Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Act 3: Of course, of course

Some thoughts on the finale of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" (which will be up on the official site until Sunday night, so watch and/or download it while you can), plus an interview with Dr. Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris, coming up just as soon as I finish my song...

Barring some kind of goofy, character-defying twist like making Penny turn out to be Bad Horse, "Dr. Horrible" was going to end one of two ways: Dr. Horrible gets the girl, or Dr. Horrible becomes the supervillain of his dreams. Joss Whedon chose the latter, and chose to have it play out in the worst way possible for poor Billy. He gets the thing he thought he wanted, but at the cost of what he really wanted. Lovely work by NPH and Felicia Day, particularly that gut punch of a moment where the dying Penny tells him not to worry, that Captain Hammer will save them.

The rest of it was the usual cleverness we've come to expect over the previous two acts. Bad Horse turns out to be an actual horse, and is in the Evil League of Evil with the likes of Fake Thomas Jefferson, Dead Bowie and Professor Normal. Captain Hammer sings a song belittling the homeless, but it's so catchy and he's so handsome that everybody but Penny wants to sing along. And Captain Hammer turns out to be a bully who can dish it out but can't take it, judging by his crying jags after actually being hurt by the backfire of Dr. Horrible's death ray.

All in all, this was a lot of fun, bringing lots of what I enjoy about Joss Whedon's work even on a micro-budget scale.

Will there be further adventures of poor Dr. Horrible? That's one of the questions that came up when I tag-teamed Neil with Mo Ryan (which is why many of the quotes here are the same as the ones you can see in her own "Dr. Horrible" post) at CBS' press tour party last night. Some excerpts:

On the huge day one reaction to "Dr. Horrible," which overwhelmed the servers:

"We got an e-mail from Joss that said, 'Gang, we broke the internet.' That's all he said. That's awesome."

On how much he enjoyed being a part of the project:

I will say that once I actually downloaded Jed singing the scratch tracks, I had trouble not listening to it. I was listening to it all the time. Partly because Iw as having to sing it, but partly because I think the songs are really really catchy. And then once I sang it, I listened to myself singing it, and I still will go on an airplane, if there's turbulence, listen to Dr. Horrible. I think I've watched the three parts 7 or 8 times each -- and I was in it! I gain nothing while doing that except that they're really clever.

While we were filming it, I thought we were sitting on something really unique and good, and I know Joss cared about it enough that I suspected he wouldn't fuck it up in editing or change its trajectory.

On how he got involved:

I've been friendly with Joss on a personal level for a while and have always wanted to work with him. I've known him since early Buffy days. ... I usually see him at social gatherings, we have similar groups of friends. He's the kind of person where you talk to him, and he's so clever that you try to keep up with him. So when he wrote a part that I got to play, it was kinda him, him being himself. Then I had a bigger challenge to try to emulate Joss' mind a little bit. The songs are great. Act III is killer.

What would happen if Barney Stinson and Dr. Horrible met, and, more importantly, ho'od win in a fight?

I would suspect that Barney would be very dismissive of Dr. Horrible. He's a bit nerdy in prototype. But I think Dr. horrible would win the fight, just because Barney probably represents all the guys who laughed at him when he was younger. Plus, he has a freeze ray.

On where each iconic character would rank on an awesomeness scale:

Dr. Horrible, on a scale of 1 to 10 is a 10, and Barney's, like, 27.

Will there be more Dr. Horrible?

Joss has some strange giant master plan that includes much more than a sequel. Joss thinks on a great many levels. When he was pitching this to us, he said, 'This will take over the world, and there will be musicals on stage and feature films and we'll get our own television network and they'll name awards after us.'

I think we're all giggling like little schoolgirls for a week or so and then he'll figure out what he wants to do next.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Act 2: Hammer time

Act II of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" is now up, and it's as much fun as Act I. (With half the technical difficulties.) Even more than the first act, this one pushes the idea of the bad guy being the hero of his own story, plus it has the marvelously-timed moment where Captain Hammer returns to explain... well, you'll know it when you see it.

Don't have much else to say this time, plus I need to get ready for tour-related stuff, but fire away in the comments. Click here to read the full post

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Act 1: No bait-and-switch here

After much struggle to get the official site to work -- and before I knew about one alternate viewing method or another -- I went to iTunes to download the first part of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," and it was legen... wait for it... well, we can talk about that after the jump, and I hope you're not lactose intolerant...

DARY!

Please forgive the tired(?) Barney Stinson reference, but at this point the only other adjective I think I can find to describe "Dr. Horrible" would be another of his favorites: awesome.

We know Joss Whedon loves to mash-up disparate elements of pop culture. So the idea of a comic book supervillain story told for/by the YouTube generation, with Sondheim-style musical numbers, seems exactly like the sort of thing he'd come up with while walking the picket line and letting his brain wander with him.

But the idea behind "Dr. Horrible" would be amusing for about three minutes if that's all he had. Thankfully, the execution is wonderful, from Neil Patrick Harris' quiet, sympathetic performance as the title character to Nathan Fillion's cocky obliviousness as Captain Hammer, to details like Dr. Horrible's sidekick/friend Moist ruining the mail or the cowboy chorus singing along about Bad Horse.

Like the classic "Buffy" episode "Once More With Feeling," I don't know that the songs are so wonderful that they would stand along on their own (whenever a "Once More" song comes up on my iPod on shuffle, I usually skip past it), but in this context, they work perfectly.

I couldn't be more eager to see Acts 2 & 3 over the next couple of days, and will try to blog on them, however briefly, after the debut.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post