'Scooby Doo and Guess Who' "The 7th Inning Scare" (2020)
Opening thoughts: On paper, "The 7th Inning Scare" is not that special, or at least the idea of the story was, and whether one likes the episode may depend on whether they are familiar with Macklemore. The episode left me mixes on first watch, loved the villain and setting in particular while also finding that not all the humour landed and that Macklemore and baseball were too much of a mismatch.
Still rewatched it anyway, as some 'Scooby Doo and Guess Who' episodes did fare better on rewatch and as part of my mostly impressive rewatch of the whole show. There are many good Scooby Doo episodes centered around sport and 'What's New Scooby Doo's' "The Unnatural" is an example of an episode set around baseball done well. The good news is that "The 7th Inning Scare" is one of the episodes that did improve on rewatch. Still had issues with it, but a couple of things that weren't so good on first watch fared better here.
Good things: Starting with the many good things, the animation has lots of vibrant colour and a suitably eerie atmosphere. The villain design is very cool and inventive and loved the richly detailed backgrounds. The music fits beautifully, having groovy energy when needed and the right amount of eeriness without being over scored. The voice acting is very good, especially from Matthew Lillard and zesty Macklemore. Am not a fan of Kate Miccucci's Velma on the whole, but wasn't massively bothered here.
"The 7th Inning Scare" did a great job with the setting, very nostalgic and creepy and the baseball action was fun to watch. The villain was another one of the best things about the episode, super original, very cool and creepy. Macklemore is very entertaining, has a fun personality and gels with the setting a lot more harmoniously than remembered. Great chemistry with the gang, all on great form, and his very funny obsession with them is not overdone. It is a funny episode, like with the sea mine scene. The mystery is well paced and diverting with an ending that did surprise me.
Bad things: Did feel on the other hand that there were issues. The "everyone's a jerk in baseball" joke was just weird and not funny at all, also over-generalised and not true. The episode also never explains what happened to the old man, very incomplete loose end feeling that was.
Was very mixed on the motive, it was wild, unique for the franchise and unexpected, but it was also far too extreme and made the perpetrator come over as too much of a maniac.
Closing thoughts: Overall, pretty good and better than remembered but there are better episodes.
7/10.
