Trivia / The Solve-It Squad Returns!

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: It turns out Brian Rosenthal wasn't consciously aware that "Yes, a thousand times yes!" is a line associated with Pride and Prejudice (it's what Jane Bennet says when she accepts Mr. Bingley's proposal) and didn't intentionally give it to Ashley Clements as a reference to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, thinking of it only as an old-fashioned, melodramatic line it would be funny to have Gwen say. Ashley, of course, did know the reference, assumed it was intentional and intentionally did an impression of Rosamund Pike saying it in Pride & Prejudice (2005), and didn't find out it wasn't on purpose until a Can-to-Can interview after the show's LA run ended.
• Acting for Two: Brian Rosenthal has the same "Everyone Else" role that Joey Richter did in The Trail to Oregon!, playing all of the NPCs in the cast with nothing more than a Wig, Dress, Accent quick-change. (With one exception: Lauren Lopez plays the role of Chief O'Brien's secretary in the FBI headquarters scene.) This gets taken up to eleven when the staff of the hotel have a climactic dramatic confrontation with each other without the Solve-It Squad present, just Brian rapid-fire switching costume pieces and accents in order to carry on a one-man scene.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Scrags announcing that he has adult-onset diabetes, then throwing in a comment that "It's not as hard as type-1 diabetes, those people are heroes," is because Joey Richter has a family member with type-1 diabetes whose struggles he wanted to acknowledge.
• Blooper: The YouTube recording of the Opening Chorus has Lauren Lopez's mic pack detach from the back of her costume, forcing her to hastily catch it and try to fix it without breaking character or disrupting the choreography — and since her verse of the Theme Tune Roll Call comes first she has to do the whole thing with her mic pack loose, before conveniently running offstage to fix it at the same time that Esther runs off to fix her glasses. The fact that it usually takes multiple rewatches to catch this happening is a testament to Lauren's professionalism.
  • The YouTube recording of the show very prominently shows Scrags saying "Cluebert was the glue of our gloop" instead of "group", which Joey Richter says he will never live down. (It should be noted that this is completely in-character for Scrags.)
  • There was also a performance of the show where Scrags and Cluebert were noticeably missing from the lineup in the dark at the very beginning of the Opening Chorus and Joey had to race to get onstage before the music started, because he'd had a bathroom emergency just before curtain. (It should be noted this is also completely in-character for Scrags.)
  • Lauren Lopez often tripped up when giving Esther's Motor Mouth monologue at the end of the show. Luckily, this was also in-character for Esther and she always managed to correct herself ("Correction! I meant — ") without breaking.
  • When Gwen tries to comfort Scrags after he fails at the sandwich trick, for one performance Ashley Clements accidentally said "Don't feel fat" instead of "Don't feel bad" — which, once again, actually makes sense as a Freudian Slip Gwen might make (given her obsession with physical appearance and Scrags' past Weight Woe) and provided a serendipitous opportunity for awkward silence from the other characters.
  • In the Slap-Slap-Kiss scene, one night Ashley accidentally gave Gabe a real slap rather than a pulled one, and her fingernail scratched his forehead hard enough to leave a bleeding wound, adding some Black Comedy to the remainder of the show.
• Corpsing: Ashley Clements can't look at Joey Richter doing "the sandwich trick" without corpsing, which is why Gwen spends this scene filming Scrags on her phone and not looking at him directly. Joey and Gabe made a game of trying to do this to each other during the show, which is why on one night of the LA run, when Keith suddenly takes Gwen's side in the argument about whether to stay at the hotel — which typically had Joey angrily averting his gaze — he improvised an added line, "Hey! Look at me!", with the intensity of his gaze successfully breaking him.
• Defictionalization: The Tin Can Brothers actually do have an online store that sells Solve-It Squad branded merch, although the collection isn't nearly as extensive as Keith's in-universe one. One of the products is the black Solve-It Squad tank top that shows up as a piece of evidence in the show itself.
• Dueling Works: By an eerie coincidence, this show came out in the same year as Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids (2017), a novel with almost exactly the same premise — a Darker and Edgier Dysfunction Junction version of the Scooby Gang all grown up and trying to come back together as a team to put to rest the demons from the final case that broke them up years ago. It even has specific parallels like having the Velma character become an Addled Addict, having one of them become a wealthy celebrity and Former Child Star (Gwen/Daphne in this show, Peter/Fred in the book), and having one of them be dead — although since Meddling Kids is a much more grounded, Played Straight story it downplays the talking dog aspect of the story and has the death be The Leader Peter/Fred by OD.
  • Meddling Kids even also has the mysterious figure in a Black Cloak turn out to be the Fred expy, although in the case of Meddling Kids this turns out to be a Bait-and-Switch.
• #EngineeredHashtag: The final chapter of the show is labeled "#JusticeForCluebert" on YouTube, which fans have taken and made into a meme whenever Cluebert is mentioned online.
• Life Imitates Art: Lauren Lopez's dog Diane, who has "played" Cluebert in cast photos, and who needed to be brought to the theater while she was performing due to separation anxiety, had a tendency to bark from the audience during Keith's dancing scenes, since she was unfamiliar with Gabe and found him threatening (much like Cluebert's tense relationship with Keith in the story).
• Filmed Stage Production: Like with its predecessor, the creators uploaded the entire show to YouTube.
• No Budget: This was an extremely barebones production, with the TCBs literally writing the script a month before the play started rehearsals — as the script makes reference to — and with an almost totally bare stage and only five actors. Under those constraints, it's unsurprising this show is often overlooked as a "lesser" effort from TCB, but gratifying that it has as hardcore a fandom as it does.
