Zoinks! Who knew that a SNL sketch about Scooby-Doo and his not-so-scary crew could get so dark (in the best way)? This past weekend, Jake Gyllenhaal and Sabrina Carpenter hit the Saturday Night Live stage as its host and musical guest, respectively. The duo teamed up for a Scooby Doo sketch with Gyllenhaal portraying Fred and Carpenter as Daphne along with SNL mainstay comedians Sarah Sherman (Velma), Mikey Day (a fantastic Shaggy), and Andrew Dismukes (the voice of Scooby-Doo) to turn one of their adventures into something sinister.
We all know the usual beats of a Scooby-Doo adventure. There’s some ghostly or monstrous foolery afoot, Scooby and Shaggy are afraid of everything, and the team eventually discovers that they are thwarting a regular ole human in a costume. That person would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for these meddling kids and their dog.
But, in the SNL Scooby-Doo sketch, Fred takes things off the rails when he rips off a villain’s face. Everyone screams, Shaggy ends up closing a secret bookshelf on his arm and ripping it off, Fred shoots a cop, Velma literally loses her head, and, well, Scooby-Doo shoots Shaggy. Gyllenhaal’s Fred going full unhinged was not what I expected to see. What. The. Hell. You gotta love a darker take on the Scooby-Doo gang, even if it is humor-laden.
Funny enough, we at Nerdist did a rather similar skit a few years ago. We aren’t saying that SNL looked at our paper but, again, having a Scooby-Doo mystery go off the rails is an idea that simply doesn’t miss. Also get Dan Casey and Jake Gyllenhaal in a movie together right now.