Joss Whedon’s latest project, developed during the writers’ strike, was an internet-based musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day, aired in three acts over the past week. Spoilers for all three acts follow, if you haven’t seen it.
Since it’s Joss Whedon, it’s practically guaranteed to come with high expectations attached, both for quality creative work and, in many circles, for feminist content. On the former, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog definitely lives up to the hype. On the latter, unfortunately, I have to say that it failed miserably. Of the three characters, Penny is by far the least developed. She’s a sweet, somewhat naive, save-the-world local activist with big, romantic dreams for her life. While the two male characters are also stereotypes in a way, they’re both larger than life, hilarious caricatures, whereas Penny just seems to lack personality. The fact that Dr. Horrible initially falls for her as he encounters her twice weekly in the incredibly mundane setting of the laundromat is fitting, here.
And naturally, in a story with three characters, two male and one female, there is a love triangle at work, and as is often the case, the woman in that story becomes more of a prop at play in the interaction between the two men. The real relationship struggle, the real competition is between Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer. The reason Penny has lasting appeal to Captain Hammer is because it’s one more front on which he can assert his superiority over Dr. Horrible – while the scene where Captain Hammer assures Dr. Horrible that he will be having sex with Dr. Horrible’s crush was admittedly hilarious, due mainly to Nathan Fillion’s delivery, it depended entirely upon playing out their battle with one another using a woman’s body as a way of scoring points. Worst of all, Penny dies at the end, in exactly the kind of death scene we’ve complained about several times on this site – one that serves almost exclusively to progress the character development of the men in her life. She dies as a result of the competition between the two men, accidentally, by getting in the way. Despite the fact that immediately before Dr. Horrible arrived on the scene, she seemed to be recognizing her boyfriend’s incredible arrogance and selfishness, with her dying breath, she sings “Captain Hammer will save us”. Not only does this show her as the woman to be rescued (if unsuccessfully), the main point of having her say it was to take away that last thing that made Dr. Horrible want to be…not horrible, and cement his commitment to proving himself as the most evil person alive.
I think there were some aspects of the two male characters that redeem the feminist side of this equation a little – Captain Hammer in particular satirizes stereotypical masculinity and strength, falls apart at the slightest hint of pain, and very explicitly acts as a hero not because he’s a good person, but because it gets him attention and affirmation – but overall, the gender roles were disappointingly cliché. I do recognize that this wasn’t an extremely large project, but everything Joss Whedon does gets a pretty significant amount of attention, particularly over the internet. These criticisms don’t even depend on holding Whedon to a higher standard than other authors because of his public stance on feminism – these are exactly the kinds of characters and relationships that have me banging my head against the wall when I see them in nearly every mainstream television show or movie, and thinking for more than thirty seconds about making the woman in your storyline in any way interesting in her own right should not be too much to ask.
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Sadly, I agree. I expected Penny to get some sort of power or development in the third act–I was hoping she’d turn out to be Bad Horse or become a superhero herself. Instead, she sings about three lines and then dies, apparently just to provide impetus for a dude to turn extra evil. She wasn’t important in her own right, and it really disappointed me.
wealhtheow(Quote) (Reply)
IT MADE ME SO ANGRY. I would be all for the skewering of hypermasculinity, IF the show had made Penny an active participant in said skewering. But she wasn’t; she had no agency; she had no personality and did nothing to assert herself. So yeah, it pisses me off when even critiques of masculinity–which I should be totally behind!–reduce women to vessels.
(More thoughts at my blog.)
Reb(Quote) (Reply)
Total word. Being a Supervillain Musical, there were plenty of parts that had me cracking up. But the way Penny’s character was used was very disappointing. At best, she had a bit more personality than most Woman In the Middle Designated Love Interests, but that’s not saying much.
Do you know what I would have liked? If there’d been more exploration of Dr. Horrible and Penny’s differing views on changing the status quo. And from that…
I would like to say that I didn’t see Captain Hammer as a skewering of masculinity but as the classic Nice Guy/Bad Boy dynamic, only with the hero and the villain swapping roles. The audience isn’t supposed to cheer for Dr. Horrible/Penny because of any of Dr. Horrible’s merits – see the proceeding paragraph about the hint of what they might have in common not being explored enough – but because Captain Hammer is really a jerk.
