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cooplagoop · 1 month

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Just wanted to focus on the last bullet point about the credits.

I don't know much about Broadway, so I didn't notice how high profile some of the new VAs are and how much money they drain from the show's budget alone.

It's super disappointing that Viv is repeating her mistake of getting celebs on her show like in Helluva Boss, but more egregious this time. At least Kesha and Norman Reedus were only in one episode, but Kimiko Glenn, Alex Brightman and Keith David are in almost every episode.

Although she definately deserves her bad planning biting her on the ass for screwing over the pilot voice cast and then having the "more talented" VAs do an impression of a character's pilot voice to varying degrees of success.

Hazbin Hotel Liveblog: Dad Beat Dad

We are back to finish this. Real life got a bit in the way, but I do seek to write something rather big about this series and media literacy in general, but before i really can, i need to finish. Additionally, there are no more Vivienne Medrano-written episodes from here on out, which I am interested to see. I am watching these alone from this point, and sober, so I do apologize that they may not be as entertaining, or maybe they will be more so since you will see the active participation of my brain this time around.

Vaggie is sleeping like she is sitting at a desk. The way she wakes up is going from a slouched position to sitting upright like she’s the anime protagonist by the window at the back of the classroom. I immediately had to pause and laugh.

I didn’t even recognize Vaggie’s voice when she asks if Charlie is good. Goodness, After Angel Dust’s voice was so out of character last episode, I legitimately thought Roman just stopped trying for the rest of the series there for a minute. I actually had to start the scene over just to physically see who was talking.

I’m fascinated by the writing for Charlie this episode because instead of talking about things happening that were actually important, we focus on the things she did. It feels selfish of her to really only attribute the things she personally has done, all of which didn’t help at the time or were actively harmful to those around her. Additionally the idea that the hotel “isn’t working” is confusing. In what way is it not working? What is it Charlie thinks is supposed to show it working? There is entirely no clear idea of what “working” would be to Charlie. And instead of actually expanding on the idea of what this very nonspecific idea of failure is, they immediately use the situation to lazily introduce another character in Lucifer. It just reminds me of Carmella and how Sir Pentious’ out of character paranoia was just a segue to her being introduced through her arms dealing.

Side note, but this episode is written by Rachel Kaplan who wrote two episodes for Bojack Horseman. Specifically Season 5’s Ancient History and season 6’s A Little Uneven, Is All. I definitely feel Kaplan has solid comedy chops in her writing, but both of her episodes in particular really thrive in regards to her female characters. In Ancient History, for example, the story heavily focuses on Hollyhock and Princess Carolyn with sprinkles of Todd and Emily. The way Kaplan writes women in Ancient History is refreshing in media. She embraces HollyHock’s fragile mental and emotional state and how trauma has attached itself to Bojack in her mind. Despite Bojack not being the one to have harmed her, things that are fundamentally associated with Bojack are triggering. And you see how having such a sheltered and loving upbringing as HollyHock made her less resilient to the dysfunction that Bojack has horrifically normalized in his life.

Kaplan really does excel in writing for her female characters and I’m curious to see how she handles this episode. I see the similarities in writing such as Mr. Peanut butter asking for the rights to a happy birthday gift card that happens to be made by Ralph’s company to instigate their engagement for the episode. However, Bojack continued forward with Birthday Dad as a legitimate outcome and subplot within the series from that point forward. The point being that utilitarian writing is a necessary form of writing, but due to how little Medrano as a director focuses on the specifics of the story it results in the writers hired onto the team to struggle with very little to actually work with. How well this episode goes definitely feels like a canary in the coal mine for how much behind the scenes work was actually put into the female cast and series as a whole. If there is some strong foundations at least in the planning, Kaplan can probably make this episode one of the best ones, whereas if she is being left to build on sand, I believe the episode will feel hollow at its core.

While Kaplan is the writer for the episode, Medrano has self-identified as having written portions as a director, and it shows. On twitter she identified herself as having written the interaction between Lucifer and Alastor, and it completely broke the flow of the scene. I was starting to get into the feel of the episode for a second, Charlie was starting to feel like a person and her and Lucifer had a back and forth dynamic that was detached but affectionate and rather sweet. The visual direction also had improvements with more interesting compositions to tell the story and the silence felt less robotic. It started to get a flow only for Alastor to act as a massive pothole. I hypothesize that Medrano is highly protective of Alastor as a character and thus monopolizes his writing. Ironically it works well alongside her own personality she has displayed. Alastor is a very self-absorbed individual with entitlement who uses bravado and abuses to project this sense of power while being extremely insecure. It must be comforting to write what she actually knows for once.

