Supervillain Musical.

[Mattador]

I think it's mitigated a bit by the fact that we know Joss characters often die horrible pointless deaths regardless of gender  (book, Wash, Tara, Anya... Angel and Spike sort of served purposes, but Angel's death at least was more about Buffy's character than his own), but even with genre-savvy, I think there's uite enough of that already.

But, to stay on both sides of the argument, both male leads were infantile, despite super-status, while Penny was mature and adult, well-rounded and realized while the men were caricatures (with some depth).  And this is the first Joss work ever where the men had super-status and the girl didn't have asstons more.

So.  mixed bag.  But brilliantly executed.

[txanne]

I didn't mind the fridge. I'm with MG--it was the only possible outcome, given the rules. And it led to a perfect last line. And I am SO gonna get the DVD *and* the soundtrack.

[Emma Bull]

Well, I gotta say, I loved the first...two and a half acts. I think there were lots of possible ways to go with the ending (Penny is secretly a superhero. Penny is secretly a supervillain. Penny stops the fight by fixing the freeze ray. Et cetera.)

Penny is the only completely likeable, admirable character in the story. It's hard to laugh at any of the funny stuff that happens after she goes; that the funny stuff is there, and clearly there to be laughed at, means either the writers think we're low on compassion, or they never meant us to take the story and the characters very seriously.

It's true, this is comedy, and goofy comedy at that. But we're still going to identify and root for people in the story. I don't want to engage with the characters and the action, only to get to an ending that seems to say, "But of course, this was all sly meta-comment, a deconstruction of superhero comics. You weren't so unsophisticated as to get attached to these symbol-people, were you?"

[Mattador]

I felt like it might b e acceptable if it was a lead-in to something larger and longer- which it may be, and Penny's actress has been quoted as saying she'd be willing to work in the sequel.

Comic book deaths are often temporary...

[txanne]

I didn't really get a sense of Penny as anything but Generic Nice Girl. Billy Budd(y), on the other hand...there's a trope where the hero's first girlfriend always dies. Supervillain, superhero, what's the difference?

I dunno, I only watched each act once, on the release date. I'll probably change my mind on rewatching when I'm not asthmatic, cranky, exhausted, and trying to get crap into boxes. And did I mention cranky?

[Beth]

"Refrigerator"?

Signed,
Unhip

[txanne]

Dear Unhip (and everybody else),

Feministe to the rescue!!

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/07/19/blogging-along-with-dr-horribles-sing-along-blog/

Don't skip the comments.

Signed,
She Who Really Frellin' Hates Packing.

[Emma Bull]

I had my very first panic attack ever while packing the kitchen stuff.  Life lesson? Own fewer breakables. *g*

IMPLIED SPOILER FOLLOWS




Oh, the refrigerator explanation is in the comments thread to that post Txanne linked to. But basically, it's shorthand for a plot in which the female character exists, not just to be the love interest, but to be the love interest who dies in order to motivate the hero to action (thus, a subset of the This Time It's Personal plot). Name based on a specific instance in which hero's girlfriend's dead body is found in a refrigerator.

I am proud to offer this Cliff's Notes litcrit installment since I just learned about Girl in the Refrigerator sometime late last year. Cutting! Edge! =/= Me.

[MadGastronomer]

Errr, spoilers.

Personally, I find reading comment threads on blogs I don't follow somewhat frustrating.  In case anyone else does, the canonical refrigerator (which gives the phenomenon its name) appears in Green Lantern #54.  You can read more about refrigerators at Wikipedia, and Gail Simone (who coined the term) has a nice, long list of occurrences at Women in Refrigerators.

At any rate, I didn't actually like Penny (she's a particular variety of goody-two-shoes, milquetoast, naive bleeding-heart female stereotype that thoroughly annoys me, and I didn't feel even a flash of connection or compassion for her until she started edging off the stage), so I wasn't too upset when she died.  Come to think of it, I didn't like any of them.  I disliked Captain Hammer fairly strongly, of course.  And I liked how Dr. Horrible was played and written, but I didn't actually like him.  I found all of them to be too much caricatures and too little characters to really connect with them.
In addition, by the tropes that rule that genre, the only way the Bad Doctor could have gotten the girl would be if she could turn him good, which I thought would have been a really lame ending.

Emma's idea that Penny might have turned out to be a supe on either side herself could have been really really cool (like, what if she was a supervillain, and the the homeless shelter was part of her Evile Plan?), but I still feel that I don't entirely mind the refrigerator this time.

[Beth]

Thank you!

I'm still thinking about Dr. Horrible.  It's very dense under that slick and funny surface.

[VCorvidae]

Errr, spoilers.

Personally, I find reading comment threads on blogs I don't follow somewhat frustrating.  In case anyone else does, the canonical refrigerator (which gives the phenomenon its name) appears in Green Lantern #54.  You can read more about refrigerators at Wikipedia, and Gail Simone (who coined the term) has a nice, long list of occurrences at Women in Refrigerators.

At any rate, I didn't actually like Penny (she's a particular variety of goody-two-shoes, milquetoast, naive bleeding-heart female stereotype that thoroughly annoys me, and I didn't feel even a flash of connection or compassion for her until she started edging off the stage), so I wasn't too upset when she died.  Come to think of it, I didn't like any of them.  I disliked Captain Hammer fairly strongly, of course.  And I liked how Dr. Horrible was played and written, but I didn't actually like him.  I found all of them to be too much caricatures and too little characters to really connect with them.
In addition, by the tropes that rule that genre, the only way the Bad Doctor could have gotten the girl would be if she could turn him good, which I thought would have been a really lame ending.

Emma's idea that Penny might have turned out to be a supe on either side herself could have been really really cool (like, what if she was a supervillain, and the the homeless shelter was part of her Evile Plan?), but I still feel that I don't entirely mind the refrigerator this time.

Oh, you mean the girlfriend in the refrigerator from the comics! Okay, I get it now.

Yeah. I was totally waiting for some clever Joss twist that didn't happen (Hammer is secretly a bad guy. Or better, Hammer is secretly Bad Horse. Some kind of redemption for Horrible that would totally turn him into a Draco in Leather Pants, something like that.) I was NOT expecting the refrigerator.

I wasn't expecting Bad Horse to be... well, a REAL HORSE.

[MadGastronomer]

I wasn't expecting Bad Horse to be... well, a REAL HORSE.

Well, of course he's a real horse!  He's the Thoroughbred of Sin!

[Beth]

But Captain Hammer really was a Bad Guy.  He was in the Superheroing business for bad reasons.  And Dr. Horrible was in it for good reasons...that's part of the reason I'm still thinking about it. 

And I was vastly amused that Bad Horse was a real horse. 
 

[txanne]

Am I weird* for never once thinking that Bad Horse was anything other than a horse?

*Hey! I heard that!

[Emma Bull]

I think I was forever scarred by reading comics back in the '60s when villains like Monsieur Mallah and Gorilla Grod first showed up. So Bad Horse, with his Death Whinny? Oh, yeah. Super-intelligent equine, must be. *g*