Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Granted, most of the recent TV buzz has been about, rightly, "Mad Men": Who wouldn’t want to spend summer Sunday nights delving into the deeply misogynistic psychosexual underbelly of a Kennedy-era advertising agency?

But in the big picture, the more interesting effort of the season is an Internet-only offering. "Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog," from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon, is not only hugely entertaining, but it’s another big nudge toward that future where the entertainment screen will be the entertainment screen, and users won’t worry whether it’s called "Internet" or "TV."

Though, at slightly less than 45 minutes, it doesn’t have the narrative endurance or ambition of the multiple-episode "Mad Men," and though it has some serious third-act problems, "Dr. Horrible" is note-perfect as an experiment in throwing something up on the Web and seeing if people will come.

Made by Whedon and many of his regulars during his frustration with the writers strike, the tale of a hapless villain/song-and-dance man sparkles with all the knowing pop culture glory of "Buffy."

But it adds new levels of comic absurdity, as Dr. Horrible, a challenging role played to perfection by Neil Patrick Harris, shares the screen with a cowboy chorus and blogs about his evil plans until he realizes the authorities can see blogs and foil said plans. He’s torn between taking over the world (he wants change just as our candidates do) and winning the love of sweet, altruistic Penny (Felicia Day).

Vying to enter the Evil League of Evil, Dr. Horrible has a nemesis, the beefy, do-gooding cad Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, from Whedon’s "Firefly"). And the delight isn’t just in the gloriously conflicted Dr. Horrible but in the catchy, comic tunes the cast breaks into to advance the story. It is no faint praise to say that "Dr. Horrible" brings to mind musical episodes of "Buffy," "Scrubs" and "The Simpsons."

On very short notice, Whedon first put it up for free for a week in mid-July and now wants people to pay a nominal sum to see it. Over the weekend, I became one of many propelling it to top-of-the-charts status on iTunes, the only place it is available.

The cost is $1.99 for each of three "acts," or episodes; the whole thing is $3.99. It took about 30 minutes to download all 500 megabytes over a wireless network. And, of course, iTunes being iTunes, I had to update the software (another 10 minutes or so) before I could even consider starting the download.

With two cables, for picture and sound, I then plugged my laptop into my TV and got a presentation equal to good, standard-definition TV fare. The only issue was in Act 2, with the sound lagging just behind the onscreen lip movements, like an old, dubbed Hercules movie. (The problem persisted when I tried to watch on the laptop alone, too, so it must have been in the file itself; the same thing sometimes happens when I record NBC’s "The Office" to the DVR.)

But if it’s already that simple to display iTunes (or Amazon Unbox or CinemaNow or Hulu, etc.) content on your TV screen, the eventual ultimate merger can’t be that far off. Just recently, TiVo announced that YouTube content can be seen through those digital video recorders.

You could watch "Dr. Horrible" on your iPod, to be sure, but despite being made in a week and for less than $100,000, this is a fully designed production, entirely worthy of screen real estate.

And its rapid, viral marketing—which has paid off in people being willing to pay to see it and do the work to download it—suggests that Whedon has discovered one portion of the video future.