The best songs were Dr Horrible’s freeze ray song and Captain Hammer’s “everyone’s a hero”. I had them both stuck in my head, and occasionally catch myself humming the former.

But Penny was weak writing. She wasn’t a character, she was a McGuffin: an object that exists to drive the plot without playing an active role in it.

If Penny had been properly developed (and not killed off), this would have been good for at least a few more episodes.

d

But I did love this.
I love musicals. Well, usually not a fan of anything post-West Side Story but I loved it.
And I adore superhero spoofery.

So I’d love to see more of this.

I watched it online as it was released, but I was looking forward to being able to download it so my better half could also enjoy it, and am mightily miffed that that I can’t pay to download it from the iTunes store in Australia.

You can buy an itunes gift card for the US store on ebay or get a friend in the US to buy one for you. The only postal address verification they do is if you register a credit card, and you can create an account with fake information. If you can live with lying to apple about your address Having multiple itunes accounts on the same machine as the same user works fine. Given the current exchange rate music is much cheaper from the US store too. Gotta love globalisation.

That said, I’m still bloody annoyed that Penny ended up as just another Woman in a Refrigerator (a female intimate who dies simply to further the emotional narrative of the protagonist). What the hell, Joss? You could undermine all those other tropes but you had to play along with that one? (And no, the ironic newspaper heading with “Whotsername dies” is not a subversion, it’s just a nod.)

Penny was going along with her life just fine until she came to the attention of two men engaging in a pissing contest. She didn’t need them, but they need her as a score-keeping device, until they got so caught up that they didn’t even notice that they’d broken their trophy.

Sure, that’s a valid criticism of some competitive male archetypes. But I expect more in a major female character from avowed feminist Joss Whedon. She didn’t have to kick butt, but she could at least have survived to tell them they were both jerks and they should get the hell out of her life.

So yeah, I really liked parts I and II and hated part III.

CAPTAIN HAMMER: This is so nice, I just might sleep with the same girl twice. They say it’s better the second time, they say you get to do the weird stuff!
GROUPIES: We’d do the weird stuff.

And Dr Horrible’s quest for “anarchy… that I run”.

I got the damn tunes stuck in my head, and the only way to exorcise them was to figure them out on piano. (Badly, of course.)

I enjoyed it. It’s not a work of art, but it’s fun and funny enough for me to overlook the musical format. Neil Patrick Harris and Nathon Fillion are just great in their roles.

And I knew that I should have got my doctorate in horribleness, but just didn’t see a viable career in it. How wrong I was.

The songs were sharp and clever, there were some great jokes and dialog and the Doctor and the Captain turned in terrific performances and it was a pity Penelope Pureheart didn’t have anything to do. But come on! Bad Horse and his Evil Whinny of Death! “He rides across the nation, the Thoroughbred of Sin…” (I’ve been singing it around the house for days. I think the kids are about to ask me to move out)

d

But the bit where Captain Hammer says “My penis… that’s the hammer”, that bit is great.