anthony has gotten me to watch hazbin hotel with him, and every time we finish watching another episode or two we just have to stop and have a half hour conversation about how baffled we are by it. even setting aside the juvenile dialogue and the overdesigned and samey characters that everyone's already critiqued to death, its storytelling is so fundamentally half-baked on such a deep level, even down to foundational things like "why is it even set in a hotel?" (by the end of episode six of an eight-episode season they've only ever gained one new guest to the hotel.) we literally laugh out loud almost any time a Big Emotional Musical Number starts because it's usually so completely unearned, either coming in at a weird time or trying to act as the grand crescendo of a character arc that had been massively sidelined in favor of other self-indulgent story tangents
three of the first five episodes get derailed by subplots relating in some way to alastor, who was created in a lab to be the ultimate tumblr sexyman of all time and is completely insufferable. the fifth episode is supposed to be about charlie's relationship with her dad, lucifer (who is extremely lame and onceler-coded in this), but then it devolves into being about a rivalry between lucifer and alastor because apparently we're supposed to have thought that alastor is a father figure to charlie this whole time??? (this series has a massive tell, don't show problem. also it's hard to imagine any of these characters being parent figures because they all look and feel like they're supposed to be in their 20s.) and THEN it gets derailed FURTHER when a random shortstack flapper woman (the only major fat character in the show lmao) barges into the lucifer vs. alastor musical number as if we're supposed to know who she is, and she reveals she's a friend of alastor's so that she can hang out at the hotel for an episode and give us exposition about how alastor is apparently a mysterious serial killer or whatever. by the halfway point of the episode i had literally forgotten it was supposed to be about charlie's relationship with her dad, but they still have to have a big emotional musical number at the end
i'm resisting the urge to write a longer piece critiquing this show because vivziepop's fans (and viv herself) are infamously hostile to any and all criticism, and also i have better things to do with my time, but anthony and i just keep remembering that this show has an 85% on rotten tomatoes and it just completely boggles our minds. yes the animation and musical numbers are well made on a technical level, yes they got a good cast for this, but it's just such a mess
