Sleepy Hollow Season Premiere: Team Apocalypse is in Serious Trouble

Fake Crane hugging Real Abbie in purgatory.
He was really nice till he started growling.

Monday night I watched the Season 2 Premiere of Sleepy Hollow with a dear friend I'll call “Sleepy Virgin.” I was thrilled he was watching it with me because I was sure he would love it as I did.

I turned to him 2/3 of the way through Act I and said “I'm so, so sorry.”

My beloved Team Apocalypse is in serious trouble, and I don't mean from War, Headless, or the-villain-that-Sleepy-Virgin-has-taken-to-calling-“Mollusk” (as in, “as frightening as a...”).  I mean from its makers, and I'll be damned if I'll let them jump the shark this early in Sleepy Hollow's tender life without a fight.

I am an unrepentant Sleepy Hollow Fan Girl. I LOVE this show. I love the whole bonkersawesome premise, the characters, the relationships among the characters, the humor, the tenderness, the action, the actors, the writers, the special effects team, the stuntpeople, the key grip...you get the idea. But, Guys, Monday night's episode was...just...bad. I write this out of love, because I just can't bear a Season of Bad, and I want to remain a Sleepy Hollow Fan Girl.

First let's talk about what worked.

As any fan or writer would recognize, the Sleepy structure requires each week some supernatural event/person/thing our heroes have to stop (or find) to keep Moloch and Company from entering the world thus bringing about the End of Days. But the first episode of the new season had to serve a different, much more challenging purpose as well: it had to get most of our major characters out of the insanely difficult predicaments the writers put them in during the season one finale, and, most important to any story, provide a potent emotional resolution to said predicaments.

This is a huge challenge, because in order to service all three objectives, the writers had to fundamentally shift the priorities of our hero, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), for this episode and make them run counter to his personal motivation for the entirety of the previous season (to rescue and reunite with his wife). Choosing to rescue his partner, Abigail Mills (Nicole Beharie), before his wife was essential to servicing the needs of the series, and the desires of the fandom, who had a primal need to see him reunited with Abbie asap.  By bringing the A story, the threat he and Abbie have to stop, up first in the story, the writers not only kept to traditional Sleepy structure, they also showed us quite believably why Ichabod would rescue Abbie first.  Artistically, intellectually, and emotionally, that was very satisfying.

Unfortunately, it came at a tremendous cost, but more on that below.

Every scene Jenny Mills (Lyndie Greenwood) graced worked, even when the scene had serious flaws. Exciting, emotional, but light enough not to take themselves too seriously, these scenes reminded me why I love Sleepy Hollow in the first place. The working and emotional relationship between Jenny and Crane was an absolute delight.  We need more scenes between these two. It's good to know Ichabod has someone to snark with/adore/raise hell with when Abbie's not around.

Katrina, Crane's wife, (Katia Winter) finally got to do something other than stand around and look pretty (which she could do in her sleep) and that is a huge, and long-needed, advancement for this show. She attacks the Horseman of Death first chance she gets, and attempts to free herself.  She doesn't do it very well, but, hey, major step in the right direction, writers.

Last season, everyone pretty much agrees and admits, Katrina wasn't a character as much as a plot device. She was monotone, singularly tragic, and never allowed to be funny. I'm told the writers realized they have to show us why Ichabod was mooning about her so much when he has the amazing Abbie Mills in front of him, and plan to do so. I can't wait. Katia Winter has a great sense of humor; let's hope that in addition to showing off her own badassery, Katrina gets a chance to be funny. Now if they would just get her out of that bloody corset.

Abraham came back, and let's face it: Headless is a far more interesting, not to mention better looking, villain with a head. I look forward to seeing more of Neil Jackson this season—and, no, I'm not talking about the creepy Headless Ken Doll we were exposed to in the premiere--because the relationship between him and Katrina could be a really interesting plot line.

The explanation of how Katrina would “phone home” from purgatory, complete with relevant flashbacks, was pretty cool (although I still don't understand how Katrina could phone home from anywhere she wanted, but Abbie had to be in Moloch's lair). And it was lovely seeing John Cho again. His two short scenes with Nicole Beharie were marvelous, though his presence felt more like a bone thrown to the fans—don't get me wrong; we like our bones—than an essential part of the story. But it worked because he played a vital role, giving Abbie a slew of necessary information. I'll roll with you on that one Sleepy because you understood that what we loved about Andy Brooks was the tormented goodness and love for Abbie he retained even after selling his soul.

