(Average+) Hazbin Hotel

Series in one sentence:
Heaven is Hell.

Series in more sentences:
Charlie, the princess of Hell, is tired of seeing her underlings getting routinely slaughtered by Heaven's exterminators and thinks to solve everything by setting up a reformation institute inside a hotel, hoping to give her clients the chance to enter Heaven and escape the punishment of eternal suffering.

It proves difficult to convince both angels and demons her dream is obtainable, and it takes the continuous support of her loved ones to see it through.

I can't say these 8 measly episodes -that rush through a story that's more fitted for three full seasons- left me impressed. Vivienne had quite some years since the pilot's release to write a script with bare minimum decent-level pacing, not to mention the real-time practise her Helluva Boss series should've provided.
I'm seeing the skeleton of a cool story, but it's like they only animated the cliff notes. The show asks its audience to be emotionally invested, but I struggled with it. No matter how heartfelt and well-acted some of the dialogue was, it's rarely earned, since these story beats come too soon into play.

The pilot episode should've been Vivienne's assurance that Hazbin Hotel could've succeeded fine on the internet, thus allowing her to create as many episodes as she wanted and take her time exploring the characters and overall story. And really, to have been given a spot on a streaming service, yet produce a series that still has that feel of being a small (though talented) team-created webcartoon, it solidifies for me that this was a pointless wait. Maybe not in the monetary sense, I can't speak about green numbers, but if Vivienne's soul is that of an artist, Hazbin Hotel should disappoint her at least a tiny little bit.

Let me proclaim the following first: Did not even hate it. I wasn't hopping up and down in excitement, the only moments that made me chuckle was Alastor going "hmr" after being asked to spawn a video camera and the snake continuously extending his services to the party crowd in episode 6, but at least this wasn't boring. You're not given the time to be bored.
I liked most songs, though I'm not sure if every episode needed one, let alone two or more. I think there were three I skipped after a few seconds, because the lyrics stopped conveying anything new. It went on a bit too long. Primarily the ones in the Heaven episode were bad.

Vivienne's character designs are the main element that attracts people, but I can't say everyone was created equally in this show. Some characters are really "Tumblr" and overly detailed, others minimalistic dogmen, and many of the more human characters have the same mold; with slender bodies, giant eyes, perhaps an extremely voluminous head of hair, and a giant fanged smile. It's her art style, I suppose, but this kind of thing erases the individuality of a character. A smile says alot about a person, but if everyone grins like Alastor, then what makes him special anymore.
It's why I don't find the manga art style in general pleasant, either. I've watched so much anime, yet it often feels like I'm watching the same characters with the same eyes and same hairdo, just in different settings. Why, as an artist, would you want that?

Because of the pacing, secondary characters disappear shortly after getting introduced. I was surprised to see that TV demon guy return at the end of the season, and every time the screen switched back to him, I just couldn't help myself and think "Why are you here. What do your comments add to this battle scene you're spectating?".
He's a missed opportunity for conflict, specifically to Alastor, thus the hotel, thus Princess Charlie, but he does nothing throughout the series. His one and only plan was to send a spy over, who got caught right away.. though somehow, cameras were still placed everywhere in and around the building, if I have to believe the last episode. So, the spy succeeded, because the rest of the crew was too lazy to properly check the place? The incompetence.

Alastor himself was also a bit disappointing. When I watched the pilot, I expected him to steal the show in future episodes, but it's the exact opposite somehow. This mysterious villain, who agreed to help Charlie with her business, is suspiciously absent and silent most of the time. Then, Charlie's father shows up and he's suddenly doing this song battle with him, where he basically proclaims to be Charlie's better father. Very bold, considering they've hardly interacted.

And that brings us to the lady in charge, one of the worst characters in all aspects: Princess Charlie Morningstar.

Her bland clown vampire design is devastating for a character described to be Hell's princess -if not the child of a discarded angel and hauntingly beautiful woman- and to make things infinite times worse, she's embarrassingly powerless and an emotional Disney princess. You can't take her seriously, while it's her plight you're following and should be rooting for.
Charlie is so hyper-focused on her own dreams, she's blind whenever a real and solvable problem is staring her in the face. Angel's predicament comes to mind, I'll get to that in a bit, but there's also the fact that the majority of Hell's residents are simply awful and deserve to be where they are, like her father told her.
Lucifer himself wanted to give his people a better life as well, but failed at it, no details given, which evidentially means that being a wet blanket monarch runs in the family. Neither Charlie or the king use their full authority to force change, and I don't understand why. Sure, ordering people to behave would create a dictatorship, but if this is the only language Hell beasts speak and it prevents people from getting killed and molested every second of the day, then it's a necessary evil. A necessary evil that might lead to true reformation amongst the next generation of Hellborn.

