HBO Max’s woke Scooby-Doo spin-off Velma ranks among IMDb’s worst TV shows of all time, with a 1.5 audience score that puts it below such stinkers as Toddlers & Tiaras and Paris Hilton’s My New BFF. Strangely, the Mindy Kaling-created animated series is receiving a second season.
How can this be? How can HBO end Succession, its most acclaimed series, but give a second green light to Velma, its most hated?
The TV industry moves in mysterious ways, and terrible shows often get renewed if the ratings are good enough, though these tend to be trashy reality series that are cheaper to produce than scripted content.
In the case of woke Velma, which features a South Asian lesbian protagonist and an ethnically diverse voice cast, we may never know how many people are watching since HBO Max doesn’t disclose streaming statistics. But secondary reports suggest the show has managed to draw viewers despite overwhelmingly negative word of mouth.
Two weeks after it debuted in January, the show saw a spike in viewership, becoming the fourth most in-demand breakout series in the country, “with 37.3 times the average series demand — a whopping 127% increase from last week,” according to a Parrot Analytics report.
For that week, Velma was the second most in-demand breakout series in the country, trailing only Netflix’s Wednesday.
Warner Bros., which owns HBO Max, has publicly called it the streamer’s most-watched animated series debut.
So while Velma appears to have benefited at least temporarily from the novelty effect plus the trainwreck phenomenon, its renewal boils down in practical matters to one individual — Channing Dungey, chairwoman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Studios.
If the name sounds familiar, Dungey was the executive who fired Roseanne Barr from her top-rated ABC sitcom following Barr’s derogatory tweet about Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett. Since moving on from ABC, Dungey landed at Netflix, where she worked with the Obamas to develop shows as part of the couple’s Netflix deal.
Dungey joined Warner Bros. TV in 2020 where she oversees the studio’s enormous roster of TV shows, which includes at least two more series from Mindy Kaling. Like Dungey, Kaling has ties to the Obamas, not only stumping for the former president, but even optioning the memoirs of one of the administration’s staffers.
Mindy Kaling participates in a conversation with New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum during the New Yorker Festival on October 11, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The New Yorker)
At last week’s Producers Guild Awards, Dungey praised Kaling who was receiving the Norman Lear Award for her career achievements.
“It’s a huge recognition of everything she’s done. Between her writing, her acting, her producing, she always accomplishes everything she puts her mind to. It’s so wonderful to have her get this recognition tonight,” Dungey reportedly said.
Velma is a bomb among viewers. Even the critics didn’t like it. But Hollywood elites are long on Mindy Kaling, and as a result, there will be more woke Velma in our futures, whether we want it or not.
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