There were a number of individual bits that were really well done. Tom Mison's first words of the script are heartbreaking and perfectly delivered. The reunion hug in purgatory between Abbie and Ichabod, which fans have pined for, lo, these last nine months, was appropriately passionate. Ichabod's driving was marvelous, and thank you for having him be sufficiently flummoxed in the moment that figuring out reverse was beyond him. Reuniting Henry with his beloved plants was brilliant. I absolutely adore the fact that the Horseman of War has a green thumb.

And our heroes are out of Purgatory, and out of the crypt, so that's good.

Now for what didn't work for this fan.

Act I was seriously problematic, for multiple reasons.  

For starters, you cannot promise your audience that you will pick up right where you left off with your characters and then pretend you're picking up a year later. Those of us who know what you promised won't believe the illusion you give us in Act I, in which case we're yanked out of the scene, thinking too much, impatient with the illusion, not identifying with our characters, and getting no pleasure from the twist.

Those of us who don't know, like Sleepy Virgin, still can't lose themselves in the story because the way the act is played out, the fourth wall is being continually, unintentionally, shattered.

Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison are really good actors, which means, unfortunately for this episode, that they do what their directors and producers tell them to do. For much of the show it seemed like their primary directorial injuctions were “play caricatures of your characters, while you clunkily exposit your heads off.”

The first few scenes were just bizarre.  The tone, the flow, the feel of them was all wrong.  Our beloved heroes are talking revenge, rather than justice; Crane is snapping at Abbie for remembering the past, his favorite stomping ground; the wind is opening Crane's door for no reason other than to break the tender moment between him and Abbie (not a Billy Joel fan, eh wind?).  

Having only seen the episode once (I'm intentionally writing this before seeing it a second time, because you only get one shot to win people over; if we're not already hard-core fans, and we don't like it, we're not coming back), I'm still scratching my head over the cupcake. So, we were celebrating Ichabod's birthday? Or the first anniversary of the killing of Katrina and Jenny? Okay, I'm a moron, because obviously you wouldn't celebrate the latter.  But the two anniversaries did get sort of mashed up together, and didn't Ichabod say something about celebrating “terror” with dessert, or have the writers finally succeeded in breaking our beloved Tom Mison's capacity for crystal clear elocution (or my mind)? And the whole cupcake bit just went on for way too long, while we're still suffering the emotional whiplash of having just heard our terrified Ichabod cry out for help, seemingly from his grave, before falling into his made-up surprise party.

(Also, and this is terribly petty, I know, but who does the math in your production offices? Ichabod couldn't possibly have been turning 251. He died in 1781, at approximately the same age, we can reasonably deduce, that Tom Mison was when he started playing him, 31. He was resurrected 232 years later. That makes him 263. It's totally fine for Ichabod to intone in the “previously-ons” that he awakes 250 years (or two and a half centuries) later in a world he no longer knows. He's allowed to round up in that context. But not at a birthday party. When you're celebrating someone's birthday, unless we've all agreed to forget the celebrant's age out of delicacy, one has to know how many candles to put on the cake).  (Oh, dear.  I think I just made it patently obvious why I'm a fan of Ichabod Crane.)

Perhaps because I couldn't lose myself in their characters from the very first scene, the whole bit at the historical society felt heavy-handed and silly. Ichabod and Abbie kept telling me (or shouting at me), “I'm acting like this because I'm so grievously angry.” Oh.  Really?  Did Ichabod Crane actually do the old floor roll Sigourney Weaver permanently discredited in Galaxy Quest, or did I imagine that? By the way, I don't care if they were in purgatory, how is it possible Abbie ran out of ammo so fast? I mean, sure, consecrated rounds, whatever those are, are probably hard to come by, but you've been training for a year and you haven't stockpiled more ammo? Meanwhile, Headless is winning the battle, so he's just going to leave now, okaythanksbye.

Was all that--the overblown acting, the clunky exposition, the plants, the wind, the absurdity of seeing Ichabod Crane saying “clear” and rolling around on the floor with a crossbow--supposed to be one long hint that we were in purgatory? Okay. Okay. I get it. No, wait. I don't get it. Why would you do that? If we as your audience were also supposed to be drawn in to the illusion, wouldn't it have been far better if we had had no idea about the twist until Ichabod starts to physically and mentally lose it, giving us only the most subtle of hints (as you did last season re: Jeremy) so that when we go back to rewatch it, only then do we realize you were warning us all along?

