Velma Review - Episodes 5 & 6: Marching Band Sleepover Velma Makes a List & The Sins of the Fathers and Some of the Mothers

Velma's hallucinations are gone, thanks to her father's believing in her. And Daphne's real parents, really suck. No one is simping here.

When did slogging through a show for sake of spitting out a few decent thoughts about it become a chore? Since I embarked on Week 3 of Velma and episodes 5 and 6. If I’m being honest, I may have first experienced the rumblings of this here, but last week’s release made me somewhat optimistic, only to feel like my judgement of this show painfully restored back to the public opinion in this week’s episodes.

It could also be that I watched two movies this week that were so wholly on a different level of beautiful and revelatory, statements of the human experience (Banshees of Inisherin on HBO Max and To Leslie on Prime Video) that makes watching something like this show feel cheap and time/soul-sucking. Seriously, check out the trailers below and make these Oscar-nominated films a priority in your watchlist:

On theme of a much-awaited band sleepover between Colm and Padraic and secretly wishing for the pairing of “Jenny the donkey” & Padraic: She’s now retired btw.

Jenny the beautiful miniature donkey

On theme of “Sins of the Fathers and Some of the Mothers”: For the story and main actress, Andrea Riseborough’s meteoric and controversial rise in recent weeks:

The source of the controversy is below. But here’s what I have to say about this: A stellar performance is a stellar performance and Riseborough and this film’s cast and production deserves its accolades and recognition. This doesn’t diminish the performance of other leading contenders who didn’t get nominated. It ups the competition. The fact that this film might not have ever garnered any attention in the first place if McCormack hadn’t embarked on this campaign is the real tragedy. Let’s focus on getting more low budget, high quality “indie” type films out in the mass market and capture as much of the film market share as the goliaths.

The crux of the issue comes down to whether a last-minute campaign that saw Morris’s wife, Mary McCormack, was in breach of the Academy’s guidelines. McCormack was reported to have sent out emails arranging private screenings for friends, who were also members of the Academy’s actors branch, such as Courteney Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Amy Adams, who then shared praise for the movie on their social media account. Along with criticisms that stars like Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis were snubbed in the category, it has been hard for the Academy to brush the issues aside without being seen to fully investigate.

And btw, I also fell asleep watching Tar, another Oscar nominated film, on Saturday evening. Meh. It’s too meta perhaps? Don’t get the big hype, but maybe I’m also talking about it all wrong.

Highlights of Velma Episodes 5 and 6:

• “Marching Band Sleepover” brings a town curfew into Crystal Cove following last week’s events and a killer running rampant targeting “hotties.” Velma’s dad is MIA as his girlfriend is having their baby leaving Velma without adult supervision for the night.

• Speaking of MIA males, Velma is being ghosted by Norville and pursued by a newly woke-n Fred who has a massive crush on her. Unfortunately for Velma, it took to this episode and Norville’s absence to realize how much of a good and capable companion and friend/partner Norville is. Without him, Velma is scrambling for clues into her mother’s disappearance.

• Norville is now dating a hottie, Gigi and she doesn’t want him hanging out with Velma. I can’t blame her. Velma treats Norville bad and uses him. Episode 5 pays a lot of attention to this dynamic between Gigi/Norville/Velma coming to a head in am off key flute-off. Also present in this episode is the backstory of Daphne trying to evade curfew to go back to the mines to learn about her past and Fred going for pizzas and telling a misguided joke about Israeli security cleaning up his messes. Cause Fred would be meta enough to know this?

  

  In the mines, Daphne has a conversation with two Captain Cavemen. Hard to say if this was a hallucination or not as they made an “Irish exit” - her words, not mine. (ha ha ha) Oh but wait they take off their masks and they reveals themselves as Carol and Darren and they work in some experience ride at the mines.

• One of my chief complaints of this show is that there are too many mysteries going on all at once giving none of the mysteries a proper chance of being told cohesively. Old school / OG Scooby centered around one mystery per episode. This one seems to pull a mystery in every direction depending on the fragmented plot. Last week, we were introduced to the mystery of Daphne’s parents and discovering who they are. Week before, it was Velma’s mom, Diya, and the show started with the hot girls killer. It’s whiplash and follows no rhyme or reason. I had to remind myself in episode 5 about why the curfew was being imposed - Was it related to Daphne’s parents? Velma’s mom? The hotties’ serial killer? A new mystery? A new plot development?

