Recap / Hazbin Hotel S1E0 "That's Entertainment"

Yes, it's one of a kind
Right here in Hell
Catering to a specific clientele
^note From bottom left to right: Vaggie, Charlie, Angel Dust, Niffty, Husk, Alastor, Sir Pentious along with his Egg Bois, Katie Killjoy, Tom Trench, Charlie Morningstar and Cherri Bomb.

Pilot episode. Following the latest extermination, Princess Charlie Morningstar introduces a plan to save the sinners of Hell - a rehabilitory hotel.

Recap

Once upon a time, in hell. TBD.

Meanwhile, a four-armed spider-like person named Anthony "Angel Dust" (voiced by Michael Kovach) TBD

---

Tropes:

• Bad Guys Play Pool: One of the locations shown where Charlie's interview is broadcast to is an old-timey western pool hall where a bunch of stereotypical mustache-twirling villain demons are seen playing.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment:
  • After Charlie tries to sell the crowd her idea (in song), one demon pops up with what appears to be a huge smile and genuine appreciation for her performance:
    Demon: (awed voice) Wow... That was shit!
  • When the man who stole his drugs is crushed by a giant boulder out of nowhere, Angel Dust gasps in horror.
    Angel Dust: Oh my god! (Beat) My drugs! Damn it!
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Charlie's musical number lumps in "Cartoon porn addictions, Vegan rants, psychic predictions" in with Roman crucifixions.
• Brick Joke: During Sir Pentious's introduction, an Egg Boi wishes that his boss would shoot him with the latter's ray gun. Later, during The Stinger, as Sir Pentious climbs out of the crater, the very same Egg Boi is revealed to have survived as he asks his boss if the latter will now shoot him with the latter's ray gun.
• Broad Strokes: The first episode of the series proper is set one week after the events of the pilot. While there are notable differences between the pilot and the series proper, such as the location of the hotel being different, its events are referenced throughout the series—such as Alastor's commercial showing Charlie's meeting with Katie, Sir Pentious reminding Alastor that they fought just one week prior, Charlie and Vaggie having their pilot outfits during a flashback to when they first met, and Charlie trying to sing "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow" to rally Cannibal Town.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Sir Pentious claims to have met Alastor, but Alastor doesn't recall it. Whether Alastor actually doesn't recall or is just being a troll is hard to tell.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Fighting a brutal turf battle against Sir Pentious doesn't stop Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb from talking about the former's stay at the titular hotel, and how much it's bugging him.
• Changing Chorus: In his reprise of "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", the Radio Demon changes the titular chorus to "Inside of Every Demon is a Lost Cause".
• Combat Tentacles: Alastor summons a mass of huge, inky black tentacles to smash up Sir Pentious's blimp from what appear to be portals to some sort of eldritch dimension.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Charlie's method of "curing addiction" in her song includes forcibly ripping drugs out of an addict's hands and burning them in front of him while still singing.
• Comically Missing the Point: Angel Dust takes in a hefty chunk of criticism from Vaggie on the limo ride back to the hotel. His response?
  Angel Dust: Does that mean I don't have a free room anymore?
  Vaggie: *makes a "the hell do you think?" gesture*
  Angel Dust: *snaps fingers* Ah, well, shucks...
• Contrived Coincidence: Angel Dust decides to participate in a turf war around the same time as Charlie's news pitch for her hotel. This piques Alastor's interest and kicks off the rest of the plot.
• Crawl: During the news report covering the turf war between Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb, the crawl below starts off by recapping the events but then gets off topic with the writer complaining about his personal life.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The fight between Alastor and Sir Pentious is over within seconds, after Alastor effortlessly brings down Pentious's ship with tentacles from a void realm.
• Curse Cut Short: Katie telling Tom to "suck it up, you little bitch" after dumping hot coffee in his lap is censored by the "off air" signal.
• Dark Reprise: The appropriately named "Alastor's Reprise" is Alastor singing a more cynical rendition of Charlie's song, "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow". Given that Alastor actually saw Charlie singing it, it's possible that this was intended in-universe.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Seen in a pool hall during Charlie's interview, there's a number of Hell denizens who are the stereotypical mustache-twirling villain type.
• Description Cut: To legitimize her hotel, Charlie confidently brings up how her patron Angel Dust has been clean for two weeks. Immediately after, the news station receives and cuts to footage broadcasting Angel participating in the violent turf war, yelling "I'm so baaaaad!" amidst gunfire.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Sir Pentious violates this rule with Alastor, which results in a Curb-Stomp Battle courtesy of tentacles through otherworldly portals.
