Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

It should come as no surprise that “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” Joss Whedon’s 42-minute online musical, has been greeted like the second coming of, well, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” From the moment it was announced that Mr. Whedon had used his downtime during the writers’ strike to work on a Web-only (at least at first) serial starring Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring supervillain, geek culture quivered in anticipation of this gift from two of its favorite entertainers.

The project went live at drhorrible.com in mid-July with predictable results: the Web site crashed (Mr. Whedon reported that as many as 1,000 people a second tried to view the show on the first day); the show became the No. 1 iTunes download in the television category; a “Dr. Horrible” panel at Comic-Con with Mr. Whedon and Mr. Harris stoked the flames; and critics threw themselves at Mr. Whedon’s feet (“the summer’s funniest TV show,” according to Time magazine).

It has to be noted that “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is, if nothing else, a brilliant and relatively inexpensive marketing tool for Mr. Whedon, whose other projects are mentioned in every article about the Web serial’s success. (For the record, they include “Dollhouse,” a new series for Fox, and the comic book “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8,” based on his much-loved former series.)

But is it worth all the attention? Yes, and sort of. It’s certainly notable as an experiment in online content creation — a test of what people will pay money to watch on their computers. (Commercial-free downloads at iTunes cost $1.99 per 13- to 15-minute episode or $3.99 for all three; the show can be streamed free, with commercials, at drhorrible.com.)

What’s most interesting in this regard is how much “Dr. Horrible” looks like a television show: a show with bite-size episodes and a slightly claustrophobic feel resulting from low budgets and rushed filming, but still a show, with a reasonably complex narrative and higher production values than other fictional Web series.

If the comparison is with other Web content, “Dr. Horrible” is a winner. It’s not a one-joke riff. It has real performances. (In addition to Mr. Harris, it stars Nathan Fillion, from Mr. Whedon’s short-lived series “Firefly,” as Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, the superhero Captain Hammer, and Felicia Day, from “Buffy,” as Penny, the object of their affection.) The songs, by Mr. Whedon, his brother Jed and Maurissa Tancharoen (who’s also a writer on “Dollhouse”) are tuneful, witty soft pop, lighter than the anthems Mr. Whedon wrote for “Once More With Feeling,” the famous musical episode of “Buffy.”

Mr. Harris, while more earnest here than he is as the ego-monster Barney in “How I Met Your Mother,” still manages his trick of wrapping the most abominable behavior in the most winsomely appealing package.

And, as you would expect from Mr. Whedon, the show is funny, in an elliptical, sardonic way, especially in the song lyrics. Seeking signatures for a petition to create a homeless shelter, Penny sings, “Will you lend a caring hand to shelter those who need it?/Only have to sign your name, don’t even have to read it.”

As a Web project, “Dr. Horrible” rates up there with R. Kelly’s 22-chapter musical melodrama “Trapped in the Closet,” with which it shares an over-the-top sensibility and a prominent gay subtext. (Mr. Fillion serenades his own muscles; Ms. Day sings to Mr. Harris, “So keep your head up, Billy ... buddy”).

If the comparison is with television, the answer is murkier. On that scale “Dr. Horrible” falls somewhere between an amusing trifle and a dramedy that won’t make it to the 13th episode. Mr. Whedon has clearly thought about how to develop and add layers to a story (even a goofy tale about a nebbishy villain with a freeze ray) within the short-attention-span context of the Web. But as diverting as it is, “Dr. Horrible” still looks both slight and overheated compared with any middling-to-good television series, and the jokes, both verbal and visual, feel tossed off and scattershot.

Fans of the show, and of what it represents, will probably say that this exactly misses the point: that there’s no reason to compare “Dr. Horrible” with anything but other online content. That might be true, but it ignores the fact that in the initial wave of adulation the show has routinely been compared with television and deemed better. And that simply isn’t true — you may prefer the slacker aesthetic of “Dr. Horrible” to the formulas of network television, but even in the summer doldrums, 45 minutes (after commercials) of “The Closer” or “Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search for Elle Woods” is a superior piece of craftsmanship. (And even on its own anti-mainstream terms, “Dr. Horrible” has a ways to go to catch up with “The Sarah Silverman Program.”)

For Mr. Whedon the stakes are higher anyway. The Web won’t be the only, or even the most important, point of release for “Dr. Horrible.” A DVD has already been announced, and Mr. Whedon has dropped hints about the possibility of feature-film and stage-musical versions. If he wants those future revenue streams to materialize, he’s going to need to beef up the product.