File this whole thing under "wasting time".
I waste a lot of time online reading Freddie Deboer's Substack. (Freddie is a very entertaining writer.)
Recently, Freddie posted another subscriber writing, which I always find interesting. (Turns out, a lot of very good writers are subscribed to Freddie. You can always find a lot of interesting things in his subscriber writing post.)
On of the entries I happened to click on was called: Dr. Horrible or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Nerd Culture and Myself.
I've never seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, and I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard of it. (It sounds vaguely familiar, I've probably heard references to it at some point on the Internet. But I certainly couldn't have told you anything about it.)
The article then included a link to a Youtube video which included the 3 episodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog edited together into one video.
I told myself I shouldn't watch it. (I'm trying to reduce the amount of time I waste on screens.) But I was in the mood for some entertainment. So I clicked it. And I watched it. And now, I suppose, I have to review it. (One of the goals of this blog is, as much as possible, review everything I watch. I'm counting this as a web series, and filing it under Podcasts, Youtube Series, Radio Shows, Etc)
Given the fact that this was just a web series, it's kind of impressive. I mean, they don't have great special effects. But they have some big name actors. They have several different sets, and even one scene involving a moving car. It's definitely recognizable as a something professionally done.
I don't know how the economics of web series work, but I'm surprised that they could afford to spend that much money on a web series. (See more about the production details on the Wikipedia page HERE.)
And yet, if I had to sum this thing up in one word, it would be "forgettable". I mean, it's okay. Mildly entertaining. The jokes are forgettable--I mean, they're passable, but not really funny. Nothing you'd remember after a couple days.
The songs--oh boy, are the songs ever forgettable! I can't imagine anyone singing along to any of these songs in the shower.
And the story is also pretty forgettable.
Now, when it comes to comedy and songs, I think it's hard to dissect it too much. (Something is either funny, or it's not. A tune is either catchy, or its not.)
But when it comes to the story, I think there are identifiable structural problems that we can point to in order to explain why the story is not engaging.
There's a couple of well-worn tropes being retread here. The first is "the supervillain is actually the protagonist" trope. This has been done a few times before--see, for example, Megamind or Despicable Me. (Although, to be fair, Dr. Horrible came out in 2008, before Megamind or Despicable Me, so maybe this trope was a bit more fresh back in 2008? I still feel like it was already an old gag even at the time, but I'm having trouble thinking of an example. Help me out in the comments if you can think of an example of "the supervillain as a protagonist" before 2008).
Anyway, this story has a certain structure. The supervillain starts out as evil, but likeable. By the end of the story, he redeems himself, and are now he is on the side of good.
However, in Joss Whedon's version, there's no redemption.
Dr. Horrible starts out as sympathetic. (He's an underdog, so we root for him. Also he's in love, so that's an identifiable characteristic that makes him sympathetic.) But besides being sympathetic, he has no good characteristics. (Nothing that we see in the first episode shows him doing anything that is of benefit to society--it's all evil villain stuff.) So the logical place for this character to go, in order to reward the audience investment in him, is for him to gain some virtue as the story goes on. But this doesn't happen.
The other trope is "man sacrifices what's most important to him to achieve his dream, and then regrets it". (I feel like this is also an old trope, but again, I'm having trouble thinking of examples. Help me out in the comments.)
However, in Dr. Horrible, the story beats are a bit different. And in a way that doesn't improve the story.
In the normal telling of this story, the protagonist starts out as a good person. He has a goal he's trying to achieve. Maybe it's a worthwhile goal in theory, but he becomes obsessed with it in a way that's not healthy. The irony is, the character doesn't need his goal to be happy. He already has happiness right in front of him, in the form of his true love, who is absolutely devoted to him at the start of the story.
Somewhere along the line, he loses his true love. Either he makes a deliberate choice to sacrifice the relationship for his goal, or else he loses her as a side effect of his devotion to the goal. In the end, he achieves the goal, but discovers that his goal doesn't actually make him happy.
The problem with Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is that the protagonist is already starting out as a supervillain, so he's already starting out as corrupted, and we don't get to see him being corrupted by the pursuit of his goal.
Plus, his goal is to get accepted in into the League. But what causes the girl to die is not him trying to get into the League, but him trying to get revenge on Captain Hammer. So the set-up and the payoff are not aligned.
And, he never really had the girl in the first place. The girl was in love with his nemesis, not him, so there was no great thing in his life that he had to sacrifice for his goal.
Now, I know it might seem that I'm being overly prescriptive in my analysis of the story. Surely a great storyteller is allowed to change the normal storybeats if it can produce a greater story, right? But in this case, changing the story beats clearly did not improve the story. It's not a great story, is it? It's a pretty forgettable story that lacks any emotional punch.
But to re-emphasize what I said above, it's not a bad little webseries. Entertaining enough. Watchable. Neil Patrick Harris is good, and he's always fun to watch.
It's just completely forgetable.
...odd, then that this completely forgettable little series seemed to have spawned so much commentary on the Internet. You don't have to look far to see a lot of opinion pieces on it. (Again, see the Wikipedia page.) Perhaps a lot of this is because this story is part of the mythology of Joss Whedon. (Once considered the greatest nerd storyteller ever, now a pariah.)
The article I linked to at the top is one such piece. I'm not sure I agree with all of it. For example, this quote:
Dr. Horrible has dated quite badly. Some of the gags are amusing, but the whole thing is smothered by the “well, that just happened” style of millennial/Gen X humor which Whedon helped make ubiquitous and is now treated with derision by zoomers.
...I don't know, maybe I'm just out of it, but I didn't notice the humorstyle was particularly tied to Gen X/millennial. I just thought it was a bit flat. But maybe I'm missing something.
But anyway, I'm not sure I agree with the whole thing, but it's worth reading.
And then, I watched Sarah Z's video essay on it.
...again, I don't agree with all of it. But there is some insightful stuff here.
Sarah did a good job of highlighting the theme of male vulnerability that runs all the way through. I'm ashamed to admit I didn't catch this theme myself on my first viewing of Dr. Horrible, but after Sarah walked me through it, it seems so obvious in retrospect.
Also, I thought Sarah made a good point about how the girl in the story is just purely presented as a plot device, and not as a real character in her own right. (Sarah says this is typical of Joss Whedon, and I'll take her word for it.)
However, I disagree with Sarah when she claims that the narrative is trying to make the viewer feel that the girl should have ended up with Dr. Horrible, and that it is the girl's fault for choosing the wrong guy. I think the narrative was making it pretty clear that Dr. Horrible was the one who was sabotaging his own romantic prospects, and I think that is what the viewer is intended to take away.
So, agree with some of it, disagree with some of it.
There's a lot more Internet commentary out there, but I'm stopping here. I've wasted enough time on this already.
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