Helluva Boss Has A Helluva Problem

[Music] [Applause] [Music] you're welcome hey I'm back from a long Hiatus and Hell trade secret but that's where all video essay has come from where else so I was watching the latest episode of Hell the boss and I felt an incredibly bizarre sensation I felt my bias run out I was out of patience too many mistakes piled up my hopium lasted two seasons but I just had to admit it to myself hell of a boss kind of isn't good huh okay okay I know that's confusing after I cut an intro that aggressively cool I have a negative opinion of the shell you might be wondering if I'm part of the BPD the police department of alarming mood swings or if the angle to this video is that I'm some sort of disappointed fan of the show well to answer the second question kind of I don't think I'm a fan of Hell a boss I'm a fan of the story of hell of a boss the Aesthetics and Vibe of the show never grabbed me the same way seem to do so with others bit too hot topic for me but the Vivy pop story it's an Underdog Story that inspired hope in the industry it's the story of Indie animation on the internet competing with industry professional shows sure internet Indie animation has almost always existed but they've always been clearly Indie riddled with obvious compromises it's cool they exist but they never made the feeling of oh this isn't like a real TV show go away way but you compare hell of a boss in hasbin hotel to any other Indie animation and even to the untrained eye they blow them out of the water hell compared to actually fully budgeted shows on streaming services hell of a boss looks great the problem with Indie animation is getting the cash to fund it but with how many fortunes you see being earned on social media I always wondered if that money in clout could be funneled into something useful if it went into the coppers of people willing to make a cool show I wondered if the internet could be an alternative funding Avenue for shows instead of having to beg Publishers and producers for the massive budget TV shows need and Vivy pop seems to have done that hell of a boss looks as good as it does with episode lengths comparable to regular TV shows it's got a pretty hefty voice cast like it has Richard horvitz as a main character course stop Dad I'm Sam each episode gets millions of views within hours of being uploaded it has almost every ingredient of a viral success story and gives hope that maybe internet-based Indie animation can be a real thing so having hell of a boss kind of suck obliterates that hopeful narrative the reason why hell of a boss kind of sucks emphasis on kind of is simple the writing is just lowkey bad no it's not the worst thing ever it's not bad enough to write Greek epic sized video essays about at least not for me long [Applause] long not bad enough for me to take a diarrhea dump on a blitzo costume in pure Rage or something the show's writing isn't so bad it's incoherent and the show tries to wow the audience every episode with big emotional scenes or action set pieces I guess that's where the Creator vivien's love of musicals comes in I assume those end uh theatrically I'm just guessing I don't like theater pr41 so the obvious Hallmarks of bad writing stuff not making any sense and building up to nothing aren't there so why is the writing bad the writing is bad because despite all the imaginative visuals and the crazy premise it lacks creativity you think from the pilot or episode one that the show was about demons from hell working a pseudo office job focused on assassinating humans it's clearly the pitch of the show but you'd be wrong because the show changed its mind the entire reason this video exists was that moment I brought up earlier it was when I was watching the latest episode that I had the hopium tube ripped right off my face because all of a sudden it felt like I had been watching the same story for 3 years I realized there were only two story ideas hell of a boss had relationship issues and daddy issues problems with exes and problem problems with dads the only variance is how much sympathy you're supposed to have for the ex or dad this ex was bad this Dad is bad this Dad is bad but trying this ex was bad but so were you it pushed me absolutely over the edge when the latest episode was both about ex's and daddy issues at the same time did you dat him too get over here and give your daddy a daddy seriously if you summarize the core conflict of every episode almost almost all of them fall under this I know you're supposed to write what you know but [ __ ] you got to hide the fact you only know two things better I'm not offended that the series and writers don't have a particularly deep well of personal inspiration to pull from is that the keep repeating the same exact story over and over again some might say this is a focused theme MH yeah okay yeah my thoughts exactly which you can have but you need different ways to explore those things themes if you don't it's not a theme it's a formula you can only feel so sorry so many times in a row for these same exact things a insert character here is so sad they such a rough pass with their dad and or X gosh I sure hope you are both bad at pattern recognition and are an infinite well of easily one over compassion otherwise this show will put you to sleep you're like I'm going care about this I know it I know I know I oh wow I don't give a damn I'm not aiming to be reductionist here there's just so little difference between episodes