• Don't Explain the Joke: After Charlie announces her goal to open a hotel to rehabilitate sinners, she's met with a long silence. She awkwardly explains that she chose a hotel because hotels are for people to temporarily stay at while on their way to their destination. She's met with even more silence and at least one demon laughing at her vision.
• Dread Zeppelin: Sir Pentious has a giant zeppelin that he flies around in as an airship, complete with multiple weapons and servants to man it. Cherri Bomb's turf gets invaded by this zeppelin, which she (and Angel Dust) are more than eager to defend. It's later shown damaged from the fight when he shows up at the hotel, and whatever Cherri and Angel didn't already break, Alastor finishes off in seconds.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It's a pilot, so this is a given.
  • The main problem in Hell was originally an Overpopulation Crisis, which in the show proper is referenced in Charlie's reprisal of "Happy Day in Hell" at the beginning of "Hell is Forever", but the real reason for the Exterminations is revealed to be in order to keep the Sinners from rebelling against Heaven by reminding them of who their betters are.
  • Almost every single character had their design altered in some way after the pilot, primarily by giving them more sharp edges and less curves. In particular, Charlie does not wear her hair in a giant braid, Vaggie wears a white slip dress with X's on her chest rather than a hotelier's tuxedo, Angel has four (much shorter) pink gloves instead of two pink ones and two white ones which are all the length of his arms, Husk doesn't wear any pants and has playing card suits on his wings instead of dots, and Niffty wears a poodle skirt instead of a maid apron.
  • An imp stated to be Blitzø from Helluva Boss is shown watching Charlie's interview and ogling her, though he looks very different here than he does in his own series.
  • Angel only wields one Thompson SMG instead of two (plus several smaller miscellaneous SMGs), and the one he does wield doesn't have the intricate webbed filigree that his guns have in the actual show.
  • Angel is suggested to not only be struggling financially to the point where he feels the need to have sex with random guys on the street to get by, but is also concerned about his public image enough to want to keep it hush-hush as well help out Cherri with her turf war. In the series, he's largely apathetic about what anyone thinks of him and while it's implied he's still severely financially abused by Valentino, he still has an Arbitrarily Large Bank Account so that he can go out clubbing every night and pay off some Sinners as an apology for Niffty's behavior in "Welcome to Heaven".
  • Cherri Bomb is not The Bogan, due to the concept of her being an Awesome Aussie being conjured too late after her lines were already in use to go back and change them.
  • In the pilot the Hotel is very clearly downtown in the heart of Pentagram City, whereas in the actual show it's on a hill overlooking the city instead.
  • Vaggie's Exorcist spear resembles a one-bladed harpoon instead of being an ornate double-bladed partizan like in the show. More broadly, what little we see of Exorcists has them having standardized equipment whereas in the show they use a variety of unique swords and polearms.
  • The clock tower keeping track of time until the next Extermination was originally designed like any other building in Pentagram City, whereas in the series it's an embassy to Heaven clearly maintained by angels due to its Gold and White Are Divine color palette and is also a giant hourglass in addition to a clock.
  • Charlie's (and by extension her family's) last name was originally "Magne", being an otherwise lore-disconnected pun regarding Charlemagne. It was changed to "Morningstar"^note One of many variations and translations of "Lucifer" is "The Morning Star" in the series.
  • The episode's tone is much more heavily comedic, with there being a joke every few seconds and overall feeling more like the tone of Helluva Boss than the Dramedy the show would turn out to be.
  • Alastor's microphone is seen talking, something it never does after the pilot.
  • The Egg Boiz are implied to be an easily-replaceable Redshirt Army for Sir Pentious, with quite a number of them dying at the hands of Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb. In the show, he consistently has only five Egg Boiz until all of them except Frank are killed in an instant by Adam during the battle at the Hotel at the end of Season 1.
  • No mention is made of Alastor's seven-year disappearance which he canonically returned from in this episode and is an integral aspect of the mystery of his character in the series, especially in Season 1.
• Entendre Failure: When Angel Dust is ensnared by Sir Pentious's pain he makes an erotic remark that Pentious takes a bit too literally. Justified, as Sir Pentious died in the 1880s and as such isn't familiar with modern slang.
  Angel Dust: Ohh~ Harder, daddy!
  Sir Pentious: Gasp! Son?!
  (Angel is visibly annoyed by him not getting the joke)
• Epigraph: The pilot ends by showing a quote from Lotte Reiniger:
