Review: Sleepy Hollow

So we come to it at last. I'm going to keep this as brief as possible considering I like to keep negativity at a minimum, but the jury is back and the verdict is that Sleepy Hollow lost its way.

As promised, I'm going to comment on the final seven episodes of season two, which may well end up being the final episodes ever given that a third season has not yet been greenlit.

It's hard to know what to say that hasn't already been said a million times before. Way back when the very first trailer for Sleepy Hollow was released I remember posting "this looks just crazy enough to work" on Television Without Pity. And against all the odds, the show did work!

While Agents of Shield, a show that was fully expected to be the Big Hit of 2013, unexpectedly floundered, Sleepy Hollow quickly secured a fanbase (and a second season) with its careful balance of over-the-top nonsense and genuinely creepy chills, all grounded by two leads that took what they were doing with just the right amount of seriousness.

It had atmosphere. It had style. It had a cocktail of inspiration, everything from the Biblical apocalypse to American history to Washington Irving's famous short story. It had at least one truly innovative idea in positing that the Headless Horseman of folklore was in fact one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It had Hessians. It had Freemasons. It had a dark eldritch quality that reminded me of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. It had Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie, who were perhaps a little too good for the material, but whose talent and chemistry elevated every script.

It just had the X-Factor, that strange alchemy you can't pin-point or define.

Only for things to fall apart come season two.

But the thing is, even in season one the Crane family's personal connection to the impending apocalypse was always that awkward knot at the centre of the story, one that was not only mishandled in in how it was written, but which diminished the threat the bad guys posed. The reveal of Death as Abraham was weak (not least because he was introduced in the very same episode he was transformed) and though the twist that Henry Parish was not only War but also Ichabod and Katrina's son was a shocker, it failed to take into consideration that the two greatest generals in Moloch's war on humankind were two whiny men-children driven by petty jealously and nonsensical vengeance.

The focus on them side-lined Abbie and Jenny, robbed the Horsemen of their mystery, and reduced the whole damn apocalypse to a domestic spat. Whenever a show or franchise takes a nosedive, it's worth looking back at earlier instalments to see whether the seeds of its downfall were already there – and in this case, they were.

Katrina was always a lacklustre character. The idea to make the Horsemen mortal men whose identities would be treated as "major reveals" in the story-arc was always a risk. Making the apocalypse revolve around each Horseman's obsession with Katrina was never a good idea. The only thing that changed was that the second season exacerbated these problems.

It's called a Franchise Original Sin, and yes – I've already added Sleepy Hollow to the list of examples. 

***

As with the start of this season, the opening episode of its second half starts out strong, only to devolve into a string of patchy and unrelated episodes that seem to belong to the "make it all up as we go along" strategy of storytelling. In the concluding episodes there's a half-hearted attempt to just give the audience what it wants, but – for reasons I'll explain later – it's never a good idea to collapse under this type of pressure, and (despite a few nice little touches here and there) the whole thing just stinks of desperation.

So we open with Moloch apparently dead and Henry having disappeared completely. Our main characters get six weeks of respite, during which Ichabod is feeling a little lost without the impending apocalypse to keep him on his toes. Being somewhat estranged from his wife in the interim, Abbie is trying to keep him busy with his on-going integration into modern life, but you can still feel the two of them are a bit antsy.

Elsewhere, Abraham is still being held in chains beneath the police precinct with Katrina guarding him. As a woman who loves her projects, and who has adopted a new Goth wardrobe, she's decided to try and remove the man from the Horseman. This goes nowhere, and Abraham disappears entirely after this episode (okay, the Horseman appears in the finale, but thanks to time-travel it's just his past-self).

After several months of me wondering whether those that dwell Upstairs would get involved in the End of Days struggle for the fate of the world, it turns out that angels do in fact exist in this universe. O'Ryan Orien is one of the angelic host that's been trapped in Purgatory after a defeat at the hands of the Horseman of Death, who comes complete with giant wings and Xena's chakram (it even makes that "shhhink" noise just by holding it).

There's a slight effort made to explore the theme that Pure Good can be just as bad as Pure Evil, with Team Witness opting to support Abraham in a case of The Devil You Know, but – like Abraham – Orien just up and disappears after this, leaving behind him only the charming legacy of Abbie asking him if he's ever seen a dinosaur.

Oh, and the information that with Moloch's death the gates of Purgatory are open and all sorts of ghoulies are escaping into the mortal plane. Aaaaand we have our setup for the six remaining episodes. It's hugely reminiscent of that time Smallville had convicts escape from the Phantom Zone, leading to Clark having to round them up over the course of the season.

It's really not a good thing that I'm referencing Smallville.

