"And I Would've Gotten Away with it, Too..."

Scooby Doo is a classic. Everybody knows that. And I have no great objection to the show or its title character. Scooby has earned his place with Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and others. But recently, I have been home to watch the Kids' WB after school lineup with my brother, and I've had the opportunity to watch episode after episode of the furry coward's sleuthing. (Don't ask me why they stuck a vintage show like Scooby Doo in with Pokemon and Jackie Chan Adventures. The much more pressing question for me is, why is this lineup immediately proceeded by Elimidate??? But that's another issue.)

I never really watched Scooby Doo that much before, certainly not back to back. So it's only now that I've come to realize just how formulaic the show really is. The following is a list of some of the many things that you can count on happening in just about every episode:

* Shaggy fixing himself a ludicrously complicated snack, only to have it swiped by Scooby at the last minute
* Fred ordering the protesting Shaggy and Scooby to branch off by themselves while he looks for clues with Daphne and Velma
* Shaggy tricking Scooby into taking the more dangerous part of their mission
* The five being reunited, then separated again, then reunited again
* Velma shouting "Jinkies!"
* Daphne disappearing
* Scooby being bribed with a Scooby Snack
* Chase scenes
* Instantaneous costume changes
* Really corny music
* Fred saying something obvious like, "Look! Footprints! It might be a clue!"
* Cops showing up at the end
* Unmasking, in which the villain(s) is revealed to be the only other character(s) in the episode
* "I would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those kids and that dog!"

Had enough? Me too. The basic thing I have discovered is that if you've seen one episode of Scooby Doo, you've seen 'em all. That said, it's still funny, even if some of the laughs come from the corniness. Shaggy and Scooby's antics are always entertaining, and it's rather
interesting to listen to the audience laughter in the background. Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder what was so funny; some of the comedy is a little dated.

Velma has always been my favorite, the bespectacled nerd who gets to play second fiddle to Daphne. If Daphne's more visible, though, she's certainly not more important. She's pretty clueless, rarely contributing anything to the case and usually vanishing or getting herself kidnapped. Fred is Mr. Know-It-All, always ready to take charge and figure out what's going on. And usually he?s right, too, unlike in the later series when, as a 10-year-old, he was always ready to waggle the finger at Red Herring. Then there are always the extras, who are cookie-cutter copies of one another. They've got one ghost, one zombie, one witch, one old man, one cop... you get the idea. Same voices, too. I guess you could say that one thing Scooby Doo provides is stability. Don't expect too many surprises.

Certainly, Scooby Doo is not the only show whose plots so closely resemble one another. In Magic Schoolbus, for instance, the subject is always different but you always know who is going to say what and when. And the Scooby Doo theme song is hard to beat. As far as TV theme songs go, it's almost right up there with Gilligan's Island. So Scooby may be a little corny, and a little predictable, but he's still popular after all these years, so he must be doing something right.