Gen-Z comedy written by 50 years old self-proclaimed comedian and screenwriter. It is not about generational humor being bad, but about hiring people for optics rather than their competence.
While I do agree that zoomer humor is just the worst, it seems like the showrunners (incl. Mindy Kaling) are really not from that generation... I know it's made *for* gen z, but it isn't. It's more "how do you do fellow kids" than anything.
@@roaringsteelmedia Exactly! The Clone High revival also comes to mind... that was embarrassing, couldn't watch more than 2 episodes despite the original season being one of my favourite cartoon ever made... It was trying so hard to be relevant and tiptoe around modern "pRoBLeMaTic" stuff uuugh
Boomers still hold all the cards financially, and this franchise is a boomer franchise. The youngest boomers were five years old when it premiered. That's exactly the right age for watching the Saturday morning cartoons because that's the mentality advertisers believe everybody has.
“Progressive comedy today is actually regressive” - This, plus the comment about the fact that modern comedy tends to be that “deconstruction is funny” just reminded me of shaggy. The entire thing I recall of my youth and awakening into teen hood was going from “shaggy and scooby just *really* love food into, shaggy is a stoner”, and so the turning of shaggy into a black guy always just stood out as generally being racist in itself. The fact that his characters funny is that “oh, hey, the stoner is black now, followed up by, oh and actually highly against drugs!” Is just weird from a progressive standpoint because the entire funny is the fact that they subverted the racist trope, which required them to actively address the stereotype in order to subvert it, rather than just “oh, shaggy is a foody and always has been, if he wasn’t running all day from people in masks he’d be fat” Alans comments about Mufasa also sticks me as true, for the role that Mufasa played in the lion king, he was such a small character in terms of perceived frame time, I have to agree, I don’t know the story and don’t think I’d care to see a visual retelling of it. I think that’s part of why Disney released a lot of sequels as direct to film, their movies where highly character focused, we watched Simba disappear and mourn away the passing of his father which, “if I listened to dad he’d still be here”, to watch him grow up to stand in his fathers position, and stand up to the person who actually killed his father and brought harm and suffering to his family and friends. We saw simbas path, and, I don’t think there is anything to follow that, do we really care to see how scar grew to be an ass? 20 years later? Not really.
Alan please send our best wishes to Chris and keep us informed I somehow missed the news and as someone who had a stroke I can sympathize hope it was a light one thanks
A Pup Named Scooby Doo is how a reboot should be done. That show holds up incredibly well and makes good use of the stereotypes associated with each character.
I think it's because what we currently live through _is_ the joke. Now is the time for more serious storytelling... to pull us out of the absurdity of real life in the 2020s.
@slicedtopieces To have serious storytelling requires a lack of escapism, and fanbabies (and more likely Hollywood’s target demo of 8-12 year olds) won’t stand for that, so the nostalgia saga continues.
I'm gonna paraphrase Glenn from the Comic Book Palace and try to make this my own words, kinda. It expresses how I feel about modern 2023-2024 writers and people who take over a fan favorite character or franchise: The problem with Mindy Kaling and the writer now a days, they don't care about the characters or characterisms and show respect to the original Scooby Doo story like these older writers had. All they care about is 'how can I put myself in the Story'. No, we, Scooby Doo fans, don't care what Mindy would do if she were Velma. We don't care who she is. She should have wrote the original or close enough to the original Velma. She should not write herself in the show. If that's the case, she should have made her own show with her in it. No one will watch it because nobody cares. People grew up loving Scooby Doo, loving the Scooby Gang, loving all these characters. We don't need Mindy to put her input in it. Just write Velma. Don't write 'What would Mindy Kaling be if she were Velma?'. That's not how it works. But that's again how most of these new people write nowadays. That's why most of this stuff is shit. Because we don't care how or what Mindy would do. Because we don't care about her life whatsoever. Just write a "Velma" show (As in the Velma that all the Scooby Fans know and love), get paid for what she does, get paid for what she was supposed to be doing and MAKE IT A GOOD STORY. We don't need Mindy's opinion."