Without Moloch to provide an underlying arc, it's a standard Monster of the Week arrangement, but with two major issues. The first is that Monster of the Week stories usually come at the beginning of any given show; they're just placeholders to provide simple storylines that allow writers to properly introduce and establish our main cast before eventually giving way to greater and more complex villains. To kick-start this formula halfway through the second season, after the climactic confrontation with the Big Bad, is a remarkably clumsy move.

Second of all is the way the procedurals are now written. When we were dealing with the likes of Serilda and the Sandman back in season one, a significant amount of time was devoted to Ichabod and Abbie simply identifying the threats and figuring out the rules of engagement. This not only added to the spookiness of any given threat, but also the suspense in how they would be defeated.

Now the various monsters are quickly labelled and unimaginatively disposed of, usually in the attempt to full up the intervening run-time with action sequences and the usual horror story clichés (whoever pops up in the cold opening is a goner).

But there is a thread of continuity that moves through the backend of season's two episodes, one which introduces the possibility of time-travel, the fact that Katrina is still hung up on her son's welfare, and resurrects Frank Irving for reasons I could never quite figure out.

But before we discuss that, let's go through the characters.

The Witnesses

Their dynamic is the heart of the show, and whatever happens in the future, at least it remembered that in those last handful of episodes.

Throughout most of the latter half of the season Ichabod feels awkwardly positioned between Abbie and Katrina, and though an entire episode is devoted to a husband/wife date night in which they attempt to prevent a psychopathic painter from murdering innocent people (aww, romantic!) it's clear that he just doesn't have the same spark with her as he does with Abbie.

For a while he gets rather annoyingly condescending with both women, twitching his fingers and scolding the two of them even when one of them (Abbie) has a damn good reason to be ticked off at the other one's behaviour, but in a rare display of self-awareness, the show actually has them acknowledge that they've been drifting apart and make the conscious effort to return to each other.

If there was any sort of theme that played out between the two of them, it was that of choosing the greater good over any personal desires. It's something that Ichabod has always struggled with (recreating the map to Purgatory in an attempt to reach Katrina) and in many ways Katrina has been his enabler, what with her ongoing attempts to rehabilitate both Abraham and Henry.

Abbie on the other hand, always sees the bigger picture, and isn't afraid to make herself the bad guy when her friends and allies are acting suspicious. She knows what her responsibilities are and sticks with them.

Events of the finale seemed to be foreshadowed in the third-to-last episode, in which both Abbie and Ichabod make the call to not sacrifice innocent men for a treasure trove of raw information, deliberately striking a balance between their usual extremes. Depending on who the person is and what exactly is at stake, it can be a hard choice to make between a loved one and a valuable tool in the greater war against evil. In that case, they chose to save the hostages. In the penultimate episode, Katrina choses to save Henry. And in the finale, Ichabod choses to save Abbie.

In other words, they usually go for the loved one, though in the case of Ichabod's definitive choice, saving Abbie ticked both boxes: she's his fellow Witness, and she's his loved one.

Despite the inexplicable personality shift in Katrina (more on that later) it was the time-travelling finale that really lifted the season from its slump. It was a solid idea to throw Abbie back into the past and have her cope in reverse with what Ichabod went through when he woke up in the 21^st century, complete with verbal cues that reflected the pilot episode (Abbie nearly getting run over by a horse and carriage, the population sign on the outskirts of town).

Of course, it was deeply uncomfortable watching her cope with the attitudes of that particular time and place, and perhaps the most heartrending scenes were when she desperately tried to reach out to Past!Ichabod, knowing that he hadn't even met her yet. In him we see a slightly colder, formal version of the character, but somewhere behind the eyes you can see he senses a connection with this woman. Perhaps the highlight (for him) was watching him figure out how to use the cellphone. He's an intelligent man regardless of what time period he's in, and after he literally tries to slide the phone open by pushing it across the table, he soon realizes he needs to push his finger across the screen itself.

And the highlight for Abbie was naturally coming face-to-face with Grace Dixon. They didn't have much time to make this connection work, but I ended up getting a little teary as the realization dawned on Grace's face as to who this young woman really was.

The show remembered its strengths just in time, and though it was handled in a slapdash manner, if this is the last episode we go out with, at least it served to re-establish the bond between Ichabod and Abbie.

Katrina

I'm already annoyed because I know her entry is going to be twice as long as other characters I'd rather be talking about. So let's dive in and get this over with.

There's no question at this point that Katrina was Sleepy Hollow's albatross. They never figured out what to do with her and she dragged everything down with her. It wasn't even a matter of having her do stuff, it's simply that we never found out who she was.

