To be fair to Adam, Vivzie was selling him as a cool villain especially because Alex Brightman is voicing him and embraces the fandom for him.
However Alastor I feel fits your model more because he’s presented as this super intimidating mastermind who is scheming and is super strong. Yet he comes across as a tryhard edgelord who spills his spaghetti when put up against higher tier characters like Adam and Lucifer.
Two more characters I can put are Sera and Millie since Viv’s female characters are a mixed bag and these two are honestly the worst ones
Sera is presented as this morally grey antagonist who condones Adam’s behavior but believes the exterminations are a necessary evil for the greater good, but comes across as a paranoid idiot who has a lot of resources to figure out if the source of her paranoia is true but doesn’t bother too cause lazy writing then has Charlie appear in Heaven court yet doesn’t think she will make the exterminations public.
Millie is someone Vivzie insists is a strong independent women, but literally every character conflict she has is at the service of another character and her entire personality revolves around being strong and loving Moxxie.
Guess it's my turn for a wall of text.
I have mixed thoughts on Adam as a character. I think he's a great villain...just not a great villain in the show Viv created. If the show leaned more into the comedic angles, he's a perfect villain. The best way I can think to describe him is a combination of Zap Brannigan and Hank Scorpio, written through a teenage lens. Surprisingly, despite being one of the most violent characters, he's one of the least edgelordy in all the series, which is why I think so many people like him. He's just...fun. The reason I don't think he works for the rest of the show is he doesn't fit the mold of what Viv is trying to do with her villains, making them more of clever schemers who rely on manipulation and control. I think she wanted to do that with Adam to some extent, having him pull the wool over Heaven's eyes to justify exterminations, but when she tried to do that she just made Heaven look stupid as opposed to making Adam look particularly intelligent. And Adam definitely loses points for casually leaving angel steel weapons around Hell during the exterminations. But I think he fits the general tone of what Viv should go for, a goofier, less serious comedy that embraces the absurd.
I heard a lot about Alastor before watching the show and was surprised how boring and flat he was. The way he was described, I was expecting him to be the main character. I think the biggest issue is one of those things of "dumb person trying to write a clever character." The biggest issue overall is he doesn't really have any sort of motivation. For a manipulative character to work, we need to root for their manipulations because we know what they're aiming for. In comics, a lot of Joker's schemes work so well because we know the ultimate endgame is breaking Batman, so we understand why his plan involves XYZ. Lex Luthor wants to defeat/discredit Superman, so he manipulates/blackmails people to remain a corporate and trustworthy figure so he has resources for his master plans. Game of Thrones, especially the earlier seasons, had plenty of shrewd characters who were helping/elevating others to gain favor or discredit/remove rivals. Similar deal with Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, there's lots of manipulative characters there and, even if we might not know what the final step of the plan is, we at least understand why the characters are manipulating things.
The best we can say about Alastor is he wants power, but that's so boring and vague. Part of his lack of motivation definitely comes from the ultimately limited worldbuilding. Hell is so bland and flat, I can't really imagine what him ruling it would look like. I guess people would listen to radio instead of television? And...that'd be fine, I guess, in a more "traditional" setting, but...it's hell. Why does hell have TV shows/radio/podcasts etc. in the first place? I feel like, despite seeming like a pretty prominent character, if you took Alastor out of the show almost nothing would change and someone like Husk could probably get a few extra lines to fulfill Alastor's overall purpose. I also don't understand *why* Alastor is so powerful, when I first heard about him I thought he was going to be some super devil that was originally part of Lucifier's rebellion or something, but he's just some serial killer dude from the 50's, not even a proper hellborn.
Calling Sera a character is being generous. I was about to say she shows up way too late in the show to feel relevant, but now that I'm thinking about it, I think she was actually in the earlier episodes but didn't do much of anything. I think it's a similar thing with Alastor, someone dumb trying to write a clever character, but we at least have some idea of what she wants. She's just incredibly incompetent and bad at her job.
Never saw HB so I can't comment on Millie...who I'm pretty sure is from there and not HH. The fact I'm not sure really says a lot about Viv's "strong indepedent women" characters. You can tell she isn't particularly interested in writing about female characters because they're all pretty bland and generic. I think at best, Viv likes the idea of a "girlboss" archetype, but because that's not really a thing in highschool, she doesn't know how to try and portray it. They, uhh, have lines I guess? And sometimes have things resembling personality traits? They technically move the plot forward through exposition, but all of their lines could be given to other characters and it'd have the same effect. Beyond that, it feels like their only purpose is to appease tumblr crowds with "perfect lesbians" but she clearly has minimal interest in them herself and wants to focus on her fetish, gay boys.
