TV is Going to hell

Literally.

There’s a new wave of dark content, often featuring occultic or satanic elements, taking over on cable and streaming services.

Recently Amazon Prime Video dropped a new animated series called Hazbin Hotel, which centers on Charlie Morningstar, the cheerful, optimistic and kind-hearted daughter of… Lucifer and Lilith.

Move over Andy Griffith, Hollywood has a new favorite father figure: The devil.

This plot device was most recently used for FX’s Little Demon, another animated series which featured the devil as the relatable “everyman” who is just trying to forge a relationship with his rebellious teenaged daughter. And last year Disney+ announced plans to import Pauline, a German “coming-of-age” story about a teenaged girl who becomes pregnant after a one-night-stand with the devil.

Hollywood’s fascination with the occult is nothing new, of course; films like Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist are proof enough of that. What has changed is the way these stories are told, and what they suggest about the nature of good and evil.

Hell as presented in Little Demon and Hazbin Hotel is a judgment-free zone: There you can have fun, be your authentic self and indulge in whatever perversions or sexual peccadillos you choose without recrimination or consequences. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans all the time. In this universe, the real bad guys are in Heaven.

Lucifer’s great sin, according to Hazbin Hotel’s opening sequence, was that he was “a dreamer with fantastical ideas for all of creation.” Lucifer and “his love,” Lilith, are punished by the angels by being cast into a dark pit and “never allowing him to see the good that came from humanity, only the cruel and the wicked,” as if Lucifer had nothing to do with introducing cruelty and wickedness into the world.

As the population of Hell grows, Heaven, we are told in the opening narration, makes a “truly heartless decision” sending an army every year to conduct an annual “extermination.” Only Charlie, the “Princess of Hell,” is concerned about the fate of these poor souls, so she tries to offer them a path to redemption.

In the first episode, Charlie is told by her father (the devil) to meet with representatives from Heaven. She optimistically believes she can sell them on her idea for redeeming these lost souls and sending them to Heaven. Instead, the “angels” tell her they are going to increase the frequency of the exterminations. She discovers the angel she is speaking with is actually Adam, who is shown to be narcissistic, vulgar, vindictive.

Adam casually tells Charlie, “So I was playing this gig, and for some fuckin' reason, this virtue chick was diggin’ on the drummer, and it's like, ‘Do you know who I am? I'm fuckin' Adam. I'm the original dick. All dicks descend from me. You think you want drummer dick? No way. I'm the dick fuckin master.’ So anyway, we fucked and it was awesome.... I know, I fuckin rock... Call me dickmaster."

Charlie, by contrast, is shown to be sweet, sensitive, compassionate, cheerful, and optimistic.

This TV-MA-rated animated program originated on YouTube (where its spin-off series, Helluva Boss is still available) and already has a built-in audience of teens despite the adult content, which should be of concern to parents who may not have heard of this program.

The first episode of Hazbin Hotel contained more than 50 uses of foul language (including 22 uncensored uses of “f*k” and 12 uses of “sh*t”). Charlie’s best friend is named “Vagina,” “Vaggie” for short. The lone guest at Hazbin Hotel in the premiere episode is “Angel,” a porn star who offers to film a porn commercial to advertise the hotel. When Charlie demurs, saying she doesn’t wish to exploit Angel in that way, Angel responds, “Oh please, baby. This body was made to be exploited. I got the arms, I got the stamina, I got the legs, I got the lung capacity -- Oh-oh I got the legs, the gag reflex, the holes, the chest fluff everyone thinks are tits." In another scene, Charlie sings and dances her way through the streets of hell on her way to her meeting and peers through a window where she witnesses a dog and cat having sex while wearing bondage gear.

Parents, beware.