Play It Again, Dick

The episode opens up at the end of an “interview” with Rob Thomas, creator of Veronica Mars, about his new project iZombie. The interviewer asks Rob about his thoughts on the upcoming Veronica Mars spin-off and he scoffs at the idea that there’s a spin-off that he doesn’t know about. He shrugs it off as fan speculation and the episode goes straight into the Dick Casablancas P.I. trailer that was introduced in the previous episode. It’ll be a nice surprise for Rob when he realizes what Ryan’s done without him!

This week’s episode centralizes on Jason Dohring who played Logan Echolls, Veronica Mars’ on again off again boyfriend. In episode 1, Ryan made it clear that Jason was already on board with the project before presenting it to Kristen Bell. Jason keeps pushing for the spin-off to be based on both of their characters and that it should be renamed to include them both so that their characters can’t leave the show. He settles on Joker and the Ace: Cruising for a Couple of Queens.

This episode clarifies that Play It Again, Dick is basically the behind the scenes footage that they’re “filming” for when Dick Casablancas P.I. starts airing. On screen, Jason even makes the behind the scenes crew refilm parts of his conversation with Ryan so that it will come off better in the final cut.

Parallel to Kristen’s last words in the next episode, as Jason leaves he explains that “[He and Ryan are] like brothers. Everything happens for a reason.” Back inside, the camera man asks Ryan what all that duo talk was about with Jason and he explains it’s just actor stuff they need to go through and that “[Jason’s] just being a bitch.”

After Jason leaves, Ryan Skypes Chris Lowell to convince him to join the cast and reprise his role as Stosh ‘Piz’ Piznarski. Spoiler alert: in the Veronica Mars movie, Piz basically gets kicked to the curb by Veronica and that’s the last we see of him. Understandably, when Ryan presents his idea to Chris, his reaction is to tell Ryan to eff off. As he walks away from the computer, it’s revealed that Chris isn’t wearing any pants or underwear. Okay? It may not make sense but neither does a lot of this webseries and it doesn’t hurt that we get a shot of Chris’ backside.

A lot of Play It Again, Dick is confusing and jumbled, especially for people who haven’t seen Veronica Mars or the Veronica Mars movie since there are continuously references to both. But this way of storytelling works with both Ryan and his counterpart Dick. This episode is worth watching just to see Jason doing chin ups and Chris’ butt and we get an answer to the mystery of why Chris was only credited as playing himself when the guest stars were revealed. With only six episodes left, it’s to be expected that the remaining episodes will be full of guest stars to accommodate the rest of the Veronica Mars crew that Ryan still needs to talk to. With this episode running a little over eight minutes long, and the short interview with Rob plus the trailer taking up three of those minutes, it seems like Ryan is never going to get this pilot made. Only time time will tell.

You can watch the episode here through CW Seed. Read about episode 1 here. Each episode will be released once a week until all eight episodes are posted.