hell I'm pretty sure the second episode of both seasons have the same core story Octavia feels neglected by her dad her dad loves her but he's just bad at it and he'll do his best to never have that happen again oh wait it happened again a season later Game Theory I think I know what season 3 episode 2 will be about I'm trying to think about who in the main cast doesn't have relationship and or daddy issues oh oh God yeah yeah that's that's pretty bad okay there was some advice I was going to give but I got to explain how bad this is first hitting that for later this is a problem with your stories being so repetitive if you're stories are unimaginative and repetitive the characters have to be too to tell those stories and to hit the same emotional beats with these same characters they have to be static unchanging boring they have to come out of those huge emotional scenes exactly the same removing any weight those scenes could have see Octavia and honestly blitzo 2 who doesn't act too differently despite all the focus episodes then there's just Luna I mean try to cut your dad some slack he may not always get it right but he's trying that's more important than you think sorry I'll never replace you no matter what you we're good let me demonstrate how nothing these characters are this character writing exercise is directly taken from Escapist company carrier yatsi update he decided to stop carrying them in a gamedev diary from a couple years ago wow it sure is hard to find good writing tips usually you should do this during the writing process but his writing advice is actually a pretty good way to autopsy characters yatsi explains the first four questions you need to ask when writing a character question one what does this character want think less in terms of concrete plot outcomes and more in a general sense of what motivates them gaining power being loved Etc it could be that they already have what they want in which case how do they hold on to it question two what is this characters defining strength a plot is a sequence of situation changes what is it that qualifies this character to be an agent of those changes question three what is this character's defining weakness or flaw what is it about themselves that they must overcome to achieve their goal finally question four what are these character's quirks the little irrational weirdnesses that make them human let's fill this out so you can better understand my horrified Revelation [Music] earlier you start to see a pretty clear picture of why the characters are so weak look at how similar they are they're virtually interchangeable they have little different to them in terms of what they want none of them have any noteworthy Ambitions or desires they all basically have the same role in the group because they affect the plot in the same way everyone is just good at fighting that's it that's all I've got that's all I've got jeez M their flaws their personal Hang-Ups that prevent them from getting what they want are also either identical or actually non-existent another thing worth considering in a story with multiple characters is how they interact with each other I find it useful to consider them as pairs could you put any two characters in the cast together and imagine how they'd interact do they have common ground or some clear point of contention that drives arguments one of my favorite TV shows growing up was Red Dwarf which is a good example you can pair off any two from the four Central cast members and feel like there's a clear Dynamic there and something the two of them can do together or argue about which is what makes it work so well as a sitcom which is after all mainly about characters talking in a room this blew my mind when I heard because it's such elegant and efficient advice with character Dynamics you're fleshing out two characters at once without directly telling the audience how a character views the world you can imply that by how they see the other characters you can see the many things a character likes and dislikes in the world by how they react to the people that are a part of it well explored character Dynamics means a full chart so how does the hell of Boss character Dynamic chart look oh [ __ ] this is this is just sad forget the glaas for a second which I threw in because they're big recurring characters look at your main four characters they're together like every episode after working what seems like months are up to a year together they barely care about each other what's worse is that these are the exact same character pairings from the first episode that's how unchanging the stories and characters are your found family doesn't get along well or get along poorly they just exist in the same location as each other Luda knows Moxy as well as you know the Uber e driver that brought you McDonald's like forget the dramatic potential of it all the hell of a boss riters never thought about having unique Dynamics for jokes that's comedy show writing 101 having your different personalities have banter bounce off each other have pants Yi suggests putting your character pairs together in an empty room to see how how they interact this is also what community did for its entire showrun beautifully having everyone just interact in their study room at the start of the episode but maybe when Jeff gets here we could talk to him as a group about his tartin oh come on now don't use that word around aen but for hell of a boss considering almost every episode starts