of media is, but watching Velma was perplexing because I wondered whether Kaling had actually wanted to make an adapted spin-off, or whether this was a completely separate show that later had a Scooby Doo veneer put on top. I wish I could've better understood what her vision was, because I can't see what, if anything, resonated with Kaling from the original media.