The (over-)Thinking Man's Guide to Dr. Horrible

I tried to watch Joss Whedon's buzz-generator Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on its premiere day, but traffic was so heavy I  gave up. Here's the complete three-act musical (42 minutes, with some short commercial breaks), and it's worth a watch.

But how do I feel about it? Not so easily capsulized.

The most obvious observation is this: When you're a cult celebrity with a body of successful work (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity), a relatively small amount of money, plenty of talented friends and too much time on your hands (Dr. Horrible came out of the writer's strike), you can get plenty of publicity and great production values out of a low-rez media form like web video.

Another obvious observation: Neil Patrick Harris is an extremely funny guy.

Yet none of that particularly interests me. Yes, Dr. Horrible likely will be remembered as a historic milestone in the development of web video as an independent medium, but that was almost assured from the moment that news of the project started racing around the Twitterverse.

No, what I want to talk about requires spoilers. So don't read past the jump until after you've watched the final act.

Up until the final minutes, when Dr. Horrible's death ray malfunctions and improbably kills Penny whilst turning Captain Hammer into a blubbering basket case, everything about this piece fit nicely into the super hero satire genre. That's not a slam on Dr. Horrible, by the way -- it's funny and clever and it picks up on Greg Kinnear's brilliant Captain Amazing from Mystery Men and has fun with the hero-as-jerk-jock concept.

Killing Penny is so unexpected based on the wind-up that it's actually unsettling. And here's the thing: A family of TV/film professionals like the Whedons knows EXACTLY what the conventions of those genre narratives allow. So it occurred to me: They're on the writer's strike and they thought, "Let's not just do a Web video: Let's do something we couldn't do in another format."

There isn't an ending to Dr. Horrible so much as there is a set-up for another episode. But I don't think they're really planning to do another episode as much as they are returning to the genre's serialized conventions. The stunning reality is that Dr. Horrible, a sympathetic closet romantic, is now really horrible. There isn't any redemption. There is no celebration in victory or lesson in defeat.

We sang and joked and had fun and anticipated a big laugh at the end, and the filmmakers set the whole thing up to surprise us by violating their unwritten happy-fun-time contract with the audience.

Why did they do it? Because they could. Because they thought of it. Because they understood that they were breaking the rules and doing it deliberately and deviously and joyfully.

And that, my friends, is both liberating and admirable. It wakes us up. Without giving us any message to think about, it makes us think.

It isn't fun at the end. But it's fucking brilliant.

Comments

[Heather]

It was a sucker punch, but I loved it anyhow.
Hulu, however is changing our habits. For the first time in five years (since we cancelled cable) we're able to watch popular shows, some in high def. Tim and I are in love with the site.

[Sam]

Re: the sucker punch, my friend Meg made some relevant icons like: http://wakefromyourself.com/icons/drh_icons/actiii20.png

But, maybe its just cuz I watched too much Buffy, Firefly, etc, but it seemed fairly obvious to me that Penny was going to die. There was absolutely no way that the "bad guy" (Dr. Horrible) was going to win the girl at the end. Nor was there any way that Captain Hammer could possibly have ended up with her. So? She either had to die or just go her own way and the latter was way too anticlimactic (sp?). Buffy had much of the same win-but-not-really stuff happen time after time.

You're right, of course, this couldn't be made in any other medium. Not standalone like this on television or the movie theater for reasons of length and audience expectations. However, I disagree that this is the first time we've seen this, particularly from Joss Whedon. This is what he DOES. It's why Buffy was fucking brilliant. Why his portraits of U.S. (female in particular) adolescence were, as far as I'm concerned, unparalleled in any other moving-picture, small or large screen (in Buffy). It's not even my favorite show, but I cannot deny that, as you said, "It wakes us up. Without giving us any message to think about, it makes us think."

Hmm. Didn't think that was going to be such an intense comment.