Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Fans eager to watch the first installment of Joss Whedon’s direct-to-web musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog flooded the site Tuesday, causing it to crash.

The first installment, which was scheduled to go live Tuesday, has been down since early morning.

"Traffic is through the roof.... We were hit beyond the servers’ capabilities," said Dr. Horrible co-creator and writer Maurissa Tancharoen, who estimated that the site clocked 200,000 hits per hour.

Web meltdown notwithstanding, the first act of Dr. Horrible can be downloaded at the iTunes Store for $2. The second and third portions will be available Thursday and Saturday, respectively, with each episode of the miniseries available for download through July 29. A "season pass" for all three episodes costs $4. After the download period, the series will be released as a DVD with plenty of extras.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is the latest project from geek scribe Joss Whedon. It tells the story of a wannabe villain battling his archnemesis, Captain Hammer, and struggling to woo his neighbor, Penny. Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse, came up with the idea for the internet musical during the Hollywood writers’ strike earlier this year.

So far, the first installment, or act, has been wildly popular, outpacing shows like Lost, The Wire and The Daily Show to rank No. 1 on the iTunes list of most popular television series.

The creative team behind the miniseries, which includes Tancharoen, Whedon and his two brothers, Jed and Zack Whedon, released a statement Tuesday about the barrage of visitors: "We love you for crashing the site, we really do. In the meantime, those of you who have iTunes capabilities can go there and get your fix. Our site should be up and running again in a few hours. Your support is warming our hearts and kicking our asses. So thank you thank you."

’Dr. Horrible:’ The sweetest supervillain :

Servers, schmervers, I’ve moved on to iTunes, and thus have finally watched the first installment of "Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog," the three-part web musical produced by Joss Whedon and his cohorts. There has been talk about whether this show represents a revolution in web video, and I’m not quite sure about that, but the immense interest and crashed servers do say something: If you have a built-in fanbase (the vast array of Whedon fanboys and fangirls) and a great product (a tongue-in-cheek musical starring Neil Patrick Harris) then you will get traffic. Tons of it.

The buzz, it turns out, was right: "Dr. Horrible" is, without a doubt, the most entertaining professionally-made-for-the-web show I’ve seen in a long time. And I say that as someone who watched all of "Prom Queen," a good bit of "Quarterlife," and as much of "Roommates" as I could stand, which is to say, not much. This one is deliberately self-mocking, and it uses the medium perfectly: It’s not a polished TV show put up on the web. It’s a web show, with a web aesthetic.

That look and feel, in a way, is the best part. I recently watched a film made by some high-schoolers in Texas (long story) and "Dr. Horrible" carries out the impressive feat of making a very polished production look and feel almost as low-budget as what those Texas kids churned out. The high school film was both terrible and unwittingly brilliant; it was meant to be a martial-arts thriller, and a lot of critical scenes took place in some kid’s garage, with debris piled up and tools hanging from the wall. In the case of "Dr. Horrible," the costumes are just as simple — Nathan Fillion’s unlikable superhero, Captain Hammer, wears a t-shirt with a hammer on it — and the scenes take place on street corners, a laundromat, and Dr. Horrible’s ratty apartment. The acting is deliberately over-the-top, and yet it’s impossible for Neil Patrick Harris to play a desperate, pining supervillain wannabe without coming off as authentic. The songs are adorable spoofs of cheesy movie-musical numbers. And Harris’s singing voice is just so sweet.

The story, for those still stymied by the server, revolves around Harris as guy with big dreams: He wants to be inducted into the "Evil League of Evil," and must pull off a major heist to do so. But when he’s not wearing his white coat and goggles and perfecting a freeze ray that will stop time, he has to go to the laundromat, where he develops a huge crush on a redheaded girl named Penny (Felicia Day). Who looks to be getting the girl instead? Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, Captain Hammer, who’s quite proud of his flowing hair, but isn’t as super as he seems. Today’s installment ends with a Harris/Fillion duet in which each croons that "A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do." As for me? I’ve gotta watch the next episode on Wednesday. How about you?