Goodness, look at my wrist. I must be going.

[cyrano]

I enjoyed the first two parts of Doctor Horrible's SingAlong Blog. However, I must say I'm disappointed by the conclusion.
For somebody with the strong feminist credits Joss Whedon has, why does the sole female character in this drama essentially serve as a piece of turf for the two men to fight over, or as an abstract motivator for the Doctor? When I saw her reactions to Hammer's speech, I thought "Oh! This will be an interesting development!" But no, it had no bearing on the plot because all she was needed for at that point was to be the martyr.
And... the ending wasn't satisfying, except as the end of a prelude or a chapter one.
There may be more thoughts later. Please feel free to comment.

EDIT:
SarahOfTheDead has pointed me toward her essay on Why Penny Matters which covers a lot of what I'm thinking. Thank you, Sarah, for saving me the emotional work up neccessary for a proper rant.

Comments

Awh! Sad, teh hate. I find a silver lining angle to take, maybe it works. :)

[cammers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I initially hated the ending. Was hoping for some redemption via resurrecto-ray until it became clear that wasn't going to happen. Then I was just sad. But after replaying the whole thing start-to-finish a few times (as I am wont to do), it grew on me.

Now, I loves me some Buffy. I share the opinion of Penny Arcade's Tycho in that ass gets kicked harder and stays kicked longer when the kicking is done by a female. In MMOs, I almost exclusively create female characters for a wide and multi-layered variety of similar reasons. So yeah... neutralizing the gender aspect of media is great, sure, makes for excellent real-world drama and storytelling.

But this... well. It was different. See, I really just saw Penny as the only normal person (and since I have a major thang for Felicia Day, I probably wrote her a few dozen novels of backstory in my heart) in what was otherwise completely cheesy and obvious parody of classic archetypes. Which, normally, would include the Damsel In Distress. The whole thing's a send-up... Hell, we had some friends around and got drunk late one night and watched some old 70s TV and to us it seemed an even more dire parody of... well. Itself. (Outback vet gets sick and his female apprentice takes over while he's laid up. She faces challenges getting the farmers to trust her with their livestock, but eventually the moral of the story shines through - a woman can do almost as good a job as a man! ...And will be patted on the head for it, as she clearly wants and deserves. Dear god, the horror...) I reckon the damsel aspect could've even been hammed up more, but as it was, her normality served as one of those jarring counterpoints to all the cheese. I love how during Hammer's speech/song, it looked to me like although she was trying to be squeezed into that damsel role, it just wasn't fitting =quite= as well as it should. (Just like how the other characters didn't =quite= manage the full archetype - just most of it.)

And hell, ignoring meta, the reason she died was because she was just doing... well. What a normal person would. If you'd made the characters all-gay and made Felicia a man, that component would've remained... but then you'd have lost the send-up of the cheesy role fixings. What should we have had instead? A plucky girl who comes out of left-field to change up people's expectations and put a new spin on the archetypal battle between evil doctor and heroic muscle-man? I suspect that really wasn't the point of this exercise.

If I have any objection to the show it was the sad ending instead of the happy one, not gender roles.

Off topic:
Favourite moment/s? When Horrible realizes his dream is crushed and will not be realized (both first and second times), which leaves him so wonderfully free. The first time, with enthusiasm. (We all know that slightly insane smile inside.) The second... emptiness. Mmmm. Delicious.

Re: Awh! Sad, teh hate. I find a silver lining angle to take, maybe it works. :)

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

I think it may just end up where I buy the first two parts and then have the three of them come over on a weekend and script and shoot a new third episode. And then we tell Nathan that we do the weird stuff.