If you actually CAN watch this, then I guess their servers have managed to recover from yesterday’s crush. After trying for awhile, I just got the first episode of Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” through a torrent.
Neil Patrick Harris is Dr. Horrible, a struggling mad scientist hoping one day to join the supervillain group, “The Evil Society of Evil”. He occasionally does a video blog where he discusses problems like how his transmat ray is going, what his nemesis Captain Hammer (Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) did to him last week that really hurt, how his evil laugh is coming along (he has just gotten a vocal coach), and how nervous he is about talking to a girl he sees at the laundromat, Penny, played by Buffy’s Felicia Day.
This leads into the song “Freeze Ray”, about a gun he wants to invent that will freeze time, so it would be easier to talk to her. He’s interrupted by his friend Moist, who has the power to make stuff damp. He’d been on a date last night with the super-villainess Bait and Switch. At the end of the night, he’d been hoping to go home with Bait, but… oh well.
Among the sopping wet pieces of mail he delivers is a letter from Bad Horse, the evil equine leader of the Evil Society of Evil, which leads right into the song, “Bad Horse” (and where did those cowboys with the painfully fake mustaches come from?).
The thing is hilarious. It’s short, has four fantastically funny songs (the other two are the one Penny sings as she tries to get signatures on her petition to convert an old building to a homeless center, and the song that ends in a three-part harmony between Dr. Horrible, Captain Hammer, and Penny, “A Man’s Gotta Do”).
I won’t spoil anything – but watch it. There will be two other “webisodes”, and even though all three together will likely be only half an hour – I’d buy the DVD.
edit – link to Joss Whedon’s post about Dr. Horrible, how it came to be, and what will become of it. Next episode is up THURSDAY and after July 20 they will no longer be free to watch, though it’s well worth paying.