Mindy Kaling Has the Last Laugh: Controversial HBO Max Series ‘Velma’ Renewed for a Second Season
- The decision is attributed to people tuning in en masse to watch the production featuring a South Asian incarnation of the famous Scooby-Doo character, making it the most-watched animated series debut ever on the streaming platforms.
Despite being widely lampooned for its insensitive jokes and the repeated theme of an Indian girl desperate for white attention, Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max series “Velma” has been reportedly renewed for a second season. The spin-off of the Scooby-Doo universe in adult animation format, which premiered on Jan. 12, stars Kaling as the South Asian incarnation of the famous Scooby-Doo character, as well as executive producer.
The series primarily focuses on Velma Dinkley as she “tries to solve a mystery regarding the disappearance of her mother, as well as the numerous murders of local teenage girls,” according to an HBO synopsis. It also reimagines the other human members of Mystery Inc. Glenn Howerton voices Fred Jones, Sam Richardson is Norville “Shaggy” Rogers, and Constance Wu is Daphne Blake. However, most conspicuous in its absence is the iconic pup Scooby-Doo.
Although HBO Max hasn’t officially announced a season renewal, Deadline reported that Warner Bros. Television Group Chairman and CEO, Channing Dungey, is actively having her team working on a second season. The report added that “Velma set the record for the most-watched animated series debut ever on HBO Max, lending some credence that this high viewership outweighed the negative reviews enough to move forward with season 2 of the new Velma Dinkley’s adventures.”
Movie Web noted that while “Velma” had the biggest premiere day for an original animated series on HBO Max, the mixed reviews tell a different story.” However, it speculates that “the bad reviews have had people tuning in en masse, even if seemingly most viewers weren’t enjoying it.”
“Velma” was met with harsh reviews from critics and viewers. It has an abysmal audience score of just 7% on Rotten Tomatoes while sitting on a rotten score on the Tomatometer at 42%. Velma is faring even worse on IMDb where it’s been labeled with a 1.4 out of 10 score based on more than 66,000 fan ratings.
The series was ordered by HBO Max in February 2021 and is produced by Warner Bros. Animation. Along with Kaling, executive producers include her frequent collaborator Charlie Grandy Howard Klein and Sam Register, president of Warner Bros. Animation, Cartoon Network Studios, and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe.
How is ruining your reputation and making a garbage TV show “having the last laugh”? The person writing this article is as good as a journalist as Mindy doing a TV show on her own.
It was renewed because of all YouTubers were forced to make videos on it since it was being hated so much. People are tuning in just to hate watch and laugh at how bad it is. They might actually be self aware about how terrible the show is or they could really think it is good, who knows. Hope they are self aware enough to make the second season good with the second chance they’ve been given. It has potential.
It’s awful. It can be good. It probably won’t be.
Actually, I like Velma, the series. It’s a really good parody of the teen-thriller-mystery genre like Pretty Little Liars and Riverside.