Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

If you were in on the original web release of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, chances are you remember that week: how you found out, where you watched it, what you thought of it. I found out through friends, and I remember thinking what a fascinating event it was. Watching it, I remember being both delighted and slightly baffled by the first act. And I remember being grievously disappointed when my scheduling constraints didn’t allow me to see Acts II and III before the event window closed and the whole thing was taken down. Fortunately, demand was great enough to grant a DVD release, which I promptly bought and immediately watched the hell out of. I think I watched the musical, Commentary! The Musical, and then the actual commentary all in that same glorious afternoon.

Dr. Horrible occupies a singular place in pop culture. Considering that it had its birth in the dry spell caused by the WGA strike, in which one point of contention was compensation for "new media" — basically, stuff written for the Internet — its conceit seems appropriate. It’s somehow fitting that Joss Whedon and fifty or so of his closest friends should have put together a piece of entertainment as a web event during a time when the industry was uncertain of how to deal with this gigantic can of worms that is the Internet. Not only that, the web miniseries took the idea of the "sympathetic villain who’s actually the good guy" and didn’t give it a Disney ending. We’ve since had DreamWorks Animation’s MegaMind and Illumination Entertainment’s Despicable Me running with the good-guy-villain trope, both with redemption and happy endings for all (except the actual bad guys). Dr. Horrible, though, gave us something darker. It’s a redemption story in reverse, a tragedy in the classic sense.

And because it’s Joss Whedon and he can, this dark and groundbreaking tragedy is ... a musical. Which is why it’s Tart Notes material. Whedon productions have a habit of being musically noteworthy — Buffy’s musical episode "Once More, With Feeling," Firefly’s far-east-meets-wild-west soundtrack, even the dynamic score and lovingly selected AC/DC-heavy soundtrack of The Avengers, just as a few examples — so it can be seen as a logical extension of that facet of his artistic identity. This relatively short work, just 42 minutes long, relies as much upon the music as any other storytelling element to accomplish its dramatic journey.

The genre and tone of the musical numbers support and elaborate upon the characterisation. As the main character, of course Dr. Horrible gets the main theme. You may know it as the DVD menu music, the intro to Act I, the main credit theme or the chorus of "Slipping," which Dr. Horrible sings in his moment of near-triumph in Act III. It’s that energetic, slightly-manic theme with the brass and the timpani and the xylophones and the slightest hint of mad-scientist theremin. It’s fairly multipurpose, expressing Dr. Horrible’s ambition in a variety of situations. But the first actual song in the musical is "My Freeze Ray," a sweet, light, pop-style number, framing Dr. Horrible’s ambitions in the context of his feelings for Penny. "A Man’s Gotta Do" begins as a sincere expression of Dr. Horrible’s resolve to do what has to be done, interrupted in a stereotypically heroic manner by Captain Hammer’s ego; the scene is about hijacking on every level.

At the beginning of Act II, "My Eyes," a duet with Penny, shows Dr. Horrible’s despair at the state of the world contrasted with Penny’s optimism, in a minor-versus-major key transformation between verses. Dr. Horrible’s tipping point comes in "Brand New Day," which begins with ominous low strings, unfolds with electric guitar, bass and piano, then cements the emergence of Dr. Horrible as a decisive mad scientist with a fantastically satisfying array of synthesizers.

His two remaining songs both incorporate the Horrible Theme in some way. "Slipping" begins eerily, reflective of the creep factor of Dr. Horrible’s new resolve to actually kill a man and further his career as a villain, then draws on the Horrible Theme to underscore the middle section of the song where he elaborates on his intentions, but drops back into the quieter demeanour of the opening to express his reluctance to pull the trigger. "Everything You Ever" progresses through the crushing realization that the woman he loves has been killed because of his actions, and that he has no real choice but to take his place in the Evil League of Evil and embrace it; his ambition is all he has left to live for.

Besides the arc of our title character, the music does also reinforce the portrayals of the other characters. Penny’s songs are soft and sweet; Captain Hammer’s are brash and ostentatiously heroic; Bad Horse’s messages are accompanied by a great spaghetti-Western score. In music as in other areas, Whedon proves himself extremely genre-savvy.

In addition to developing character, the music plays a beautifully integral role in the thematic structure of the show. Thematic and motific material is used and re-used throughout in a way that underlines key moments in the story. I’ve already touched on the use of the Horrible Theme as it punctuates Dr. Horrible’s journey. He also has a theme to express the moments when he needs to shore up his resolve, first appearing as the musical interlude during which he plants the remote on the courier van, then, in Act III, becoming the A section of the ABA-structured "Slipping." Other pieces come together to form an intensely emotional jigsaw of callbacks in and following "Everything You Ever," after a gorgeously double-edged opening ("Here lies everything / the world I wanted at my feet") and first verse, the bridge slides through "Brand-New Day" and the Horrible Theme before slamming full-tilt into the last verse. There is a prolonged moment of silence after Dr. Horrible proclaims his last line ("And I won’t feel a thing"), for which the audience is grateful (or, I am, at least), before a gentle recollection of "Penny’s Song" in the piano opening to the credits. The Horrible Theme takes over from there, taking up most of the credits score, but just before the end, the music tails off to focus on the theremin in an almost unrecognizable reference to "My Eyes." I’m not sure what it means, exactly, but it’s an interesting note to end on.