with our main cast in an empty meeting room I know exactly what they do say nothing to each other make small talk that goes nowhere oh I check the scale today and it said I lost 2 lbs this [Music] week ask where the character they actually like is your dad's really worried about you that's why you're here instead of him he couldn't be bothered to keep his promise and now he can't be bothered to come and get me himself where is blissy where's my baby this is the definition of a cast with no chemistry together as a point of comparison I will compare the entire main cast of hello boss's character pairings with the protagonist of community Jeff Winger they're both comedy shows with season long character arcs so it feels like a fair comparison and in the spirit of said fairness Community has way more seasons and episodes so I just compareed the first 13 episodes of Community to the first 13 of Hell boss as you can see it doesn't really matter yeah yeah this is just one guy he's got as many Dynamics as the entire cast of Hell of the boss deeper ones too Abed it's called chemistry I have it with everybody everybody if you know about the creator of community Dan Harmon this isn't that surprising like his self-inserts the man clearly was raised by TV and heavily internalized the structure of TV plots he made his own version of the 3A structure specifically formatted for compelling TV even made fun of the tool in a Rick and Morty episode because of how much he uses it we have to leave the train we don't have to do anything Morty this is just a structural guide we're obviously going to impart our own style the point being that this is the difference between community and hell of a boss Creator intent the intent of community was to tell engaging stories that were funny and could be emotional the intent of hell of a boss is to wallow in emotional baggage look good and be R-rated Looney Tunes in community characters had sad Back stories as brief infrequent explanations for the the character and roles in the story in hell of a boss the sad backstories are the character and is the story the characters are completely defined by their pasts never moving on from them and never learning from them none of them ever talk about or work towards their Futures watching hell of a boss is like hanging out with a unique and energetic friend but the Knight always inevitably ends with them crying about the same trauma that you yourself have gotten numb to to hearing about and long since given up trying to help with you still shove away anyone who gets too close until they resent you for being a selfish shitty that sounds pretty shitty Sam S conscious is trying to tell you that you simply cannot fathom proper intimacy yeah you already told us that well it happened a lot to be clear while it's very funny that the only thing to show unless the writers can talk about is how sad they are from their [ __ ] up Dad in relationship issues it's not a death sentence creators can totally examine their issues with their art but you usually hide that with unique stories well explored or developed characters and Dynamics mostly for the audience of Sanity but because this show has none of those we just got to plainly see Vivian's therapist notes like the least shitty dad in the show is a guy who literally says nothing and the healthiest to most prominent romantic relationship in the Shell feels as real and genuine as a greeting card aisle at this point I kind of feel bad do they even know how to write healthy characters do they even know what that looks like to understand how this show writes people without brain problems there is one character that embodies it one character that perfect ly portrays as shows understanding of mental Wellness some of the eagley dealers in the audience might have noticed a standout in the Dynamics chart a character that only had a single relationship Dynamic Which is less than Octavia who has much fewer appearances gotcha yeah don't let those mesque chicken drumsticks fool you this character isn't thick she's actually paper thin it's time to talk about Millie now Millie is moxy's wife she's always with him she's good at fighting she smiles a lot yeah sorry that's all I got that's it that's it you see Millie comes from a healthy family and that means that this writing team can't make her interesting and she is so nothing I barely remembered she existed the reason I'm talking about Millie at all despite her having the power to leave my memory the second she's off screen like some sort of Doctor Who monster is because of Twitter specifically Vivian's Twitter where she made a tweet addressing criticisms about Millie and another and another and oh my God there's so many the gist of it being that Millie is just healthy and not damaged like the rest of the cast so she just seems shallow in comparison she also doesn't get that many Focus episodes so the unobservant audience just missed how great of a character Millie is which is a crazy claim because what I missed was that Millie was a character in the show having such a strong Creator defense be completely disproportionate to the actual impression she left on me the audience meant I had to analyze Millie well as much as you can analyze empty space however before I get into that I'll give credit what credit is due the Twitter thread was surprisingly respectful I can't remember the last time a head honcho behind a huge creative project ever addressed criticisms like the milly ones like who is this polite