  

• Revelation: Edna Purdue is the mad scientist Velma’s mom, Diya, was researching before she disappeared and was last seen going into her house. She’s also (wait for it..) the identity of…

  

• Fred/Norville’s GRANDMOTHER!

• Mad Scientist Edna doing experiments on Diya, Velma’s mom. Or better yet, taking the brains of all the hotties that were killed and implanting them into patients at the asylum (?). I just want to point out that this idea was generated before episode 6 was watched so ya know, not bragging, but I predicted something based on what Fred’s mom shared with Velma - how the military was trying to replace the brain of “meddling kids” in the 60s.

  

• In the “Sins of the Father” episode, Velma’s dad is totally obsessed with his new baby (Velma’s new baby sister) and taking paternity leave to spend time with her. Velma is jealous and comments, “Geez dad, when I was born you doubled your work hours.” Later on, he decides he needs to make up for lost time and spend more time with Velma which results in playing catch with her while Whitney Houston (“Greatest Love of All”) plays in the background.

• Fred’s mother is the school principal and also Edna Purdue’s daughter. I guess that should have been obvious but wasn’t to me.

• Daphne spends more time with her “Captain Cavemen” biological parents, cultish criminals Carol and Darren at the mines, who are criminals and trying to run a scam by selling crystals and Darren, at least, still seems bent out of shape about the police (Daphne’s adoptive parents) foiling a scam they had going a long time ago when Daphne was born. They aren’t as interested in hanging with her as Daphne is with them.

• We learn why Daphne, who is asian, has red hair, while her biological parents have black hair. Apparently her mom smoked a lot…

• Darren tries to shoot Daphne in a shoot off with the police and Daphne’s real moms protect her. Daphne learns her parents abandoned her running from the police when she was a baby. And now they’ve left her again.

• Meanwhile, Norville is not feeling alpha enough having Lamont as his dad and male role model so trying to unpack asserting himself more. This is pretty funny.

• Diya discovered Edna’s journals and learned her secret lab was in the basement of Edna’s old house (now Fred’s house) and Principal Rogers (Fred’s mom, Edna’s daughter) thinks she was taken by her mom’s ghost

• Fred, Aman and Velma go deep into the mad scientist, aka Edna’s laboratory where Velma is confronted with her scary witch mom hallucination. The only thing that breaks it, is Aman’s really believing Velma that her mom was kidnapped all those years ago. Just like that the vision is poof.

Funny Outtakes/Quotes:

• Velma can’t find Norville as he’s busy with Gigi so she goes around showing a chicken scratch/toddler quality picture she drew of Norville to high schoolers to inquire if they’ve seen him, saying, “I don’t know what color eyes he has? Blue?”

• “Bats are just flying rats.” - Daphne

• “Don't need to say female neurologist. Can just say neurologist” - Fred to Velma, after last week’s feminist awakening

• “We need to spend less time with you.” - Norville to Velma, on behalf of Gigi and him, but really Gigi

• Velma feels lost without Norville and so she slums it with Fred, a poor substitute, who is desperate to be her crime solving partner and romantic buddy, “I can help you [Velma] with anything, Except filling in your ethnicity on a form. I’m guessing Samoan.”

• “World domination. That’s white people shit.” - Velma on hearing about the General’s plot to replace brains of teen revolutionaries.

• Velma and her dad head to the diner (Nana’s) where they used to bond. It’s now a strip club, “Nana’s nipples” which Velma comments to her dad is not appropriate to which Aman says, “Sophie’s boobs are out so much, I thought this was normal.” upon seeing all the topless women walking around. Sophie is Aman’s gf who just gave birth to their baby.

• “Hey can you answer this? I’m substitute teacher hungover.” - Velma after a long band sleepover night where little sleep was had.

• Norville stole a leather jacket off a teddy bear in the mall in his “rebel with[out] a cause” phase to be less beta male

• New Slang Word Discovery of the week: Simping. As in Norville simps for Velma? Am I using this correctly? Please relay in comments…or else (Just practicing my Velma talk)

According to Urban Dictionary, a simp is “someone who does way too much for a person they like.” Unfortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary has not decided to weigh in on simping yet, so Urban Dictionary is the highest authority we have.