Sleepy Hollow - "Pilot" - Review

Intro

Whole new season, whole new review format! I will try to stick to this format as best I can for the rest of the season, though some sections may be appearing or disappearing from week to week, depending on whether I have something for them or not.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen last night's episode of Sleepy Hollow, please leave the blog and return after you've seen it. I'm horrible at keeping spoilers out of my reviews, sorry.

Sleepy Hollow - "Pilot" - Review

Characters:

• Lieutenant Abbie Mills - Played by Nicole Beharie. The "Second Witness." Saw the Four Trees as a child with her sister.
• Ichabod Crane - Played by Tom Mison. The "First Witness." Sort of time traveled from the Revolutionary War to the present because of his magical blood connection with the Headless Horseman.
• Captain Frank Irving - Played by Orlando Jones. Sleepy Hollow's Police Captain.
• Katrina Crane - Played by Katia Winter. Ichabod's wife. Apparently a witch of some sort. Shows up as a Hawk and in mirrors.
• Sheriff August Corbin - Played by Clancy Brown. The second modern day victim of the Headless Horseman.
• Andy Dunn - Played by John Cho. Worked for the demon and failed it. Killed by the demon.
• The Headless Horseman - Played by Richard Cetrone. Death incarnate.
• Jennifer Mills - Abbie's sister. Saw the Four Trees as a child. In and out of mental institutions, according to Abbie.

Review:

Sleepy Hollow was interesting, to say the least. I thought the way the episode was structured really worked. There wasn't a moment of wasted footage. I thought the supernatural element was well done, though I'm not entirely sold on the procedural bits at the moment. There was a lot of "Don't shoot, he's with me." and "Let me follow this lead." going on. I'm interested to see whether Sleepy Hollow follows the Grimm model or the Buffy model of mixing supernatural and procedural.

I liked Ichabod a lot. I thought the level of amazement, disbelief, wonder, and freak-out he had around modern stuff was okay. It worked mostly because Ichabod was shown to be both adaptable and open minded. In addition, I found his sense of humor pretty awesome.

I was much less impressed with Abbie. Despite her stubbornness, she was really bland. I like that she was willing to suspend her disbelief, but at the same time, she's just not fleshed out enough for me to like or dislike yet.

I'm also not sure how I feel about Katrina. We didn't get a lot of her this episode, but she seems to really care about Ichabod, which is good. I was also really struck by her stereotypical 18th century "sexy witch" outfit in the mirror scene. I don't like it and I don't feel like it was needed. But hey, Hollywood has a thing with selling actresses by making them sexy so... yeah... still don't like it.

I was also unimpressed by the demon. What we saw of it was extremely stereotypically demonic. Got the funky skin, got the giant horns, got the creepy face. It reminded me of The Beast from Angel.

As for the Headless Horseman, I though he was done pretty well. I was kind of confused when he first showed up, though Ichabod's pretty quick decapitation of him cleared that up really quickly. I do have a few things about him that kind of bugged me, but didn't completely kill the character for me. First, where did he get his modern weaponry? Second, where are the police gonna keep his head. Third, why does he burn in the sun like a vampire?

Final thing, the fairly easy acceptance of all the weirdness by Captain Irving, at least, bugged me. I thought that was taken care of way too quickly.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the "Pilot." I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the Season plays out. It looks like it's going to be fun.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The flip shot from the town road to the farm was annoying.
• Of course the older cop was gonna die in order to motivate the younger one. Called it.
• No real explanation of the priest. This bugs me.
• It's incredibly annoying that Ichabod knew General George Washington personally. Under his command, I buy. Actually knowing him, not so much.
• Ichabod flat out said he and Abbie would have seven years together. Hopefully Fox doesn't cancel this show before then.

Extras:

Sleepy Hollow Official Website: I checked this out last night while I was finalizing my notes and kind of cool... kind of. There's a "Secret Map" like the one in the show and a featurette with Nicole, Tom, and Orlando, along with the usual full episodes, clips, and character bio-ish stuff. And no, Fox isn't paying me to promote this. I wish.

Theories:

• Abbie's sister, Jennifer, is a witch. Based on the season preview.
• Captain Irving is a bad guy. Based on a look he gave Corbin's office/Abbie as he was closing up after her.
• Katrina will eventually end up coming out of the mirror into a physical body. Based on things that tend to happen with people trapped in mirrors.

Housekeeping

If you enjoyed this review, please leave me a comment. If you have something you'd like to say about Sleepy Hollow, please leave me a comment, I'd love to talk to you about it. Also I like comments.

Also, if you've just found my blog, welcome. I've got a Season worth of reviews from a bunch of last Season's shows already up. For quick viewing, check out the "Reviews" page via the navigation bar. To see what I'm watching and reviewing this Season, check out the "Fall Schedule" page, also via the navigation bar.

There will be another Sleepy Hollow review up next week, along with and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review. I'm so excited!

Love ya, Jessie