Sleepy Hollow: Pilot

As part of the countdown to Sleepy Hollow season two, I’ve decided to rewatch the first season and repost my original reviews (with a few up-to-date notations). Here goes...

Any pilot episode has the challenge of (a) introducing the show’s premise, (b) introducing the main characters, and (c) delivering a reasonably satisfying and self-contained forty-five minute story, whilst (d) providing a hook for future episodes. It ain’t easy, and very few pilots manage to balance out all these aspects in a way that doesn’t make one element feel irrelevant or for the whole thing to come across as cluttered.

The most difficult aspect is always (c). The writers naturally want to give each character a memorable introduction and establish the dynamics that exist between the main cast members. Likewise, it’s considered a given that not everything will be resolved in a single episode, and that certain plot-threads will be tantalizingly left up in the air.

But most viewers will always want a sense of closure, however small. Therefore (c) will usually involve a standard Monster of the Week who has minimal motivation and a sliver of a plot that runs through the course of the episode. Remember Mary Collins from Merlin? Or Jeremy Creek from Smallville? Or Luke from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yeah, me neither. Their purpose was simply to generate minor conflict for the main cast to resolve before the closing credits, largely to showcase their abilities and demonstrate their personalities.

So I found it interesting that in the case of Sleepy Hollow, the writers not only go straight for the Headless Horseman as an antagonist (though granted, they make clear that there’s a Bigger Bad lurking somewhere in the background), but leave him undefeated by the end of the episode.

Abbie and Ichabod get hold of his skull, but the best they manage to do is hold him off until the sun rises, and things are far from resolved between them. As such, this felt very much like the first chapter in a larger story than a “formula setting” opener that tells the audience exactly what to expect from the rest of the show.

That said, I think the show has set itself up pretty nicely to follow a “weekly monster/crime” scenario whilst developing characters and deepening the mythology as it goes. Sheriff Corbin’s hidden file of unsolved mysteries (much like Chloe Sullivan’s Wall of Weird) and the idea of Sleepy Hollow being the epicentre of supernatural events (hugely reminiscent of Sunnydale’s proximity to a Hellmouth) means that Ichabod and Abbie could hypothetically be solving weird mysteries on a weekly basis while clues as to their pasts are gradually metered out with the Apocalypse scheduled for the season finale. The next episode should tell us which route the writers plan to take.

***

The strongest aspect is undoubtedly the characters. Ichabod is not only hot with a cute accent and a Badass Longcoat, but there was a great balance of the character being curious/overwhelmed/delighted at all the modern tech that surrounded him as well as a clear sense of his intelligence and heightened instincts when it comes to “reading” the people around him and following the signs that appear to him.

As for Abbie, I don’t think I’ve ever felt such instantaneous warmth towards a fictional character since…ever. I’m a sucker for the outward feistiness/inward vulnerability trope, and Nicole Beharie captured that without going too overboard in either direction. In shows like this you almost always have a Mulder and Scully type partnership, with one as the cynic and the other as the believer, yet here both sides exist (and are at war) within Abbie. She’s clearly already half-convinced by Ichabod’s claims, and that the writers have already inserted her into the mythos regarding her experience as a child was a stroke of genius. Their dynamic felt oddly like that of a religious leader and a reluctant disciple that has to be convinced of her own importance.

And what’s special about that is that Ichabod isn’t being mysterious or deceitful about the roles he thinks they’re going to play (and yes, on the heels of Merlin I can’t help but compare it to Arthur and Merlin’s supposed “destiny” that Merlin knew all about but never shared with Arthur, thus rendering it unattainable). Instead of that enigmatic Obi-Wan Kenobi half-truths and murky prophecies bullshit, Ichabod is being completely open and sincere and truthful about what he believes in, and I think that conviction alone is what compelled Abbie to stay in Sleepy Hollow. She may not believe what’s happening, but she knows that he does, and she wants to stick around for that.

As for shipping…well, I’m an easy-going shipper at the best of times. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Either way I’ll be squeeing over the height difference and the way they look at each other. What’s that thing called when a baby animal hatches and latches onto the first thing that it sees? That’s totally what’s just happened with Icabod and Abbie.

Though I suppose the presence of Katrina throws something of a spanner in the works, and I’ll admit that I’m not quite sure what the writers have planned for her character. She doesn’t really fit into the Disposable Woman category (since she’s apparently a cast regular who is permanently trapped somewhere in the netherworlds) but I didn’t really get a husband/wife vibe from her two scenes with Ichabod. Instead I got the sense that they didn’t really know each other that well, exemplified by the fact that Icabod didn’t even know she was a witch.

The rest of the cast is promising, particularly Captain Irving (get it? GET IT?) I’m not entirely sure what he’s up to yet, though I think he’s eventually going to come down on the side of the angels. It’s not just the name, but the fact that he’s so clearly being telegraphed as dodgy. It seems a typical Red Herring Mole scenario.

 

***

As for the mythology – that was all over the place. Let me see if I’ve got this straight…
The Headless Horseman is in fact one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (identifiable by the brand on his hand and his pale horse). Specifically, he’s Death. Ichabod was ordered by George Washington to kill this mercenary Horseman in order to prevent the coming Apocalypse and save the world.

There are currently two covens at work within the world: one good and one evil. Presumably the evil one is working to assist the coming Apocalypse while the good one is trying to prevent it. Katrina and the priest (did he get a name?) are part of the good one, and after Ichabod is mortally wounded after killing the Horseman, they discover that there’s now a mystical bond between them. So they engineer it so that Ichabod will sleep until the Horseman rises again. The Horseman’s body is thrown in the river, and his skull buried in Katrina’s fake grave, for he can only fulfil his purpose if he’s whole.

Ichabod wakes up only because someone else awakened the Horseman first.

