DR. HORRIBLE is easily the most celebrated creation directly for the Internet. GEMINI DIVISION has come out since DR. HORRIBLE and is getting some good reviews in some quarters, but it has garnered nothing like the praise. Repeatedly over the years, Joss Whedon has managed to match or exceed expectations. No wonder that he managed to do so again with this gem. And it easily stands as the most remarkable thing that Neil Patrick Harris has done.
It is nothing short of amazing how much on the cutting edge that either Whedon or his creations have been over the past 15 years. He helped write the screenplay for the first computer animated film, TOY STORY. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER alone was an epic of "firsts." Buffy Summers was close to the first powerful female hero to be found on TV. Xena beat her by a couple of years (though not if you count the BUFFY movie), but Xena seems to have influenced few if any subsequent female heroes, while Buffy seems to inform them all. BUFFY pretty much invented the TV concept of the Body Count, whereby important and notable characters are killed off, completely upturning the prior convention that no recurring characters on a show were to meet untimely deaths). BUFFY was the first series to successfully employ the long narrative arc, building entire seasons around a single story. BUFFY was also the first series to be heavily downloaded on the Internet. This took place because of the decision of the WB to pull two episodes off the schedule after the Columbine High School shootings. The episodes were broadcast in Canada, where some fans made copies of them and uploaded them to the Internet. As a result, "Earshot" and "Graduation, Part 2" became the first heavily downloaded episodes in the history of television. Also, while BUFFY was not the first series to have a musical episode, "Once More With Feeling" was unquestionably the most successful. And while other series came out on DVD prior to BUFFY, it was one of the series to find the pricing "sweet spot" of around $40. Prior series like the STAR TREK and X-FILES franchises had been priced to high to generate big sales.
Similarly, FIREFLY anticipated many of the alterations to Sci-fi that BATTLESTAR GALACTICA would wrought. No aliens, low tech, no magic science, hand held cameras, use of zoom on both regular cameras and on CGI "cameras" would all be reemployed on BSG.
And BUFFY also became the first TV series to be continued in comic form (ANGEL would follow shortly). Many, many series have continued in noncanonical form, but this was the first series to continue in canonic fashion, with the creator at the helm. Since the advent of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Season 8 on Darkhorse comics several other TV creators have contemplated continuing their shows as a comic, including Rob Thomas (VERONIC MARS) and Bryan Fuller (the tragically cancelled PUSHING DAISIES).
In other words, it is hardly surprising that Joss Whedon, who has been out in front on so many other projects, would be out in front on exploring just what you could do on the Internet.
That this is good is hardly a surprise given the astonishing quality of "Once More With Feeling," the great musical episode from BUFFY Season 6. This has a far smaller cast, but what there is is outstanding. As I said above, Neil Patrick Harris has never been this good before (and he has on several occasions expressed interest in a sequel, to which I reply, "Bring it on!"). He sings in a wonderfully unaffected light tenor and manages to express all the nuances of his character. As a blogger who aspires to join the Evil League of Evil (led by Bad Horse -- at the end of the musical we discover that Bad Horse is, indeed, a horse), Harris couldn't be better. Felicia Day, who played one of the potentials in BUFFY Season 7, was unexpectedly delightful as Horrible's love interest Penny. And the always magnificent Nathan Fillion is wonderful in the project's third major character and Horrible's nemesis Captain Hammer. There are also some great cameos by writers who have gone on to other television series, but who made their mark as writers on BUFFY, including David Fury (now a major contributor to 24) and Marti Noxon (now show runner of PRIVATE PRACTICE, formerly show runner of BUFFY in Seasons 6 and 7) as newscasters, and Drew Goddard (currently a writer on LOST, recently the writer of CLOVERFIELD, and director and co-writer with Joss Whedon of the forthcoming film THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) as "Fake Thomas Jefferson" of the Evil League of Evil.
As befitting a Joss Whedon creation, this does not end as you think it will. Some object to that. I celebrate it. The ending had far more of an emotional impact on me than I anticipated. Joss Whedon has stated that as a writer it is his job not to always give his viewers what they think they want, but what they actually need. That applies here.
All in all, this is another amazing chapter is a long line of amazing creations by Joss Whedon, wonderfully performed and executed by some great performers. Whedon has recently signed up with a software company to provide additional direct-to-Internet (and hopefully later to DVD) content along the lines of DR. HORRIBLE. There has been whispering that there will be a new DR. HORRIBLE story before too long according to Nathan Fillion. Neil Patrick Harris has expressed interest in doing a sequel. We can only hope.