Scooby Doo, teacher of skepticism

Like many Gen X kids, I absolutely loved Scooby Doo when I was growing up. There were a few years in grade school that I couldn't wait for class to be over because a local Topeka channel showed two back to back episodes every weekday from 4-5pm. I even had Scooby Doo underoos. So needless to say I was shocked when I made some reference to the typical Scooby Doo plotline, and my husband stared at me blankly. Sure, he's seen it a couple of times, but he never really was a serious watcher of Scooby Doo. Instead, he preferred the Smurfs. "HOW COULD I HAVE MARRIED THIS MAN?!?" I screamed at myself. He must have totally been faking it when he laughed at Veronica Mars saying "ruh-roh."

In order to remedy the situation and preserve my marriage, I decided to TiVo original episodes of "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" After watching a few of them together (and surprisingly remembering most of the plotlines over 20 years later), David began to get a feel for the Scooby formula. The Mystery Machine breaks down near a spooky location or one of the Scooby Gang's family members/friends asks them to come and visit. Local talk about some recent haunting or otherworldly activity. Freddie and Thelma get excited and agree to investigate, with Scooby and Shaggy wanting to get out of town immediately. The gang splits up in search of clues. Scoobers and Shaggy always go together, as do Fred and Daphne, with Thelma floating between the two depending on the episode. Scooby and Shaggy inevitably find some food or make food (typically a dagwood sandwich), and run into the ghost/monster/zombie/werewolf/whatever. They try to hide by dressing up as someone else or integrating themselves into the background scenery. The gang hatches a plan to catch the spook, usually with Scooby and Shaggy as bait. There's a montage of the bad guy chases Scooby and Shaggy again with a groovy 60s music score. The trap backfires (usually catching Shaggy & Scooby instead) but then the gang catches the ghoul anyways.

And then, of course, is the big reveal. The mask is pulled off and otherworldly spook is revealed to be just a regular human being, muttering the famous line "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you darned kids." And then it hit me after watching a few iterations of the Scooby Doo formula as an adult . . .

Scooby Doo teaches kids to be skeptics; to use critical thinking and problem solving skills to reason out a logical solution. Sure the clues are obvious and the motivations at times hokey, but instead of accepting supernatural explanations on face value, Scooby Doo tells us there's always a naturalistic explanation for purportedly unexplained phenomena. After arriving at this conclusion, I realized I'm not the only one who has. Other skeptics have also recognized the value of Scooby Doo in teaching kids to think skeptically. Too bad the newer Scooby Doo cartoons and live-action movies have jettisoned the human explanations in favor of showing the supernatural as unquestionably "real."

So my kids will definitely be watching old skool Scooby Doo. And I'll enjoy it along with them. Now if I can just get David to watch them all . . .