The Backstage Rage

Scooby and Shaggy are carrying a pizza home on a spooky night. You’d think they would have learned from the last time they did this when Scooby ran into a dognapping ring. Or the time before that when they ran into a sentient suit of armor kidnapping a professor. Fully indulging in their hubris, they decide to stop and eat their pizza there. Just then, a car drives by and a violin case falls out of it. The car doesn’t stop despite the case being full of cold hard cash. I would have secured that better if I was carrying that kind of dough.

Shaggy shoves the case into Scooby’s hands and leaves him alone and helpless while he phones the gang. The mysterious car trawls back around and a limping dog wanders beside it. Scooby, gentledog that he is, runs to her aid and leaves the case in the road. The dog ascends back into the car and the case is gone. It was a trap. A really creepy one.

Scooby pantomimes to the newly arrived gang what happened despite being capable of the power of speech. They find a puppet control with the logo Pietro’s Puppets and deduce that the dog was a puppet. Very creepy and unsettling! The gang deduces they’re after a ring of extremely savvy puppeteer counterfeiters. They go to Pietro’s Puppets and meet a harmless old man playing with a puppet. I’m sure he has nothing to do with those nasty counterfeiters.

They try to get Scooby an audition in the puppet show but the old man points out that Scooby is in fact not a puppet. Maybe they should have spent maybe 5 more minutes on this plan. The caretaker claims he just fools with puppets as a hobby and the great Pietro taught him. When the old man puts the puppet away, they find another counterfeit bill and scramble out of the shop.

Velma analyzes the bill in the car and declares it to be a fake. Well, if Velma says so! The gang decides to go back to the theater having just spent the last 10 minutes driving away. I guess this was before fuel efficiency was really a consideration. The caretaker is asleep so they do what they do best: break in to ransack the place. As they walk in, the puppet opens his eyes even as the caretaker sleeps. Creepy!

A giant puppet tries to murder Shaggy by pushing backdrops on him, but it fails, and what’s worse, Shaggy doesn’t even notice. Imagine not being able to scare the biggest nervous wreck in the world. Humiliating. The puppet tries to crush Velma’s skull by dropping a sandbag on her, but it narrowly misses. Velma is at least smart enough to realize someone is trying to kill her and alerts Daphne.

In the dressing room, Scooby runs into a jack-in-the-box that tries to kill him. This is getting dangerous fast. Shaggy puts on the same costume the giant puppet is wearing just as Scooby finally catches a glimpse of the evil puppet on the other side of the room. They panic and run off..

The puppet appears in front of Daphne, Velma and Fred in the prompter’s box, cackling maniacally just as Scooby and Shaggy arrive. The gang once again asks Scooby to sacrifice life and limb going after him. Daphne offers him a Scooby Snack just because and throws one in the box. Scooby dives in right after it. Everyone follows him in after gaslighting Scooby and finds a ton of empty violin cases. They hear the organ playing on the stage and ascend to find the big puppet playing the organ before he disappears.

They’re then attacked by Viking and pirate puppets. Velma declares she doesn’t like looking for clues anymore. Scooby spots the dog puppet, or as Velma refers to her “the canine Mata Hari,” and viciously rips her to pieces, uncovering a counterfeit plate inside. They decide to go wake up the doorman to tell him what’s going on despite the fact that he’s obviously in on it. When they shake him awake, his head falls off. He’s a puppet too! Uhhh, time to leave! Unfortunately, the door’s locked.

A bird puppet snatches the plate away from them, so they return to the prompter’s box to find more clues. They open a big harp case and find the secret counterfeiting room. Having found the crucial evidence, the giant puppet appears and tries to murder them again. They run into another tunnel and hit a dead end with just a ladder. They begin to blindly climb up it like they’re in freaking Zork. The puppet beats them to the top and stands on the trapdoor. Fred gets everyone to push at once, but the puppet just lifts his foot, so they get out okay. They’re back on stage despite having run a long way. I’d like to know what the layout of this place is.

The Viking puppet attacks but the gang smartly remembers that it’s a puppet and Scooby spots the puppet master. He chases him up in the rafters and runs him off the scaffolding where he falls to his death. Or not, I guess. It turns out that the giant puppet is Pietro himself who posed as the caretaker. Shaggy declares that he really had them fooled for a while, which I would never admit if I was part of a gang of teen detectives because it would make me look like a huge idiot. Scooby appears outside of the theater in magician’s garb and presumably takes it over, eventually becoming big enough to get his own show in Vegas. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Scooby Snack Stock Market: No Scooby Snacks exchanged for labor this week. Instead, one is thrown into the lair of a murderous puppet as an incentive for a dog to get back to work risking life and limb for a privileged upper class. Essentially, it’s the government’s coronavirus relief plan.

Where in the world is the gang?:  A huge creepy puppet theater feels like something that could be in New England pretty comfortably. They practically subsidize those up there.

Overall Rating: 4/5 Scooby Snacks. A much better episode than I remembered. Gets genuinely spooky with all the puppets trying to ruthlessly murder the gang.

Next Week: More haunted novelty attractions as the gang investigates an evil hypnotist clown in “Bedlam in the Big Top” and the Universal Monsters in “A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts”.