Penny tells Billy herself that if he stopped looking inwards at his own pain he can find the ‘colour in his darkness’. Penny IS the strong character in this story because she’s the only one who isn’t too self involved to actually make a difference in the world as opposed to the glory seeking, arrogant and largely useless superhero/villians.

PS: Penny did realise captain hammer was a jerk (not the first or last girl to take that tiny bit too long to realise) and most likely would’ve found the same if she and Billy became involved. Remember the only Billy she knew was her friend at the laundromat, she has no idea about how bitter and twisted he is.

They claim that Penny is merely a prop for Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer to fight over. … But we shoulda gave her more jokes.

Well, they could have given her more jokes, but it still would have ended the same way, because Penny really is a prop. But I don’t see it as because she’s female. From a narrative standpoint, she could easily have been a male sidekick, a car, or a ham sandwich and everyone else would have acted the same way.

I’ve been reading some criticism (insert audible gasp here!) of “Dr. Horrible” about the lack of a strong, empowered female lead. They claim that Penny is merely a prop for Dr Horrible and Captain Hammer to fight over.

What are your thoughts on that?

Joss Whedon: Hi! Here goes Typomania! If I don’t get to a question, forgive. There are many, and I’m dodging the tough ones.

But, yeah, Penny is not the feminist icon of our age. And yes, she does exist in the narrative as part of Doc’s fate — but everyone in the story is there to move the story. Is she less real than Hammer? (Is ANYTHING?) We gave her a cause so she wouldn’t JUST be the Pretty Girl but the fact is, neither Doc nor Hammer gives her the attention she deserves — Doc’s crush comes before he has the slightest idea what she cares about. Which is not uncommon. It reminds me of “Sweeney Todd,” the Judge and Sweeney singing “Pretty Women” — a beautiful duet with no insight whatsoever. Just images.

But we shoulda gave her more jokes.

That part made me wonder if the story had two frozen yogurt scenes and I’d somehow missed one.

Actually, there’s three.

1) Penny & Captain Hammer sharing frozen yogurt on a park bench while Doctor Horrible stalks them in his arboreal disguise, during the latter part of “On the Rise,” the first song from Episode 2.
2) Penny & Billy ‘accidentally’ sharing frozen yogurt at the laundromat. This was somewhere between “On The Rise” and “Keep Your Head Up, Billy Buddy”, but I’m not sure whether it was before or after the phone call from Bad Horse telling him to go kill someone.
3) Penny, waiting alone at the laundromat with 2 frozen yogurts, during “So They Say,” the first song from Episode 3.

—Myca

EDIT: The second yogurt scene was immediately before the failed caper and call from Bad Horse.

The idea is that Billy could have got what he wanted if only he was prepared to treat Penny like a person. If he’d talked with her, rather than built a freeze ray, she would have returned his affections. I really dislike that aspect of these sorts of geek stories, because sometimes people don’t love you back. As written it plays into Billy’s entitlement over Penny.

I don’t share all of Maia’s analysis, but this insight intrigues me. I expect authors write this dynamic into stories for very traditional, journeyman reasons: you want to keep your audience guessing, let them think that any outcome is possible. If Joss made it clear that Billy never stood a chance of winning Penny’s affections, then there’d be less drama. There’d be no poignancy when he lose her in the end if he never really had anything to lose.

That said, authors may favor certain story devices for apolitical reasons, yet have political consequence. Thus, most of us will encounter far more homicides in fiction than we do in real life. Authors like homicides because they provide a quick, dramatic way to start and/or end a story. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder that human sensibilities are altered by the prevalence of such stories. Similarly, the fact that our society is marinated in stories telling us that every boy or girl next door is on the verge of falling in love with us if we only believe hard enough – this surely can’t help but feed people’s frustrations when it proves not to be true.

Of course, the “Just believe strongly enough and your dreams will come true!” storyline is pretty common with or without romance. And it’s doubtful advice, with or without romance.

Then again, there are also famous stories in which one person sacrifices for the object of their unrequited love (Count of Monte Cristo, Hunchback, Les Miserables, The Night of January 16th). Such stories undermine the idea that everyone will actually receive the love they feel entitled to. But these stories tend to be fewer and further between.

The trope that actually annoyed me in Dr. Horrible was “The Good Woman Always Dies”. I actually really loved the ending, but it kind of made me go “Really? Again? Seriously?”…

——————————————————————————————————————
Okay, sorry to derail and be a total Buffy-geek, but I’ve never really had a problem with the “[physically] strong female characters” trope in Whedon’s work, partly because it’s never all that’s going on– Buffy’s real strength is always eventually shown one way or another to be inner strength: a fair number of storylines revolve around exactly the issue of what Buffy does when she is unable to match her opponent physically (like Glory, fer ex).

