Commentary on Dr. Horrible

[mishalak]

If you hate the ending of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog you probably are going to hate my commentary too.

Penny dying was the right way Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog to end. Well a right way. I think it served to remind us that what Dr. Horrible built was a death ray. Cartoon villainy played for laughs is all in good fun, but the fact that a character I liked died reminded me that what Dr. Horrible was about to do was wrong. Penny died because he decided to take Captain Hammer's life. Stop and think about that for a moment.

While the 'hero' was an arrogant bastard he did not deserve death. It is really easy for geeks like me to identify strongly with the smart evil villain being beat up by the strong guy and mindlessly start rooting for the superhero's death. This is only fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the real world. In real life when someone starts pulling out weapons innocent bystanders can and do get hurt no matter how carefully planned the act is.

I might have preferred if Penny had lived but refused to have anything to do with Dr. Horrible after the incident, but someone he cared about had to get really hurt. Because that's the short circuit to showing what evil really is. Evil is deliberately hurting people for personal gain or just because the victimizer wants to see the victim hurt. In real life it is rarely so direct and/or immediate that actions come around and bite the villain by hurting someone or something he cares about right away. However it does happen eventually in some degree. Call it karma, making your own bed, or whatever, but it does happen. This story just short circuted the process to show that it isn't just the intended victim that is hurt by violence. Except for his semi-sidekick Moist I cannot think of anyone else in the story that could have shown this by being hurt in the climatic explosion of Dr. Horrible's damaged gun.

It would have been even more obvious, perhaps, if the gun had worked but Hammer had just not been actually hurt by it since he's super tough or whatever. But instead of the gun blowing up it could have been a ricochet. But this is all Monday morning quarterbacking.

What I hate is ideas people throw around where Penny turns out to be a villain. That would have been a nice light entertainment and fun, but it wouldn't point out that he's doing EVIL. Geeks stomping jocks is not a good ending, it is just evil covered up by the fact it is someone we don't like getting hurt. It would have been a totally different sort of story.

Penny is the one good person. Of course something terrible had to happen to her just as Seymour and his love interest Audry had to die in Little Shop of Horrors (don't talk to me about the movie version). This is a black comedic musical with a bit of a commentary about what we think we need and killing to get it.

If you prefer an ending where Dr. Horrible gets the girl and Captain Hammer is put in his 'proper' place, you're probably a pretty rotten person on some level. Not evil all the time (and certainly not evil like zombie Hitler or something), but you lack empathy for people who are unlikable. Chew on that.
 

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

I finally watched it late Sunday night, just because of all the fuss about it all week. I generally liked it, but I wish there'd been time to give Penny more of a personality and make her less an object to be fought over by Hammer and Horrible.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I won't argue with that. Though I will argue that that would mean that she could not possibly end up with Dr. Horrible since he is doing the stereotypical lust after a pretty girl without knowing that much about her. It would need to end with uncertainty.