The Tao of Scooby first aired on March 7, 2021 on the Boomerang App and is the 15th episode of the second season of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
Written by Caroline Farah, this episode sees the gang in NY visiting an art museum before it opens, and it guest stars Lucy Liu.
The Tao of Scooby – Episode Review
The episode begins in New York city where the gang are touring an art museum before it opens. Scooby’s friend has sent them an invite.
Unfortunately, as the gang walk through the gallery, a metal sculpture comes to life and attacks them. Fortunately, Scooby’s friend, Lucy Liu steps in and rescues the gang by shining a bright light in its face. After seeing Lucy’s moves in Charlie’s Angels and Kill Bill, we all know she’s a force to be reckoned with.
Lucy explains that Scooby and her became friends after the two of them created an art piece together. She also tells the gang the sculpture monster has destroyed several of her aft pieces in her workshop.
Examining the clues, Velma deducts that the Sculpture Monster was searching for something in Lucy’s workshop. We also meet an art collector who is lowballing Lucy for her art making him the perfect suspect.
Returning to the art gallery, we also meet a maintenance worker who calls Scooby a bad dog for spilling paint on the floor. Maybe this maintenance worker should get off his lazy butt and get to the bottom of this Sculpture Monster who is running around and wrecking all the art!
The Sculpture Monster makes another appearance and scares the entire gang out of the museum, where the gang run through the streets of New York until they find refuge in a Pizzeria. We get a really fun scene at the pizzeria as the gang disguise themselves as waiters.
The gang find a newspaper article where Lucy is featured with a piece of wood. We are hit up with a flashback of Lucy Liu dumpster diving for art material where she finds this piece of wood within a puzzle box. Velma quickly figures out that Lucy’s piece of wood is also a puzzle box, so Lucy opens it only to find the Birchenwald Emerald.
The gang then prepare a trap to capture the sculpture monster by using Scooby as the lure. I wouldn’t call it much of a trap really, as there are no nets of coconuts being released or a flying washing machine – it’s mostly just everyone running around and tossing the emerald about. Scooby does eventually trap the monster inside a box.
Unmasking the monster, the culprit turns out to be that lazy Maintenance worker who goes by the name Jimmy The Pigeon. Jimmy had stolen the emerald a long time ago from JFK airport and hid it in the puzzle box right before he got arrested for jewel theft. Jimmy ain’t so smart as the puzzle box was put in a dumpster. Come on Jimmy, how would you ever find the puzzle box at the NY dump! The article about Lucy where she is holding the piece of wood was spotted Jimmy and he came up with the Sculpture Monster identity to steal the puzzle box back.
My Score
I give this one a 6 out of 10. Lucy Liu is really great in this one and the set up is fun, as is the mystery. Some of the interior/exterior scenes look really sweet too.
My favourite part of this was the long running pizza gag where the gang too turns throwing a hot pizza pie in the Sculpture Monster’s face.
While I have a lot of nice things to say about the episode, it’s also fairly average. I can’t see myself remember what happened in this one and that most likely has to do with this one not being spooky (although the metal sculpture monster does seem rather dangerous).