Despite the constant switching of her from a Quaker nurse to a secret witch to a Georgian lady, there was the potential for a decent backstory here. Right from the very start of this show I kept waiting for some exploration of the idea that there were two covens at work in Sleepy Hollow: one good, one bad. Clearly this was the best road to take when it came to finding out more about Katrina, especially in regards to all the dark secrets she was keeping.

(How did she know Ichabod was a Witness? How did she become a witch? Who was the rest of her coven? Who were her parents? What made her so committed to the fight against evil? Did she or did she not know she was pregnant prior to Ichabod's death? I could go on).

But whereas I could tell you a number of things about Abbie's childhood and how it affected the shaping of her personality as an adult (the neglect she suffered in foster care, the lie she told that damned her sister, the trust she placed in Sheriff Corbin and the subsequent transferring of this faith onto Ichabod), I don't know a damn thing about Katrina except the one thing the writers bothered to convey: she and Ichabod loved each other.

Did Tom and Katia have minimal chemistry? Sure. Was the relationship more tell than show? Absolutely. But the entire premise of this story rested on a single fact: that Katrina loved her husband enough to put him in stasis despite the risk it posed to the world, despite knowing her coven would hunt her down for it, despite realizing that the Horseman would be resurrected alongside him.

So to have her so casually turn to the dark side and try to kill Ichabod made very little sense. I get that they wanted to get rid of her. I can see that they at least established her desire to reconnect with Henry. I know that the fandom had been discussing how shady she seemed for quite some time.

But how it happens is so abrupt that it's almost comical. Apparently George Washington promised her coven reintegration into society only to back out of the deal? Buh? On the basis of that never-before-discussed agreement she turns on her husband, the cause she was committed to, and everything else she fought and suffered for with no hesitation. Between the evil smirks and newfound arrogance, what happens to Katrina makes Morgana's arc on Merlin look carefully nuanced and gently paced. Just think for a moment about how horrifying that sentence is.

Boom. Evil.

And as it happens, even turning her evil is not enough to make her interesting. Having her dying in Ichabod's arms isn't particularly sad. Because the show never set her up properly as a character.

So Katrina chucks away her marriage and Ichabod reacts with a mild shrug. She travels back in time to save Henry's life and then proceeds to try and murder her husband even though she's already changed the past and has no real reason to harm him.

It's lazy and clumsy and awful and could have been done a thousand better ways. Just a good old fashioned fridging would have been preferable, and I can't believe I'm saying that.

***

I know Katrina is a volatile subject for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with Katrina and everything to do with how audiences/fandoms respond when two women exist together in the same story – especially when one of them is white and the other is not. See also: Iris West and Caitlin Snow in The Flash, and Guinevere and any number of white princesses in Merlin. There is a lot of baggage here, but for the purposes of my argument I'd like to concentrate more on the writing process than audience reactions.

Katrina didn't work. I'm not disputing that. But I wanted Katrina to work – not because I was hugely invested or interested in her character, but because (unless I'm feeling really vindictive) I generally don't want things to fail. And the way in which the show handled her illuminates something I've noticed occur in other shows.

As it happens, there are at least three ways writers can deal with unpopular characters. Perhaps the most benign is to Put Them On A Bus. The harshest is of course, to Drop A Bridge On Them.  But there is a third option, the most challenging of all: Rescue Them From the Scrappy Heap.

This is when writers stick to their guns and decide not to throw unpopular characters away. To salvage them. Recuperate them. I've no doubt it's tough going, but it can be done. It may be difficult to remember now, but Chloe O'Brian was hated when she first appeared on 24. So was Donna Noble from Doctor Who. And need I mention Mako from The Legend of Korra?

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the writers to dispose of these guys, but instead they battened down the hatches, recognized the problems, and slowly but surely retooled these scrappies into fan-favourites. Okay, so Mako never became a fan-favourite, but consider this: if they had simply ditched him after the disastrous love triangle shenanigans of the first two seasons, everything about that plot would have ended up a complete and utter waste of time.

As it is, we can watch the show in its entirety and put Korra/Mako into perspective: that the two of them were each other's learning curve; a relationship that had to fail as part of the growing up process. Mike and Bryan's determination to redeem the character gives all the things we initially hated about Mako and his story-arc a greater sense of purpose. In hindsight, the love triangle nonsense comes across not only necessary but BETTER, as it serves as a contrast for the more mature and meaningful bond Korra creates with Asami.

So what's this got to do with Katrina?

The fact that the writers opted to make Katrina evil and then promptly kill her off means that all her previous appearances across the first and second season have completely gone to waste. Knowing how it all ends for her, I have even less of a reason to rewatch the show – because I know a significant amount of screen-time is devoted to a character the writers eventually just gave up on.

