Sleepy Hollow Episode 2.5: Never Fall in Love With a Handsome Englishman When Death is on the Line!!!

Nevermind all his women!  I'm shipping Ichabod and Shaft-the-Crow.

Dear M. Raven Metzner and All Sleepy Hollow Writers,

Thank you for your recent love letter to Sleepy Hollow fans, aka Episode 2.5, “The Weeping Lady.” Missive received, and on behalf of fangirls everywhere, back-at-cha, in triplicate.

Which is not, of course, to say that I'm not going to complain here and there. Hey, it's me; of course I'm going to find something to criticize. But mostly I just need to wax as-poetic-as-I-can about how marvelous, what a treat this episode was.

Since he first wandered onto that bit of 21^st century pavement in his tall, black boots, wide sapphire eyes bewildered, long hair flowing, Ichabod Crane has been a sex-symbol/dashingly romantic figure to many of us. With rare exception, though, you writers have bought into this only very cautiously, a bow to Abbie here, a bit of naked-time-traveler-in-the-shower comedy there. And good on you for it, as that restraint has paid off handsomely in character development and a large, dedicated, breathless fan base.

Gently, tenderly, you have begun to literally let Crane's hair down this season, and as long as you don't overplay it, it will remain a welcome indulgence. In “The Weeping Lady,” bless you, the man finally gets to play Dashing Romantic Figure par excellence across the board, an inadvertent ladykiller in every sense of the word, mostly without ever straying from the proper, chivalrous, cantakerous and hilarious Ichabod we know and love. (And when he does stray, it has nothing to do with him playing Dashing Romantic Figure, but more on that below).

The first of Crane's victims of love to be introduced and, unfortunately, promptly dispatched is none other than the lovely Miss Caroline, aka, Ichabod's Outlet Mall, his one non-apocalypse-fighting friend in Sleepy Hollow. We met Caroline in last season's finale at a revolutionary war reenactment when, ironically, Crane mistook her for Katrina. The entire Ichabod and Caroline opening scene is brilliantly hilarious, although I do think my best friend was right: it strained credulity that so handsome a man has had so little experience with female infatuation he couldn't recognize it smacking him in the breeches.

Alas, sweet Caroline, we hardly knew ye.

Meanwhile, Crane's ever-present worry for Katrina takes us to the lovely witch finally doing something!And using magic to do it! Even if Shaft-the-Crow did bite her three times, by God, she sneaked a letter out to her husband. Of course, as many have already complained, while Katrina may be a thoughtful and brave wife, she's not proving herself much of a spy—her supposed job these days--as the letter provides no intel whatsoever as to Team Moloch's plans for the apocalypse. But then who cares, really, because—this bears repeating—Katrina finally did something! And to our shock, delight, and ultimately, horror, she keeps doing things throughout the episode!

Thank you, so much, costume designers, for finally putting Katia Winter in a dress that doesn't force her boobs up into her nose. Talk about overkill; Katia Winter is so unbelievably gorgeous she could wear sackcloth and ashes and still be sexy as hell. Mind you, it's not a particularly plain, Quakerly new dress you gave her, but then if Abraham's shopping for her, what can we expect?

Speaking of Abraham, the best description of the scene which follows between him and Katrina also came from my best friend who described Abraham as “creepy as fuck,” and felt she needed to “boil her eyeballs after watching that.” Poor Abraham...he was starting to seem almost human, and then he had to go and confess himself a patient would-be rapist/murderer. Nice.

I'm kind of loving Henry's and Abraham's phone system through mirrors. It's such a gloriously campy, Disney mode of communication, but then, so is Katrina and Crane's Hogwarts derivative. More important, it's kind of hilarious and totally works. One thing pestered me, though. In one of the earlier episodes the season, the director used a mirror to show us that, while Katrina-with-the-enchanted-necklace can see Abraham as human, Henry still sees him as the Headless Horseman. But in their bewitched Skype call, Henry see Abraham exactly as Katrina does. Wonder how that is....

The second scene between Crane and Caroline, and the scene in Abbie's SUV which preceded it, are absolute perfection. Caroline was utterly charming and totally believable, and Crane--as written, acted, and directed--proved himself in every way the chivalrous, honorable English gentleman entirely deserving of Caroline's (and our) swoons. The bow was executed far more stiffly and clumsily than Ichabod's charming bow to Abbie in Season 1, but I suppose that's appropriate as Abbie is far more dear to Crane than Caroline.