As for the much-touted Ben Franklin scenes, these were problematic on several levels, the primary one being that you needed to slow down.  Even Mison couldn't make all the dialogue attacking Franklin's character fully comprehensible on the first listen, and that's saying something. I know the old “Ichabod remembers something from the revolutionary era that helps him figure out our current puzzle” bit is integral to Sleepy's M.O., but if you're so obviously going to use that plot device, you have to do it well. I'll let you toss off a medieval French lantern Crane saw once that conveniently expels demons and happens to reside with Jenny's old comrades, but you can't just toss off Ben Franklin. And you can't give him and Ichabod a mentor-mentee relationship, fraught with antipathy, hire Timothy Busfield to play him, then race them through their scenes so fast almost nothing about their characters or relationship has a chance to land. It almost felt like, ex post facto, the director and producers realized the first act wasn't working and told the editor to get the audience through it as fast as humanly possible.

(As for the fact that every single thing Crane needed to know for the episode was handed out in one conversation with Ben Franklin, eh. I'm a Sleepy vet, so I'm used to it; Sleepy Virgin was appalled).

The awkwardness of Act I reached its nadir in the archives scene, with Abbie randomly pushing something off a table because she can't find the intel she wants (because that's something she'd do?!?!), and she and Crane expositing to each other like they both have terrible brain injuries. Then we go into question War, our first scene of the season between Jeremy and his Pops, which should be so pregnant with all this incredible relationship drama, but isn't and can't be because Pops is under the illusion he's already had a big, fraught reunion with his son.  (A reunion to which we, the audience, were not invited, thank you very much).

The Sin-Eater, Jeremy Crane/Henry Parrish/War (what do the writers call his character on the page this season?), played by the wonderful John Noble, spent the show eating scenery instead of sins. His villain was directed to be so over-the-top I was shocked he wasn't mustachioed and wondered if I shouldn't hiss whenever he came on screen. This is a travesty. War/Jeremy is an awesome character, played by an actor capable of conveying fantastically complex emotion with a single glance (see, for example, his reaction to seeing his mother for the first time in “Bad Blood”). To make him mono-dimensionally and melodramatically evil for even a second should be against the Geneva Conventions.

A major issue for both Sleepy Virgin and me was how did Moloch manage to create a spell in both Ichabod's and Abbie's brains, when only Abbie was in purgatory? I suggested that maybe a) it was actually War who did it, because he can apparently jump between worlds even though everyone else needs a key or soul to barter with, or b) maybe War worked on dear old dad while Moloch worked on Abbie, or c) maybe Ichabod was nearly dead, since that's one of three ways humans can get (at least spiritually) into purgatory. Sleepy Virgin was not impressed with my valiant attempts to make sense of this.

But overstuffed plot and overblown directing aside, there was a much, much bigger problem with Act I. Your audience has been waiting, above all else, for Abbie's and Ichabod's reunion. Be it loving, tense, both, neither, we've been waiting to see our captain and his beloved leftenant epically reunited after their epic separation. You can't just start the second season with them together, even if it is a ruse of War/Moloch. It's completely unfulfilling (which is why we didn't want you to take the easy way out and have time pass between the finale and the premiere in the first place). It makes their later grand reunion scene in Moloch's lair fall flat. The air has been let out of that balloon before it ever got a chance to fly. Thanks to Mison and Beharie, the later scene still has some power, but nowhere near what it could have, what it should have.

Speaking of reunions, about Katrina and Abraham's....The Headless Ken Doll was too far gone even for you guys. American Horror Story can get away with that, not Sleepy Hollow.  I know some people found it hot. I'm worried about them. For my part, it was damned creepy, and not in a good way. (More in a “what were the producers thinking?” kind of way). Was he supposed to be scary or sexy? Please say scary.  Because I'm right up there with Genevieve Valentine of io9 in finding a quasi-sexual relationship between Katrina and her captor, if things go all Stockholm-Syndromy, really disturbing. I could take Beauty and the Beast, if it weren't for the fact that Headless is a Mega-Stalker ex-boyfriend who sold his soul in exchange for the right to hold Katrina prisoner, and is hell-bent (pardon the pun) on killing her husband. Seriously, you'd better be going somewhere liberating for Katrina with this storyline, Sleepy writers.

I love the idea that Katrina can see Abraham because she's a witch, but not because he puts an enchanted necklace on her (how and when did he get it back from Ichabod?) and then “fades” into view (No, no, no. Necklace on, Neil Jackson's there; necklace off, Neil's not there). I get that she thinks the Headless Buffman (as Sleepy Virgin charmingly dubbed him) is trying to pull a fast one on her, convince her he's still human, that he's the one casting the spell, rather than Katrina using her own powers to see him. I get it, I just don't like it. After last season, to make reparation to Katia and your audience, every single chance you get to make Katrina powerful and active you need to take.

