Sleepy Hollow - "For the Triumph of Evil" - Review

Intro

I'm extremely nervous at the moment, just fyi. I've written this review ahead of time so, at this point, the only bit of possible mistakes or whatever are typos... and this review is rather long so I'm just gonna let all that lie there and start...

Spoiler Warning

If you have not seen the first three episodes of Sleepy Hollow, please leave the blog and come back after you've seen them. My reviews almost always contain spoilers.

Sleepy Hollow - "For the Triumph of Evil" - Review

Characters:

• Lieutenant Abigail "Abbie" Mills - Played by Nicole Beharie and Jahnee Wallace. 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.
• Jennifer "Jenny" Mills - Played by Lyndie Greenwood and India Scandrick. Abbie's sister. Saw the Four Trees as a child. In a mental institution.
• Detective Luke Morales - Played by Nicholas Gonzalez. Abbie's ex-boyfriend.
• Dr. Mara Vega - Played by Mary Kraft. 1st victim of Ro'kenhrontyes. Jenny's former doctor.
• Garret Gillespie - Played by Pete Burris. 2nd victim of Ro'kenhrontyes. Found Abbie and Jenny after they saw the Four Trees.
• Wiroh - Played by Alex Livinalli. Mohawk shaman and used car dealer.
• Ro'kenhrontyes - Mohawk dream demon.

Review:

I might possibly have made the mistake of reading a couple blog posts about "For the Triumph of Evil" before writing this review. Actually, I simply skimmed the second one, but in all fairness, I was trying to figure out who played Ro'kenhrontyes. The first review I read seemed to be complaining about A) the fairly easy to dispose of Ro'kenhrontyes and B) the apparent procedural nature of the show. I would like to address both these points in my review.

First, Ro'kenhrontyes. The point of Ro'kenhrontyes was to get Abbie to a place where she could admit she'd been wrong in betraying Jenny and banish the fear of what they'd experienced as children. Yeah, he was pretty easy to get rid of once she'd done that, but not all the "monsters" and "demons" can be ridiculously hard to dispose of. Sleepy Hollow is, after all, a heavily "monster of the week" type show. The purpose of the various hell denizens is not to be really hard to vanquish. Their job is to help the main characters develop along the overall narrative. Ro'kenhrontyes got Abbie to a point where she could reconcile with Jenny and was disposed of accordingly. I thought the disposal of Ro'kenhrontyes was actually pretty cool. I'd not been expecting him to turn to glass and I thought it made sense because glass is made of sand.

As for the procedural element of the show, it's a vehicle for storytelling and that's it. Also, what were you expecting when one of the main characters is a Police Officer? The complaint about this makes me angry. Sleepy Hollow could have gone one of two ways, which I will refer to as the Buffy route and the Grimm route. The Buffy route is "monster of the week" without police involvement at all, basically ever... except when they randomly show up, but that's not the point. The Grimm route is "monster of the week" with full police involvement. The main character of Grimm is, like Abbie, a police officer.

I think Sleepy Hollow is actually combining the Buffy route and the Grimm route to come up with their own thing. Abbie will provide the police presence and procedure. Ichabod will be both backup and "Watcher," as it were. Irving will funnel pertinent cases to them. And Luke... Luke will stick his nose where it shouldn't be and end up joining Abbie and Ichabod.

Okay, now that I've done that, we can get to my usual "I liked x, I didn't like y" thing.

I like Jenny so far. She'd self-aware, snarky, and suitably creeped out by the demonic stuff happening to her and around her. I thought her meeting with Ichabod was well done. I could take her seriously and chuckle at her self-aware wit at the same time. I'm looking forward to seeing what she brings to the team once she actually joins up... hopefully.

I actually liked the taunting Ro'kenhrontyes did before he properly went after Abbie. It was more or less realistically done, enough so that I was really thrown/creeped out by the eye turning to sand thing. Ick. Ro'kenhrontyes' Dream World, or whatever it was, strongly reminded me of Supernatural's Purgatory, until we got to the interiors. It was suitably dream-like and creepy at the same time. I was even happy Ro'kenhrontyes had Dr. Vega and Mr. Gillespie just hanging around in the hallway, as strange as that sounds.

I thought the chemistry between Abbie and Ichabod was a lot stronger this episode. It's clear Ichabod is beginning to view Abbie as a little sister. I sincerely hope they don't go the route of love interest between them for lots of reasons. I noticed Abbie trusted Ichabod a lot more as she got used to having him around. She didn't even blink when he messed up the evidence tape. It rather reminded me of when we have to take things from my nephew. Just "Oh, no. Done with that now. Moving on." Speaking of which, I like that Irving's going to let them have the Records Room. It kind of reminds me of the library during the first three Seasons of Buffy.

So... this review ended up being really long... I'm gonna go ahead and just end it here by saying: I liked "the Triumph of Evil" and I can't wait for more Sleepy Hollow!

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Tom Mison should do audio books. I could happily listen to him all day.
• Ichabod accidentally fast-fowarding or rewinding the evidence tape and then covering horribly was hilarious.
• Someone needs to take Ichabod shopping.
• The upside-down shot struck again! UGH! Do Not Want!
• I'm less certain Irving is evil now.

Theories:

Luke is going to join the "Scooby Gang" at some point and be immensely annoying meantime.

Favorite Lines:

• "You're a living being walking in the Valley of Death." - Wiroh
• "I broke a wall." - Ichabod

Housekeeping

Okay so... the nervousness is being caused by a job interview I've scheduled for tomorrow. It's my first one ever that's actually interview-y... my last one was just the phone interview. So yeah... this typing really helps with the shaking.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully have up my Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review, no promises. If it's not up tomorrow, I'll have it up Thursday... and so on and so forth...

Last little thing, there will most likely be a Nuzlocke Challenge update here this evening, so look for that if you're interested. I'm going to go fix the Home page now.

Love ya, Jessie