But, naturally you guys—being YOU GUYS—follow this heartfelt, adorable scene by promptly murdering the unsuspecting Caroline with an unknown spectre. Honestly, how could you make us like Caroline so much and then immediately kill her off? Who do you think you are, Tim Minear? George R.R. Martin? I'm officially starting the Bring Caroline Back petition here and now. As we all know, death of one's character is no barrier to an acting job on Sleepy Hollow. It shouldn't be only the evil spirits who can wander around the Hudson Valley Undead; why not the benevolent ones too? Plus, Caroline's hilarious, and at some point, Ichabod will need some more new clothes.

Thank you for making space for Ichabod to grieve his new, lost friend a little before rushing headlong into the next set of catastrophes. Tom Mison makes Ichabod's grief and shock palpable, but not overplayed—perfect for a man who has buried too many friends and comrades, but wasn't really expecting to bury this one this morning. Likewise the tender professionalism of Beharie's Abbie keeps the scene grounded.

As our detectives begin their search for Caroline's killer at a spot under a bridge where high school kids go to make out, we are treated to an absolutely adorable Man Out of Time moment. Crane informs Abbie he knows perfectly well what a “lovers' lane” is, and whilst remaining true to his grief, he still manages to make us laugh describing a betrothed couple holding hands, followed by their parents to stave off any impropriety. Because of the potential for tonal whiplash, the scene couldn't have worked had Mison and Beharie not nailed it.

They nailed it.

The trip to the high school for intel kept blessedly brief (what the hell was Crane's comment re: half-dressed teen girls, “I'm duly impressed with their...spirit,” supposed to mean?), we move on to the Sleepy Hollow library, which proves one of the more exciting places in this little burg. Flirting, gunshots, near drownings, CPR, enchanted avian mail deliveries, and the best collection of historical fiction in the area—all in one building!

Everything that happens in the library is awesome, even the bits that makes no sense or ring wildly untrue. As our heroes “divide and conquer” to research the ghost story told them by the teen lovers (I do not think that phrase means what you think it means), Abbie runs into Hawley, and Crane runs into a crow. The crow delivers to Crane Katrina's pointless letter, in a scene worth everything Mison and the crow-wrangler went through to get it. I may the only person shipping Crane and Shaft, but I am most sincere.

Meanwhile, Abbie's so over yellow-bellied Hawley, she moves on to shooting at ghosts, specifically one very weepy lady who—HELLO?!?!--perfectly fits the description of the spirit they're trying to find.

Not to be outdone, the Weeping Lady promptly creates a very wet hole in the floor and pulls Abbie down into it. Turns out that through some kind of groovy magic, the hole goes straight to the river, and Abbie sees this when she briefly surfaces during her resistance to Weepy's determination to drown her. Crane frets uselessly for a while, while patrons seemingly flee what has quite suddenly become a very bizarre crime scene, before FINALLY reaching his arm just-a-little-ways-under-the water to grab Abbie.

By the time he finally succeeds in grabbing her, Weepy is happy to surrender Abbie because the latter is no longer breathing. Crane's terror and anguish as he concludes Abbie is dead are magnificent, as is Hawley's pushing him out of the way to do CPR (Yea! Hawley did something useful! Boy, everybody's just starting to represent here in Sleepy Hollow, aren't they?). In a season notable for its effort to ground the crazy in the sane reactions of ordinary people, you can't help wondering how the hell Abbie explained nearly drowning in a library to the paramedics.

Hawley departs without fanfare. His “gotta go see a guy about a thing,” works completely because a) that's pretty much what Hawley's always doing, and b) unless it involves Henry, nobody cares. Crane, meanwhile informs the speedily recovered Abbie that, while the “mobile doctors” tended to her, he did some more research on their perp. Sure he did. Yeah. That happened. Like Ichabod would leave her side for a nano-second after something like that? Uh-uh. Nope.

Once we're back in the Bat Cave, I have to twiddle my thumbs for a very long time waiting for Abbie and Crane to figure out that the Weeping Lady is, in fact, Crane's jilted ex-fiancee, Mary Wells. So, this is why you showed us Crane all flustered and taken aback by Caroline's advances; so that when all the signs were spelled out for him in plain English, and the Smartest Man In The Room still couldn't read them, we'd find that believable?