And for five months, that was the sum total of the musical experience surrounding Dr. Horrible. Then the DVD was released, and with it a whole new musical! Yes, as an incentive to purchase the DVD (and, as I like to think, in thanks to the fans who made the DVD release possible), Whedon created Commentary! The Musical, a collection of songs providing meta-commentary on both the original musical and the film and television industry as a whole ... but that will have to wait until next week.

Last week we took a look at the music of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; this week, it’s all about Commentary! The Musical, a whole new set of songs created for the DVD release. The cast portray an entertaining mix of self-caricature and borrowed characterisation that appears to have been based on their roles in the mini-series itself.

The structure actually parallels that of Dr. Horrible to an extent. After setting the tone with the opening number, "Commentary," and contextualising the project with "Strike," the entirely self-referential "Ten-Dollar Solo" is sung as, onscreen, the visuals show Dr. Horrible preparing to hijack the courier van. Hilariously, "Ten-Dollar Solo" is hijacked by Neil Patrick Harris as Captain Hammer hijacks Dr. Horrible’s song during the hijacking of the van, making this perhaps the most densely layered hijacking scene in the history of musical hijacking scenes. (Read that aloud three times fast and then try to remember what your life felt like before "hijack" started to look like a non-word.)

The hijacking is followed by "Better (Than Neil)," a showcase of meta-Nathan Fillion’s ego timed to coincide with the exposition of Captain Hammer’s ego. Continuing the character parallels, Felicia Day sings "It’s All About the Art," betraying a blatant crush on Nathan — presumably one of the reasons she doesn’t "discuss [her] process" — as Penny becomes enamoured of Captain Hammer onscreen. The next couple of songs take a bit of a detour, but we return to characterisation related to the onscreen action with "Ninja Ropes," sung by Jed Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. Overlaid over the end of Act II, it supposedly documents how they all bonded when Jed got them hooked on the game Ninja Ropes. The real beauty of this is that it makes the whole situation with Captain Hammer meeting Dr. Horrible in the laundromat and taunting him about Penny, which is the point at which Dr. Horrible realises he could totally kill Hammer to get into the ELE, into some kind of bromantic buddy moment, rather than a pivotal plot point propelled by angst and loathing.

Act III, in Commentary! as in text, begins with an ensemble piece, bringing in all the extras to bemoan their lack of screentime in "It’s All About Me." Following this, playing over Captain Hammer’s egregiously offensive public appearance, is Maurissa Tancharoen’s "Nobody’s Asian in the Movies" — overlaying a parody of socially-privileged blindness with a pointed commentary on racial privilege in entertainment.

The commentary derails again into a meltdown by Joss culminating in everyone being shooed out of the studio, leaving Neil Patrick Harris alone to glory in his own talents in "Neil’s Turn." This is one of the more overtly musical-y numbers, since he has a Broadway history and can pull it off. As Dr. Horrible spirals into villainy at the end of the show, NPH spirals into self-doubt and panic when left to his own creative devices, becoming increasingly distressed and self-referential as he struggles to find meaning by himself: "And what’s with all these chords? What’s with all these weird chords? Somebody help; somebody say ’cut’!" This and the many meta statements in the other songs regarding the music itself actually have precursors within the classical canon; for example, in Menotti’s one-act opera The Old Maid and the Thief, when the titular old maid and her servant are breaking into a liquor store (long story), one exclaims, "I heard a noise!" only to be soothed by the other: "That’s just part of the orchestration."

The musical commentary finishes with a reprise of "Commentary!" but if course it wouldn’t be complete without music for the credits. And so we get "Steve’s Song," sung by Steve Berg, the actor who played the groupie with the lisp — the song includes about as many "s" sounds as lyrically possible. It’s an appropriately inappropriate ending to a pseudo-commentary track that makes fun of approximately everything.

So what have we skipped? Anything that didn’t line up with the plot structure, pretty much, which is actually surprisingly little. Zack Whedon’s song, "Zack’s Flavor," for one, which is a ridiculous display of posturing machismo in rap form with an astonishingly catchy chorus. One YouTube commenter speculated that s/he could listen to the chorus on repeat indefinitely; I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it’s extremely decent. Immediately following "Zack’s Flavor" Simon Helberg requests to sing his song, ostensibly one that was omitted from the original musical. "Nobody Wants to be Moist" is in the voice of his character, Moist; Helberg accompanies himself on piano, which is a delightful touch and shows another of his several talents, giving his fans something new to get excited about. Right before a piano break, he says, "What’s that, Mom? I have to solo? Okay," then proceeds to do so in masterful fashion. The line is a reference to his character on The Big Bang Theory, Howard Wolowitz, who lives with his overbearing mother. It’s a nice little extra in-joke in a veritable cornucopia of in-jokes.

The last song to discuss is "Heart (Broken)," sung by Joss Whedon. It’s a lament for simpler days of storytelling, before everyone demanded to know about process and deleted scenes and what happened after — essentially bemoaning the entertainment climate that demands the very commentary in which he is participating. Considering his demonstrated enthusiasm for providing interstitial and contextual material to his fans, it’s highly unlikely that this is a faithful representation of his actual views, particularly since, in the song, he is swayed by the warning that if he does not provide what the fans want, he’ll "be ignored at Comic-Con." Even so, it’s actually a beautiful defense of the integrity of narrative, and kind of makes a person think twice about digging too far beyond what’s given.

Of course, after that second thought, a person (i.e., me) goes right back to behind-the-scenes documentaries and commentaries and outtakes. Because, hey, what fun is entertainment without a meta lens? I don’t know how I functioned before DVD features.