  "Animation is basically not so much a technical implement as the expression of the spirit behind it. To see that that spirit goes into your shooting must be your overriding ambition."
• Expy: One of the background characters is a plant demon that looks very similar to Audrey II.
• Face Palm: Vaggie's reaction to Charlie's overtly saccharine song.
• Fallen Hero: Among those Charlie mentions her hotel would help out in her song, "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", are "fallen superheroes". She sings this in a shot wherein she appears alongside two demons, one of which wears an obvious superhero costume, cape and all.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: In "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", a demon is injected with "love + fun" via Giant Medical Syringe. This forces them to go sparkly-eyed and grin, despite the tears in their eyes and the strained look on their face.
• Giant Medical Syringe: In "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", a demon diagnosed with "evil" is prescribed "love + fun", which is injected from a syringe larger than their head.
• A Glass in the Hand: Katie Killjoy breaks a glass in her hand as a visual gag for her "After the break" cut to commercial.
• Got Volunteered: Alastor volunteers Husk for the Hotel. By summoning him while he was in the middle of a game of Poker.
• Groin Attack: Katie Killjoy dumps hot coffee in Tom's lap for being a creep.
• Handshake Refusal: Katie Killjoy refuses to shake Charlie's hand when it's offered because she "[doesn't] touch the gays."
• Hypocritical Humor: Katie Killjoy refuses to shake Charlie's hand, proclaiming that she "[doesn't] touch the gays." Seconds later, she's poking Charlie's chest and nose as she speaks to emphasize her words.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Vaggie threatens Alastor upon his arrival at the hotel, warning that she won't allow him to cause any trouble for them. Alastor responds by making clear that if he intended them harm, they wouldn't be speaking. To accentuate the point, he undergoes a Glamour Failure with voodoo symbols appearing behind him, as well as an in-universe Ominous Visual Glitch with static and radio feedback.
• Inconvenient Summons: Alastor summons Husker while the latter was in the middle of a poker game.
  Husk: I was about to win the whole damn pot!
• Instantly Proven Wrong: On live news, Charlie declares that her redemptive hotel idea will work, because their first client, Angel Dust, has already turned his ways around. Almost immediately, Breaking News ensues that the very same spider demon is engaging in a Hell turf war and gleefully slaying dozens.
  Angel Dust: (offscreen and over the sounds of gunfire) I'm a BAAAAAAAD person!
  Charlie: Oh, shit.
  Katie Killjoy: Oh, shit, indeed!
• Insult to Rocks: After Vaggie accuses him of making her, Charlie, and their whole operation look like a joke, Angel Dust counters by telling her exactly why that's wrong:
  Angel Dust: No, no, no, babe. Jokes are funny. I made you look, uh...sad! And pathetic! Like an orphan...with no arms...or legs...uh...oh, with progeria! Great, now I'm bummed thinking about it!
• Level Ate: At the end of "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", Charlie rises into the air in front of a land of sweets.
• Listing the Forms of Degenerates: "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow" offers an unusual example: Charlie sings a list of all the horrible people in Hell, but she does so to mention that all of them still have good inside and can be redeemed.
  So all you junkies, freaks and weirdos, creepers, fuck-ups, crooks and zeroes, and the fallen super heroes, help is here!
  All of you cretins, sluts and losers, sexual deviants and boozers, and prescription drugs abusers, need not fear!
• Misplaced Sorrow: After Angel Dust gets his drugs stolen and the thief is squashed by a piece of falling rubble:
  Angel Dust: Oh my God! [picks up torn bag] My drugs! Damn it!
• Mood Whiplash: The Radio Demon's arrival at the hotel goes from eerie and ominous to to straight-up comedy to a brief Oh, Crap! moment from those paying attention (in-universe) and then back to straightforward comedy in less than a minute.
• Musical Number Annoyance: As Charlie prepares for her television interview, she suggests singing a song, only for Vaggie to shoot her suggestion down, saying "Life isn't a musical, hon". Despite Vaggie insisting her not to sing, Charlie does so anyway on live TV, much to Vaggie's displeasure.
• Musicalis Interruptus: Just as Alastor is finishing his reprise of Charlie's song, the hotel doors behind him are suddenly blasted off as he's saying "hotel". As everyone steps out to see what caused this, it's then revealed that Sir Pentious was responsible for ruining Al's number.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Angel Dust's involvement with Cherri Bomb's turf war results in the hotel's already shaky name being dragged in the mud even further.
• Odd Reaction Out: After Alastor effortlessly destroys Sir Pentious' ship, Charlie, Vaggie, Husk and Angel Dust stare at the carnage in Stunned Silence. Niffty instead gives a small smile, hinting at her Ax-Crazy nature.