I actually do think that when we talk about strong female characters in Joss Whedon’s work, that includes Willow, Kaylee, Zoe, Joyce, Tara and Cordelia (though I have other issues with her portrayal) and others– all of whom are presented as strong women, with physical prowess being sometimes a part of that and sometimes not.

Buffy is the traditional hero with superpowers, fierce loyalty to the people she considers “hers”, and a relatively simple worldview where she defends the good from the evil. But I don’t think that means that other forms of strength are devalued, especially because the way she sees the world and reacts is often a limitation, and requires the strengths of others to help her get it right.

Anyway, I may be oversimplifying because I’m inclined to love these shows, any straightening out of my perspectives will be appreciated :0)

Sorry, end derailment.

I love the headlines at the end - “Dr. Horrible Worst Villain of All Time” and “Dr. Horrible Kills Whats-Her-Name.”

The one’s flailing about ineptly for attention are the one’s who get the notice, praise, blame, etc. and the one person actually getting her hands dirty (so to speak) is remembered only briefly and only in context with the useless but charismatic jerks. “Captain Hammer’s Girlfriend Killed” and “Country Mourns What’s-her-name”.

I also agree with Myca about Penny’s waiting for Billy. She was lonely and she saw him as a friend. She’s finally not alone in the world but it isn’t as she ‘d hoped. She’s got the “Big Man On Campus” and everybody says she should be happy with that, but she isn’t.

I think if this story were really the sexist cliché that some people think it is, we wouldn’t have such a clear image of what jerks both Hammer and Horrible really are. Sure, Horrible says he loves Penny, but it’s clear when he finally talks to her that he has no real idea who she is or what she’s about. Hammer only wants her because Horrible does. For him, it’s all about “I’m touching your stuff.” The media, the public and the groupies only want charismatic drama.

There’s nothing dramatic about quietly doing the right thing, so when things are happening she’s never seen as an individual and when the drama is over, she’s forgotten completely.

And anyways, didn’t Captain Hammer pull the trigger that resulted (indirectly) in Penny’s death? Dr. Horrible didn’t actually kill anyone himself, he just made a lot of fireworks, so why did he get the credit/blame?

Because that’s the pattern that was set in Act 1.

In Act 1, Captain Hammer destroys the van’s controller and as a result, the van almost kills Penny. But the narrative that gets remembered (by the Captain and Penny) is that Dr. Horrible endangered Penny and Captain Hammer saved Penny’s life.

So in Act 3, it makes perfect sense that Captain Hammer kills Penny, but it gets interpreted (by everyone but Dr. Horrible) as Dr. Horrible killing Penny.

In Dr. Horrible, it’s made very clear that Billy, not Penny, is the one at fault. I think it was good that the narrative implied that Penny is attracted to Billy, because it makes it clearer that the reason they aren’t together is that Billy is acting like a jerk.

I expected Whedon to work a little harder at escaping the cliches of That Story Where The Protagonist Totally Deserves The Hot Chick Except This Jerk Hooked Up With Her First.

My interpretation was a little different.

If we read Billy as the stereotypical Nice Guy, then one of the characteristics of this group is that they generally blame others for their own shortcomings. Time and again, he had the opportunity to talk to her . . . she actually approached him and was friendly in the first episode before she’d met Captain Hammer, and he was a real douchebag to her. He stalked her. He took ’spy’ photos of her.

I think that by showing that Penny was theoretically receptive to Billy, Whedon wasn’t saying “he totally could have gone out with her if it wasn’t for that Captain Hammer dude,” but rather, “he totally could have gone out with her if he realized that Captain Hammer wasn’t the problem, and that he was.” It was his actions that prevented him and Penny from connecting.

At any point, Billy could have owned up to his shit and made an effort to change, but he didn’t, and tragedy ensued.

—Myca

I saw Penny as the only “normal” person in the trio with normal expectations of relationships (both romantic and otherwise). She seemed to be in the process of figuring out that Something Is Wrong Here but died before she had time for the light bulb to go off and she told them both to get stuffed.

The ending came as somewhat of a surprise to me; I was really expecting Penny to reveal herself as a superhero or villain during the climactic fight, so when she died before that happened, I was shocked.

And anyways, didn’t Captain Hammer pull the trigger that resulted (indirectly) in Penny’s death? Dr. Horrible didn’t actually kill anyone himself, he just made a lot of fireworks, so why did he get the credit/blame?

Also: the Evil League of Evil was awesome, and not just for Bad Horse (The Thoroughbred of Sin!). Did you see Fake Thomas Jefferson? Best. Supervillain identity. Ever.

(BTW, you probably want to give the OP another proof-reading; there’s a lot of little editing mistakes or missing words, like “a surprising number of understanding”, and “acknowledge the way , and the idea”, and a there/their swap at the end, etc. Just a friendly heads up.)