It wouldn't have been hard to make Charlie interesting, because a devil who's good-natured is interesting by itself. Having that said, the real mistake made here was having Hell acknowledge she's a loser. She's their damn princess, the ultimate authority, she should have power beyond anyone's imagination, but Hell's residents laugh at her and her hotel remains unvisited. Only the TV demon's spy is recruited during the entirety of the season, and that's only because he's also a discarded loser with nowhere else to go.

That crippling fear everyone has for the overlords, this group of demons that sit far, far, far below the royal family on the hierarchy scale mind you, should've been Charlie's running gag. Hell should be grovelling at her feet, completely blind for her docility and kindness. That would've been funny.
But Hazbin Hotel's universe doesn't respect hierarchy, even though Vivienne very clearly set one up. Just, why is Alastor feared as he strolls down the street, yet can people act cute with fucking King Lucifer? "Who is this you brought with you?" a mere overlord asks Alastor about the one and true princess of Hell standing next to him.
How and why can there be people who don't know the face of their princess? Has Charlie never made a name for herself since the day she was born?

The part where she got distraught upon learning her girlfriend used to be an angel I didn't get. Your father used to be an angel, making you half angel, but also, Heaven is where you wish all of Hell to go to. You know. This place where the angels you dislike so much reside?
She later confides in a person she literally just met and clarifies she's disappointed Vaggie didn't trust her enough to come clean about it, but, also adds not to like how she used to kill her people. I lol once more. This lil' clown. You believe that, yet you're crying for the victims, who kill themselves and each other on a daily basis as if it's normal? Because it is? Since this is Hell? Those people? Also weird that the owner of a reformation institute won't entertain the thought of granting redemption or forgiveness to the angels and has to be told that regret might make someone uneager to speak up about issues that involve her personally. She only cares about the way worse -or perhaps- equally terrible residents of Hell.
Nonsensical conflict, but at least it was short-lived. The one positive about a series that speeds through its script.

Charlie's wish to reform Hell is a funny premise, but it's thoughtless to write the angels as assholes, having Hell's creatures acknowledge they're assholes, yet present a cartoon plot about giving demons a second chance to enter this place they don't even like.
A good chunk of Hell's residents is there for a reason and these cursed souls are better off getting destroyed. After all, would bleeding heart Charlie forgive and help people like Angel's pimp?

Angel's episode is like getting punched after years of having lost your senses. You feel the horrible sting, yet you're happy to be feeling anything at all, this was a captivating episode.
But I still have to ask, was episode 4 the right moment to tell his story? Is this cartoon with casual swearing suited to cover a subject this raw? The episode had powerful, emotional, excellently voice acted scenes, but it's the only episode that goes this hard, making the rest of the series look tone-deaf in comparison. Hazbin Hotel likes to occupy itself with quirky comedy and exaggerated crying, as if you're watching a bad Spongebob Squarepants episode, so to have a story with so much real and believable emotion -it's all the more distracting when everything goes back to normal the next episode. Or really, when Angel gleefully sings about being a used-up whore at the end of the episode itself. Don't care the song is catchy, it should've been featured a few episodes away.

Charlie's passiveness in this episode was infuriating. She won't see Angel's stuck in an abusive work environment and just (princess btw) pitifully crawls away when her friend demands her leave. Her friend, who disappeared inside a closet with his boss for a few seconds, then returned with a black eye and trembling voice, his throat littered with swelling tears.
Nowhere in the episode does she acknowledge anything to be off, instead, she "comically" sobs to be sorry about overstepping his boundaries. Fuck you, blind swine, how hard can it be for the offspring of the most powerful being in Hell to destroy Angel's contract, or preferably, his boss. Useless friend and useless monarch, absolutely maddening.
I don't understand why Angel's pimp can't be disposed of, besides narrative reasons, but it doesn't make sense within the world itself. Angel is friends with a princess, and she's lame, sure, but through her, he should also have the less pacifistic and more powerful Alastor on his side. And yet, no one in that hotel works towards his happiness or even suggests to snap his rapist in half.

