Scooby Doo Where are You Season 1 Episode 1 What a Night for a Knight

      What a Night for a Knight is the first episode in all of Scooby Doo and debutted in 1969 as the first show in a series devised by Hanna Barbera, a cartoon company named for creating Flintstones, Jetsons, and Huckleberry Hound, among other cartoon shows.

       The Scooby-Doo Where Are You series was designed to be a slightly spooky comedy and mystery series wherein a group of teens, Fred, Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy,  aided by their talking dog Scooby-Doo, solve mysteries where a bad guy disguises themselves as some monster or spook usually to scare people away from finding some treasure.

       What a Night for a Knight opens with a very charming and fun opening song accompanied by scenes from the show's episodes. It's in my opinion one of the more memorable theme songs for a cartoon and really captures the charm of the show and of its titular character, Scooby.

       The animation is very impressive,  especially for a cartoon of this era. Perhaps on the Blue Ray edition of the show that I am watching it's been enhanced somewhat but the artistry especially on the backgrounds is very good and the sparkling effect on the knight's armor is a great touch.

       The music is very atmospheric and spooky. It's good music and very memorable and its a nice contrast to the actually not that scary at all cartoon.

    The main characters are very distinct in their appearance and well-designed and given equally distinctive yet rather one-dimensional personalities. Fred is the leader, Velma is the smart one, Shaggy and Scooby are personality-wise clones of each other as they both love food and get scared a lot and they are the stars of the show. Daphne on the other hand, does not seem to have a clear role at least in this episode.  She is a charming character though and I like her design as she is quite pretty.

     The humor is the highlight as the jokes mostly work.  They are simple and basic slapstick and screwball humor and that is a good thing since this is primarily a series aimed at kids. But they are still clever and witty enough to get a chuckle out of adults as well. 

      If there is a weakness in this opening episode it might be the villain. He is a suit of armor, not particularly interesting,  though, as mentioned before I liked the nice sparking effect on his armor. But this is the first episode and I think there will be much less interesting villains in Scooby Doo world in the future.

       As for appropriateness, basically everything in the Scooby-Doo series is for all ages but might frighten very young children.

       I would give What a Night for a Fright a 9 out of 10. A fine example in my opinion of the fun that the Scooby-Doo series offers and an excellent first episode.

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