Good Job, Niffty! - Hazbin Hotel Season Two

Remind me what I said about Hazbin Hotel Season One... ah yes... "great fun from beginning to end". Also "one of the sweariest shows I've ever watched." And I found the characters (All of them, apparently.) "memorable and frequently endearing."

My conclusion? "Highly recommended, provided you don't shy at swearing, sex, religion or song and dance numbers."

All of which applies equally or possibly even more so to Season Two, with the exception of the "great fun from beginning to end" part. I loved the season as a whole but I found the opening couple of episodes overwhelming. Not always in a good way.

Another thing I said about Season One was that it was "a full-on assault to both eyes and ears" and that turned out to be doubly true of the opening of the second season. I'm not sure if I'm out of practice or if the show does actually ramp up the hysteria but I had some difficulty not just following the plot but also hearing what anyone was saying. 

That hasn't happened to me before. Not in a show like this, anyway. Maybe I'm going deaf. I don't think it's that, though. If it was, I'd be having trouble with other show. I'm not. Just this one.

There is some precedent. There was a moment, back in the deep swamplands of the mumblecore era, when I couldn't always make out what the unbearably naturalistic characters were slurring (Looking at you in particular, Garden State, although now I learn that's technically not a mumblecore movie because it actually has a plot. Could have fooled me.) I had to switch the subtitles on for some of those. 

I've rarely had any difficulty picking out the sense and substance in animation, though, even when people are screaming and yelling and explosions are going off all around.

When all that's happening and the dialog is set to music, though? Apparently that's too much for me now. Halfway through Season 2 Episode 1 I had to switch the subtitles on so I could figure out what they were singing about. 

That worked for the songs but then I found if I left the subtitles on after the singing stopped, the subtitles were too distracting. I've been happy to read subtitles for movies since I was a very young teenager. The BBC used to show subtitled foreign films all the time and then I went to university and spent three years watching movies in all kinds of languages (Okay, mostly French...). 

The thing is, nearly all of those films, being arthouse movies, were either visually slow-moving or static. Until Diva and Subway and Run, Lola, Run, anyway. (Although I've actually never seen Run, Lola, Run. I ought to do something about that sometime...) Having your eye constantly drawn to the bottom of the screen didn't generally lead to you missing much of the action. There was no action.

Hazbin Hotel is all action. The screen is a constant firework display of vividly colored (Red, mostly.) weird-looking characters caroming off each other, the walls or the ceilings. It's kinetic and chaotic and almost impossible to take in even when you're looking right into the heart of everything that's happening. When you're half watching the characters and half reading the subtitles, it's totally impossible.

Or it was for me, anyway, in those first two episodes. I had to compromise by toggling the subtitles on when the singing started and off again when it stopped and it was distracting to say the least. I never felt like I was fully engaged, let alone immersed.

And then with Episode Three that all just...stopped. I don't know why. I don't think the show got any less frenetic. I think maybe I just acclimatized to it. From then on, I loved Season Two every bit as much as Season One. More, probably.

Oh, just editing this in... SPOILERS from here on. 

The plot is really involving. It makes sense and you can follow it. Charlie's plan to offer Redemption to sinners in Hell paid off at the end of Season One, when Sir Pentious's selflessly sacrificed himself to save Cherri, an altruistic act that sent him straight to Heaven. The problem is no-one believes it happened and there's no way to prove it. Even Charlie doesn't know for sure that it's true.

Meanwhile TV Demon Vox is ramping up his campaign to become the #1 Sinner in Hell and turn himself into a god. Well, a demi-god, anyway. Alastor, the Radio Demon and Vox's nemesis, is sulking, plus there's something very dodgy about him anyway, even if no-one in the Hotel suspects.  

There are so many sub-plots and back-stories and secrets being hinted at but never explained. The whole thing is layered far beyond reason and good luck trying to unravel it. If ever a show was designed to be re-watched and slo-moed and picked over for hour after hour, it's this one.

None of which I've done or am likely to do, of course. I like not knowing what's going on. Or rather, I like to know something is going on, I just don't care if I ever find out what it is. 

On that level, Hazbin Hotel works wonderfully. It has a single, straightforward, linear adventure plot - Charlie wants to do a good thing, Vox wants to do a bad thing, their two things are in conflict. Which is going to win? Anyone can follow that, pick a side, and start cheering. (No-one would pick Vox's side. Would they? Please tell me you wouldn't...)

Beneath that, it's all a churning, roiling maelstrom of grudges, lies, secrets and despair. It is Hell, after all. You wouldn't expect anyone to be happy, would you?

Enter Niffty. Niffty's always happy. She doesn't do subtext. Niffty grins and cleans and stabs. She stabbed Adam to death in Season One, which I imagine got her a standing ovation all around the world, let alone in Hell. The absence of Adam in Season Two is in itself enough to make the entire show feel lighter. I really, really could not stand him.

Niffty is my favorite character in a show where I like almost everyone. In fact, now Adam is gone, I think I do like everyone. Even Lute, who makes it very hard to like her, sometimes. I can see her point, though. Even Abel, ditto and ditto. 

The show is a musical. It's sometimes easy to forget. I certainly never came out of any episode humming the tunes. Mostly I couldn't remember the melody lines ten seconds after the singing stopped. Amazon keep trying to push the Soundtrack CD/Stream before every episode but I can't imagine ever wanting to listen to any of it away from the context of the show.

That said, the songs are fine. They mostly work while they're happening. One or two I thought dragged on a bit but mostly they didn't outstay the limited welcome I was willing to give them.

The finale, though... Wow!

I loved the finale. I thought it was pretty much perfect. The pacing could hardly have been better, with the whole thing following the structure of a caper movie and doing it brilliantly. I was just starting to notice, more than halfway through, that there hadn't been any songs at all and then there they were, just in the right place, just at the right time.

It was a fully satisfying conclusion to a compelling and engrossing storyline. Every major character's arc concluded there or thereabouts as I'd hoped it would. Niffty's fight with Velvet was just sublime. Niffty has so many great lines in it, too. Check it out above. It works on its own as a short.

That whole scene comes freighted with so many resonances. It's like the animators from Looney Toons and Animaniacs and AAP and Ren and Stimpy all got together and decided to have a baby. Er... no... not that...

I hadn't really thought about it too much until now but Hazbin Hotel is a very Western animation. I'm so used now to just about anything that isn't Disney or Pixar being shorthanded as "anime" I don't pay it any attention but this is so firmly in line of descent from the tradition of Hollywood animators of the 30s onwards it's impossible to miss.

In fact, at its core, Hazbin Hotel is an updated, adult progression of the shows that proliferated on TV in the 90s and 'aughts, which themselves paid tribute to the Golden Age of cinema animation. It's louder, faster, redder and much, much, much swearier but it's wholly recognizable as part of that lineage. Maybe that's why I love it so much.

The final episode ends with all the loose ends knotted so tidily you might wonder where the lead-in for Season Three was going to come from. And then Charlie's phone rings...

There will be a Season Three. It's been renewed. And there'll be a Season Four, too. The deal has been signed for both. Actually, it was signed months ago. Amazon have a hit show and for once they seem to know it. 

Looking forward to next season already.