A delightful episode of The New Scooby-Doo! Mysteries.
Scooby, Shaggy, Scrappy and Daphne are working as reporters. Their boss Orson Kane (a reference to Orson Wells and his movie, Citzen Kane (1941)), hires them to get a story on horror film actress, Norma Deathmond (a reference to Norma Desmond, Gloria Swanson's character in the movie Sunset Boulevard (1950)). Norma has not been seen since her last film in 1933 and has been living in a creepy mansion since then with a staff of real live monsters. Our heroes disguise themselves as caters to get into her birthday party but are soon found out. Meanwhile there is something suspious about the newly hired mummy maid and that might put another mystery in their hands.
This episode shows just what I love about this show. While as the name implies it puts the gang back to solving mysteries, unlike the original series, the supernatural and real monsters are still possible. This gives this series a unique place among the other Scooby-Doo! shows which either don't have real monsters and ghosts or don't have traditional mysteries. This episode is also delightful even taken out of that context. The humor is pretty good and while not laugh out loud funny, many jokes put a real smile on my face. The ending gag is especially good. Norma's mansion is a great Scooby location as it is appropriately creepy but never too much to lose its sense of lighthearted fun. The new characters are also excellent and a lot of fun. The only real problem is that there are too few suspects for the mystery to really work.
All in all this is a delightful cartoon.
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