1. The Vox and Alastor scene was meant to establish two things. One, Vox loves not only being at the center of attention and he\'s part of a younger generation of Overlords who are in over their heads. The old vs new conflict was meant to show that the Vees consider themselves the hip new thing with all their technology and media and thus don\'t respect the establish authority. It also establishes that Alastor is clearly evil, and he has some kind of plan or motive he\'s using the hotel for. They\'re setting him up as a future antagonist for the show. Also neither one of them are trying to establish themselves as potential rulers, they\'re just fucking with each other out of spite. Alastor absence is also suppossed to be a mystery, why spoil it second episode?
2. Given the fact we\'ve only seen Vox use his tech sight powers and brainwashing through his own products, and considering that the only major tech we see in the hotel is an old ass TV that certainly didn\'t come from his company and none of the main cast use a phone made by him, it\'s safe to assume he can\'t see inside. That\'s why he sends Pentious in. Also why are you complaining about Pentious\'s name not starting with V? It\'s clear the Vees are just using him as an expendable pawn to spy on the hotel and aren\'t considering letting him join on the team.
3. Sir Pentious has been established as an incompetent evil overlord wannabe, so him doing at shit job at surveillance makes sense.
4. I think you missed the scene where Vaggie and Angel definitely didn\'t forgive Pentious at first and were totally ready to kill him. It wasn\'t until Charlie, the Naive girl who wants to see the good in everyone, sees that he is legitimately sad and regrets his actions that she invites him to stay, and neither Vaggie or Angel are happy about it.
It\'s clear at this point you just don\'t like the show. Why spend so much time watching it and making multiple reviews online on TV Tropes when you can make one and move on?
I mean, not only are they obviously building up to talking about how the third episode turned their opinion around, but flagging a perfectly legitimate review because you personally disagree with it is pretty gauche.
Unflagged the review, the title is a bit tasteless but this section is for people to state their opinions on a work.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
...I do hope Bard one day finds the desire to finish what I had thought was a set of reviews that ends with praising something they liked overall rather than forever being stuck on what I think they intend to condemn as its lowest ebb.
The funny thing is that Vox is very effortlessly shown able to monitor everything in the hotel in the final episode of this season. My only guess why he sent Sir Pentious is that he wanted him to directly sabotage in some way later on.
Sorry about the delay! My SSD died, and with it went the offline drafts of the reviews for later episodes.
I will agree with Barsidius\' issue about the \'Pentious being a spy\' subplot. There\'s like no time to him actually be a spy before he gets caught since some of the screentime was focused on the dick-measuring contest Vox had with Alastor. Maybe he should have lasted one other episode before he gets caught.
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Episode Two: ...And Slip in a Puddle of Your Own Piss...
Hazbin Hotel does not leave a good second impression, either.
Episode 2 focuses primarily on Vox, the seeming leader of a trio of overlords known as the Vees. Vox is a hypnotic, screen-headed media mogul devoted to improving his reputation and consolidating his power through brain-washing TV broadcasts. He is depicted as a force for the future, a self-serving tech genius with a wi-fi motif.
Vox's recently reignited feud with Alastor serves as the A-Plot of Episode 2, and the discrepancy between how seriously the show treats either character could not be more conspicuous. Alastor is an inscrutable being of immense eldritch power, and Vox is a self-aggrandizing tech bro who looks like he graduated from knockoff Rushmore. The second Alastor deigns to pay Vox any mind, he immediately drives him off the air and decisively ends their spat in his favor.
The show attempts to make this a battle between hip youngsters and jaded oldheads, but it gets completely lost in the sauce in the process. The characters' technological motifs are simply set-dressing for a musical number that tries far too hard to be clever. Neither character expresses a vision of their ideal Hell save that they're in charge, leaving us to wonder why it even matters that one of them likes TV and new file formats (which is such a bizarre characteristic to turn into a supposedly stinging insult to begin with) while the other prefers radio and analog media. The song fails to show us what makes either character cutting edge or old fashioned beyond these superficial signifiers.
Indeed, rather than tell us anything new about the characters, "Stayed Gone" does little more than vomit exposition at the audience. Even that it does poorly: we don't actually learn what changed during Alastor's absence (aside from everyone pivoting to video, I guess), and we aren't told why the Vees are even relevant outside of their respective industries.
After his humiliating defeat, Vox attempts to infiltrate Hazbin Hotel using wannabe Vee Sir Pentious (his name doesn't even start with V!). Why they need an in-person infiltrator at all when Vox can see through any device's screen (half the residents have smart phones!) is never adequately explained, and Pentious' espionage involves little more than placing a very obvious camera in an office regardless.
Pentious' treachery is revealed his very first night at the hotel, however, and he is immediately given a chance to redeem himself and become a full-time resident. Part of me is glad that they got this out of the way ASAP, but another part wonders why they even bothered with this subplot if they weren't going to use it for anything beyond getting Pentious checked in.
Episode 2 is far too focused on setting up future arcs than it is functioning as an entertaining episode on its own, and it does so well before the show has provided a compelling plot-hook to justify such setup. If it weren't for the three episode rule, I would've dropped the show outright here. Nevertheless, I persevered.