in response to that much negative feedback Vivien shows more thoughtfulness in public than a lot of Industry professionals so even though I basically disagree with all the content of the message I appreciate the context it's very nice that aside back to my point let's dig into the claim that Millie is Well written shall we Millie's characterization isn't blink and you might miss it it's stare as much as you want you can't see [ __ ] Millie is seen as boring not because she is healthy but because she is a nothing character the audience is disappointed that all she is is moxy's wife because that's the only Dynamic she has in the entire cast blitzo has a Miley positive but ultimately neutral opinion of her Luna sure knows Millie exists even her relationship with Moxy doesn't tell you much about her they love each other in the most generic way possible Moxy do a grand romantic gesture and she likes it that's it and when they're all together boy does she ignore everyone else in favor of Moxy in a comedy show with long dramatic character arcs Millie contributes no jokes or chemistry and adds nothing to the character drama and also not enough Focus episodes she's already had three entire episodes that could have been focused on her yeah three in her first episode we go to her childhood home but all we found out is that she's subborn this was literally news to me because she talked so little I didn't realize she was doing an accent the episode was mostly about Moxy being insecure and setting up stace's relationship drama in the other episode we discover she had the same ex as her husband and it literally doesn't even matter to the episode it was only a couple of mentions because that episode wasn't for Millie it was just a Moxy episode Milli is such an add-on to Moxy he's an add-on to his relationship drama too and that happens again in the third Millie episode that was yet another Moxy episode you learn Millie likes attention amazing stuff maybe in the next 10 Focus episodes we'll discover her love of breathing and not dying Millie is boring and from Vivian's tweet Millie is supposed to be healthy that means the writers of all three of them have this weird perception of what being healthy means like they know what being unhealthy is almost every character in the show is unhealthy they're just miserable make mistakes all the time and are usually in the wrong or are just evil so you think the opposite of that is people who don't make mistakes by virtue of not doing anything at all that's not being healthy being healthy doesn't mean creating no problems and never being in the wrong that isn't required for good mental health that's a byproduct of experience everyone makes mistakes no one's perfect but being healthy is being able to recognize problems when they inevitably do happen and working to solve them productively with thought and empathy it's secure confidence not absence of presence Millie can totally be a character be outspoken and have flaws that cost problems she just has to recognize they happened and work to solve them yeah she doesn't even have to know exactly what to do right away she just has to make a real effort to fix things that's how you would write her to be healthy thinking back the way viven praised the writing of Millie shows off a fundamental misunderstanding she's proud of Millie in the way youd be proud of your kid or a pet or something about how healthy and put together she is rather than as a character in a story almost everyone loves and connects with stories via characters but as a writer you can't just view them as your babies characters are writing tools and you have to get other people invested in them investment you have to earn it's not intrinsic no one cares about how cool your kid or dog is because it's not their kid or dog hey you want to see pictures I mean she's right there look at this big oh you got is she's incredible okay that's most of the bad stuff out of the way diagnosed I can finally dust off the pin I made earlier about giving actionable advice to improve the sh remember that Dynamics chart in the character questionnaire they're useful at dunking on bad writing but I think they're even better at creating good stuff let's try and make Millie the most nothing into something you can pull from Millie's quirks and past and start coming up with those connections come up with some sort of meaningful conflict or Synergy she'd have with the rest of the cast Millie grew up on a farm with a loving family and is emotionally healthy those two facts are probably related she should assume those two facts are related at the very least subconsciously Millie therefore should be gungho supportive of blitz's efforts to form a found family with his employees even if his methods are a bit creepy plus if their neurons ever activated Millie could see blitz's flailing attempts to bond with Luna and then she could become a conspirator with blitzo hatching schemes with him to get closer to his daughter all tinged with Goofy Southern wisdom see when you figure out a character's desires and past it can be simple and straightforward to create a relationship Dynamic Moxy and Millie should have more reasons they like each other other than they do Grand generic romantic gestures for each other Millie should also really dislike Luna in the show when the two have to work together they say nothing of substance to each other and work together easily again guess Luna calls Millie old damn you're pretty agile for an old lady I'm