Consider Fred. The unquestioned leader of the Scooby Gang, he’s the one that directs the investigations (“Let’s split up”) and is therefore the one who explains the mystery at the end of each episode, pulling the rubber mask off Old Man Withers and explaining how he was trying to run everyone off the farm disguised as a banshee in order to dig for the pirate gold (or whatever). No one ever questions his supremacy or his diktat—he’s like a Teenage Stalin in a red cravat. One wonders what would happen to, say, Daphne, if she were ever to note to Fred that his plans almost always caused her to be snatched by the latex-faced villain. I see Fred turning an apoplectic red, quickly regaining his composure, and then making sure Daphne “falls” down a well. She’s replaced by Janet, redheaded, spunky would-be mystery writer. None of the other Scooby gang members makes mention of the switch. None of them dare.
Why do the Scooby gang follow Fred in the first place? These are supposed to be teenagers, after all, and in terms of teenage dynamics, the Scooby gang is all wrong. Fred and Daphne make perfect sense, of course: Prom king and queen, quarterback and cheerleader, student body president and treasurer, take your pick of teenage upper-strata clichés. Daphne and Velma likewise make sense; from the top of her butch bowl cut to the bottom of her sensible shoes, Velma’s relationship with Daphne screams “unrequited crush”; poor Velma’s probably been carrying Daphne’s books and writing her school reports since the second grade without ever quite figuring out why. As for Shaggy and Scooby, well, come on; stoner loner and his talking, possibly hallucinated dog. A perfect match.
But there’s no way on earth that they should all get along. In the real world, Fred would barely tolerate the presence of Velma, whom he would intuit, in a dull, instinctual way, as a competitor for Daphne’s affections; likewise Velma would be a gushing font of passive-aggressiveness regarding Fred, subtly talking him down to Daphne whenever he was not around (now you know why Fred takes Daphne with him whenever the gang splits up). Neither Fred nor Daphne would be seen near Shaggy or any of his ilk; we all know the natural antipathy that exists between high school royalty and the teenage equivalent of the raving homeless. Velma would hardly be a better match for the boy and his dog. While Velma’s natural social standing is closer to Shaggy’s than to Daphne’s, as Daphne’s minion, she’s required to ape her social opinions. Put these five in a room, and you don’t have the Scooby Gang, you have the Breakfast Club, minus the happy ending where they all sign a joint declaration to the music of Simple Minds.
So the idea of this group being a naturally occurring grouping of teenagers is out, way out—and enforced contact would result in somebody being bitten, not necessarily by Scooby. Fortunately, there’s a much more rational explanation for this odd little grouping, led by Fred. It is: Fred is not the leader of a gang of friends, he’s the leader of a cult.
Think about it. It makes perfect sense. The eerie lack of conflict within the group. The unquestioning adherence to Fred’s declarations. The ever-repeating ritual of “solving” crimes, most of which play out exactly the same way. The creepy itinerant lifestyle that packs four teens and a dog in a van for weeks at a time without so much as a single change of clothes. Honestly—these are teens. Shouldn’t they be in school at least part of the time? Why do they travel so much, anyway? Where are their parents? Aren’t they concerned?
But these are the hallmarks of the cult life: The enforced separation from a previous life. The rejection of outside information in the form of education. The lack of any authority figures other than Fred and the occasional and all-too-complicit country sheriff. The Scooby gang doesn’t travel because they are looking for crimes to solve. They travel because they’re on step ahead of the deprogrammers. Somehow, Fred’s got them all snookered. It probably has something to do with the Scooby Snacks.