Sorry, guys. Good idea, didn't work. I just found myself gnashing my teeth in frustration at how long it took Abbie to figure it out, let alone Ichabod This-Couldn't-Possibly-Be-About-Me Crane (just because most of the villains and all currently known Horsemen of the Apocalypse became Horsemen of the Apocalypse because they were heart-broken by you, Handsome)!

For the Smartest Man In The Room to suddenly stop being the smartest man in the room because a woman is involved can make perfect sense, provided you set it up a hell of a lot more explicitly. We all know Crane makes some pretty piss-poor decisions where Katrina's involved, but in those instances he's blinded by passion and pride, not ignorance of his own capacity to captivate. For now, it felt quite off. And it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that Abbie would be that slow.

The flashback scene was absolutely gorgeous, although trying to convince us that the guy who thinks Versailles is quaint is going to live with his new bride in that small house and become a farmer is pushing your demands for willful suspension of our disbelief a bit far. Enter Mary Wells, the ex-fiancee Crane thought he had left behind in England for good. Even though she's a little bit totally crazy, to paraphrase Abbie, you got to admit Mary kinda nails what's happening between flowing-haired, romantically-open-shirted-Ichabod and gorgeous, equally-flowing-locked Katrina.

I honestly don't know if I feel more sorry for Mary because Ichabod seems not to have told her he only cared for her as a brother does a sister when they ended the engagement, when it would have been most appropriate and helpful, or because wardrobe put her in that hideous dress.

Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison are perfect throughout these scenes, with one exception I can't even believe I'm going to make. As someone who has complained mightily of Stage Crane, about the last thing you'd expect to hear from me is frustration with Mison underplaying his character. Yet, I really wanted to see the fear and horror dawning on Crane as he realizes that a) Caroline died, and b) Abbie nearly died, at the hands of a spectre whose heart he broke, and that c) Katrina is next.

Upon this realization our heroes race to save Katrina (something the Scooby Gang spends far too much time doing) only to find that, naturally, she's already been taken, and Headless is searching for her too. It probably didn't help that first they had to stop off to see Hawley for no reason whatsoever. The weapon they “acquire” from Hawley proves useless; the only valuable thing in this scene is Beharie's Abbie finally asking the men to stop their pissing contest.

Once they realize Katrina's been taken and head for the river, the story takes a turn for the epically interesting.

Katrina, the witch—finally freed of the wards Henry's placed around Abraham's lair to weaken her powers--manages to save herself from The Weeping Lady. Can I get an “amen” on that, my sisters? (Mega-props to actress Katia Winter for doing her stunts on that one, too). Not only that, but once Abbie and Crane arrive, Katrina (not Crane nor Abbie) deduces that Henry has made this previously benevolent spirit corporeal and deadly, a deduction which in turn gives her the knowledge needed to send Mary's spirit on “to a better place” (presumably one that isn't managed by a guy with rams horns sticking out of his head). Of course, she can't tell us this without intoning that her very soul may not survive the use of such dark magic, at which point Abbie, who simply doesn't do drama where stopping the Apocalypse is concerned, immediately volunteers to help keep Katrina's spirit safely on this side of the grave.

Katrina and Abbie say the necessary incantations as Crane tries to ward off the enraged Mary, but it turns out that while the “sending-you-on-to-a-better-place” incantations can immediately rob a murderous spirit of her murderous thoughts, you have to wait a little while for them to take full effect, sort of like a Miracle Max pill. Mary, therefore, gets a brief respite of life again, this time dying in her beloved Ichabod's arms, but not before pointing to Katrina as the cause of her suffering.

Crane asks Katrina why Mary pointed at her. Katrina gives him a plausible answer, but not the real one: big mistake. Huge. Because Crane FINALLY figures out that Mary, a woman of incredible tenacity, would never have given up on him that easily. So Crane, who has had it up to here with Katrina keeping secrets from him, demands an explanation—now, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the woods, with a dead body on his lap and the Horseman on the hunt. Katrina eventually spills all, or at least most, of the beans.

In flashback we come to learn that Mary demanded a meeting with Katrina after Ichabod had rejected the former's suit. In that meeting she accuses Katrina of all sorts of not very nice things that make one's hair stand on end the same way Abraham's description of Ichabod in Episode 2.02 did. Are these hints? Will we look back on this scene after the finale and realize Mary was right? We don't yet know.

