Frozen-Adjacent Holiday Tunage

If I were Disney, I would be marketing the crap out of holiday-buffed Frozen merchandise. Put a Santa hat on that stuffed Olaf! Add a red sash and bow to that Anna doll’s green coronation gown! String some bells on that Sven plushie’s antlers! But, alas, I’m just a lowly high school English teacher.

What I can offer is some Frozen-adjacent holiday songs featuring Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel).

The first comes from Straight No Chaser, a 10-man acapella group, and features Kristen Bell. They’ve done the good deed of adding to the limited number of Christmas songs by writing “Text Me Merry Christmas.” It’s cute, funny, touching, and ever so slightly naughty. It’s video, though quite simple, matches the levity of the song and punctuates the jokes.

The second is an ol’ holiday standard made acceptable for a Disney audience through some lyric tampering–“Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” This one comes from Idina Menzel’s new holiday album and features Michael Buble as her duet partner. The vocals cannot be faulted, but I miss the sauciness of the original lyrics. The video features the amateurish dancing of children. They’re cute, but that’s about it. Weirdly, the whole video is styled like something off of Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby soundtrack, which doesn’t jive with the whitewashed lyrics and cutesy kiddos.

‘Play It Again, Dick’ Eps. 7 & 8 Review

The final episodes have hit the web! Watch ’em before you read–spoilers ahead!

Watch Play It Again, Dick episode 7 on CW Seed.

Now watch episode 8.

Episode 7 opens with a behind-the-scenes testimonial from Daran Norris (Cliff McCormack) talking about how wonderful it is to work on this labor of love for such a close friend. The camera pulls back to show Ryan behind him offering directorial coaching on the next take. Daran calls him a “fuzzy little prick,” does some voice over-style talking and leaves.

When we enter the Private Dick episode, we’re thrown into a sex scene, this time with Rose McIver’s “horny mourner.” It’s not nearly as funny as the earlier sex scene with Madison. Post-coitus, Dick gets a vision of Beaver–at this point it occurs to me that he only sees Beaver after seeing beaver, which is a sneaky sort of joke to pull. Beaver mentors Dick on how to solve the case which boils down to locating the corner pieces of the puzzle.

Walking by Weevil’s place of death, Dick notices tacos from room service waiting half eaten outside the door. He does that finger-test-taste thing and determines that these are “Tacos de los Muertes.” Cut to Ryan explaining he got a Spanish coach for those lines to show cultural respect. Then cut to a dense parody of badly-dubbed martial arts movies. Oh, irony.

Dick goes to the kitchen where three Asian men are working. Two leave in a dubbed hysteria while the third readies for hand-to-hand combat. Here’s where we discover Daran was used for the voice acting, though clearly the actor playing the Asian fighter speaks perfect English. I’m not even half the authority on tropes of martial arts films that I might claim to be on film noir, but that’s not a requirement for the scene to be funny. As Dick gains the upper hand in the fight, his opponent hits the floor and Dick repeatedly punches him. The low angle of the shot is reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs.

But then the episode pulls the first of its Scooby Doo reveals. Dick pulls a plastic mask off of the Asian cook to reveal Kane Software’s muscle man, Clarence Wiedman. Dick demands to know why Wiedman killed Weevil and Keith. Wiedman says, “You already know. You’ve always known.”

Cut to actor Christopher Duncan (Wiedman) finding out he’s not getting paid and leaving the set.

Episode 8 picks up directly after the reveal in the kitchen. Veronica arrives at the bed and breakfast and is greeted by Madison, who pulls a gun on her and starts to fire. In an acted slow motion, Dick jumps in front of the bullet, saving Veronica. He is not shot–did she miss at close range? No, Madison has been shot–did the bullet ricochet off of his holstered gun? No, Wallace shot her from the unseen next room. He’s gone all gangsta, just like Percy wanted.

But wait, Dick reveals that Madison also wears a plastic mask, revealing Celeste Kane underneath. She gets some villainous explanatory lines, but it doesn’t matter. Then Dick goes to Wallace and begins to explain that he isn’t actually Wallace. “Whitey say what?” Wallace yelps while his face begs to keep the ownership of the gangsta-style shooting. But no, underneath the Wallace-mask is Duncan. Except Duncan is being played by Ryan Devlin, season 3’s serial rapist Mercer. Veronica is overjoyed to see “Duncan” again, and there is heavy sucking of face between them.

Cut to Devlin talking about how his previous role would have prevented his casting as Duncan, but, hey, he got to kiss Kristen Bell! Being one of many fans who felt the whole serial rapist storyline in season 3 was distasteful at best, I had mixed feelings about this twist, and it soured the ending of the show a little bit.

Then, finally, we get the dance number. It goes on too long, but the song choice of “No Mediocre” is ironically brilliant. After all, Private Dick is awful.

The final scene is back in the CW board room with the producers. They pass on the show saying their demographic is accustomed to…competence. Ryan, heartbroken, leaves.

Then we get the credits dance sequence which is also set to “No Mediocre” but now features all of our beloved Veronica Mars cast members getting their groove on with Ryan. The brief moment of Ryan dancing with Ken Marino made me laugh out loud.

All in all, I was underwhelmed by the final two episodes. But the series as a whole was fun if a bit forgettable.

Review: ‘Play It Again, Dick’ Episode 1

Watch the first episode of Play It Again, Dick here.

First things first, the opening shot is straight out of Apocalypse Now, panning over the accouterments of Dick’s bedside (sex wax, Boner Express pills, trashy earrings, and condoms of many colors), sliding by his iPhone playing the message of last night’s forgotten woman (and client), while he slumbers, spooned up with his dog. Okay, so it’s no Saigon, but its classic 1970’s P.I. television. Jason Dohring appears lounging with him on deck chairs, looking like he’s definitely spent some time in the Navy gym. Inserted is part of (or an homage to) the dance video that went viral during the Veronica Mars Kickstarter excitement.

This is the title sequence to ‘Play It Again, Dick,’ the show within the show, which Ryan Hansen is showing to Kristen Bell in an attempt to get her on board and sign the waiver for appearing. His cluelessness sproings humorously off of her mild disbelief. She’s got all sorts of reasons not to but also doesn’t believe he’s got a chance of getting it green lit. At best Dick Casablancas was a nobody on the show, at worst he was a minor villain. But he does get his pilot. The jokes on her, and the laughter is for us Marshmallows who love their antagonistic chemistry.

I’m hoping that the series will continue giving us snippets of the show Ryan is making, full of homages to Magnum P.I. and Starsky and Hutch, along with the meta angle of Ryan trying to rope in his former Veronica Mars cast members. Pretty much everyone you could want is on tap to guest star.

But even if you’ve never watched the show from which this potentially spins off, the dopey ambition Ryan exhibits still has the charm and humor to entertain and ensnare.

It’s what plants crave!

Here at The Dinglehopper we’ve passed an unexamined love for Kristin Bell on to our offspring.  It’s nothing we tried to do.  It apparently happened genetically.  From Veronica Mars to Frozen, the household is united.

So when we read that Game of Thrones trumped Mother’s Day (ABC News), we had a good laugh.

“Mother’s Day is on a Sunday, so Mother’s Day is secondary to ‘Game of Thrones’ viewing, let’s be honest about that,” the 33-year-old “Veronica Mars” star told ABC News. “It’s ‘Game of Thrones’ first, Mother’s Day second … we will still have a dead serious viewing party – no talking, pull the projector screen down, Sunday nights are a big deal in our household.”