The audience's reunion with Big Bad Moloch in the scene between Abbie and Andy was underwhelming, to put it mildly. Sleepy Virgin wanted to know, “why is this guy walking around on his horse talking to himself supposed to be scary?” I would have answered him but I couldn't stop laughing, and I'm pretty sure that scene wasn't supposed to be funny.

How does Jenny know about whom Henry Parrish is speaking when he says “my father is gone?” All she knew at the end of last season was that Henry Parrish was not who he said he was, and was probably a member of Team Moloch. She wasn't in the Great Confessional Scene of 2014, wherein John Noble spends nine pages ripping our brains out of our heads. I'll buy that she's deduced he's War—Jenny's wicked smart—but why she would have the foggiest idea that Henry is Ichabod and Katrina's long-buried son, Jeremy, is beyond me. Nevertheless, when the-man-she-still-knows-as-Henry tells her his father is gone, she knows immediately that he's talking about Ichabod.

Who cleaned up Jenny? Even in the flashback used to remind us where we left her last season/five minutes ago, we can see she's pretty beaten up, bloody if not bruised. But just drag her into a warehouse with a children's desk (and an ambulance conveniently and inexplicably parked outside), give her a shot of adrenaline or something, and she's pretty as a peach again and raring to go, no blood, no scars.

(Ohhhhhh. I think I just figured it out. War and the Hessians kidnapped Jenny from the ambulance, didn't they? But you had to cut the scene for length. Is that what happened? You shouldn't have cut that.)

As he leaves the room, Henry tells Jenny that “war is hell.” C'mon, guys. You know the rules. If you're going to use a cliché, it has to be used in a way that is fresh and brilliant and necessary. All you did here was make possible more curtain-chewing on the part of John Noble.

Do I even need to comment on the fourth-wall-shattering incredulity of anybody putting Jenny Mills in plastic cuffs and then leaving a knife within arm's reach? Why was the knife even there in the first place? ('Cause someone told the props master to put it there). And if we're going to spend all that money putting random Hessians in the script, shouldn't we give them something to do besides die?

As for Ichabod's conveniently well-appointed coffin, okay, look, I accepted both the Andy Brooks and the Ben Franklin information dumps substituting for investigation and discovered clues, but even I can't cope with how thoughtful it was of Ichabod's son to bury him with a bit of flint and some gunpowder so he can get himself out of the grave.

Once Abbie and Crane are reunited for realsies, Crane ends their gorgeously passionate embrace by holding her firmly at arm's length while he talks to her. When they part, she keep pulling away from him before he's ready to let her go. Is purgatory really great for your hair (see Katrina, Abbie), but really bad for dental hygiene? More importantly, why was the scene so terribly overwrought? We've seen these two actors express sincere, heartfelt affection for one another very believably and dramatically (see “The Sin-Eater,” “The Indispensable Man,” “Bad Blood”). It worked in those episodes largely because our actors were allowed to exercise the necessary restraint such that the heavy bits really land, but also because the climactic emotions were built to, slowly, throughout the episode, throughout individual scenes. I know we left things at a very heightened pitch last season, and I love me my Ichabbie feels, but melodrama is a piss-poor substitute for drama.

After Ichabod returns from his trip through the looking glass, he gives us the act break that “[Abbie] doesn't have much time.” Nice act break but, um, since when? She's in purgatory. Moloch can't find her, even when she's in his crib. There's no clock in this episode, except the one implied by War beating them to the key, so isn't the issue really that none of us has much time? Also, if Moloch does manage to invade our realm with his demon army, wouldn't that make it possible for Abbie to kind of slip out with them, all Frodo-and-Sam-like, and come back to earth? I'm sure she saw Return of the King.

Ichabod convinces Jenny to stay behind and not come with him into purgatory because “You, me and your sister are...” or “Me, you and your sister are...” the only ones who know about all this. I don't remember which permutation Ichabod said, but I do know this: there is no way in purgatory that a British nobleman's son, born 250 years ago, a professor at Oxford University who prides himself on his intellect, would be caught dead, sleeping, or wide awake in a coffin on his cell phone uttering such a toothcurlingly ungrammatical sentence no matter how stressed out he is in the moment. No, no, no, no, no. To quote my mentor regarding a passage of my own, “you couldn't be more wrong.”

