What happens to the picked on choir-kid who discovers that his voice can hypnotize folks into do whatever he wants? Well, villainy, of course. Bouncy, toe-tappy villainy. In tonight’s episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the Dark Knight does battle with such a grown-up fiend, the somewhat-goofily named Music Meister. And what makes this episode of the Cartoon Network’s already fun Bat-show noteworthy was that Neil Patrick Harris — he of How I Met Your Mother and Dr. Horrible fame — lent his precisely pitched pipes to the role.
It’s been said that in musicals, the song-and-dance numbers are the equivalent of action scenes in action movies. The weirdness of “Mayhem of the Music Meister” is that the music actually slows down the action: The story pauses while, for example, Black Canary (Grey Delisle) sings a torch song for Batman (with lyrics like “If only he could love me/like he loves fighting villainy”). The songs are fun — and NPH sings them out of the park — and it’s a perfect time to try this kind of musical experiment, in the wake of Dr. Horrible and the current mania over Glee. But, ultimately, it’s not a successful experiment. The songs and the superheroism don’t quite gel here as well as they should. Plus, Batman should never, ever sing. I don’t care how good his Bat-Auto-Tune gadget is.
What’s more “Christmas” than a rolling ball of meat morphing into a tree and singing about boogers? That’s right, NOTHING. Meatwad, Master Shake, Frylock, Carl, and — believe it or not – Neko Case (who just became one of my favorite singers of all time) have teamed together for what will no doubt be this season’s must-have stocking stuffer: the 12-track Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas, set for CD and download release Nov. 3 through Adult Swim’s 
Let’s hear it for Milla Jovovich, who did a damn fine job guest-judging on 
