Couple things I want to point out
1. The pilot is not required viewing before watching. Everything that was established in the pilot is reestablished here, from what the exterminations are, why Charlie wants to run the Hotel, to the characters and their relationships to each other and the hotel.
2. I think you misinterpret Adam. He's clearly not incompetent as he's in charge of conducting the yearly exterminations and he has done so for thousands of years with this being the first an incident happen. I also find it disingenuous you didn't mention the reason for the moved up extermination, the fact they found out an angel died in the last one so they plan on more or less exterminating all of Hell in the next.
3. Going from yearly exterminations to 6 month exterminations is not "slightly earlier," it's essentially doubling the amount of death. Charlie's motive is to stop her people from getting killed by these exterminations so hearing this one is coming 6 months early is a big deal for her.
4. While yes Hell certainly has irredeemable figures in it, the B plot with the commerical is mainly meant to establish the main cast. While they're all jerks, none of them are blatantly horrible people. The worst we see is Angel making sexual jibes at Husk, which are rather tame compared to some of the other things we see in the show. The fact that Angel, Husk and Nifty were willing to help with the commercial shows they do have a decent side to them.
5. I wouldn't say Alastor instantly solves the problem. Vaggie had to make a deal with him to do it, showing that Alastor is testing the waters on what he can get away with in terms of coercing these people to do what he wants. He made it clear he doesn't care about the Hotel's goal, and clearly is in it for his own fun. Husk is Aloof because it's established he doesn't want to be there and was forced into it by Alastor, and Angel's sexual jibes, like i said, are shit he get commumpence for in the episode. Yes Nifty is the size of a child, but she isn't sexualized in anyway so who cares?
@SYRUNK Not that I disagree about the guy doing this review being harsh, but there is one point where I disagree with you as well:
Also his frat boy personality is a side effect of his superiority complex from being the first man and presumably first human to ascend to heaven. He\'s a deconstruction of the ascended angel troop as now that he is in Heaven he believes he can be as big of a jerk as he want.
That\'s either a headcanon interpretation or something stated by Word of God. Either way it\'s not explicitly stated in the actual story, so I\'d say it doesn\'t qualify as a solid argument to defend the show and should be kept to personal opinion rather than presented as fact.
@THEOKAL Fair enough
You absolutely need to watch the pilot to have a solid understanding of what\'s happening; the first episode repeatedly references the events thereof. The pilot is where all of the characters receive a proper introduction, where we learn how and why Alastor is supporting the hotel, who Cherry Bomb and Sir Pentious are, and how its sole resident, Angel Dust, ended up at the hotel in the first place.
The pilot racked up an extremely impressive 98 million views, so it\'s not unreasonable to assume that most of the audience for the show itself watched it, but woe betide the viewer who stumbles upon the show without prior exposure.
The show demonstrates that Adam is extremely incompetent. His exorcist corps completely crumbles and he outright dies the second he encounters any remotely organized resistance, and the exorcists themselves are notoriously bad at actually fighting (per the scene with Carmine and Vaggie in Episode 7).
Despite having 6 months to prepare for a Hell that\'s learned how to kill angels, the exorcists demonstrate just as much Suicidal Overconfidence as they did during the last extermination. Adam, meanwhile, has no idea what it even takes to become an angel, he accidentally reveals the extermination to all of heaven, and he\'s generally a barely-tolerated embarrassment to the rest of the heavenly host. His behavior during even Episode 1 makes one wonder why such a seemingly serious task was entrusted to such a self-absorbed buffoon, one who literally treats the gig as some sort of elaborate, homicidal game.
His call to hold off on the extermination is also the blatantly incorrect decision even going off of the available info: attacking immediately, before Hell can learn of the Angels\' vulnerability, is a helluva better strategy than waiting 6 months to make sure Hell doesn\'t \"catch on.\"
We also don\'t know when the extermination actually started; it could have been a thousand years ago or a hundred years ago or ten years ago. My personal theory is that, based on how all of the oldest sinners we encounter (aside from Lucifer and Lilith) seem to have died sometime in the early 20th century, the extermination only started within the past century or so.
Husk and Niffty are explicitly forced to take part in the commercial by Alastor. Husk has some great moments where he voluntarily sticks his neck out for the hotel in later episodes, but he basically only exists to be aloof and cranky during Episode 1. We\'re not even shown how they \"help out\" with the new commercial after their lackluster performances during Vaggie\'s first shoot. Speaking of Niffty...
Niffty is absolutely sexualized. Her very first line is about how she \"likes being forced\" to do things in a conversation rife with innuendo (to the point where Husk suggests she keep that to herself), and later episodes depict her as fascinated with S&M play and eager to be taken by a \"bad boy.\" This would be fine on its own if the show didn\'t also play off of her more childlike characteristics, sometimes in the same scene. It\'s not nearly as bad as it could be, but it\'s a strange enough choice to where I had to pause episode 3 and confirm how old the character was supposed to be when Angel took her to a sex dungeon for \"trust-building exercises.\"
Also, regarding the canonicity of my interpretation of Adam: When Charlie realizes Adam is the First Man ever in Episode 1, she comments \"That explains so much.\" The show deliberately frames him as the Ur-example of toxic masculinity; that\'s his Original Sin.
Actually, Adam dies because Lucifer, someone far, far more powerful than him stepped into the fight. Before that not even Charlie was able to stop him. While Adam clearly isn\'t a great strategist, his main advantage relies on the fact he simply so OP. No one in Hell can truly challenge him. He doesn\'t need to try that hard because he\'s never had to try hard before which only emboldens his careless attitude. Even when Charlie manages to hurt him, he reacts with more indignation than concern he might be in real danger for once. Basically, he not used to things actually being difficult because no one has a hard day in Heaven.
