Recap / Hazbin Hotel S1E1 "Overture"

RECAP:
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I can do this, somehow I know it
I'll get Heaven behind my plan
There's just no way I could blow it, not this once in a lifetime chance
To change their minds and touch their hearts, or whatever Angels have
Cheer up, Vaggie, this could be swell, something tells me that today will be a happy day in Hell!

— Charlie, "Happy Day In Hell"

Charlie Morningstar tries to pitch her idea to the angels, while Vaggie films a new commercial for the hotel.

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Tropes:

• Air Guitar: During his song, Adam does an air guitar solo while making guitar noises with his mouth. Moments later, he pulls out an actual guitar.
• Art Shift: The prologue uses a very different style from the rest of the show, resembling the silhouette animation of Lotte Reiniger.
• Aside Glance: Adam pulls a blink-and-you-miss-it one when listing ugly people as one of the world's problems.
• Ass Shove: During "Happy Day in Hell", two of the background singers are a burly Sinner and an imp with "a ton of barbed wire to shove in his hole". Later in the song the Sinner sings that he "kinda [likes] the barbed wire that's shoved in [his] hole" while the imp smirks in the background.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Vaggie's first attempt at shooting a commercial for the hotel not only demonstrates Husk has zero acting talent, but it also gives us our first glimpse at Angel's porn-actor-tier acting skills, even disregarding the fact that he's transparently using the shoot as an excuse to hit on Husk some more.
  Husk: [emotionlessly reading off the script] Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel, can I help you with anything?
  Angel: ~I've been a bad boy, and I need a big, strong daddy to put me in my place~...on the path to redemption!
  Husk: [sighs] Well, you've come—
  Angel: ~OH, YES!!!~
  Husk: —To the right place.
• Berserk Button: Alastor hates being on television, to the point that Vaggie pointing the camera at him in a moment of anger makes him flare his true form at her to warn her against another attempt.
• Brain Bleach: Though Charlie attempts to extole the virtues of Cannibal Town, even she is immensely disturbed when a pair of cannibals messily devour a Sinner on the street do the point of exclaiming "Holy shit, why?".
  Charlie: And I don't give a crow that— HIS BRAINS GOT IN MY EYE!
• Brief Accent Imitation: As she's pointing out to Alastor that deliberately undermining the hotel runs contrary to his goal of being entertained by the failure of the sinners to redeem themselves, Vaggie pronounces "entertaining" in her best approximation of his radio-accented voice.
• Brutal Honesty: Charlie tries to delicately criticize the commercial Alastor made for the hotel. Vaggie puts it less delicately.
  Charlie: Maybe the tone is a bit... off? We want people to want to come here. This makes it look, um... [Beat]
  Vaggie: Bad. The word you're looking for is "bad."
• Bunny Ears Picture Prank: In Alastor's first commercial, when Charlie is introduced smiling awkwardly and waving to the camera, Angel Dust leans in from the side and does quadruple bunny ears on her — two hands behind her head, and one by each of her shoulders.
• Call-Back:
  • The outfits Alastor gives everyone for the real commercial are the same as in his song in the pilot (with the exception of Husk, who wasn't in that number, getting cuffs to make his tuxedo style fur look more upscale).
  • One scene in Alastor's commercial shows Charlie trying to explain her idea for the Hotel to an annoyed and disinterested Katie Killjoy, a reference to the pilot episode where she did the same thing.
  • Alastor has another HA HA HA—No reaction to Angel propositioning him...this time with a knife sound between the laughter and his firm "Never going to happen."
  • When Alastor says "This face was made for radio." while chiding Vaggie for filming him, he adopts the same Nightmare Face he did in the pilot, speaking without moving his mouth while his teeth pulse with light.
• Can't Take Criticism: While Alastor's nigh unchanging Slasher Smile remains in place, when Charlie and Vaggie say they don't like the commercial he made for them, his eyes narrow angrily and his claws gouge into the table he's resting them on.
• Changing Chorus: The first two instances of the chorus of "Hell Is Forever" have the same melody and lyrics. The third instance changes up the lyrics and what would normally be the last line goes in a different direction with the melody and extends it into another line, which contains the main reveal of the episode.
• Country Matters: Towards the end of "Hell Is Forever", Adam describes Sinners as "cunts" to rhyme with "months".
• Cynicism Catalyst: Charlie states Hell only allowing Lucifer to see the bad of what came from giving humanity free will crushed his optimistic dreams.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Subverted. When Vaggie convinces Alastor that he won't have any fun if no one is willing to even attempt to redeem themselves, he offers her a deal to make a better commercial. She initially balks at selling her soul, to which he clarifies that he meant it as more of a quid pro quo; he'll put in an effort if she agrees not to involve him in any further use of the video medium.
