Hazbin Hotel, Charlie, and How a Poorly Written Main Character Can Ruin Your (already terrible) Show

Dearest Ghost (and crew, I guess, since more and more of you keep joining)

As much as I'm still enjoying singing along to the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack, that's about the only part of this show I enjoyed. Even going in with fairly low expectations, I was still shocked at how poorly written this show was.

But why? What makes it so incredibly bad? And, much more importantly, what can we learn about how to write better from Hazbin Hotel’s failures?

The more time I spent watching and thinking about this show, the more I realized that many of the show’s problems stem from the poorly written main character, Charlie Morningstar. Wow, Charlie sure likes to think of herself as a “good person” and wants you to think that too!

And that's part of the problem. In a show where one of the main plot points is Charlie hoping to “redeem” sinners, quite literally no one in the show knows what that means. Charlie thinks being a “good person” is just looking good outwardly and other people thinking nice things about her.

When there's a disagreement between her and Vaggie, she's not upset that Vaggie hid something from her, Charlie's angry that Vaggie didn't think she'd be understanding of the situation. And Vaggie was right. Charlie wasn't understanding of the situation!

Charlie wants others to think she's an understanding person, even though she's not. Morality is just an aesthetic to Charlie. And that's one of the reasons why she can't help her friends truly change and be "redeemed," (whatever that means).

So, in this video, and after summarizing the plot, I focus on the ideas in the story, how the story was told, individual characters, and how Charlie being written so poorly affects all of the above. Anyways, I hope you (just you though, Ghost, and no one else!) enjoy it!

From the other side of the galaxy,
Capt. Jazz Bleep

0:00 Intro

Plot Summary
2:42 Episode 1
10:56 Episode 2
13:09 Episode 3
15:55 Episode 4
16:42 Episode 5
18:08 Episode 6
20:09 Episode 7
22:08 Episode 8

Analysis & Review
Story
25:54 Charlie's Plan
28:37 Morality?
45:18 The Destruction of the Hotel
48:04 What Was the Point of Vox?
48:55 Adam's Death

Storytelling
52:12 Tone & Genre
57:20 Foreshadowing & Plot Twists
1:01:26 Wasted Time & Inefficient Storytelling
1:05:40 Dialogue (Plus a Tangent on Immortality)
1:08:32 The "Humor"

Characters (But Mostly Charlie)
1:11:22 Charlie
1:29:23 A Slight Tangent on Vaggie
1:30:02 Back to Charlie
1:31:14 Angel
1:32:04 Pentious
1:32:56 Adam
1:43:42 Emily
1:44:46 Alastor

1:45:26 Conclusion

PS // Despite my earlier community post, due to circumstances, (be they squirrels, cat, imp, or otherwise), this is, in fact, the video with the few mistakes I wanted to correct. I tried. But, ultimately, I think this is for the best.



Ending Music // Jasmine Blie and J. M. Farkle
Space Backgrounds, Sound and Overlay Effects // Pixabay

Background Music:
"Backbay Lounge", "Heavy Heart", "Newer Wave"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...