Lucifer becoming an insecure manchild ruined any goodwill I was starting to build towards him. He went from being insecure in himself to suddenly projecting that insecurity outward onto Alastor and it immediately hollowed him as a character. The sudden screaming that wasn’t a part of his mannerisms until he’s demanding attention is a Medrano staple of what she thinks comedy is. It sounds like Medrano herself screaming for attention when threatened by someone with legitimate accomplishments and talent taking control of her show.

The issue with the large time skips and much ado about nothing going on in the actual episodes is why Alastor’s behavior is so confusing. Him being endeared to Charlie both seems in character when place in context with the pilot, and grossly out of character when it is not anything we have seen since. In fact, the series has made a point to emphasize this malicious side of him to, I guess, make him appear more “cool” and it disrupts any coherent idea of actually who he is.

So Alastor has not a single line for about two minutes after Lucifer requests to get to know the other members of the Hotel, and then this song. I’m so disappointed in this song. Lucifer distanced himself from Alastor and is introduced to the other sinners, and instead of having this song be what it clearly should have been: Lucifer singing about how he feels about Sinners and how foolish he finds Charlie’s quest because, you now, look at them. Lucifer has a first hand experience in Heaven and it would be reinforcing his character by reminding the audience that he himself is also in Hell to be punished. And his punishment is the very Sinners that Charlie loves. Like, there is so much interesting content to be pulled out of this ad explored. Instead, out of nowhere, Lucifer is just hyperfixated on this one sinner for no reason. That one second scene of Alastor doting on Charlie being grounds for this song-battle just makes Lucifer look insecure, petty and pathetic, which is also how Alastor looks. These two now are the same exact character and it is soul sucking. This episode was genuinely the best one yet, but Medrano is so infatuated with her own tumblr sexy man that it resulted in both of these characters becoming less interesting almost instantly. And I genuinely enjoy Lucifer’s singing and personality, and there was so much you could have done to really make this work. It almost worked. It’s so unfortunate that no one involved higher up had the experience or desire necessary to pull this together by keeping a tight control on an amateur and weak director.

I was informed that this is an unpopular take, but as a character I like Mimzy. Granted I’m only in so far as her being introduced to Lucifer, but she seems fun. Not really digging the idea of her backstory or her accent however. The issue is she has a very New England accent but was supposed to run in the same circles as Alastor when he was alive. So it would negate Alastor’s supposed Louisiana roots and life-long heritage because its very clear that Mimzy is from the North East and as a Flapper girl, she would have not been in the Deep South. Flappers were primarily located in modern liberal areas like that of New York and Los Angeles with its money and socialite society providing them their primary source of income. The south, even in places like New Orleans, was still heavily segregated which resulted in stark social and economic expectations between social circles that Alastor and her never out have been able to bridge in 1920s Deep South. Taking into account Alastor’s supposed black American ethnicity, her line “Mixed company” comes off overtly racist, even if appropriate to her time period.

Mimzy’s animation on the bar. I had to pause and laugh again. There isn’t even any animation, she just slides across the screen as a static image with only her face being animated. Anyone who claims there was no rigging used in the animation process is a liar.

Niffty’s mouth movement in her line “Not for long” does not, at all, match the dialogue and I am curious what the original line was supposed to be.

This feels like an ego trip or Medrano. She really thinks Alastor is an interesting character and pushes this idea of how “badass” we are supposed to find him. Instead it reads like. Severely insecure OC (TM) and she really wants everyone else in the roleplay to be obsessed with him.

It shows how little Medrano understands the use of music in musicals. Typically speaking, you want the emotional heights to be the content of the songs, so by not having Lucifer’s song be about how much Sinners suck (which, again, would have made way more sense for the lead up and context of where the song was placed. In the script) it reduces his opinions about sinners to be unimportant compared to his own ego. It isn’t even about Alastor’s relationship to Charlie as the comparison to them both being “father figures” only appears in the middle of said song. This whole reminder about how he sees Sinners being an afterthought undercuts the idea that he even cares about Charlie at all. It has muddled the entire concept because you have one writer who knows where the emotional beats should be, and the other overly obsessed with her own wish fulfillment and ego. It is fascinating to watch this tug of war where one person is genuinely trying to make the characters their own people and build into them human connection and feelings while the other is so fixated on spectacle and her own identity being the focus of the show that any character groundwork is bulldozed in favor of aesthetics and attention. It’s actually almost heartbreaking to watch. It shows how, on every level, Medano has ideas that could work, but neither the ability nor desire to follow through, and the pitiful lack of security to allow others to really bring these ideas to fruition. It highlights how little the existence of this show is about telling a story and how it really is just all about Vivienne Medrano having a show.