I really think they could have done a lot more if Captain Hammer, while a ham of a hero, didn’t only like Penny because Dr. Horrible did; and if they’d built up Penny and Dr. Horrible’s relationship along the lines of both of them wanting to change the world. In fact, that could be something Penny and Captain Hammer had in common, too. Throw in Dr. Horrible being too shy to tell Penny he likes her…or, better yet, make him not a Nice Guy by having him accept his and Penny’s relationship as a pure platonic one — heck, maybe even have him like her only as a friend, making it still workable if not quite a love triangle. So then you’d have a love triangle (or almost love triangle) built around all of the participants being active in having differing opinions of how the world could be best changed. Really, that wouldn’t be any more serious than Act III was, and with the appropriate songs, it could be appropriately comedic.
Bleh. Who would have thought you could go wrong with a Supervillain Musical?
S. A. Bonasi(Quote) (Reply)
Thank you for showing that I’m not the only person (well, obviously not considering the way the interwebz has exploded in the last 12 hours on this issue, but still) who was left going “WTF, Joss?”
I’ll admit to not being a big, frothing-at-the-mouth Joss Whedon fan, but I appreciate his contribution to the genre and particularly for delivering strong female characters who are matched level for level with their male counterparts, and still retain their femininity. And it did strike me as a real cop-out in the end, that Penny ultimately was no better than any other red shirt on any other Star Trek episode; she was completely, and utterly nondescript. There could have been some redemptive value in her death just by omitting her last words, even. But to dangle the prospect of her realizing that she’s made a stupid, empty-headed female mistake with Captain Hammer and then to have her look into Dr. Horrible’s eyes and coo “Captain Hammer will save us”???
It’s really sort of ridiculous, and not in a good way.
Sarah Bellem(Quote) (Reply)
OH JOSS WHEDON NO.
That’s pretty much all I can say.
Doctor Science(Quote) (Reply)
I’m glad for this varying POV. My LJ flist has been nothing but ga-ga over this project.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I agree with a lot of this commentary, particularly that Penny’s last words were completely out of character, only uttered because they were what was needed to break Horrible. However, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Penny had no personality. She was idealistic and dedicated and optimistic and sort of quiet and appreciated the small things in life. That is personality, a real personality type. Not as over-the-top as the guys, but every comedy needs a straight man.
Stella(Quote) (Reply)
Overall, I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. But on the other hand, it introduced me to the work of Felicia Day.
Great. Another awesome, smart, funny redhead on the Internet whose work I will feel compelled to follow. (Who, coincidentally enough, turns out to have been born exactly 15 days before me.)
Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
To me Dr.Horrible was your typical Nice Guy(tm) and Captain Hammer the bastard/jock who gets all the girls, as a nice guy sees it (refer to betacandys post on the bastard-gets-all-the-girls-myth) and Penny your WiR (women in refridgerator). Bad Joss, bad. Might he be a closet niceguy?
lkue(Quote) (Reply)
I would have liked to see it with all the characters’ genders reversed.
lemurcat(Quote) (Reply)
Stella,
Definitely agree with you about Penny. In Act I, she gets a song where she’s trying to petition people to help the homeless, which established that she had a life outside of Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer. In Act II, she gets a song where she tells Dr. Horrible to cheer up. I thought that the lyrics of that one, with lines about how every color can be seen in the darkness and rain makes things grow, really established her unique philosophy toward life. I think this is why, even with the same stupid Nice Guy-Bad Boy false dichotomy love triangle set up, I was willing to see how things played out.
Which is really part of what made Act III so disappointing. Because, yeah, like I said above, while I think it could have been better if they’d established the characters as liking each other for more than looks, Penny actually having a personality meant that I was expecting Whedon to subvert the formula somehow. But then he didn’t.
S. A. Bonasi(Quote) (Reply)
I’m glad for this varying POV. My LJ flist has been nothing but ga-ga over this project.
Really? Mine has been the exact opposite…I had a few with mixed enjoyment, and a lot of anger at the crap treatment of Penny (justifiable).
However, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Penny had no personality.
Agreed…while I can’t deny she was shorted compared to the other 2 main characters, I don’t feel she was completely devoid of characterization. It’s just…JW could have done so much more…
And the way she was treated badly (death, final line, etc) kinda overshadow what was done right.
To me Dr.Horrible was your typical Nice Guy(tm) and Captain Hammer the bastard/jock who gets all the girls, as a nice guy sees it (refer to betacandys post on the bastard-gets-all-the-girls-myth) and Penny your WiR (women in refridgerator).
