The following contains spoilers for Velma Season 1, Episode 6, "The Sins of the Fathers and Some of the Mothers," which debuted Thursday, Jan. 26 on HBO.
Velma is off to a rough start on HBO Max, partially due to its lack of a strong identity. In fact, much of the show feels so similar to other adult animated comedies that it's hard not to draw a one-to-one comparison between them. One clear example of this is Velma's new origin story for Daphne. While the story is definitely unique compared to other iterations of the character in Scooby-Doo media, it is quite similar to that of Turanga Leela from Futurama.
Like Leela, Daphne does not know her birth parents or where she originally comes from at the start of the show. When Daphne is given reason to question the story her adopted mothers tell her about her origins, she decides to investigate and eventually finds her parents living in Crystal Cove's decommissioned crystal mines. Though there are some pretty clear departures from the Futurama episode where Leela finds her own parents, it's hard for fans of both shows not to see the similarities between them.
Daphne And Leela's Origins Share A Basic Outline
In Futurama Season 4, Episode 2, "Leela's Homeworld," after winning orphan of the year, Leela laments that she has never met her parents and doesn't even know what planet she comes from. Throughout the episode, it is revealed that Leela is not an alien like she thought, but actually a mutant from the sewers beneath New New York. Similarly, in Velma, Daphne also discovers her parents living as outcasts in an underground location. The similarities continue when it is revealed both characters' parents have lied to them about the circumstances of their separation.
In Leela's case, her parents pretended she was an alien so that she would be allowed to live in the world above the sewers and have a better life. Similarly, Daphne's adoptive parents lied to her saying they found her in a cornfield, so she wouldn't know the truth that her parents intentionally abandoned her. Both stories have a lot of the same ideas and try to hit some of the same emotional beats, focusing on what parents do to try and give their children better lives. Unfortunately for Velma, it fails to reach the same emotional heights as Futurama.
Velma Struggles to Engage Viewers on an Emotional Level
By the time Futurama fans follow Leela on such an emotionally impactful discovery, they've already gotten to know her over the course of nearly four seasons. In contrast, the supposedly big revelation of Daphne's true origin comes in the show's sixth episode. Viewers don't even learn much about Daphne as a character other than the bizarre implication that she's inclined to break the law because her parents are criminals.
Daphne never knew her parents were criminals, so the show is either making a strong political statement that criminality is a heritable trait, or more likely didn't think through the implications of the story they decided to tell. When Daphne eventually learns the truth that her birth parents had chosen money over her, she has a reunion with her adoptive moms that is meant to be emotional but lacks impact since the conflict lasted less than 30 minutes of screen time. Velma also struggles in general to evoke a lot of genuine emotion for its characters as it is more focused on a laugh-a-minute style of writing that doesn't leave much room for audiences to sit with nice moments like this.
Unfortunately for Velma, it fails to reach the same heights as the shows it has taken inspiration from. Whether it's Velma's insistence that there must be something "wrong" with her for being interested in both men and women or mixed messaging over how audiences should view the mean popular girls in the school, the show just seems ill-equipped to handle the subject matter it tries to tackle. This only makes moments like Daphne's similar origin to Leela stand out as they remind viewers of quality adult animation they could be watching instead. Of course, many shows struggle in their first seasons, like Bojack Horseman, for example, had a rough start as well but managed to turn things around spectacularly. Hopefully, Velma can find its own identity in time and learn to stand on its own ideas.