UNCOVERING UTICA'S GEMS - Clinton - Hamilton College

a cult
phenomenon
in the making
maybe you’re
not a fan of
Joss Whedon.
Maybe
you really
didn’t hear
about the surprise smash hit of
the summer. Maybe you just think
that the idea of an internet musical
about supervillains sounds silly.
Whatever the reason that you
didn’t watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing
Along Blog, you should, because it’s
genuinely one of the most innovative,
surprising and creative works
done in the last five years. And I’m
not just saying that because Neil
Patrick Harris bursts into song.
Dr. Horrible is a quirky, hourlong
musical about a supervillain,
Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris),
who runs a video blog about
his evil deeds and desperately
wants to be accepted into the Evil
League of Evil. It’s not your average
Broadway fare, but it’s cute. Dr.
Horrible is a painfully shy nerd
who stalks the pretty girl from his
laundromat, Penny (Felicia Day),
and is continually being beat-up
by his nemesis, Captain Hammer
(Nathan Fillion). Even though he
seems pathetic, Whedon manages
to make Dr. Horrible a truly sympathetic
character. You actually
want him to rule the world.
Dr. Horrible came into being
during the Writer’s Strike last year,
when Joss Whedon (the writer of
Buffy and
F i r e f l y )
got the
idea to do
a project
solely for
the internet.
After
all, internet royalties and the shift
towards television housed on the
internet were large motivating factors
behind the strike.
Whedon is one of those people
who can just make a phone call and
cast a show, so it should come as no
shock that two of the main actors,
Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion, are
alums of his previous shows. Some
prominent scenes also feature his
brother, Jed Whedon, who helped
write the music. The great coup
of the show, though, is the performance
of
Neil Patrick
Harris.
The
D o o g i e
H o u s e r
and How I
Met Your
Mother actor had not worked with
Joss Whedon before, so Whedon
was stunned when his cold call was
met with a resounding “Yes!”
“I didn’t even get the sentence
out before he said yes. And then I
sort of got defensive: ‘No, no, no,
it’s really going to
be good,’ and Neil’s
like, ‘I said yes.’ And
I said, ‘No, no, no,
I mean, but I mean
the point is, is mean,
I mean’ … I couldn’t
handle it,” said Whedon,
in an interview
with TVGuide.com.
Ultimately, Neil
Patrick Harris was
perfect for the role,
throwing away his
It’s genuinely one of the
most innovative, surprising
and creative works done in
the last five years.
usual super-confident
persona for
that of Billy Buddy,
Dr. Horrible’s true
identity, a fumbling
nerd who only wants to connect
with Penny. Watching Billy’s transformation
is one of the best parts of
the show.
And then there are the songs.
Perhaps supervillains do not strike
you as a good subject for striking
arias, but whatever the case, Dr.
Horrible’s got them. Shot in only
a week, you have to be impressed
that a low budget and a tight schedule
created such a masterpiece of
humor.
News has come that the show
will be released on DVD, so that
those who lent their services to its
creation can get paid, and the DVD
will even feature Commentary: The
Musical! Rumors abound about a
sequel in the works, and the whole
thing is exciting and new.
So what’s the big deal At its
heart, Dr. Horrible is a show about
self-discovery, but its impact has
much more to do on the way people
are viewing internet content.
As a show that was only hosted on
the internet, and will be so until its
DVD release, Joss Whedon has
given us a model of what internet
content can be and the surprising
popularity it can have. After all,
in the first hours that Dr. Horrible
was available online, there were so
many visitors to the site that the
server crashed.
- rachel frazier ’09
the continental | autumn 2008 15