What we do know is that Mary comes at Katrina, as though to attack her, and goes over a cliff. You Sleepy Peeps were very clever and very coy about how you showed us that. We see Mary running towards Katrina, and then, from the bottom of the cliff, we see Mary fall. But we have no idea what happened in the interim. Did Mary trip on a branch as Katrina told Ichabod? Did Mary attack Katrina, and in fear and self-defense, Katrina pushed back hard enough to send the unfortunately-clad woman over the cliff.

Or, as has been wildly speculated on the net, did Katrina commit cold-blooded murder to keep Mary from taking Ichabod from her?

We don't know. And I love that we don't know. What I don't love and don't buy is Ichabod going all ape-shit on Katrina about all the things she's kept from him. Okay, sure, some of them are huge. The fact that his childhood friend and former fiancee died in front of Katrina--whatever her involvement in said death--and that Katrina not only got rid of the body but mimicked Mary's handwriting in order to convince Ichabod she had returned to England is maybe the kind of thing she shouldn't have kept from her husband. I get him being angry about that. It's kind of a biggie.

But he's angry at and suspicious of Katrina before that. Before he has any idea what happened to Mary, he's already more willing to trust the corpse who five minutes ago was trying to kill every woman close to him than his wife who spent 231 years in purgatory and lost her only son in order to save him?!?!?

Let's look at Katrina's supposed list of crimes against Ichabod. Her keeping from him that she's a witch, in colonial New England? How exactly does one bring that up in conversation? Her keeping from him the fact that she was a spy for Washington? Isn't keeping what you do from your loved ones part of the job description? And as for her keeping from him her pregnancy, if we could all just step back to Season 1 for a moment we'll remember both that Katrina claimed she didn't know she was pregnant until after Ichabod “died,” and they hadn't exactly had much time for catching up on the others' news in the present before Ichabod learned it himself.

As for her not telling him he's a Witness, actually she tells him he's Neo, aka The Chosen One, almost as soon as she meets him. If he didn't bother to ask her what that meant, well...okay, maybe that's kind of a biggie.

But here's what I think is unfair. Crane rips Katrina a new one about all her “deceptions,” yet his BFF Gdubs also kept from Crane that he was a witness, that Katrina was a spy, and I suspect, that Katrina was a witch (after all, Franklin knew). Yet in our very next episode there's lovely Ichabod, toasting George Washington and comparing him to the Biblical Joshua. No censure, no anger, no resentment for his old pal.

Either this is showing us a side of Crane that I like not at all—in which case, cool, interesting, looking forward to seeing where it goes—or I am a complete nutjob for thinking that a woman who alienated her coven and the masons, was forced to give up her son to protect him (whoops), and spent more than 200 years alone in purgatory in service both to the cause and the love of her husband, the woman who now remains a voluntary prisoner of the Horseman of Death, liable to be raped and beheaded, not necessarily in that order, by him at any time, all to serve the cause and protect her husband, deserves to be cut the tiniest little bit of slack.

Man, no wonder Moloch wants Katrina on his side! Talk about a warrior with a serious commitment to the cause, and an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice for what she believes in. Katrina would be an incredible ally for Team Apocalypse; I just hope Team Stop the Apocalypse gets their shit sufficiently together that they don't lose her to Abraham's, ahem, sincere, ahem, concern, ahem, and charm, cough, cough, cough.

If there was anything I found more disturbing than the noble, self-sacrificing, secretive, Constantly-Captured-Katrina turning into Possibly-Murderous, and Certainly-Confoundingly-Complicated-Quaker Katrina, it was Ichabod's Borderline Personality Disorder rearing its ugly head in Act 6.

One of the defining character traits of a person with BPD is the tendency to put someone on a pedestal and then kick the damned thing out from under them the first time they fail to live up to your idealized expectations. One minute he's telling us that Katrina walks on water and the next he's bemoaning to Abbie that marriage is difficult on its best days.

Whoa! Who are you and what have you done with the Ichabod who made Yolanda cry with tales of a perfect fairytale love? Thank you, writers, for finally bringing Ichabod out of the clouds and letting us see him as a real married man who apparently just discovered that he's married to a real flesh-and-blood woman. But to switch so quickly from Mr. Utterly Besotted to “well, I can't trust her, so I guess, Abbie, I'd better stay loyal to you” gave me total, absolute emotional whiplash.