If the writers had gotten their shit together and made Katrina work, then all of the less-than-inspiring scenes throughout season one would have been imbued with fresh poignancy. If we had learnt more about who Katrina was as a person in season two, we might have retroactively felt for her regarding her stint in Purgatory. If the writers had added more context to her relationship with Ichabod, the brief moments they manage to snatch in season one would have seemed all the more heart-rending in hindsight.

But they didn't, and consequently it all feels like a massive waste of time.

Just compare Katrina to Greg and Tamara from Once Upon a Time or Nicki and Paolo from LOST. Like Katrina, these were characters that just didn't work, and the writers responded to critical/fan negativity by simply killing them off. But to me at least, I get frustrated that so much time was spent on them in the first place if the show was just going to give up on the effort to try and improve their characterization/purpose in the narrative.

So if you find yourself working on a popular show and all the feedback you're getting concerning one particular character is negative, you have three options.

1. Give the fandom what they want. Kill 'em gruesomely. But I warn you: the initial joy an audience feels will eventually be replaced with disgruntlement that they had to spend so much time in the first place with the character you've just rendered pointless.

2. Take the tough stance. Don't give up on the character, but figure out what the audience hates about them and make moves to fix it. It'll be a slow and arduous process and fandom will complain all the way through, but it's worth it when you reach the point where everyone looks back and says: "wow that was really great character development!"

3. Or you could take the third option, which is really the best course of action. Don't make bad creative decisions in the first place. Figure out who your characters are and where they're heading before things get underway.

Katrina was obviously conceived with two things in mind: as an exposition fairy, and as a necessary element of Irving's story that just had to be incorporated (unsurprisingly since it was a short story that only had three significant characters in it). Other than that, I don't think the writers had much of a game plan for her. And yet I'll continue to believe that the character of Katrina had potential – the writers just didn't figure out what it was. They emphasized the wrong things about her: her faulty magical powers, her informed relationship with Ichabod, her desire to put her son before all else, her role as Abraham's obsession. And in doing this, she only sapped time away from one of the show's beloved leads.

How would I have done it? First of all, separate her from the main cast, drop her from the opening credits and make her a recurring character. After spending so many hundreds of years in Purgatory, only to be spat out in a completely different century, it would make sense that she would want to be by herself for a little while to collect her thoughts.

Then, perhaps once every third or so episode, have her appear in her established role as Mrs Exposition, approached by the main cast for information and advice. She could have been installed in a library somewhere, quietly trying to strength her powers and adjust to her new surroundings.

Give us little flashbacks into her history – like how she became a witch in the first place, or how she met Abraham, or who her parents were, or how she got trapped in Purgatory.

But the real key to Katrina lay in her relationship with her coven. There was some really interesting groundwork laid here. We knew they were called the Coven of the Sacred Heart. We knew they were working with George Washington to fight demons in the War of Independence. We know Katrina was their leader, and was powerful enough to bind Serilda. We know that Reverend Nap was a member, and that he was (apparently) immortal. We know Sheriff Corbin knew about the covens, and was acquainted with Reverend Nap in some capacity. And we know that after Katrina opted to save Ichabod's life she was hunted by her own coven and forced to flee the country. 

I mean, damn. This is good stuff that was never touched upon. I kind of like the idea that her coven ordered Katrina to keep an eye on one of the Witnesses (thus explaining how she identified him) only for her to accidentally fall in love with him despite herself. So she was already at odds with her coven by the time she cast the spell over Ichabod, and has been hiding from them ever since. I forget, did they have a hand in sending her to Purgatory...?

So all that needs to happen is to have the dark coven (or the remnants of the good one) arise in contemporary Sleepy Hollow, and voila! You've got a plot that could incorporate Katrina in an organic and interesting way, without stepping on the toes of the two Witnesses and which could have shed more light on the show's rather convoluted backstory.

Ah, what could have been...

Hawley

Everything I said about Katrina can just as easily be applied to Hawley. He was introduced, he didn't gel, and they duly wrote him out. As with Katrina, they folded to fandom demands, they (maybe) should have reconfigured the character to make him work better (if not just so his entire presence didn't seem completely pointless), but ultimately he never should have existed in the first place.

In all the episodes he appears, he still shares the same narrative purpose as Jenny, making one of them redundant. Hilariously, as soon as he's gone all of the usual breaking/entering/stealing activities go straight back to her.

Also, given his sudden swing back to Jenny for romantic tension, we can only assume that Nicole Beharie went NOPE and forced them to change things. At least that's the scenario I'm running with.