While I can’t disagree about Captain Hammer (jock) and Penny (WiR, though a bit better developed than most), I disagree about Dr. Horrible being the “nice guy”…I saw part of the point being that he could have been a REAL nice guy, but he consciously rejected that part of himself…it wasn’t just about bastard screwing over nice guy, it was about “nice guy” kinda screwing himself over, because he wasn’t REALLY being a nice guy. In short, I guess I got the message that we were supposed to see Dr. Horrible as just as problematic a love interest as Captain Hammer, albeit for different reasons.
Oh, and re: Beta’s bastards-get-the-girls myth…I didn’t see this as a playing out of that myth in the classic sense; because as Beta pointed out in her article, the real myth is that women WANT a bastard; not that they never date them. Penny didn’t fall for Capt. Hammer because he was a bastard, but because he was able to conceal his bastardness…and in fact, when it starts to shine through, we see her turning away from him (not in as strong a fashion as I would have liked, granted…and then JW spoiled it utterly with that dying line…).
Can’t really disagree with Purtek’s analysis, though…in general, I liked it despite it’s problems; I just see how it could have been so much better.
(but c’mon, it’s got a villain named BAD HORSE. That’s just awesome.)
Spartakos(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t think that mocking stereotypical images of jockish masculinity is something that should win a male writer any feminist points anymore. It could be part of something feminist if the jock/jerk were contrasted with a with a female character possessing the same virtues and skills that he attributes to his manliness and/or a female character with more traditionally “feminine” qualities who is capable and active in her own way. But not if he’s contrasted only with a male character who fails at at living up to contemporary US-centric mainstream ideals of masculine strength– I’ve seen far too many examples of extreme misogyny from guys who style themselves “geeky/nerdy/nice” to believe that the guy who thinks he’s too dorky to get the girl is necessarily an ally of women.
Gryphon’s Egg(Quote) (Reply)
Penny didn’t fall for Capt. Hammer because he was a bastard, but because he was able to conceal his bastardness
I think this is the key point to why I didn’t quite see that as the Nice Guy/Attractive Asshole dynamic. Before I wrote this (and before the last act aired), I had already heard people referring to that Nice Guy sense, but I thought at least that trope was subverted a bit in Dr. Horrible. I mean, yeah, he’s the guy you sympathize with, but at least on some level it was pointing out just how selfish and self-aggrandizing that character type is, and no one ever pretended he *really* cared deeply about Penny.
As to the idealism as a personality type, I agree that I was maybe too harsh in condemning that. There was some allusion in Act II to Penny having some history that would lead her to doing work like that, which might have helped, if explored. I think it was mainly clouded out by the fact that her entire plot line had far more to do with the two male characters’ development than her own, and it leaves any personality she does have feeling all the more reflective/hollow.
Purtek(Quote) (Reply)
I have been thinking about this quite a bit, as a feminist who nonetheless enjoyed the whole of Dr Horrible and particularly loved the last act’s resolution.
I’m not sure why I don’t have a problem, to be honest. But I don’t. From the start I wanted to find Penny really annoying for being such a shallow character of naivete and innocent femininity, but I couldn’t – she was too sweet and ultimately too layered (like pie) even though she didn’t get many lines to show it.
And then at the end… she wasn’t perfect. Why should she be? She wanted to be saved from pain and death; we all do. But she also wasn’t either shallow or dangerous in her femininity as so many misogynistic portrayals of women are. She was just herself, unsure of what to do with her life, hoping her friend would be at the laundromat.
I think, if the gender roles were reversed, Joss would have written it pretty much exactly the same way. (Anyone seen Serenity? Which sweet, ever-optimistic character gets shafted? Right.) But ultimately this was not about subverting gender perceptions (which it would have been if he’d done that, female supervillains draw plenty of fire as it is) – this is about something else, the descent into evil of a fairly likeable character. The loss of hope, the loss of purpose, the loss of everything. Death of a loved one is the ultimate way to push a character there (and the most effective, given a 40-min runtime), and I don’t have a problem with characters furthering other characters’ storylines so long as they are true to themselves as well. I think Penny was, in the small amount of time she had to show us who she was. *shrugs* My personal feelings.
