Listen, I still love the Hazbin Hotel pilot but WOW the rose-tinted, nostalgia-glazing I'm seeing for it nowadays is getting REALLY bad. To the point where any of the new higher rated comments on youtube are people like this. This is exactly the reason why the industry standard is to NEVER release the proof-of-concept pitch-bible pilot to the public until MUCH later on. (or never at all, we only have a lot of them because they were leaked)
People have either forgotten what the actual pilot era was like, or were never there in the first place and don't remember that, the pilot, while great, still suffers some pretty big flaws and it SERIOUSLY shows it's age in some places. The 3rd act especially shows it's age the most. Angel not knowing who Alastor was makes no fucking sense. Velvette was basically a clone of Niffty and was meant to be the adoptive daughter of Val and Vox who kept them from breaking up permanently. Valentino was such a new addition at the time that you can tell he was put in last second based on his design and how he's crammed in the overlord backstory. Valentino used to be an animal abuser and was arugibly abusive to Vox, too. Sir Pentious was literally meant to be a throwaway character just for the pilot and had absolutely no backstory at the time. Carmilla and her daughters being in the positions they were during the pilot opening make no sense. And Lucifer hanging out with Carmilla, Zeezi, and Zestial ESPECIALLY makes no sense. Adam used to be a dragon, Vaggi may not have even been an excorist Angel yet, and that's just the tip of the iceburg.
And the pacing of the pilot... That's worthy of it's own discussion because it has ALWAYS been an issue, and the period between after the opening song ends and the news interview begins does a very bad job at hooking the viewer because for a while it feels like a bunch of nonsense is happening at a million miles per minute. The 1st act is INCREDIBLY messy, and I feel like if we're going to be comparing the pilot and the full series like this it's only far to bring these things up. And it also throws a million things at you at the same time in a tone that honestly doesn't always work. (Key phrase "doesn't always," NOT "never,".)
And the sound effects... Oh god. Everyone and their mother complained about there being too many back then, and there absolutely ARE too many, and now I'm seeing that people what that excessive amount back...? That's something I cannot understand the arugement for to be honest. They were incredibly distracting and were extremely overused. Especially in the 3rd act when Alastor showed up. The full show still uses them, especially if you listen with headphones, but they toned it down in it's volume and excess for a damn good reason. The pilot was sensory overload in a bad way at times, and by a "bad way," I mean when the pilot is NOT intending to overload the viewer. Which is most of the 3rd act. Charlie's song at the news station is so obviously on purpose so that's completely fine imo.
Like it's totally fine to prefer the pilot; I actually still think it's one of the best episodes of Hazbin Hotel (if you consider it an episode 0) but to complete ignore all of its flaws with the purpose of slamming season 1 and 2 comes off as very biased in people's criticism. Because a large sum of the criticismes come from people having an improper view of cannon and what was even cannon back then. It was actually common knowledge that Lucifer was secretly "a stupid silly guy," back then and the pilot is just from Charlie's POV, and now people say this is a recon. Or people holding on to old ideas and just can't let go of them.
Like, guys, it's been 7 years. 2019 was 7 years ago. The pilot came out before covid became a worldwide pandemic. I was just about to turn 16 and was in 11th grade when the pilot came out and now I'm 22 in my 5th year of college. The pilot was way longer ago then you think. Of course it's going to be dated, and there's a difference between preferring old ideas and just NOT being able to let go of past ideas that in hindsight have been best to have changed long term. The famous writing advice "Kill your darlings," exists for a reason.
A pilot is a proof of concept, and since Hazbin Hotel was basically the 1st major indie pilot on youtube, of course it's going to have the roughest transition through it's full show. Hazbin Hotel walked so everyone else can run afterwards.
I now think it's best to treat Hazbin Hotel (and Helluva Boss) pilot's as more so a pitch bible proof of context sort of pilot you'd present to your executives to be greenlit, over a actual 1st episode that aired to the public at this point. Instead of a show like TADC where it's pilot episode is essentially it's 1st regular episode for the public.
But to be fair, I have no fucking idea why Viv and her crew have decided to not remake the pilot because it's "close enough," when they did for Helluva. Like, at this point I'd aruge that both are too outdated to truly consider cannon anymore and both should be approached with the same err of caution in terms of canonicity.
I now it sounds like I'm only being negative on the pilot here, so I must stress again, I still love the pilot, but I'm just bringing these things up because in order to make my point here I have to bring up my critical points of the pilot, and most of them really boil down to it's showing it's age and it's all over the place. And I think people are slowly forgetting that while it's great, it's also very flawed just like the rest of the entire ass show.
Hazbin Hotel Masterpost
