Matthew Gray Gubler Compared Criminal Minds To This Classic Cartoon

There are any number of ways to catch a crook.

Police procedurals are perhaps the staple genre of television. Most of them work in the same way, broadly speaking. You assemble a gang of good guys, let the audience get to know them, make sure their personalities complement and clash with one another in just the right ways, try to keep them mostly consistent for the duration of the show, and then you set them loose on their fictional world's criminals. Within that standard formula lies the possibility for nearly infinite variations, types of crimes, types of investigations, and dynamics between the key players. Still, some tropes are bound to recur, as "Criminal Minds" star Matthew Gray Gubler realized a few years ago.

Gubler appeared on the show for the entirety of its 15 seasons, playing Dr. Spencer Reid, the Behavioral Analysis Unit's youthful prodigy notable for his genius IQ, multiple doctorates, and slight social awkwardness. But it took the actor years to realize that his role on the show as its resident know-it-all has an unlikely antecedent that stretched back further than "Law & Order" or "Hill Street Blues" — all the way back to a childhood classic.

"Realized today that criminal minds is basically just live action scooby doo and i'm freakin velma," Matthew Gray Gubler tweeted back in 2017, accompanying the sentiment with a picture of himself and some of his castmates, along with someone dressed in a yellow raincoat and holding a red balloon like Georgie from "It." It's true that they are both the brains of their respective operations, and both occasionally struggle with the physical aspects of their job, especially when Velma loses her glasses. However, Velma, whatever her other problems on "Scooby-Doo," never seemed to have a technology phobia. 

Fans replied to the tweet with notes on the take, including many offering their opinions on his attractiveness relative to Velma or vice versa. Many people pointed out the actor's physical resemblance to a different member of Mystery Inc. "Your mind screams Velma your look say Shaggy," wrote one respondent.

But it did get people wondering about other correlations between the two shows. "And morgan is daphne, the hot one," someone offered, referring to Shemar Moore's Derek Morgan. Another commenter thought that Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) was a more appropriate Velma. As usual, nobody seemed to care about Fred. He's pretty boring. 

But the biggest burning question, asked by a number of fans in the replies, was "Who's Scooby then?" Now there's a mystery it will take quite a team to solve.