As strong as episode 4 was, there's no proper ending to it. Husk -probably the most hideously designed character in the whole show- comes to his aid and thinks to start a conversation by bringing up his own predicament; as if having to play bartender is in any way similar to being taped and raped by multiple men every week. Then that cute song about them being losers starts and everything is fine, like we never even witnessed that horror montage a minute earlier. And like I insinuated, the next episode acknowledges nothing and Angel is back to being his carefree self. I quite hated that.
Episode 6 attempts to pick up his story again, where he suddenly acts super protective over the annoying small cyclops girl, and defies his pimp, also out of nowhere. It's brief and happens very late in the episode, and his witnessing friends just watch him get smacked and again do nothing to help. Baffling.
Meanwhile, Charlie's having a meeting in Heaven where she's given disapproving stares after swearing once in their presence, while Adam is sitting in a balcony spewing filth at every opportunity, and no one even looks up. The angels then quite randomly decide that demons can't be reformed, concluding the meeting. Baffling.

Swearing is abundant in this show. The worst offender was Adam, who was insanely irritating. I did not see the humor in the why, because, why? He's a pointlessly rude narcissist who can't utter one sentence without calling someone a bitch like he's fucking Jesse Pinkman.

What a missed opportunity to play onto the fact he's human. A human, with humanity, "emotional flaws", which should set him apart from Heavenborn angels. Have him and Eve be the only ones to care about Charlie's dreams, if only because they indeed consider all of humanity to be their children, or really, because they feel guilty for being the ones to spawn sin into the world.
But they went so antagonistic with this man. Like, Vivienne, my friend, did Adam hurt you? Why does he look like a 2000s bro? Why does he talk like someone who spent too much time on Reddit? This man is supposed to be the first human spawned on Earth, but he swears up a storm like a 12-year-old who just saw an episode of South Park for the first time.
There's this ancient demon character with an old-timey dialect, insinuated to talk like that because of his age, but then, why does Adam not? He existed before Hell did, thus before that demon did, so is older than the vast majority of the Hazbin Hotel cast. It makes no sense. And this same logic can be applied to Charlie's father and a few others, I'm sure.
And why is Adam in Heaven at all, considering he and Eve are directly to blame for Hell opening itself for humanity? He got welcomed into Heaven, while his offspring is still living out "the sins of the father"? That's twisted. Just as twisted as the tremendous amount of power and authority these angels gave Adam, who doesn't even hide he's a violent douchebag.

The more you sit down and dissect these otherwise short episodes, the more they fall apart.
Nonsensical is the reason why this one overlord refuses to tell the rest of Hell that angels can be killed, unexplained it is why Charlie is advised to ask the help of the cannibal race specifically to battle the angels, or why convincing them requires song, and the existence of episode 4 alone is strange when taking into consideration that the pain and anguish of other characters -background characters- are played off for laughs in Charlie's intro song and other instances. Ha ha to the guy who got devoured alive by cannibals, but grieve the sex slave?
The tonal whiplash is something I'm sure Hazbin Hotel's way too young audience won't pick up on, because Vivienne is unironically good at distracting this demographic with colourful character designs and catchy songs.

Hazbin Hotel would've been better if every episode covered a simple day of attempted rehabilitation, slowly building up the characters in the meantime and keeping the story light and comedic, but it's almost like the creator is worried she might never get the chance to showcase her work on a streaming service again, so throws out everything at once.
There are so many early plot twists and discoveries that were better off getting revealed at the end of the season, or in the next, with the assumption it's a proper season with 12 episodes at the minimum, of course.

The gist of my experience is that Vivienne has a fun vision, but the execution lacks. She should've let nitpicking psychopaths like me read over her ideas before making this show, but the truth of the matter is that the people who already liked her work won't care. Not right now. When more time has passed, perhaps, but then the show has already been watched and it'll be a nostalgic memory.
And well, another truth of the matter is there's objectively nothing wrong with that.

I hoped for way more from this show, but if I were to stumble onto season 2 someday, I'd probably check it out, because as much as I complained, Hazbin Hotel isn't "that bad".