But I don’t feel like I ought to feel that I’m betraying feminists everywhere by loving Dr Horrible to pieces…
skittledog(Quote) (Reply)
The only complaint I have about this analysis of Joss Whedon’s 3-part internet blog is that it overlooks the essential nature of the series. It is a PARODY. “A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule”. This series is a parody of many aspects of the typical super-hero comic, which as a genre uses shallow stereotypical characters as vessels for action. Of course, for a parody to be successful it must announce itself as a parody (as opposed to a true representation of fact). Joss Whedon does, in fact, do this many times. See his often hilarious representation of the self-absorbed muscle-head Captain Hammer, which is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. Or, Dr. Horrible’s useless sidekick “Moist”, a mockery of the second rate super-powers often given to the sidekick of a major super hero.
But what is least obvious, or rather, more subtle, is the portrayal of the “love-interest”. She (as many others in comicbook history, such as Spider Man’s girl-next-door Mary-Jane Watson and the sexy Mystique from X-men, see link below) has red hair. This should signal us from the beginning. But the series remains unclear about the portrayal of Penny until after her death in act 3, in a very important and revealing scene: the news reel. Titles such as “The world mourns whats-her-name” and “Hero’s girlfriend murdered” (with a very large picture of Captain Hammer) reveal the true purpose of her character. She is a stereotype to the most extreme extent. Her lack of personality is supposed to bother you, strike a chord, if you will. She is used to reveal the shallow stereotype of ALL love interests in the comic book genre.
In light of that one, telling scene, the thinking viewer can not believe that Joss just “overlooked” giving her a personality, but consciously chose NOT to give her one. She is a parody, as the rest of the series, and must be examined through that lens.
(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroesWantRedHeads)
Carleena(Quote) (Reply)
Hi. What pissed me off was Penny had the potential to be a interesting counterweight to Hammer and Horrible, but in the end she was just … a victim. A victim to Horrible’s unrequited crush/stalkery (and for the last freaking time, STALKING IS NOT ROMANTIC, I am looking at you Stephanie Meyers), a victim to Hammer’s doucheyness, and then finally the ultimate victim to Hammer’s cruelty and Horrible’s ambition.
And because the initial tone of the piece was so light and campy, her impalement (hello) and her final blind belief in Hammer highlights just how dismissive a character she was to this piece. And I wonder, are we are supposed to want to go to a midnight showing of this someday to sing along a sweet, innocent girl being victimized? Yah, please sign me up for that.
Whedon could of made the ending just as tragic, but could have made Penny a dynamic character making a choice instead of a random victim. He could have had her trying to save Captain Hammer and being killed by accident, or confronting Billy and getting hurt in the process, and that would have shown much more respect.
I have to say, after this? Not really looking forward to Dollhouse – the premise is ripe for more of this kind of stuff.
Annx(Quote) (Reply)
Okay, I think we’re all well aware that the musical was a parody, and my complaints stand in spite of that fact. I really did like the moments at the end that you mention, particularly the whats-her-name one, and didn’t miss their weight. But Joss Whedon is *way* too good at parody to be that subtle about the true meaning of Penny’s character. If he *really* wanted to make that point, Penny could have had a really hilarious song about her own irrelevance and woman-in-refrigerator status. He didn’t feel the need to be subtle with the other two characters, why use *red hair* as one of the main signals for this one?
Purtek(Quote) (Reply)
This article is now on the front page of Whedonesque, so a quick note to anyone clicking over from there:
Welcome! We’re a site that discusses how TV and film portray women characters. Just so you know, we do not hate Joss Whedon. In fact we have a number of favorable reviews of his other projects:
*Subversive Masculinity – How to Learn to Respect Female Strength (Xander Harris)
*The Women of Firefly/Serenity: Kaylee
*The Women of Firefly/Serenity: Zoe
*How to Write Good Ship That Doesn’t Demean the Woman: Zoe and Wash from Firefly/Serenity
*The Women of Firefly/Serenity: Inara
*Hearts of Gold, Backbones of Steel
And our not-so-favorable reviews are far from scathing:
*The One Thing I Don’t Like About Firefly and Serenity
*Inara’s misogynistic client
*Firefly: The Trouble With Saffron
*Cordelia: Why I Stopped Watching Angel
We talk a lot about Joss Whedon because he’s one of the few producers in Hollywood who’s even trying to write interesting women, and he puts up with a lot of crap from networks in the attempt.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
One comment on the parody aspect. The end scene where a newspaper is shown with the headline “The World Mourns Whats-Her-Face”, would have been ironic if Penny had been a dynamic character instead of a vehicle/victim. As it is – the newspaper treated Penny exactly like Whedon wrote her.
