Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog was entertaining and insightful. It’s hard to pinpoint what about the miniseries I found compelling. The hilarity of it surely did not go amiss; the leader of a villainous league is a horse and the protagonist’s nemesis, Dr. Hammer, sings about his penis.
Beyond that, I appreciate how the writer used character development to make his somewhat outlandish concept relatable. As I progressed into the show, it became less about comic book culture and more about how people deal with the challenges of living in a world where ambition and identity is all rolled up into the same tangle of decisions. The main character, Billy, is a normal guy that tries to fight his normality by becoming the super villain, Dr. Horrible. When he puts on his gloves and goggles, he feels powerful, unique, and capable of accomplishing great deeds and receiving recognition for them. Outside of his lab, he’s timid and sweet. He loves a girl that wants to help others, and doesn’t know how to be the charismatic man that he thinks that she wants.
There are times that I put on my own pairs of goggles and gloves in order to define myself in terms of something quantifiable. I don’t know how to measure my success as a person, so I measure my worth in how successfully I fill a role.
Dr. Horrible ended up becoming truly evil, and Billy became numb. He hurt the person that he loved as the result of his violence and plight to obtain something he never really wanted. The story made me think about how I define the concept of “my self”. Is the façade I play really just an expression of a part of who I am? Or do I stuff myself into roles to play and loose something in the process?