Other Characters

Apologies for relegating Frank Irving and Jenny to the "other characters" category, but the show hasn't given me much to work with.

Jenny Mills is probably this show's most wasted character, all because they just had to introduce Hawley for a barely-there love triangle and as an Indiana Jones knockoff. There's nothing he did that couldn't have been accomplished just as easily by Jenny, and though there was perhaps room later down the track for a love interest and/or partner in crime, season two was too soon. There was too much we had to learn about Jenny herself.

As for Frank, he was relegated to another strange and pointless subplot. I was never in any doubt that he would reappear, but the way it happened was utterly bewildering. He digs himself out of a grave in the forest, it turns out he's soulless and in league with Henry, there's a half-hearted attempt to explore his family life (even though his daughter is missing entirely) and finally he's released from Henry's control due to events that happen somewhere else entirely. Um... okay.

Still, I'm glad that the final scene of the show included both him and Jenny meeting up with Ichabod and Abbie. If that's how we're to leave these characters, that's the image I want to go out with.

As for the bad guys, Henry has been disposed of after realizing that fathers suck and mummies will always be on your side, though I DID appreciate that Ichabod finally gets the chance to tell Henry: "I didn't even know you existed" and that he's little more than a child throwing a tantrum.

Again, he's got "wasted character" written all over him, though I concede it was always going to be difficult to portray a man-child (literally) as a legitimate threat. His bland, innocuous appearance was the scariest thing about him, though his motivation was always painfully trite ("I hate mum and dad!")

Not sure what happened to Abraham, but I do have to wonder whether or not he has a head. They barely bothered to shoot him without one, and everyone was talking to him like nothing was missing. Was some sort of spell cast that I missed, or did they just get lazy?  

Hey, it's Jaime Murray and Michelle Trachtenberg! Neither one is so famous as to call it stunt casting, but it was nice to see them again.

And we never did find out what happened to Luke Morales.

***

To sum up, I think the show's biggest mistake (besides shunting Abbie to the side-lines) was cutting the apocalypse short. Everything that the first season was building towards is wrapped up in the middle of the second season. Everything that follows (Frank, Henry, the Purgatory escapees) is just the clean-up effort. Obviously there can be no suspense or overarching plot to any of this.

Back at the beginning of season one there was a hopeful mention of "seven years of tribulation", which sounded a bit like a writer's game plan. I was under the impression that each season would end on a note that made things just a little bit worse for our Witnesses until the hypothetical seventh season saw them in a post-apocalyptic landscape, the status quo well and truly destroyed, struggling in a world where all of society had collapsed. Chaos on the streets, demons on the loose – the whole shebang.

As it happens, they ended up regurgitating the "seven years of tribulation" line in the finale, but it's hard to see how or why this would work. I mean, this entire show was meant to be the build-up to the End of Days, culminating in a Grand Finale seven years down the track, but they've already taken care of that halfway through their second season. All that remains is to tie up a few loose ends, which they were clearly doing in the finale's final moments. Moloch is defeated, Abbie and Ichabod are reunited, Frank is back to normal, Henry is dead ...  I've no idea where the show can go from here.

TO SUM UP...

I believe that Sleepy Hollow can be salvaged if it's given another season. They've managed to get rid of the things that were affecting the show's quality both behind the scenes (Mark Goffman) and in the story itself (Katrina, Hawley), so there's every chance this ship could right itself. Improvements were made to Elementary and The Legend of Korra, and they managed to continue/finish up on a high note. Why not here as well?

And even if it can't, it would be sad to loose Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie's sparking dynamic, which really is what kept a lot of loyal viewers tuning in week after week despite the slip in quality.

But the bottom line is that – frankly – I was bored for most of the second season. The show originally enticed me because of its interesting mix of Biblical lore, American history and dark fairy tale quality. Here it felt like a bunch of random stuff was being thrown at the screen, including a monster from Greek mythology and a Hindu goddess. Buh?

Some of its ideas were just plain sloppy, such as trying to squeeze the origins of the Salem Witch Hunt into five minutes (blaming it on a backstory about a warlock that accidentally killed the girl he loved and blamed it on his fellow magic-users). It actually made me miss WGN's Salem!

And of course, any showrunner that loses track of what makes the show tick – in this case, the bond between the two Witnesses and subsequent chemistry of the actors – really shouldn't be showrunner. Which, I guess, they've taken care of. But I'm not sure I'll return to season three even if it is greenlit. There's plenty of other good stuff out there, and Sleepy Hollow has already squandered most of its story potential. Perhaps Tom and Nicole should be freed up for other, more worthy projects.

Ah well, we'll always have season one.