  • While the exact nature of the deal is unknown, Lute reveals that Lucifer made a deal with heaven that Hellborn demons, such as Charlie, are off limits and that the Exorcists are only allowed to target sinners.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Invoked. Alastor doesn't want to appear on-camera due to his Evil Luddite tendencies, so whenever he does things start to go haywire. The commercial at the beginning of the episode has static crackle across the screen whenever Alastor waves his hands in front of the camera. When Vaggie points the video camera at him, the camera glitches out and stops working. It helps that the camera was made with Alastor's magic. Even in the real commercial, where he's trying to stand off-camera, the parts of him that are on camera are glitching horribly.
• Establishing Character Moment: Since it's the first episode of the show, each of the main characters gets an additional one on top of the ones they already received in the pilot in case the viewer hasn't already seen it:
  • Charlie is introduced reading from a storybook about the creation of Hell which immediately paints her as a Wide-Eyed Idealist, and Vaggie is shown comforting her after the Extermination, keying her in as Charlie's forever-supportive and caring girlfriend.
  • Alastor is introduced having made a shitty commercial for the Hotel that deliberately portrays it in a stupid light for the lulz and then mocks Charlie and Vaggie for taking issue with it, revealing that he's the Hotel's carefree and mercurial patron who has a much more malevolent and manipulative side hiding just underneath his smug exterior.
  • Angel Dust is introduced offering to make a porn film where he has sex with Alastor and starts listing off all his attractive attributes, showing off how he's a Lovable Sex Maniac and Proud Beauty who's more than a little full of himself to the point where he chafes the other hotel residents with his obnoxicity.
    Angel: Oh, please, baby! This body was made to be exploited! I got the arms, I got the stamina, I got the legs, I got the lung capacity, ho ho, I got the LEGS! The gag reflex, the holes, the chest fluff everyone thinks are tits...
    Charlie: Hold that thought, I'll be right back!
    Angel: I can keep goin' all night, baby!
  • Husk and Niffty are brought up as examples of Sinners Alastor has forced to stay at the hotel using his power, simultaneously showing off how they're both indentured to Alastor, that Niffty is Ax-Crazy and takes no issue with her current situation and that Husk is a bartender who hates his job, life, and other people.
• Everyone Has Standards: Charlie always tries to see the best in her subjects, but even she can't hide her disgust at the inhabitants of Cannibal Town gorging themselves on the corpse of a slain Sinner.
• Evil Luddite: Alastor hates working with televisions, or any tech more advanced than a radio. Vaggie is only able to convince him to aid in making a proper commercial for the hotel by promising him that she'll never make him do it again if he helps her now.
• Exact Words: Vaggie asks Alastor for a camera, so he creates an old-fashioned flash camera just to mess with her. She then clarifies "video camera" and he gives her a handheld camcorder.
• Finger Muzzle: When Charlie first starts to tell Adam about her project, he stops her by putting a finger over her mouth, squishing it and pushing her back slightly. This shows he actually can solidify his hologram and is just letting her pass through it to mess with her.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Adam lists "ugly people" as a problem, he takes a brief second to smirk at the viewer.
  • As with all 666 News segments, the news crawl freaking out about the Extermination is insane if you stop and read it.
    News Crawl: This Is Not a Drill! Confirmed! Legit! Fuck! cevgbhnjm we all dead soon! Why does this always happen to me!—
• Grasp the Sun: When Charlie sings about getting Heaven behind her plan at the beginning of "Happy Day in Hell", she reaches out, and the camera shows her point of view as her hand appears to grasp for the light shining from the window.
• HA HA HA—No: Alastor's reaction to Angel proposing they have sex to promote the hotel:
  Alastor: Ha ha... never going to happen.
• Hard Light: Adam's hologram passes right through Charlie, which he uses to troll her a couple times. However, he interacts with her physically on a couple occasions, showing he could have made himself solid and was just being a dick. The first occasion is early in their meeting, when he silences her with a finger to the mouth; another is at the end of his song, where he grabs her wrist and shoves her out of the room.
• Interface Screw: Alastor can't be filmed on video, footage and live-feed glitching out whenever a camera is on him. When Vaggie tries filming him directly, it fries the camera.
• Jerkass: Throughout his meeting with Charlie, Adam is as obnoxiously entitled and macho as possible. He does things from trolling Charlie twice, turning the conversation to him, and finally mocking her plans with "Hell Is Forever".
