Late to the game: "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog"

Superheroes and musical comedy aren't exactly peanut butter and chocolate, but then again, Joss Whedon's always been about making the questionable palatable, like turning a popcorn movie into a thematically layered TV series and then producing a not-too-shabby-itself spinoff from said series. And of course, let's not forget one of the best shows to never make it past one season... 

So while I was waiting and waiting for the Whedon to come out with information on the long-delayed Goners project, apparently this little one-off slipped past me. Come to think of it, I first saw Buffy and  Angel episodes in their final seasons. And like a lot of people, I completely missed Firefly until it came out on DVD. I suppose not watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog until six months after it came out is pretty good considering.

I don't know what you'd rightly call Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It's only 43 minutes long, cut into three acts and shown for free on hulu.com. It's not exactly a TV movie... It's more like a TV special - on the internet - without any holiday to celebrate. 

The awkwardly pretty Neil Patrick Harris plays the title character as he monologues and sings his way towards world domination and into the heart of his laundromat crush played by Felicia Day. The only standing in his way is the chauvinistic town superhero, Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion.

It's got it's got the typical Whedon awkward wordplay humor ("Justice has a name, and the name that it has, besides Justice, is Captain Hammer!") and his "Once More, With Feeling" style musical numbers - which I'd hate coming from anyone else, but let slide when he lets things get cut short by a roommate barging in.

With production values that are clearly below most TV shows - yet exceeding the vast majority of web-produced material - Whedon could be trying to elevate the medium. As you're watching the first two acts, it's easy to slip into the mindset of watching any decent YouTube parody, but in the show's final act, Whedon slips a dagger between your ribs when ... no, I won't give it away. It's just one of those twists that completely warps your expectations of how this silly musical comedy was supposed to end. Like most Whedon shows, the shifting emotions aren't exactly subtle. But it seems like he's always been comfortable with sacrificing that for honesty and for taking nerdly shows like this places they don't typically go.