Somehow it’s all connected to an experience Abbie had as a teenager in which she and her sister come across four white trees in the forest, hear the voice of a strange demon, and wake up later on the side of the road. Apparently the exact same thing happened to a farmer in 1882, who believed that the trees were symbolic of the four Horsemen and that the demon was sent there to raise them.

Katrina’s spirit is somehow trapped in the netherworld, Ichabod and Abbie are the first and second witnesses mentioned in the Bible who are brought together for seven years (seven seasons?) worth of tribulations, and John Cho’s character was somehow in cahoots with the demon that is apparently causing all this – only for him to be killed for his failure.

Got it.

***

The atmosphere of the show was exactly what I’d hope for; not only a great blend of Old World charm and modernity, but with a style that was reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow and M. Night Shymalan’s The Village (yeah, the latter was a stupid movie, but you can’t say that it wasn’t gorgeous to look at).There was even a bit of Pan’s Labyrinth thrown in there what with the strange white demon at the end.

Two final things (which are really the same thing): that the immediate popularity of Sleepy Hollow and the success of Elementary are indicative of the fact that you don’t have to have a white boy bromance to get an audience’s attention. After those rather depressing statistics over what type of pairings fandom is utterly obsessed with, it’s heartening to know that some people (perhaps quite a lot of people) are just getting plain old sick and tired of that dynamic.

And on that note, the role of Clancy Brown as Sheriff Corbin made me smile. Think about it: this is the character that has devoted many years of his life to accumulating a file full of strange and supernatural occurrences. He’s the conspiracy nut that’s been waiting for the day when his unusual hobby will be validated by the appearance of a man like Ichabod. In any other show, it would be him and Ichabod teaming up to kick demon ass. Ichabod would be the answer to his prayers, the proof of his crazy theories. Abbie would be just another component of another mysterious event; a guest-star of the week that the menfolk help and then forget about.

But here, Sheriff Corbin’s role is to die in order to facilitate Abbie’s journey. She’s the one that’ll be dipping into that file in search of answers. She’s the one that’s going to be teaming up with Ichabod in order to solve her own mystery, hopefully on her own terms. And it would appear that they’ll be introducing her sister as soon as next week.

This show is awesome.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I’m always deeply interested in the fictional portrayals of the relationship that exists between Christianity and witchcraft/paganism/magic, whether it be conflict or complimentary. The existence of a priest with magical powers and a witch that uses the Bible in her spells would suggest Sleepy Hollow is going with the latter option, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle that from here.

Was there a reason the Horseman went to that particular farmhouse first, or was it just authorial fiat at work? (After all, they’ve got to have the Horseman demonstrate how much of a threat he is somehow). But he goes after the priest specifically and for obvious reasons – so why the people at the farmhouse?

Great effect on the red-hot blade of the Horseman’s axe, so much so that I was disappointed when he upgraded to a rifle (or whatever it was – I know nothing about guns). But was his horse meant to be an Evil Albino? It was obviously “a pale horse” as per the Biblical description, but its eyes looked more pink than Red Eyes, Take Warning.

It seems a bit unlikely that Ichabod would be hauled in as a suspect for the murders at the farmhouse when Abbie saw the killer and Ichabod was clearly miles away. I’m going to assume that John Cho’s character knew what was really going on and took him in as a diversion from the Horseman.

Years ago, on the first season of Charmed, John Cho featured as a guest star (a ghost to be specific). The funny thing is that that show had a cop called Andy Trudeau, and at one point John Cho’s character sarcastically complains that his fate is in the hands of a cop called Andy. Guess what his name is here…

Ichabod says that he was ordered to kill a mercenary who was “recognisable by a mark on his hand.” Not by the weird metal mask he was wearing?

Why did Katrina’s gravestone look brand new? And if she was burnt as a witch, why was she buried in consecrated ground? I suppose you could argue that her body was never there to begin with and it was just a hiding place for the skull, but it was probably my biggest nitpick of the episode.

I laughed when the Headless Horseman “hid” on the couch in Andy’s house. All he had to do was sit down!

Abbie must have had razor sharp teeth to make Andy’s thumb bleed that much.

Most interesting is that by the end, the cat’s out of the bag in regards to the supernatural happenings in Sleepy Hollow. Two cops saw the Headless Horseman and it’s going to be impossible to explain or cover-up Andy’s death. So it’ll be an intriguing twist on the genre to see Ichabod and Abbie working without the need to hide the supernatural aspect of their cases from their colleges.

It’s the Book of Revelation, singular, not Revelations, plural. Just saying.

In Hindsight:

I was wrong about the formulaic aspect of the show, as even though there were a couple of episodes that dealt with Abbie and Ichabod facing off against one-shot monsters, for the most part Sleepy Hollow is highly serialized. By the end I was pretty impressed by the foreshadowing and continuity that was prevalent throughout the season, with components of the Myth Arc strewn across each episode in a tight on-going storyline.

I was completely wrong in my assumptions about Captain Irving – I was under the impression that he definitely knew more than he was letting on, but that the show was trying to make us believe he was an antagonist. It turns out neither was true – he was completely oblivious to the supernatural occurrences in the area and definitely a good guy. And on that note, it’s rather disappointing that the initial exposure of the supernatural to the police force was almost instantly covered up again.

They never did really figure out what to do with Katrina, did they? Pity. And the whole “good coven versus evil coven” never really went anywhere either.

And on that note, who was it that actually resurrected the Headless Horseman? Was it John Parish? Or Moloch? Bits of this mythology definitely got more convoluted than was strictly necessary.

My observation that John Cho plays a cop called Andy and once complained about that very name on Charmed did not go unnoticed by the rest of fandom. There’s a GIF set out there somewhere of both scenes spliced together.