Friday, March 30, 2018

Toons After Dark: Scoobynatural (2018)

Scooby-Doo returns to broadcast primetime television for the first time in 15 years, as he & the Mystery Inc. team guest star on Supernatural.

The plot: The episode is bookended with live-action sequences involving the show's leads, Sam & Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles), who get sucked into a season 1 episode of Scooby-Doo Where Are You?, "A Night of Fright is no Delight". We reviewed the original episode last night, so let's jump to the here and now.

The animation, of course, is a radical improvement on the original, but then, WB has stepped up their game with Scooby for the last 20 years. For the purposes of the story, the ghost that the shady lawyer is posing as is rebooted pro tempore into a real ghost. That leads to an awkward meta sequence where the Winchesters have to explain to Scooby and the gang that the monsters they fight are, in fact, real. Daphne (Grey Griffin) looked like she was on the verge of tears, or having a nervous breakdown. Dean is crushing on Daph, representing every red blooded teenage boy since 1969, and thus is jealous of Fred (Frank Welker).

The live-action sequences tie together with the animated portion, as Castiel, the Winchesters' angel pal (Mischa Collins) ultimately joins them. The real bad guy is in the real world. I'm not so sure we'd get a sequel to this one, though.

Here's a morsel, courtesy of TV Line:



I don't usually follow Supernatural, so I don't know if Dean has ever scored with the ladies.

Rating for this episode: B+. We'll take a closer look at Supernatural over at The Land of Whatever another time.

4 comments:

Steven Dolce said...

An adult show doing a crossover with a kids show? Awesome.

hobbyfan said...

And it was rated TV-14, to boot.

magicdog said...

The angel character is named, "Castiel".

I saw the episode on CW's website (free!!) and LOVED it!!

It was a crossover done right and for the most part, hit the right notes. Dean is a bit of a ladies man and like many boys over the age of 12 since 1969 he pulled through puberty thanks to Daphne! It made perfect sense for him to crush on her and try to steal her away from Fred (don't worry, she's Fred's girl all the way!). Sam however, has an admirer of his own!

I haven't seen every episode of Supernatural but in a way it's a Scooby Doo for grownups - and the monsters are very real. In fact, there have been Scooby references in the show long before this, so it was a matter of time for a crossover to happen. It's obvious the writers loved and respected both shows based on the tropes and gags peppered throughout. The episode is a bastardization of "A Night of Fright Is No Delight" from the first season. Many lines of dialogue are repeated word for word. Of course things go very wrong very fast for everyone in this mystery - especially the lawyer, Mr. Creeps.

I highly recommend it!!!!

hobbyfan said...

I corrected the error on Castiel.

Like you, Magicdog, I don't regularly watch Supernatural, and it is just amazing that this show has lasted 13 years, one of the last WB network series, before the changeover to CW.

Since I was 6 when Scooby-Doo premiered, it wasn't Daphne who got me through puberty, but anyone that follows this blog probably knows who did.