I couldn't agree more. Writers nowadays don't know how to write something that isn't themselves inserted into something that was beloved or they care more about insignificant things like easter eggs over a quality story and characters with real development. Or worse still, they write about everything they hate and "take it down a peg", primarily white men and/or Christianity, and it feels so vindictive, childish, and overall cringy.
1. Modern Hollywood has dug itself an inflationary hole that it can only get out of by short stocking their wares to the highest -sucker- conglomerate, so it creates its own collective value through nostalgia, which the public has shown to devour in droves, however selectively (Force Awakens, Spiderman No Way Home, Super Mario Movie, Barbie). 2. The Mindy Project lasted six seasons, a show that was pure liquid Mary Sueism incarnate, so that’s what she has to go on in terms of what “everybody” wants.
I was weirded out in the last jedi when Poe was fucking around with hux at the beginning of the movie pretending his comms weren’t working. Felt out of place like it was meant for a Judd Apatow movie.
There seems to be a new class of female character being developed. Velma isn’t a Girl Boss, Strong Female Character, Mary Sue, Girl Who’s the Key to Everything, she’s something new. She and She-Hulk are part of a new class of female character.
If you believe all the rumors about the 'Velma' show, it was originally proposed as a new IP, but the execs, noped out, then they added the Scooby IP and the execs instantly pounced on it and greenlit
Because they realized it was the only way to make this decrepit franchise any good. She already had a successful sitcom at a successful Pixar movie. This franchise has a fan base that will eat shit and call it chocolate, but once they are presented with actual chocolate, they call it shit.
Except it's being made for a 'modern audience' (their words, not mine). Which means the target demographic is Gen Z, and the humor is oriented that way. Gen X humor was in the vein of Old School and Dodgeball. Maybe even as far back as There's Something About Mary.
The big issue is Gen z is unable to laugh at itself. They are righteous and they can be as awful as they want to be, because everyone else is worse. And the reason is they purposely lack perspective. They only seem to see the aesthetics of the past and usually end up butchering it anyway.
Why would we laugh at ourselves, that's weird and wreaks of self hate. I am not American so I always found this odd that American culture does stuff like this.
@@suzygirl1843 Because humor starts with self-reflection. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you're likely to take everything too seriously, which means you're likely to miss the humor in situations, and that's not conductive to comedy.
@@dr.kineilwicks7002 Africans laugh everyday, even during perilous times but they're not laughing at themselves. Americans want to laugh at someone else's expense so they don't feel like shit for their own circumstances.
On Star Wars (20:33)... back in 1997 I took a friend to see the special edition of Star Wars. They'd never seen the films before. Imagine making it to adulthood having been an 80s kid and never seen any of the films. I'll never forget the moment STAR WARS came onto the screen, occupying the height and width of the visual space with that rousing John Williams fanfare... my friend's jaw dropped. They said, in all earnestness, "Wow...". You're both right, that opening still resonates today
One composer I'd put at the level of John Williams is Hanz Zimmer. Zimmer is an incredible talent and has done SO many scores. Maybe not as famous but just as skilled
Fairly certain this is millennial comedy. Always being sarcastic, has to use references to pop culture every three seconds to be funny. That's millennial humor.
Part of this started with Big Bang theory, where just making a reference (bringing up Thundercats while playing ping pong) 'counted' as a joke, when it didn't even make sense to the nerds but to the normies it was just "lol, he said some nerdy stuff so it must be funny, right?" Another thing was Marvel 'humor', thanks to Joss Whedon, who felt compelled to make a joke in every scene even if the joke was bad, just a snarky 1 liner was good enough. You kind of see it in the Russo Brother's Infinity War/Endgame, where they recycle 'this is your nickname' counting as a joke (calling Rocket a rabbit, calling Groot tree, calling Thanos Squidward, etc etc).
Yeah, but the problem with BBT (I've watched most of the series) is that it the reference humor was rarely funny. You were just made to believe it was funny with the overuse of the laugh track.
The few good Millennial/Gen Z jokes only result in a smile, not a laugh. No matter how much canned laughter they put over the top, it's pretty much never laugh out loud funny. Lots of Boomer and Gen X failed comedy was the same, but they also produced some classics which are still funny today and that's something I cannot imagine being the case with Millennial-Gen Z comedy.