• The Other Marty: The cast have done tongue-in-cheek promo photos◊ where Cluebert is played by a real dog (Lauren Lopez's chihuahua and the TCBs' Real Life mascot Diane, technically making this a Cross-Cast Role).
• Permanent Placeholder: The Solve-It Squad Returns! soundtrack album unfortunately doesn't include an actual "cast recording" of the songs, instead being scratch tracks where songwriter Nick Gage provides all the vocals himself.
  • Lauren Lopez was the one who proposed using "Ants Marching" by the Dave Matthews Band as the soundtrack for Esther's Morning Routine in rehearsals. Originally the Tin Can Brothers intended to replace it with an original piece of music for the final show, but decided it was such a perfect bit of AM/FM Characterization for Esther they would pay the licensing fee to use it for real.
• Production Posse: Aside from the Tin Can Brothers themselves, the cast once more includes Lauren Lopez, a fellow member of Team Starkid (and Joey Richter's girlfriend), and frequent collaborator with TCB and Shipwrecked Comedy Ashley Clements (who was in Muzzled: the Musical with Joey Richter in 2014), with newcomer Gabe Greenspan (of Pokémon: The Mew-sical) as the Special Guest (who'd previously been in an improv troupe with Brian Rosenthal, and had a minor role in the TCBs' short film Flop Stoppers).
  • The LA run of the show also had as costume desginer June Saito, longtime costume designer for Team Starkid, and as set designer Robert Manion, who had acted in Twisted and would become a core Starkid member the following year in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals.
• Prop Recycling: The wig Lauren Lopez wears as Esther is the same one she wore as Cynthia in Spies Are Forever.
  • All of Brian's characters are created by mix-and-matching different costume pieces, but especially memorable is him using the same platinum blonde wig to play Melanie Butler (posing as the Fish Monster), the beach bum in Keith's introductory scene, and the motel owner Camille Fitzgerald.
  • The robe and hood (both sets of them) worn by the Demonic Apostle is recycled from the robes and hoods worn by the cultists in the opening of the Tin Can Brothers' first short film, Flop Stoppers.
• Reality Subtext: Despite Gwen being one of the most unsympathetic characters in the show, the Tin Can Brothers and Ashley Clements felt her Former Child Star status was relatable, having dealt with insecurity over "peaking early" with A Very Potter Musical and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
• Typecasting: All four of the main actors were typecast to some extent, since part of the whole charm of the franchise they're parodying is how iconic the character designs were:
  • Joey Richter is Scrags because he's 6'2" and lanky and — most of all — because of his natural ability to do an Adorkable hoarse "puberty voice" a la Casey Kasem and Matthew Lillard. Joey has talked about how Inopportune Voice Cracking has been his bane as an actor before, and how much fun it was to intentionally play a character who's beset by it constantly (and, like Joey, deeply insecure about how his puberty voice has followed him well into his 30s). Having Joey also play Cluebert as a Hand Puppet is also a case of Typecasting plus Cast the Expert, given Joey's extensive experience with puppetry that went into playing Bug in Starship.
  • Lauren Lopez is Esther because she's a 5-foot-even brunette, who makes a great Huge Guy, Tiny Girl contrast when standing next to Joey (just like Velma and Shaggy). The transformation from Young Esther to Adult Esther was a chance for Lauren to show off her range, of course, but Adult Esther being a tomboy/Butch Lesbian and a hardcore Deadpan Snarker both play into her wheelhouse. (And, of course, Lauren is Jewish and Velma being Ambiguously Jewish has been a big deal in the fandom.)
  • Ashley Clements is Gwen because she's a 5'4" (taller than Esther, shorter than Keith) conventionally attractive redhead, whose claim to fame is playing a somewhat self-involved social media influencer in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and who's very familiar with playing Alpha Bitch and Rich Bitch characters (who are very unlike herself) like Charlotte Brontë in Poe Party or Princess Ambrosia in Muzzled.
  • Finally, Gabe Greenspan is Keith because he's around 5'8" or 5'9" (filling in the spot between Gwen and Scrags height-wise) and muscular enough to do Keith's Signature Move of rhythmic bicep-flexing, and was introduced to the Internet-viewing public as a Jerk Jock in the role of Gary Oak in Pokémon: The Mew-sical.
• What Could Have Been: Joey Richter describes the show as originally having five main characters, with the protagonist being the Solve-It Squad's Unknown Rival who hated them and was envious of their friendship and fame for his whole childhood, eventually growing up to become a heroic By-the-Book Cop FBI agent who is then ironically forced to reunite the Solve-It Squad and help them overcome their issues in order to stop the Serial Killer who initially broke them up. This plot had to be stripped down and simplified a great deal when the Tin Can Bros looked at the budget they realistically had for this show, which led to them deciding the FBI agent had to be one of the Solve-It Squad themselves; they decided the Shaggy analogue becoming the straitlaced cop made for the funniest Plot Twist.
  • On a meta level, this show is in a sense addressing What Could Have Been with the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, which James Gunn originally intended to be rated R and to be a far more unrestrained Deconstructive Parody before he was stopped by Executive Meddling. As an unofficial parody of the franchise, The Solve-It Squad Returns! is able to get even darker and rawer than the movie was, and to openly canonize things like Velma/Esther being a lesbian and the idea that the characters use drugs (although hilariously it switches things up so Scrags/Shaggy is the only one who isn't a stoner).
• Written by Cast Member: As is the case with all Tin Can Brothers shows, The Solve-It Squad Returns has a joint writing credit among actors Joey Richter and Brian Rosenthal and director Corey Lubowich.