The writing around Alastor is grossly unfocused and amateur. Husk warns him about the damage Mimzy brings with her, Alastor tells him to mind his business. Then he fixes her issues and tells her she needs to seek redemption or leave. And just like how the song is clearly played as a show to make Alastor appear like he cares, his interaction with Mimzy is (I think) also meant as a show. He doesn’t mean anything of what he says, but it is to just reinforce this facade for Charlie, right? Here’s the thing, I don’t know for sure. Based on the writing, it just feels like odd whiplash. It is a direct contradiction to what he said not minute before and it seems like Medrano wanted it played deceptive, but it lacks all feeling and buildup that it is just flat. If you read duplicity into the scene, your only evidence and reasoning is that nothing makes sense. When the clues to the direction of the story is that nothing is adding up, it’s a child’s concept of deception. It feels like a child telling themselves what they think is clever to some fictional idea of an audience in their head. It feels like a child brainstorming their story and how they will trick their viewers without understanding how human interaction works. And in regards to the idea of it being intentionally meant to be confusing, I can only paraphrase HBomberguy on his video covering the BBC Sherlock: If you don’t give the audience the tools to solve the mystery, you didn’t make a mystery. You are more in love with the character than the story and everything else, including quality, be damned.

The issue with Lucifer saying how Heaven never listened to him makes no sense to his character and story. If anything, he should be on the side of Heaven. HE is the one who didn’t listen, gave humans fee will and now he sees how much they suck. This whole stance he has doesn’t even line up to his own character. The way this should go is “Heaven didn’t listen to me, AND I WAS WRONG.” Like, Heaven and their rules, they were right. Lucifer’s hatred for Sinners is because Heaven was right. He thought they would be creative and loving when free, but he was wrong. They are sadistic, selfish, and cruel. Even in their altruism, they constantly put themselves first. This scene could have redeemed Loser Baby and show how Husk enabled Angel and not actually sought to help. How Husk’s empathy comes from a selfish place of superimposing himself over another person by making any sort of comparison between him and Angel before he shows even a sliver of care. There was so much here you could have fixed if you just had any idea of what story it was you were telling, if any story at all. Is Kaplan still even involved with the script at this point?

I think this episode gave me depression. This song could have been so powerful, but Charlie’s portion is jarring and doesn’t have any context to really comprehend what I am supposed to feel or understand. “Wishing it was me”, Wishing what was you? Wishing what? - Okay mid-typing i think i understood the context and this sucks. She means Lucifer was literally telling he stories and Charlie had an imagination. Like, not stories about his life or heaven, I mean fairytales. And she is literally singing about how, as a kid, she had an imagination. Like that is somehow special? And the reason this is so confusing and poorly placed is because Lucifer is singing about how much he wants to protect her from Heaven. But none of it adds up. He says he did this himself, which alludes to him also trying to redeem sinners and Heaven beat him down for that, when everything else suggests that this idea Charlie has is legitimately new. But the way it tries to combine these ideas completely loses the plot, the character relationships, the motivation, the world building. Angels in the Vivziepop universe have free will. Lucifer had to have free will to gift free will, and it is seen that the other angels choose to conform over stepping outside of that box. So Charlie being Lucifer’s child is not taught imagination, that’s a given and inherent trait of angels. And her whole “you inspired me” portion of this song falls face first flat because… imagination is inherent. It also means that free will is, in fact, just having an imagination. And heaven shows that angels can very much just choose to conform and how free will is a choice, but an imagination isn’t a choice. This just brought the whole suspension of disbelief crashing down. There is so much here to talk about in terms of media literacy and messaging and what is the meaning Medrano is trying to convey, but none of it works and it would be way too long for a live blog. As it is, this one episode has lasted me 2 hours.

Let’s talk credits a moment: Anyone else notice how Stephanie Beatriz is first to be credited? She is the highest paid actor in the show. She charged a lot of money for her very minor role and it shows in order of credits who is credited first. Right after her is Alex Brightman who had three, maybe four, lines throughout the episode. Then Keith David who had about as many lines as Stephanie. Kimiko Glenn is even paid more than the main actress Erika Henningsen, and now you know why she only has about 3 lines per episode. This cast drains the financials of this show and the evidence is front and center at the credits.

I am just so disappointed. Before Lucifer enters the hotel 5/10. After Alastor: 0/10

#hazbin critical #Now that I think about it is the star-studded cast the reason we only have 8 episodes because Viv blew the budget?#My money's still on Amazon buuut mismanaging her budget so much that we couldn't get more than 8 episodes with lifeless animation is not #something I can claim Vivziepop is above with confidence #This is just me theorizing so don't take it as hard evidence like her accounts of employee abuse and transphobia #I spell checked it now.

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