Now you could argue why, didn\'t Lucifer step in sooner, but one headcannon/theory is that since Adam tried to kill Charlie, he broke the agreement Lucifer had with Heaven to spare the hellborn demons during the Exterminations.
Regardless of however many exterminations there have been, no one has ever killed an Angel before. And then there\'s the fact Charlie was making waves as well. Prior to that, Adam just use brute force to deal with problem in Hell.
The exterminations were also Adam\'s idea in the first place and it\'s quite clear Sera wants to keep herself at arms length of the problem, so she is simply defers everything to Adam and Lute. Even when Charlie gets her audience in Heaven, Sera blames the situation on Adam and basically tells him to fix it, rather do something herself(which was a bad idea).
Keep in mind that Adam was the first soul in Heaven and the first human created by the Angels. He is literally, the original \'golden boy\'. He more or less states this belief during his defeat. A bit Fridge Brilliance perhaps, but he likely enjoys a celebrity status in Heaven by starting everything.
Now Adam not attacking right away seems a little contrived, but the idea was to simply double the Exterminations from now on. Even if they did kill all the Sinners, more and more will just coming in every year. Another theory is that his deal with Lilith has something to do with as well. And then there\'s Charlie again. After she humiliates him at the trial, Adam states he going to the Hotel first and foremost. So by that point, he\'s out for revenge and the dead Angel is a secondary priority for him.
The show demonstrates that Adam is extremely incompetent. His exorcist corps completely crumbles and he outright dies the second he encounters any remotely organized resistance, and the exorcists themselves are notoriously bad at actually fighting (per the scene with Carmine and Vaggie in Episode 7).
Okay, that part I do disagree with. True, the Angels are explicitly stated to have Suicidal Overconfidance and be not so good fighters once they encounter real resistance, but in my opinion that\'s understandable: they\'re stronger than Demons on average and were pretty much invincible until now. 6 months is nowhere near enough to break what I presume to have been a millenias old habit of fighting like you\'re an invincible juggernaut - I would know, I once played a video game with the Invincible cheat code on for a long time, only to realized I had become dependant on it and now sucked at playing normally, and it took me years to re-learn how to properly play. Adam probably figured there was no way they would have time to prep and decided to move up the Extermination betting on the idea Demons would have less time to learn how to fight back on a larger scale. Also, I would like to point out that the Exorcists didn\'t actually get curb-stomped like you described - sure many of them die, but they still take down the wide majority of the Cannibals, and Adam himself wipes the floor with several of the most powerful characters (including the previously invincible Alastor) until Lucifer walks in. The Exorcists ends up retreating only when Adam is down, and even then we can see plenty of them survived.... I will however give you this that waiting 6 months was a dumb strategy, and it\'s even dumber that they didn\'t realize Angelic Steel was how one of them got killed (especially since judging by Vaggie\'s backstory, they knew that stuff can hurt angels).
Also I\'d like to point out Adam not knowing how he got to Heaven is a bit of a stupid standard to call him incompetent because that same episode makes it clear no one in Heaven knows how that part works. He\'s not particularly more ignorant than the others on that front.
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Episode One: How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot...
Hazbin Hotel does not leave a good first impression. The series practically requires you to have watched the pilot prior, and the first two episodes of its first season are easily its least compelling.
Episode 1 starts us off with an unnecessary exposition dump that doesn't even explain who the main characters are before segueing into an A Plot that centers on Adam, a character far too insufferable for his own good (to the point that you begin to question why he's even in charge of the exterminators given his gross personal incompetence).
I can almost see what they were going for: the first man ever, filled with the knowledge of evil and raised to a position of uncontested authority over the lives of the damned, embodies every stereotype of toxic masculinity you could ever imagine. He's the primary antagonist for season 1, so surely they'll do something with this, right? Of course not; Adam remains a caricature of an obnoxious frat bro douchebag for the next 7 episodes, never rising above the simplest possible depiction of such a character.
The stakes Adam leaves us with—the extermination is coming slightly earlier!—aren't very exciting, either. Telling us our protagonists are fighting against slightly more of the status quo does not an effective hook make.
The B Plot, meanwhile, does its own poor job of explaining why we should care about the extermination to begin with, showing us our cast of future extermination victims at its most flanderized. Hell is full of unrepentant assholes that the world would be better off without and, as of episode 1, our lovable assholes remain wholly unrepentant.
The framing device used to show us these characters, Vaggie's struggle to shoot a commercial for the hotel, is then instantaneously solved by Alastor, rendering the previous several minutes pointless beyond their depiction of the cast at its most flanderized. Angel Dust's main contribution to this segment is sexual harassment. Niffty, the most child-coded 22-yr-old I've yet encountered in a work of fiction, is used entirely for comedic effect (and, to be fair, her scenes are funny). Alastor is little more than aloof, enigmatic, and ridiculously overpowered in the same way that a Slenderman OC is, while Husk is literally just aloof.
There is, nevertheless, an off-kilter charm to the whole thing. Episode 1 is Hazbin at its most indulgent, bearing its plaque-choked heart for all the world to see. The show is strangely cohesive despite every character looking like they were plucked straight from a queer emo kid's sketchbook circa 2007. There's even a kind of comfort to the characters' initial simplicity: they're the over-the-top archetypes of edgy "babby's-first-RP" forums the world over.
Episode 1 of Hazbin Hotel is essentially "Spencer's Gifts meets Hot Topic: the TV Show," and, before you know it, you can't help but want to wander into the back of the store and gawk at all the freaky stuff that so intrigued you as a brooding, bicurious teenager.