• Kick the Dog:
  • Alastor makes a crappy commercial when Charlie asks for one, simply because he hates the format. Vaggie has to guilt him into putting in a serious effort.
  • Adam mocks Charlie first by offering her a handshake only to reveal he's a hologram. Then he offers her food only for Charlie to find that's a hologram too. In between these he solidifies his hologram to Finger Muzzle her, and later he solidifies it to shove Charlie out of the room, showing that he could have shaken her hand if he wanted. He also rubs in her face that the exterminators kill sinners with impunity and that he's moving up the date by six months just because he can.
• Knight Templar: Adam, full stop. Despite his blatantly unholy behavior, Adam considers himself completely infallible and righteous in his slaughter of Sinners, under the logic that they went to Hell and he went to Heaven.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Angel Dust suggests that Alastor have sex with him to promote the Hotel, he mentions that such a coupling would bring in lots of popularity for the establishment, as a subdued reference to how prior to the show's release the Angel/Alastor ship was the most popular by far and had spawned uncountable reams upon reams of smut across the internet. Of course, Alastor's response to this suggestion torpedoes any notion of such a thing actually happening in the show with all the subtlety of an actual torpedo.
• Marilyn Maneuver: Niffty holds her skirt down when Alastor changes her and the other's clothes.
• Missing Mom: Lilith has apparently been gone for seven years. All Charlie knows is that she's "busy" with something important.
• The Missus and the Ex: A male example — Charlie is sent to meet with the Angels in her father's place. When she learns that the leader of the Angels is her mother's ex-husband, Adam, she immediately realizes that this is probably why Lucifer didn't want to go.
• Moral Myopia: The Exorcists have been slaughtering the people of Hell once a year for centuries, but the minute one of them dies in the Extermination, Adam moves up the Extermination schedule to bi-annually instead of annually, and Lute wanted to just go back to Hell and start slaughtering everyone immediately.
• Musicalis Interruptus: As Charlie tries to explain her plan for the Hazbin Hotel with a continuation of "Happy Day in Hell", Adam cuts her off before she can even finish the chorus with a song of his own that mocks and degrades her ideas.
• Musical Number Annoyance: When Charlie starts seguing into "Happy Day in Hell", Vaggie is considerably displeased.
  Vaggie: [Glances away for a second] Okay, but just don't… sing to them—
  Angel Dust: That bitch is halfway down the street!
  Vaggie: Is she...?
  Angel Dust: Oh, she's dancing.
  Vaggie: Aaagh, no...!
• Not So Invincible After All: For countless millennia, the Exorcists have been able to run roughshod over Hell once a year, and in all that time not one has been killed...until now. Adam is very insistent on not letting this information get out (since no one is taking credit for it), and the real reason he's moved up the Extermination date is because he wants to make sure no one in Hell can ever do something like that again.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The ending of the story of how Hell came to be makes it pretty clear that the Exterminations are less to keep Hell from overflowing and more so they can't rise up against Heaven. During "Hell Is Forever", Adam flat-out states the Exorcists find the Exterminations amusing.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Adam comes off as a meathead during the meeting, with Charlie actually backspacing on calling him "smart". However, when talking with Lute about the dead Exorcist, he's much more strategic and on-the-ball, implying it was an act to annoy Charlie further, or that he's capable of being serious when the situation calls for it.
• Our Product Sucks: Alastor's first commercial hammers home how dumb he thinks the Hotel really is. Both Charlie and Vaggie disapprove of it, to his annoyance.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Alastor is told by Vaggie that if he doesn't attract more people to the hotel, then he won't get to see anyone fail to redeem themselves, and thus not have any fun. As such, Alastor needs to help make a proper commercial with Vaggie before Charlie returns. Alastor concedes the point, and agrees to help Vaggie as long as she agrees not to involve him in television again.
  • Lute wants to slaughter the demons immediately for managing to kill an Exorcist, but Adam doesn't want to act rashly as it would tip whoever did it off.
• The Purge: The angels conduct a yearly purge of sinners to keep Hell's population in check. Adam is moving it up to twice a year.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Charlie's eyes briefly change to have red sclerae and yellow irises when Adam mocks her dream during "Hell is Forever". More comically, it happens again later when the new commercial is interrupted.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Adam justifies moving up the next purge with a scroll reading "Fuck you I do what I want", though he actually has a legitimate reason that he is simply hiding from Charlie.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: In the episode's Storybook Opening beginning depicting the story of Adam and Lilith, the human characters are shown as nude, but the scene is kept relatively chaste by only showing their silhouettes.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Vaggie spends the episode's B-plot filming a better commercial for Charlie. When Charlie gets back from the meeting with Adam, the commercial starts playing on TV, but it's interrupted by a breaking news broadcast, so nobody gets to see it.