So Alan I have to disagree with you. This isn't Millennial/Gen Z Comedy. It's material written by people (many of whom are bitter Gen-Xers or even a few Boomers) who think this is what Millenials/Gen-Zers want to watch. I'm a Millennial, and didn't even consider myself this biggest Scooby Doo fan, and I was horrified by the first season of Velma. It made me realize how much I actually liked to watch the old Scooby Doo reruns on cartoon network when I was a kid and how much I despise Mindy Kaling and her brand of "humor." None of the majors players in the development of this show are actually Millennials, much less our compatriots from Gen Z (whom I actually love, I don't get the contempt they receive). Charlie Grandy is 50, Mindy Kaling is 44 (and she's on the younger side for the people involved in this show), Glenn Howerton is 48, Sam Register is 54. I think the youngest person in the whole cast/crew was Constance Wu and she's 42, which is right on the line of being the oldest of Millennials. None of the people speak for the younger generation, and I don't think that they can speak to the younger generation. This is a affectation by people who don't understand what young people find funny, and are desperately trying to hold on to their youth and perceived hipness.
I couldn't agree more with the title of this video, modern humour truly does suck. I first noticed it about 10 years ago here in New Zealand with a series called Super City. It was a character-anthology series, much like Harry Enfield, Little Britain and the like... It was set in Auckland, and most of the main characters were played by Madeleine Sami. Watching the first episode, I felt like putting my fist through the TV. All the characters she played were either too depressing, too annoying or too self involved for me to like any of them. I was hoping for a laugh, but I just ended up feeling depressed. Modern humour is toxic, and depressing.
12:15 Paul Chato is just flat out wrong here. The new generation won't find this Velma comedy funny either because it just isn't funny. Blazing Saddles is a movie made way before my time but if I watch that movie now I'll still laugh. Because it's actual comedy. Comedy is the great divider when it comes to entertainment, you're either funny or you're not. No amount of rapid fire pelting of bad jokes is gonna make bad jokes comedy because no one laughs.
Can we really call Scrappy, "the bad guy" if he's the one that kills Velma at the end of the show? I take back every bad thing I've ever said about Scrappy, because, in the end he came through for the fan. I raise a glass to to you Scrappy and salute your "Puppy Power."
I’m with Aaron Sorkin. Don’t try to write for or sound like a generation or demo if you don’t know how to. Just write well and trust people enough to get it
Gen Z humor thrives on noncontextual randomness to form shared memes befitting 10 second attention spans. It’s the modern equivalent of a spinning mobile for baby cribs. Anything beyond that requires actual skill for relatable humor.
I was thinking this was going to be a long video to be talking about Velma, but you guys got into some interesting larger discussions so this was a great conversation!
if you look at the writers credited for these episodes, there are some surprising names, like Grandy and Warburton, both born in the 70s. so it's not even genuine Gen Z humor half the time. it's some old guys who either choose to write up this trash or are being told to write it up.
Thanks, Paul, for using the word "deconstruction" correctly. People misuse it all the time just to sound important, like they understand the epistemology of linguistics when they totally misuse it. It really is one of my pet peeves.
9:00 See, that's why I miss the audience laughter from sitcoms: it gave the jokes a chance to breathe. But it should be real, studio audience laughter, not that canned laughter crap.
It's a spoof, and spoofs only work if they love the source at heart---think THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE, JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, POLICE SQUAD, DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, SLEDGEHAMMER etc. Even RIVERDALE is done with some reverence to the source.
Yes and no. She's a Gen Xer emulating Gen Z humor. Gen X style humor was along the lines of Dodgeball and Old School. They changed the style as the dogma changed to try and fit in. Remember 'the modern audience ' is their catchphrase about who their targets are.
So what? As if a generation is *entirely* defined by one single person? (and you pick HER!?) You might as well join her if you're gonna be *that* stupid, lazy, and judgemental. You'll fit right in zoomer.
I expect something similar for the king of the hill revival (necrophilia) if ot goes through. Scooby doo was just a fun kids show and this happened to it, what chance does a shown about a conservative white nuclear family in a red state have in the modern Hollywood sphere?