annx(Quote) (Reply)
Follow-up thought, occurred to me whilst cooking dinner (pasta is quite boring): what if there is a small tiny feminist side to this story, and it’s this: the tale of what can happen to women who get caught up in the world’s chauvinistic view of them. It is certainly true that both Hammer and Horrible were seeing her as a prize, as something to win with shiny baubles (homeless shelters or Australia, depending how big you’re thinking). And yes, they engaged in a pissing-contest style war to ‘win’ her, and it ended pretty disastrously.
But I never got a single hint that Penny saw herself that way.
skittledog(Quote) (Reply)
Purtek,
Those are all excellent questions, some I have been asking myself. Subtlety is, in my opinion, a positive characteristic in any work, whether it be art or TV or internet blogging, so I refer to Whedon’s subtlety with the most positive thoughts in mind. He is not known for his subtlety when it comes to feminism, (See Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but I was really rooting for him. I think it would be a step in the right direction for him to deal with female characters of an exaggeratedly stereotypical nature alongside those more complex women he usually portrays. It creates a very striking effect.
Though it is true that Penny’s character is less “loud” than Captain Hammer’s, for example, I applaud Whedon’s effort in developing a sophisticated system of parody reserved for the female character in the series, even if it has a few bugs to work out. I would not be able to say this if he had created a hilarious self-depreciating song for Penny, because I don’t think the character would have as much effect if she had jumped out of the box like that. Like I said, I think her character is SUPPOSED to bother us.We are supposed to discuss the merits and demerits of the less-than powerful love interest.
We may not like her portrayal because she is 2-dimensional and unrealistic, but that is exactly how we are supposed to feel about it. It is supposed to make us think.
Carleena(Quote) (Reply)
I suppose I may be seeing what I want to see, but I saw Penny as a far more developed character than others here seem to have — perhaps this is because I think Felicia Day did a great job giving a nuanced performance that (for me) added depth to the character.
I also found it compelling that Penny (the woman in the piece) was the only one who actually DID change the world. Dr. H and Hammer swapped places , people are still sheep, etc. The only real change in their world is that there is one additional homeless shelter. Penny did not compromise her ideals, did not back down, was willing to accept help from others to achieve her goals, and she DID succeed. She is the true hero of the story.
In addition, while both Dr. H and Hammer obviously changed their behavior in their
competition with each other over her, she was able to pursue a friendship with Billy and relationship with Hammer without compromising herself or sacrificing her goal. All the while, she was starting to see through Hammer on her own.
I didn’t see her as a victim at all — of the three main characters, she was the only
one with inner strength. I didn’t see her last line as blind naivete or admission that she needed to be rescued, but more that she was occupying the role of nurturer — she was concerned for Billy and spent her dying breath doing what she always did — trying to help and comfort another.
nerdyme(Quote) (Reply)
i agree on the fact that she wasn’t as strong as the other two characters, but the significance of Penny is way to important for the story, without her Dr. Horrible wouldn’t be able to allow to become a more cold villain and a perfect example is the song “A Brand New Day” or “I can’t believe my eyes”. Joss obviously write Hammer as Jerk so we could love more the dynamic between penny and horrible. I know her death was kind of cruel but she was a character that gave hope to the villain and Dying between these to “larger than life” characters just make them hate each other more.
WoXVirus(Quote) (Reply)
I agree wholeheartedly with your post. While I truly enjoyed the third act the most of the three, the use of Penny as both sacrificial goat and tug-toy between the two men disappointed me. In this story, she as a person had little value. It is only in her role of trophy that she has worth – although this is more true for Captain
ToolHammer than Billy.And as I said in my own review of Act II in my journal, it would be nice to see Joss write a story that did not involve the skewering of a woman. That seems to be becoming a theme with him.
Sandy(Quote) (Reply)
The whole skeleton plot of Doctor Horrible is textbook villain background. Even Penny’s being a philanthropist struck me as a classic detail, something that I’d seen before and that doomed them as a couple from the start. The result is that I really liked the movie, but thought is would be much, much better if they had strayed from that framework a little.
