Very, very long analysis of Dr Horrible
My internet limit is stuffed, and I only managed one viewing of Acts II and III, and I will review further once I've viewed it a little more, but I can't help but write down some thoughts after having my heart ripped out and stomped on by Joss Whedon yet again.
Dr Horrible was fantastic. From start to finish, I was engaged and enthralled. I sang along and I felt my heart flutter and fall.
It started as a light-hearted jaunt, with a happy love ballad dedicated to a 'freeze ray' and a pretty girl from the laundromat, our anti-hero (Dr Horrible) a c-grade super villain with the awkward and lovable alter ego 'Billy'. We love Dr Horrible because we love Billy, he truly believes that "The world is a mess and [he] just needs to rule it."
Dr Horrible wants to rule the world because he believes that it's not as is should be. "The status is not quo" as such. Inside, we can't help but feel the same. We've all been disillusioned with the powers that be, and wondered if we could do a better job.
As we progressed into Act II, we began to see a turn-around. Billy is losing the girl of his dreams to his arch-nemisis, and he imparts on us the reasons for his 'evilness':
"Listen close to everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound.
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground.
I cannot believe my eyes,
How the world's filled with filth and lies,
And it's plain to see
Evil inside of me
Is on the rise"
Dr Horrible truly reached me at this point. I have in the past, and still, more frequently than I'd like to admit, feel like this. Something happens to you that sees you look around the world and see nothing but tragedy. People are breaking, failing, losing, and the dark part of your heart seems to take control, you fall into a deep unhappiness that you don't think you'll ever come out of. Dr Horrible loses faith in the 'status quo', but the difference between the doctor and us is that he has the power to do something about it.
Credit to Joss though, he doesn't just show us the evil. In opposition to the doc, we see Penny's half of the duet:
"I cannot believe my eyes
How the world's finally growing wise
But it's plain to me
Some kind of harmony
Is on the rise"
It's a valid view to present, and one we'd all like to have much more often, but 'Dr Horrible' has seen us invest ourselves in the Doctor himself, and so it's only a minor distraction. We learn that in order to achieve his greatest dream (entry into the Evil League of Evil), Dr Horrible has to commit murder. He is unsure and fails to take the idea seriously until Penny falls for the plastic and 'cheesy on the outside' Captain Hammer, and Dr Horrible plots his demise.
Enter Act III. As Captain Hammer unveils the new homeless shelter, Dr Horrible works his evil plan,
freezing Captain Hammer, and our jaws begin to drop. Even moreso when the doctor, finger on the trigger hesitates. As someone who has regaled against over-the-top abuse of power, the good inside Dr Horrible takes a split second to question his actions...what would Penny think? It's this split second that sees him knocked to the ground, the freeze-ray (and consequently Captain Hammer) unfrozen. The Death Ray hits the ground and Hammer scrambles to pick it up - aiming it at our anti-hero. The Death Ray sparks and sputters, and Horrible realises that it's unstable.
"Don't."
But he does, and the Death Ray explodes, sending Hammer flying and chunks of itself through young Penny. She's dying, and Dr Horrible rushes to her side. The Billy in him comes out again as he realises what he's done. Finally the worst pull on the heart-string:
"Don't worry - Captain Hammer will save us".
These are her dying words, and Billy seems gone forever. The sacrifice has been made (however accidentally) and Dr Horrible takes over. Goggles over his eyes, he is in the evil league of evil - going through the motions, robbing banks and associating with the likes of bad horse. Only in the last second do we see what's left, a sad, lonely Billy, devoid of his 'Dr Horrible' facade, looking blankly into the camera.
After an afternoon of reading up on other people's throughts, one of the biggest things I've notice is the comment that "this is typical of Joss". But I don't think it is. Usually, people die, but there's comfort in their loss (the fight is fought, people retain their humanity and heroism, good is borne out of sacrifice). Not this one, not Dr. Horrible. Penny's death killed Billy. The first two acts examined the two sides of the Billy/Dr Horrible character, and both acts assured us that while Dr Horrible was an aspect, it was a small one. Dr Horrible is a character invented by Billy, portrayed on a blog. By the end of Act III however, we see that Dr Horrible has taken over, and Billy is banished to the blog, a tiny and devastatingly unhappy fragment of what could have been.
All three characters are changed. Captain Hammer grew (a little), and now has been torn from his innocent haven. Penny was falling for Billy, and had doubts about Hammer, but in the end she waits for Hammer to save her (to Billy's devastation). Billy (however inadvertently) kills the one person he was doing this all for and now has nothing (no emotion) and everything (money, fame, ELOE) he wanted. What he wanted, not what he needed. And he wanted to overhaul the system, put the power into different hands. Well, now they're in Dr. H's hands and nothing has changed. The sheep are still followers, crime is on the rise, and now that Penny is gone, there's no one left to stand up to it.
Dr Horrible ends unhappily because we need it to. In Act II Penny states that "everything happens", and it does. If you want to believe that the good always win and the bad end unhappily, you're watching the wrong story. Bad things happen to good and bad people, and sometimes we make very human mistakes that see our lives take a turn we didn't expect. We sometimes spend so much time dwelling in the dark that we just can't see the light.