That Generation of Film Maker from the 70s came in at a time where many people were re-discovering Hollywood history, People were looking at everything from Classic Silent films all the way to their present. They were learning by watching everything that came before them and understanding why those things worked. They Understood the language of Cinema. It's the same with Comedy, a lot of the Great Stand Up comics are comedy nerds, they learned from those that came before them and understood why it worked and how to make it work for them. The last few generations have produced so few that understand that they need to understand the past to have a future in their profession. So Many now want to Burn the past down and salt the earth. Couple that with an over reliance on Technology and you can see why they are regressing, why they won't move their artforms forward.
Drawn Together was the only cartoon that could deliver joke after joke in rapid fire succession where it worked. They also chose not to use ACTUAL beloved icons to deliver said jokes......we all knew who they were spoofing.....Link, Superman, Pokemon, Disney, Josie and the Pussycats, Betty Boop, etc....but.....they did not actually tarnish those cherished icons..... That's not the case with this cartoon......they took a beloved cartoon with a huge fan base and took a big ole dump on it without any concern for those fans......par for the course in this day and age.
Monty Python put alot of time into carefully crafting their absurdist humor to make sure it hit with their audience. Sounds like the current state of things is they've stumbled onto the Monty Python formula without having any idea how to actually land it.
It’s as though they are admitting that they are incapable of writing shows as interesting as shows from 50 years ago. And the borrowing of the names of these older IPs is the only way they can sell what they know can’t stand in its own merits.
That's ALWAYS been a Hollywood practice. You're only complaining about it now because of raceswaps. I didn't know Dr. Doolittle was originally white when Robert Downey Jr made a remake. I liked the Eddie Murphy version better
You'd think someone as old and supposedly experienced as Mindy Kaling would make media showing the kids how it's supposed to be done.. instead she's lowered herself to their 5 second attention span TikTok gag level of humour.
The thing is, if you look at The Mindy Project and her books, this isn’t her type of humor either. I’m a big fan of hers and I don’t understand what happened with this project. She definitely doesn’t promote this like she does her other shows, so….I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone that explains what the hell happened with this show.
The writers room. I'm willing to bet she was saddled with woke, gen-z writers by the studio. I agree that Mindy can be a funny writer and director but Velma is just terrible. I'm guessing this isn't the show she intended to make but maybe I'm wrong.
I think Humor is out there, but it's not in the establishment media. you have to go to RU-vid or podcasts, but Hollywood has been captured by identity politics. Comedy movies and appointment-watching sitcoms are dead.
Well, Hollywood is correcting its past mistakes. You can't discriminate and leave out POC stories and writers. Great ones exist like Shondra Rhymes who created Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton etc.
@suzygirl1843 and you actually believe that? As fine and benevolent as your intentions may be, that doesn't mean that other people's are the same because they SEEM to be similarly aligned with your ideals. We're talking a out hollywood... And done make excuses for race baiting bullshitters like the twits who wrote this show. You don't "correct" past mistakes as you refer to it by spitting in the faces of the fans of a TV show with absurd gender and color swaps...thats a deliberate middle finger, that's not correcting anything. It's spiteful bullshit and you know it is.
@@blazingmonolith4323 Unfortunately. I guess it's not super serious and he's recovering fairly quickly. Gary spoke about it on Friday Night Tights and he said Gore will make a full recovery. He's just taking it easy and resting right now. He should be back to work by the end of the month, hopefully.
You can make stupid jokes land with almost anyone, but cringe ones rarely ever do. What little I did see of Velma left me with the feeling it was made for a particular twitter/X crowd, it was never going to be great, and barely any good.
@@SamtheBravesFan So you say. Memes foster a limited world view, small reference points and short attention spans. A cave drawing of a man being chased by ten Wooly Mammoths is the equivalent. Not complex, or nuanced, just a simple idea told as simple as possible. And utilizing images from better things to do it.
I think you guys are making a mistake assuming that younger people who work in Hollywood represent younger people well. Hollywood hires people who push their views. A lot of younger people don't care about Hollywood and they moved on to their own entertainment choices along time ago (mainly anime and gaming). Hollywood is like cable news in that it's overrepresented by a small minority of people who talk to people in their club. The average age of the people who watch Fox, MSNBC and CNN is about 70 years old and they tend to all people from the same social class.