02: A Clue for Scooby-Doo

After the psychedelic opening theme, we are greeted with a glowing full moon. The camera pans down to a beach where glowing radioactive looking footprints grace the sand. We pan again to see what appears to be a diver caught in seaweed.

Is he caught? Should we help him? We don't know!

We already know he's not a real Ghost Diver, and there's no one for him to fool, so why he covered he's even pretending to be a ghost now is a mystery.

Fred, the psychopath that he is, has brought the gang to Rocky Point Beach in the middle of the night with the intent of having a beach party. Seriously Fred, what the hell, it's like eleven at night.

Yeah, great location Fred. You serial killer.

Everyone begins partying, well, Fred and Daphne do. Shaggy just sits by the sausages he's cooking looking incredibly depressed. Velma, inexplicably, is no where to be seen. Perhaps she is relieving herself behind a sand dune. Scooby is surfing, because, you know, that's what dogs do. He stumbles across the diver from before and bolts ashore and into Shaggy.

The ghost follows him and a chase scene begins. Shaggy legs it across the sand, only to get caught in an umbrella, and, apparently, lose his shirt.

It's like that scene in Alien. But with a hippy instead of a Xenomorph

In another example of Fred's iron grip over the gang, as well as more reason for me to fear him, Fred demands that the gang investigate the radioactive diver ghost, and doesn't listen to Shaggy's whimpers as he heads back to where they first spied the spectre.

Mysteriously, the diver has disappeared, and, just like that, the gang is involved.

We then swap location to a Malt Shop during the day. The gang are sitting in a booth drinking what I can only assume is strawberry milk. Was... was that a thing you got in malt shops? Strawberry milk in a tumbler? Was this considered cool?

Someone tell me!!!

Fred is reading a paper; in which he discovers that a certain Beach Hermit, (which is apparently a thing, like they classify hermits. "Well y'see you've got yer reglar hermit, garden variety, right? But sometimes y' specialise, with like a beach hermit, er' a mountain hermit. Great fer weddins and the like.") witnessed the ghost, and the gang decides to intrude on the poor man.

The Beach Hermit turns out to be an amazing looking man who is in no way a hermit. He's lives on a giant merchant ship, so unless he lives in like some kind of locked off, isolated cabin, he's just a regular person. He speaks like a pirate and, as said previously, looks amazing.

Common Beach Hermit

The hermit tells them the tale of Captain Cutler, the supposed identity of the ghost. It's really not worth recounting, let's just say that Captain Cutler wants revenge against yachts.

Yarrghh! Yachts are abominations!

The gang decides to split up, Fred decides that Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby have to go to the creepy old lighthouse, whilst he and Daphne get to just stick around the boat they're on. Seriously, if Fred is not fucking Daphne in these moments then I don't know Scooby Doo.

Anyway, the non-fucking characters arrive at the lighthouse, Shaggy instructs Scooby to knock on the door. He doesn't and Velma calls him a ham, they then forgo knocking and just walk right in.

A Ham.

Inside they find a book called: 'Witchcraft Made Easy' and Velma does , I think, a racist accent. They bump into Captain Cutler's wife, who is apparently a witch, and who takes credit for Captain Cutlers re-emergal. Apparently this is enough information for them, because they take this as their cue to leave and witness someone haduken into a sewer pipe.

Streetfighter: Ryu vs. Plumbing

Scooby is forced in after it, and pulls out some glowing seaweed. Everybody freaks out about it, but I bet it's gross. Turns out it's a special kind of seaweed only found in a place called the Graveyard of Ships. The gang take what is probably a stolen boat to investigate.

It looks Military. Weird.

Whilst there they run into a yacht powered by, to quote Velma: "Ghost Power." I'm sure I don't need to remind you that Velma is supposed to be the clever one. They follow it into a cover where it disappears. Instead of exploring, or looking for caves, the gang heads back to the Graveyard of Ships and gets into the water.

Scooby wont and Fred, to my dismay, says: "Come on! There's nothing to be afraid of!" That, ladies and gentlemen, will haunt me. The submerge and begin their exploration of the Graveyard of Ships (GoS) underwater.

And some other forms of exploration, too.

I'd like to take a moment here to address an issue I have with Scooby Doo. It concerns money, or lack thereof. It's pretty established that the Gang are just college students, none of them have jobs, and, as far as I know, they aren't funded by a billionaire entrepreneur. So where does their money come from? Gas for the van alone is going to rack up quite a bill, but then you get things like this episode, where they apparently possess diving suits and a boat! What's happening here?

Anyway, Daphne, Velma, and Fred split off from Shaggy and Scooby, and enter a shipwreck to investigate a corpse. Whilst investigating a corpse, their corpse investigation is interrupted and they are locked in by Captain Cutler. They were investigating a corpse.

Pictured: A corpse.

Captain Cutler runs away gleefully, and there is a wacky chase scene. The end result is the discovery of a secret store room of scuba tanks, inside a submerged ship. How'd he get them down their without using them? Like, wouldn't it be one for the dive, and the one for surfacing? Right? Do I not understand scooba (Doo) diving?

Whatever the case, the gang finds their way into a secret cave, where all of the missing yachts have been stashed. Apparently this wraps up their mystery, but I don't really think it has. I also don't care any more, just lock up the Beach Hermit.

Is his beanie also his scarf?

A trap is set to catch the Ghost, but, as is always the way, it fails. Scooby fucks up and gets caught in the trap itself, which results in him catching the villain by dropping a boat on it.

That's a man, just to remind you.

The ghosts mask is removed to reveal: Captain Cutler! Turns out he wasn't dead, somehow.

There is a scene change and we are back at the diner, Fred is reading a newspaper, which gives us another awesome example of Scooby Doo Gibberish Writing.

Does it say: "Animal Attack Saves Lives" on the other page?

The episode ends with Scooby drinking everyones drink without touching them. Instead of the regular raucous laughter, we get a kind of slow stunned silence, as Fred slowly says: "I guess that's.... another mystery." Scooby laughs, roll credits.

Get a Clue Scooby Doo isn't as mind-bendingly crazy as some of the later episodes, the reveal is actually kind of surprising, and the Beach Hermit is incredible.

On the other hand this image.

Sweet Dreams.

Gooodnight everybody.

Jackson Bee.