(see Mea Culpa re: the above paragraph)

Tonally, it's never been more obvious to me that scenes are filmed out of order and then stitched together later. Why is Abbie so totally freaked out and talking to herself in the scene when Fake Crane finds her? In her scene previous to this, in Moloch's lair, she was relatively calm considering Moloch could have come home at any moment and kill her.  In general, our Abbie's a pretty cool customer. She doesn't really freak out much.  Did you guys accidentally take out a necessary scene again?

Fake Crane was unnecessary. I can't believe I'm saying this, but two Ichabod Cranes are not better than one (although the subtle contrast in passions between the two Cranes, Fakey being more tender than Realy, was fun). If the old Fake Crane trick had to be used, please don't have Jenny remind the audience that eating and drinking in hell is bad immediately before we see Fake Crane trying to get Abbie to drink. As Sleepy Virgin beautifully pointed out, it completely ruins the twist. And did Abbie have to remind the audience that Crane pronounces “lieutenant” with an “f”? Are we really that clueless? Even the Sleepy Virgins?

This brings us to the climax. Abbie and Ichabod race away from Moloch as they speak the words we've all memorized by now, and find themselves confronted with a secondary gate blocking their path since this time No Witness Will Be Left Behind. Moloch's head whips around in surprise and he begins to come after them. He then starts raising his army of Walking Dead extras. Sleepy Virgin wondered aloud, aside from the series' leit motif of hands coming out of graves, why would souls in purgatory be buried in the ground? I didn't even try to justify that one.

More to the point, how and why was Moloch surprised that Abbie and Crane were racing for the gate? How did he not know where they were, what they were doing? Didn't Moloch just create/inhabit Fake Crane? (Never mind the more interesting question: how is it Moloch/Fake Crane can speak with such a gorgeous English accent, but can't remember that the Brits say “leftenant”? This guy was more scary when he was riding around talking to himself).

And speaking of that key, Moloch didn't seem to have much of a problem leaving purgatory without it ten years ago when he rescued Jeremy and scared the bejeezus out of the Mills sisters. Why now, all of a sudden, can he not leave without a key?  You guys have got to figure out the Rules of Purgatory, and the Limits of Moloch's power, and stop just making this shit up as you go. You are not Indiana Jones.

Back at the cabin, Crane suddenly remembers he has a wife to rescue, so we know what's coming in Episode 2, and poor Nicole Beharie is told to act her life out of her declaring the obvious (“We won't be fooled again!” “This is war!”).

Cut to War getting an avatar from his adopted dad for early Christmas. Now this really irritated me. First off, you did not have to explain why we sometimes see a dude with long curly black hair in a knight's armor as War. But if you were determined to do that, here's a novel idea: Put John Noble in a suit of armor. (The new avatar doesn't have the long hair anyway). I don't care if Henremy IS two-hundred and sumpen-sumpen years old--hell, Yoda was 900, and Darth was disabled--he's a warlock. And he's played by John “I-was-once-Denethor” Noble. If this character can bury his (possibly) younger, supposedly more virile, father with a gesture and a glance, can incapacitate his mother, a very powerful witch, with his will, what on earth does he need an avatar for?

(Because the 25-35 year old male demographic who buy all the cell phones and video games and cars and might actually join the Air Force will think it's cool, that's why).

I know, I know, I know: my job as an audience member is to willingly suspend my disbelief. Guys, I did that, for an entire season, about the most batshit crazy stuff, because you made the rest of the Sleepy World believable. You made me trust you. But if I can't trust you anymore, I can't go along for the wild ride, and I really, really want to.

In absolute truth, I probably would have gleefully overlooked most of these complaints, if only you'd given me a) a comprehensible and emotionally satisfying first act, and b) touching, believable performances from all the characters throughout.  As long as the heart is there, go ahead, take all the liberties with my mind you want. After all, it's Sleepy Hollow, where the impossible is the norm. But if the story isn't satisfying on an emotional level, if it doesn't make sense, if the performances are directed to be totally unbelievable, you can't get away with the rest of it.  And you cannot allow Tom Mison's eyebrows to dance the Macarena to convey distress. Besides, he knows better.

(Again, see Mea Culpa)

Having now seen the premiere a second time (with drastically lowered expectations), I must say I disliked it much less. I still don't think it was good, but I must grant that you did cross all your t's, and dot all your i's, and there were definitely some fun bits, and that is no small thing. It was an achievement, however disappointing, and I do thank you for that.

And thank God Crane, Abbie, Jenny and Jeremy are back. Now let's go free the rest of Team Apocalypse!