YMMV / The Scooby-Doo Show

• Awesome Moments:
  • In "The Spirits of '76", Shaggy helps stop the ghosts on his own initiative for once. He "borrows" an iceberg from the "Washington crossing the Delaware" exhibit and tosses it at their car, hoping to cause a skid. Naturally, the iceberg isn't ice, but it is glass, which punctures the car's tires.
  • "High Rise Hair Raiser" give us another when Shaggy and Scooby see the gang in danger from the Monster of the Week and leap in to save them in their own way.
• Creepy Awesome: Many villains combine both awesomeness and terror. Notable examples are Old Iron Face (who wears an imposing iron mask and seemingly uses sharks like water skis while brazenly whipping them), the Ghostly Gondolier (who has a glowing skull face and is introduced swinging into an opera pit like Tarzan to steal a necklace), the snarling, cape-wearing Cat Creature, the KISS-styled Diabolical Disc Demon, and Dr. Coffin (who hypnotizes dogs by playing an organ and gets some good scenes standing on a cliff and laughing in the middle of a thunderstorm).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some of the monsters in this incarnation of the franchise have become some of the most memorable villains; the Tar Monster, the 10,000 Volt Ghost and Old Iron Face, to name a few. So much so that when the gang faces incarnations of their most iconic mysteries in Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase, all but one of the monsters are from this series. Old Iron Face also appears in Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy and a good half of the monsters from Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed originated in this show as well.
• Franchise Original Sin: This is the first series to deal with Scooby's extended family. While tolerable here due to Scooby-Dum and Scooby-Dee's sporadic appearances, this series inadvertently planted the seeds for the infamous Scrappy-Doo to appear down the line.
• Fridge Horror: In "High-Rise Hair Raiser", the Specter and the ghost of his great-great-great granddaughter are revealed to be fakes. But apparently, the villains took advantage of a legend that Crabbe comes back every 20 years to his home to get younger again. Shaggy, Velma and Scooby go to the actual house where one of the hoaxers is there to greet them. But the kicker is Scooby and Shaggy find a spell book that really works at turning them into monsters. Since it is unlikely the fake ghosts would have found a real spell book just for their cover, perhaps Crabbe really does come back every 20 years. This could also count as Hilarious in Hindsight: In Scooby-Doo! and the Goblin King, a monster in the bar does look like the Specter, so perhaps he's Real After All.
• Heartwarming Moments: The gang's hunt for Scooby when he disappears in the Smithsonian and their description of him to one of the guards (a big, sad-eyed hound with a friendly face, infectious smile, and a huge appetite) is pretty cute. The guard even says he sounds like a fine dog.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Diabolical Disc Demon strongly resembles a KISS member. Kiss themselves would later guest-star in "A Scooby-Doo Halloween" and the 2015 direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery.
• Magnificent Bastard: "A Menace in Venice": Mario is a descendant of a former ruler of Venice whose lost fortune Mario covets and doesn't want to share with his distant cousin Antonio. Hiding his true identity, he befriends Antonio and researches the treasure. Upon learning that four medallions act as the key to the treasure chamber, he assumes the guise of the Ghostly Gondolier to steal them in a series of daring public thefts. He kidnaps Antonio and Daphne to get the last two medallions and makes the gang think the Gondolier mistook Mario for Antonio and kidnapped him. He eludes pursuers using a rubber gondola that he can deflate and re-inflate within seconds. He succeeds in finding the treasure right before being confronted by the gang and is only captured due to a fluke of luck.
• The Scrappy: Scooby-Dum, Scooby-Doo's inbred hillbilly cousin, is a character who contributed even less than Scrappy. Scooby-Doo would literally have to drag him over to fairly obvious hiding spots and lead him away from danger on chases. He would also get into moronic antics that made Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, and Scrappy all look intelligent by comparison. Hell, he makes Jar Jar Binks look like a dignified and sophisticated paragon of comedy. Thankfully, he only lasted four episodes.
• So Okay, It's Average: This is usually the response of First Installment Wins Scooby fans. As this show is basically a continuation of the original, this one typically gets more of a slide as being okay, just not as good as the original or even subsequent entries in the franchise. Though having a significant portion of the most well-liked villains does earn it a lot of favor with fans.
• Tear Jerker: In "The Tar Monster", Shaggy is so upset when he thinks the Tar Monster got Scooby that he actually breaks down crying.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In "A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright", the indigenous people of the north pole are referred to as Eskimos. Today, a more appropriate term would be "Inuit", as Eskimo is considered to be a racial slur to such people. Slightly forgivable in that the villagers are exclusively victims of the Monster of the Week and not the ones responsible.
  • In the episode featuring the Jaguaro, the Indigenous peoples are openly called savages, they are stated to be head-hunters who are openly hostile, and they speak in unintelligent grunts. This depiction of First Nations would be rejected outright today, especially in a kids' show, given the awareness of how these harmful stereotypes have damaged relations with Indigenous communities.
  • "Watch Out! The Willawaw!" had similar issues, depicting Native Americans wearing breechclouts, feathers and facial paint in modern times and accompanying their presence with background "war drum" music a la old Western flicks. This isn't quite as offensive as the way the indigenous people in the above example are treated, but it's still pretty eyebrow-raising by the standards of the 21st century. Like the example above, however, the Native American characters in the episode end up on both sides of the hoax, with the perpetrator taken into tribal custody.

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