The only time I really liked Penny was when they were sitting and talking about Dr. Horrible’s ‘job’ problem, because they were really talking and acting like human beings, who could become friends or lovers in a rational, non-stalky/creepy way (or would be able to, if creepy stalking hadn’t already happened, anyway). That gave me just enough hope to be dashed at the end.
But wouldn’t THAT be a fun project? A supervillain who becomes good, sincere, platonic friends with his/her enemy’s love interest? There’s a lot of hilarious potential there.
As for Penny’s last words . . . I can see where Penny, having stopped believing in Hammer as a lover or as someone who really understands social problems and the need to combat them, might still believe in him as a punch ‘em up will-save-us-from-supervillains kind of guy.
Hayclearing(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t buy the “Penny’s death was supposed to bother us.” I’m having a bit of trouble phrasing why, but I think it’s because it doesn’t fit the tone of the work. Yes, there are stories where the author fully intends for the audience to find character’s actions disturbing without broadcasting it with a neon sign. There, though, there has to be something that clues the audience in that they are watching that sort of story.
But Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog isn’t that sort of story. It’s a comical, larger-than-life parody (satire?) of the superhero genre. It’s exactly the sort of story where the neon sign is used. So Penny singing a swan song calling Dr. Horrible the Nice Guy and Captain Hammer the Bad Boy (or Jerk Guy, I suppose is more accurate here), and lamenting her own refrigeration would have been BRILLIANT, both making the point and being in line with the nature of the story. But as is, Penny’s death is just a sexist trope played straight.
S. A. Bonasi(Quote) (Reply)
I would also like to say that while Captain Hammer being a Jerk was made clear, I didn’t get the same sense that we, the audience, were supposed to see Dr. Horrible as a Nice Guy. It’s standard, when the author puts a Nice Guy in the story, for the Jerk Guy to be telegraphed as the Jerk Guy. So Dr. Horrible was a Nice Guy, no question, but the story was using the Nice Guy-Jerk Guy false dichotomy straight, not parodying or satiring it.
The tragedy isn’t just that Dr. Horrible loses the one woman he ever
lusted afterloved, it’s that it happens before Penny, who has finally seen Captain Hammer for the Jerk Guy he really is, can see Dr. Horrible as the Nice Guy Who Was There All Along. Remember, in Nice Guy-verse, Jerk Guy and Nice Guy are the only two men available, and the Nice Guy wins by virtue of the Jerk Guy’s lack of virtues. What makes Dr. Horrible a villain rather than the hero is that he’s a Nice Guy who fails to triumph. As I said in my first comment, this was just the story of the Nice Guy and the Jerk Guy with the Nice Guy as the villain instead of the hero.S. A. Bonasi(Quote) (Reply)
I’m surprised about this. I thought Penny had a good amount of development in Acts I and II. She did appear less in Act III, but Captain Hammer only appeared briefly at the end of Act I and I thought Penny had more screen time overall.
Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer both wanted to help the world, but only to satisfy their own egos. Penny, on the other hand, appears to be the stereotypical victim, but is really the only character who truly cares about people. She could have gotten involved with the epic struggle between Horrible and Hammer, but that would have conflicted with the message that her method of saving the world was the right one. If everyone wants to rule the world, you get chaos.
Ultimately, the battle between Horrible and Hammer shows that when arrogance and jealousy get in the way, good, innocent people die.
EDR37(Quote) (Reply)
You know, I authored the same complaint at Ain’t It Cool News.com…under an alias screen name, that being the fact that it has now become the in thing to kill off the female love interest, ala Dr. Horrible and SPOILER HIGHLIGHT –> the latest Batman movie, and that is not cool. I love Joss and I would love to work with him, but we can do better.
Perhaps a more clever ending, would have been for Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer to discover that it isn’t the battle over a woman at play in this love triangle, as both consciously assumed, but something more profound, buried in the subconcious, that being their own hidden homosexual feelings for each other. The two men should have dumped Penny and fallen in love with each other. Now, that would have been the more profound move…and would have been more entertaining , poignant and shocking for the viewers…the point being that many men live out their lives using women as beards to project false machismo to the world…when those very men are closeted homosexuals. Such an ending would have shocked everyone…and projected Dr. Horrible’s 3rd installment into being considered a masterpiece as well as the entire worth of the whole, now as it stands…it is but a flawed potential masterpiece.
J. Earley(Quote) (Reply)
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