a Horrible review
21 July 2008 12:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jrtomAs a fan (if not a rabid one) of a number of things Joss, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon of people talking about The Latest Internet Phenom, http://www.drhorrible.com.
The singing was pretty good, if not spectacular. It reminded me (in terms of quality and of style) quite a lot of the musical Buffy episode, which is what I expected.
The sets and special effects looked kind of cheesy.
The writing was good, and very Joss.
I was amused by just how much Dr. Horrible's lab coat looks like my fencing jacket (at least around the upper body/shoulders).
I think that, from a story/plotting perspective, the weakest point was when Dr. Horrible got the word that killing someone was his only remaining option for getting into the Evil League of Evil.
First, because, as Dr. Horrible points out, it's just not very appropriate to a mad scientist. One can do all manner of evil things without killing someone.
Second, and most importantly: at this point it was entirely clear that someone who didn't deserve to die was gonna. This is, after all, Joss Whedon we're talking about. It could have been Moist, but he wasn't important enough to the story. It couldn't be Captain Hammer, because too many people would have cheered. It could have been Dr. Horrible himself, which might have been an amusing twist (especially if he'd been revived and then inducted into ELoL) but also sort of violates the "didn't deserve it" clause.
Who else is left? Yup. You guessed it.
Now, full disclosure: I didn't see it coming. But I don't tend to watch things very analytically the first time through...and if I'd thought about the question at all I would have realized that Joss had painted himself into that same corner again.
This weakens the fabric of the story considerably, IMO. I can deal with figuring out where the plot's going by making a smart inference or lucky guess...but I really don't like it when a given outcome is pretty much hard-coded halfway through the show.
So, you know, overall...eh. It was OK. If there were new 'episodes', I'd probably watch them to see if Joss could manage to make it good, but I wouldn't place a high priority on it.
The singing was pretty good, if not spectacular. It reminded me (in terms of quality and of style) quite a lot of the musical Buffy episode, which is what I expected.
The sets and special effects looked kind of cheesy.
The writing was good, and very Joss.
I was amused by just how much Dr. Horrible's lab coat looks like my fencing jacket (at least around the upper body/shoulders).
I think that, from a story/plotting perspective, the weakest point was when Dr. Horrible got the word that killing someone was his only remaining option for getting into the Evil League of Evil.
First, because, as Dr. Horrible points out, it's just not very appropriate to a mad scientist. One can do all manner of evil things without killing someone.
Second, and most importantly: at this point it was entirely clear that someone who didn't deserve to die was gonna. This is, after all, Joss Whedon we're talking about. It could have been Moist, but he wasn't important enough to the story. It couldn't be Captain Hammer, because too many people would have cheered. It could have been Dr. Horrible himself, which might have been an amusing twist (especially if he'd been revived and then inducted into ELoL) but also sort of violates the "didn't deserve it" clause.
Who else is left? Yup. You guessed it.
Now, full disclosure: I didn't see it coming. But I don't tend to watch things very analytically the first time through...and if I'd thought about the question at all I would have realized that Joss had painted himself into that same corner again.
This weakens the fabric of the story considerably, IMO. I can deal with figuring out where the plot's going by making a smart inference or lucky guess...but I really don't like it when a given outcome is pretty much hard-coded halfway through the show.
So, you know, overall...eh. It was OK. If there were new 'episodes', I'd probably watch them to see if Joss could manage to make it good, but I wouldn't place a high priority on it.
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Joss
Date: 21 July 2008 22:33 (UTC)1) It's musical theatre, which by its nature is intended as neither good music nor good theatre, but a horrifying, shambling mutant in the "dear God kill it! Can't you see it's suffering!" tradition.
2) I enjoyed it thoroughly
3) I won't be watching it again.
I would go so far as to say that "2" makes it the best "Musical" ever created.