The year is young. Still, it seems unlikely that 2024 will produce any piece of supposed entertainment more repellent than the animated TV series “Hazbin Hotel.”
Four of the eight half-hour episodes that make up the show’s first season are streaming now on Amazon Prime. Two more installments will become available each Friday through Feb. 2.
The hostelry of the title is a newly opened property managed by Princess Charlie Morningstar (voice of Erika Henningsen), a character whose backstory reveals the program’s perverse premise. As related in the opening scenes of the first episode, Charlie is the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith, who paired up after the latter was rejected by Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Far from being the embodiment of evil, this Lucifer is a mostly sympathetic figure, a misunderstood rebel. Nor was his offer of forbidden fruit to Eve a temptation to sin. Instead it was an attempt to liberate humanity by giving Adam and Eve free will – an undertaking immediately and harshly punished by the angelic hosts of an oppressive heaven.
For her part, Lilith – a mostly mythological demonic figure who may or may not be mentioned by name in the prophecies of Isaiah – is portrayed as a doughty feminist, rightly unwilling to knuckle under to Adam’s patriarchal ways. While Lucifer loses heart after being consigned to hell, his bride thrives as the active sovereign of the infernal realm.
The nether regions, however, suffer from overpopulation. While the angels’ response to this problem is to stage an annual “extermination” – essentially a genocide of damned souls – Charlie thinks she has a better plan. The guests of her hotel will be guided into the ways of repentance and virtuous living and thus gain admittance to heaven.
To the misguided metaphysics of this set-up, series creator Vivienne “VivziePop” Medrano adds an atmosphere of misdirected sexuality. Thus Charlie’s female partner Vagatha (voice of Stephanie Beatriz) is also her girlfriend. Their constant companion is a gay porn star known as Angel Dust (voice of Blake Roman).
Along with the script’s frequently vulgar humor comes dialogue that hardly contains a sentence free of off-color language. Nor are such terms absent from the lyrics of the musical numbers that crop up about once in each installment. In keeping with the twisted outlook of the whole poorly constructed narrative, the first of these songs is entitled “A Happy Day in Hell.”
The series is derived from an independently produced YouTube video that has been viewed over 90 million times since it was posted in 2019. That this kind of corrosive material should have gained such a large following is profoundly disturbing. TV fans devoted to Judeo-Christian values will do well to shun the degrading hospitality on offer at this ramshackle lodging.
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