• Offscreen Crash: When Angel's client speeds away, we hear a car crash as soon as he disappears over the first hill.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Charlie reacts this way when the news shows Angel Dust taking part in the turf war — doubly so since this was after praising him for being the first demon to step up for the rehabilitation program:
    Charlie: Oh, shit...
    Katie Killjoy: Oh, shit... indeed!
  • Sir Pentious reacts this way twice — once when he sees that Cherri Bomb lodged a bomb straight through the window of his zeppelin, and again when she cracks open an Egg Boi, puts a bomb in his shell, and lobs the whole thing back his way.
  • Practically painted on Charlie and Vaggie's faces when Alastor turns up at their doorstep.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: After Katie dumps hot coffee onto Tom's lap, he grunts, "Not again!"
• Patter Song: Portions of "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow", notably those where Charlie lists out various kinds of sinners/sins, are sung rapid-fire.
• Pointless Band-Aid: After the fight with Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb, Sir Pentious' flying machine is covered in these; they seem to do nothing other than show how damaged and haphazardly repaired it is.
• Rule of Three: Vaggie tells Charlie not to sing during her news segment three times when they chat about it backstage. It doesn't get through to her, because Charlie eventually breaks into song anyway.
• Shave and a Haircut: Alastor's introduction starts with him knocking this tune on the hotel's door, a natural choice as both are from the same time period.
• Shout-Out: The episode's title is, of course, a reference to the That's Entertainment series of Clip Show films.
• Sitting Sexy on a Piano: Charlie does this at the beginning of "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow".
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Charlie's opening song in the pilot is beautiful and befitting of a Princess Classic as she cries over the death of her people. However, it's juxtaposed with images of how little the surviving denizens of Hell actually care about it.
• Steel Ear Drums:
  • Played With subtly during Cherri Bomb and Angel Dust's assault on Sir Pentious and his Egg Bois: while they have no problem communicating with each other at a normal speaking level over what should be deafening gunfire and explosives going off around them, they do both cover their ears when a particularly large bomb is set to go off near them. And even then, they continue to speak normally as if said large explosion hadn't happened anywhere near them.
  • Judging by the cast's lack of reaction when Sir Pentious blows the door off the Happy Hotel (other than peeking out of the hole where the door used to be, wondering what the cause of the destruction was), this trope may be played straight in Hell.
• Tempting Fate: Charlie name drops Angel Dust as the hotel's first client to a skeptical audience at 666 News and then praises his good behavior over the past two weeks. Seconds later, the news cuts to a shot of Angel Dust fighting a turf war with Cherri Bomb.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
  • Charlie's Lame Comeback to Katie Killjoy's scorn goes as such: "Yeah, well, how does it feel that I got your pen, huh...bitch?" Unfortunately, it turns out that just so happens to be Katie's Berserk Button.
  • Angel Dust drops the word to troll Vaggie on the limo ride back home.
    Angel Dust: Sorry, you're stuck with me, bitch. Get used to it!"
• This Just In!: Just as Charlie announces on 666 News that Angel Dust has cleaned up his act for two weeks straight, Katie Killjoy gets "Breaking news!" over her earpiece. She then reports that a new combatant had just joined the ongoing turf war in the city and the live feed reveals it to be Angel Dust, to Charlie's dismay.
• Understatement: When Vaggie is lambasting Angel for his atrocious spectacle that made them look bad, Charlie tries to chew him out in a more polite way. Vaggie is not amused by this downplaying of Angel's actions:
  Charlie: That was really uncool, Angel.
  Vaggie: (incredulous) "Uncool"?! After THAT train wreck, there is no way ANYONE is gonna want to stay at the hotel! All thanks to you (points at Angel Dust), and your selfish BULLSHIT!
• Un-Paused: Alastor the Radio Demon shows up at the titular hotel because he wants to help Charlie run it. Since Alastor is The Dreaded, Charlie makes an Oh, Crap! expression when she sees it's him. Alastor then says "Hel-" before Charlie slams the door in his face. After a moment, Charlie opens the door back up and he says "-lo!" before she slams the door in his face again. After deciding to let him in, Charlie opens the door for a third time, prompting this bit of dialogue:
  Alastor: May I speak now?
  Charlie: You may...
• Visual Pun: Katie Killjoy's "After the break" commercial cut has her literally break a glass cup in her hand.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: The rest of the Hotel staff after witnessing Alastor taking out Sir Pentious.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: The advertisement for It's Dahm Good!, a cooking show featuring serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, has a sticky note that says "Who approved this show?"
• "You!" Exclamation: Upon seeing that Alastor has dragged him away from his poker game, Husk angrily growls a "You!".

---