like 5 years older than you and at some point Millie calls Luna a hellhound y'all haven't met my boss Blitz and his hellhound I'm not just his hellhound what a riveting Dynamic but Luna and Millie shouldn't get along they couldn't be more direct incompatible opposites Millie clearly had to work hard in a rough and tumble life on a mud Farm just so she could eat and all she ever sees Luna do is steal money from her job by slacking off she also should be appalled by Luna's treatment of her adopted father because Millie has seen no Mal treatment from blitzo and considering Luna spent her entire childhood in the Foster system Luna should aggressively disagree with Millie's belief and personality that comes from a tight-knit family it kind of writes itself if it's too obvious or not Vivy poop enough they could add whatever spice they need to each of these relationships but hey compared to what exists I think my proposed ideas are pretty good they're decent starting points at least now just go through this treatment with all your main cast and Bam you have a properly written cast of characters thanks Yi of course this is just a writing tool it isn't the law or anything and I don't want to homogenize people's creativity but it's the clearest and easiest method I know of to fles out characters if the character characters were even remotely that well explored then the relationship melodrama would be perfectly palatable maybe even engaging because of the nature of screen time more time developing the characters would mean less time trying to constantly make you feel sorry for them that way you aren't numb to the intense sadness that happens all the time and then when it eventually does happen you care because it's happen the characters you're invested in this is called pacing properly spacing out your emotional story beats it's probably one of the most boring fundamentals in writing but it's a fundamental for a reason and fundamentally my issues with the show stem from hell of a boss failing to do what it intended my approach to criticism is to see what the creators wanted to do and seeing if they succeeded or failed one fine looking Barbecue Pit why doesn't mine look like that I don't suggest any form of cryptic mystery or season long plot arcs because hell of boss isn't plot focused but character focused hell boss clearly wanted to explore personal issues and make the audience go a because something sweet or sad happened but without good writing the audience fails to feel anything especially not after two seasons of redundant characters with redundant stories this lack of Engagement is reflected in the ever declining amount of views despite every new episode being on trending people know exactly what they're getting so fewer and fewer come back even as I'm recording this another daddy issues episode dropped which I didn't think was possible since every main character had their dads explored the winner will get to be like the son I never had and I'll be like the stepdad that will love you when it's convenient working for Mamon is a big deal to me I can't just not compete I'd be letting him down well [ __ ] I guess if they run out of main characters with that issu they'll just endlessly create new ones but honestly this show has my sympathies when I was younger I also drained of having all my cool game or show ideas greenlet only to have the self-aware insecurity seep in what if my writing is terrible what if I waste the time of not only the people I worked with but the audiences as well Vivy poop is a weird scenario of a talented artist getting their dream project well before they were ready to make it good hell boss is what her second attempt at writing I'd have [ __ ] my pants in Vivian's position I don't know I think Vivien might be open-minded enough to take some criticism I don't know her but she seems nice and interviews and tweets and since hell of a boss is an indie show she has way fewer things preventing her from changing the show however she wants she just has to answer the audience really if you look at conventional Studio animation a lot of them can't be that flexible they usually don't change and also die they die a lot when I started making this video a while ago hell of a boss kind of was the top dog of Indie animation so it sort of felt like a lot was writing on it being well a good show I was a bit uh super worried but that's not the case now with another Indie show being a random breakout success it's kind of hard to wrap your head around how well the amazing digital circus is doing but I think it's so successful because on top of solid production values it's paired of a good story it shows that people will always be hungry for them I am I don't see any reason why hell of a boss or Haspin Hotel can't have similar levels of virality if the writing gets good yeah I'm sure hell of a boss episodes take months to make so even if Vivian radically adjusted to Show's writing right now it'd be a long while before you see any changes but hey saying it gets good in season 3 is a lot better than saying the show drops off and never gets better wait does hasbin Hotel have a different writing staff if not and it comes out in like 2 months that means it's probably going to suck huh oh well all right low effort exit no more [Music] video It's Over

Channel: Lo F. Fort

Views: 527,155

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Id: a6M3gBdk0do

Length: 31min 27sec (1887 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023