Ranking Joss Whedon's Projects - From Worst To Best

Sometimes things that seem like they're going to be totally awful have unexpectedly awesome side effects. Like that time when all the writers went on strike in Hollywood and television came to a virtual standstill. Remember that? Well, necessity is the mother of invention, and of course Joss Whedon found a way around that strike to create something amazing. 

Since the strike did not affect online media, he and some of his stalwart companions put together a musical comedy that would be available for internet distribution exclusively. The result was Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, a gloriously low budget, three act long exercise in surreal, and sometimes unsettling, humor. 

It's the story of Billy/Dr Horrible, an aspiring supervillain played with a tenderness and incompetence by Neil Patrick Harris. His Ph.D. in horribleness is put to the test when he meets and falls in love with Penny, who is a genuinely good person dating his pompous arch nemesis, Captain Hammer. (The hammer is his penis.) How can you go wrong there? 

The songs are great, the humor is pitched perfectly, and although it is on the surface a parody of the superhero genre, it manages to be genuinely touching in its treatment of the main character.