• Shown Their Work: During Charlie's story about Heaven, we see Ophanim as among the angels. Adam also briefly mentions a "Virtue chick." A Virtue is a rank of angel in traditional Christianity.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: Angel suggests that, as a powerful Overlord, Alastor could simply force people to join the hotel, which Alastor makes clear he could do (and is doing with Husk and Niffty). Vaggie shoots the idea down because people have to want redemption, so they have to join willingly.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: Adam spends most of his meeting with Charlie eating a plate of ribs and rambling about himself.
• Storybook Opening: The episode begins with Charlie reading ''The Story of Hell''.
• Subdued Section: Toward the end of "Hell Is Forever", most of the instrumentation drops out for the second instance of the chorus, leaving only the vocals and clapping, before returning for the last section of the song.
• Summon Backup Dancers: Adam summons golden Exorcists as part of his song for an entourage, which pop out of the walls. Charlie is briefly confused as to where they came from.
• Take That, Audience!: A subtle example — when Adam lists off problems with both Heaven and Hell, he briefly smirks at the viewer when he mentions "ugly people".
• Tautological Templar: Both Adam and Lute display this during the meeting. Adam insists he's a holy cleanser of deserving Sinners, despite the fact that his behavior is little different from a typical demon, because he's an angel and they're demons. Lute states "Angels don't make mistakes" when Charlie suggest the possibility that the Exterminations are a flawed idea.
• This Explains So Much: Charlie, upon actually meeting Adam, fully understands why her mother left him and why her father didn't want to attend the meeting himself.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Played with. Upon Vaggie saying action, instead of saying the line, Niffty freezes and stares blankly at the camera without a breath or blinking from the scene.
• Touché: When Vaggie demands that Alastor actually help in running the hotel, she points out that he won't get the entertainment he wants if nobody signs up for the hotel. He concedes her point.
• Troll:
  • Alastor's first attempt at the commercial is more about amusing himself than anything else.
  • Adam goes out of his way to be as rude and obnoxious towards Charlie as possible during their meeting, capping it off by revealing they've rescheduled the next extermination for six months instead of the usual year—with a scroll reading "Fuck you I do what I want!"
• The Unreveal: Just as the new commercial for the hotel is about to air, 666 News cuts in to reveal the next genocide has been moved up by six months.
• Twitchy Eye: After announcing the expedited Extermination, Katie Killjoy's eye twitches.
• Visual Pun: Adam spends most of meeting with Charlie eating ribs. In essence he's eating what he gave up to create Eve.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lucifer and Lilith gave the gift of free will to humanity in the hopes of making everyone happy, only for it to backfire horribly when free will also allowed the concept of evil to infect the new world.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: It's revealed Lucifer and Lilith were this in the beginning, thinking giving free will to humanity would result in happiness for everybody. However, it introduced evil to Earth, and created Hell in the process.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: At the end of "Hell is Forever" when Adam grabs Charlie's wrist and the door opens behind her, her eyes widen and her irises shrink in intimidation.
• Wham Line:
  • A relatively small one, but many first-time viewers are caught off-guard by the revelation of the Exorcist leader's true identity.
    Exorcist Leader: So I was playing this gig and for some reason this Virtue chick was digging on the drummer, and I was all "Do you know who I am?" I'm fuckin' Adam! I'm the original dick! All dicks descend from me!
  • Adam spouts a line at the end of "Hell is Forever" which not only throws Charlie for a loop, but completely recontextualizes the premise of the show and puts her on a very strict timetable:
    Adam: I guess I should probably mention
    That we've made the determination
    To move up the next extermination.
    Charlie: What?!
    Adam: Can't wait a whole year to slaughter those little cunts
    I know it's just been a week, but WE'LL BE BACK IN SIX MONTHS!
• Wham Shot: The final scene has a Heaven drone locating a decapitated Exorcist corpse, revealing the true reason why Adam is moving up the schedule. It raises serious questions about who could even do such a thing apart from Lucifer himself, let alone be so bold as to actually follow through and not brag about it.
• You Will Be Spared: Lute explains that Hellborn are exempt from the annual purges by Lucifer's decree. She uses that fact to mock Charlie, as the only reason she is allowed to survive the purges is because another angel said so.

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