And Abbie. God I just love Abbie, how she's so over it--“This is another Katrina thing, isn't it?”--how she's way too smart to get drawn into this soap opera. She's figured out she can't trust which Ichabod's going to show up on This Week at the Apocalypse: devoted fellow-witness? Distracted, desperate, overwrought husband? Devastated and heart-broken father? Furious warrior? God bless our tough-as-nails Abbie, she just rolls with it, week after wacky week.

I'm not a ladykiller.  I just play one on TV. 

At this point, I'm really not convinced that Our Dashing, Romantic Leading Man deserves Katrina or Abbie. I'm even thinking of bringing my personal S.S. Ichabbie into port and torpedoing that baby, because if The Weeping Lady has taught me nothing else, it's given me the second most important lesson in international relations. The first, of course, is never get involved in a land war in Asia. But the second has got to be never fall in love with a handsome Englishman when Death is on the line!

Sleepy Hollow Episode 2.6: No More 'Dances with Wendigos' Guys, Please!

Writers, Sleepy Hollow is a great show, but it can, and must, be better.

The chihuahua is by far the best thing about this scene.

Episode 2.6 had so much to commend it, from a story perspective, the performances in particular of Nicole Beharie, Zach Appelman, and Orlando Jones, the editing, lighting, and special effects. Thematically, you went to both a good and interesting place. I want to spend this critique telling you how wonderful I thought that all was.

I can't.

In the beginning, namely Episode 1.02 last season, you sowed the seeds for a potentially appalling or potentially liberating relationship between Sleepy Hollow and the American Genocide by having Ichabod Crane, a Revolutionary War soldier working under George Washington, be surprised by Euro-America's devastation of Indigenous America. Tom Mison's extremely touching, well-acted-- albeit wholly unbelievable--shock and horror that entire nations Ichabod considered his friends are all but gone laid the groundwork for some compelling story lines and storytelling. But then you had Abbie sum up the post-Revolutionary invasion of Indian Country with, “after the war, the new government and the Native Americans fought over land,” effectively heading Sleepy's relationship to the invasion and ethnic cleansing of this continent right to the edge of a cliff. Last Monday night, with “And the Abyss Gazes Back,” you dove right off of it.

We need to start with the roots of this problem, because they produced the tree that brought forth this unfortunate fruit, and will continue to do so if left unaddressed.

Root #1: Making Ichabod Crane ignorant of the genocide of Indigenous Americans.

The genocide executed by the American armies, government and people was well, well under way by the time Ichabod Crane came to the colonies. It was not something that started as a response to “battles” between the colonists and native nations after the war. Crane, as an intimate of Washington, would have been well aware of both the assaults on Native communities and the efficacy of some indigenous resistance resulting in massacres of American settlers.

Root #2: Ichabod Crane, as a soldier in the American army, fought beside the Mohawks, becoming what Seamus Duncan caustically referred to as a “friend of the tribe,” or as we're seeing this season, multiple Native nations.

The Mohawks, along with the majority of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois confederacy), sided with the British in the Revolutionary War, believing that their chances of survival were stronger under Crown rule than colonial. As it happened the War proved devastating for the Iroquois.

As for friendships with members of other Native nations, while it's far from impossible, the level of intimacy Crane would have had to have to become fluent in as many languages, spiritual beliefs, and hunting techniques as Sleepy Hollow suggests requires far more from this audience member than willing suspension of disbelief. It requires a lobotomy.

Root #3: Ichabod Crane's BFF, George Washington, has consistently been portrayed as a veritable saint in the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, yet both during the Revolution and after, Washington was personally responsible for ordering horrific acts of ethnic cleansing and scorched earth policies which devastated Native nations. (I still can't believe you haven't addressed the fact that Washington manumitted his slaves only upon his death).

Root #4: Abbie's reduction of genocide to “the new government and the Native Americans fought over land” was only tolerable if it was going to be revisited. While it's completely believable that a young police officer reared and educated in Sleepy Hollow, NY could have been so inadequately educated as to consider this an accurate reflection of what transpired, it is inconceivable that showrunner Mark Goffman, a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, could come to this script that ignorant of American history.

As for plot exploitation of Native peoples, things started getting ridiculous in Episode 1.02 with Crane and Abbie drinking a supposed Mohawk potion that included plants not indigenous to North America, and then being stung by a scorpion, an animal that could not possibly ever have lived in that bioregion. This is one of those things that's more irritating than offensive, and I'm happy to throw it in the cabinet of Totally Absurd Sleepy Hollow Phelebotinum, the things I put up with as long as the heart of the story is there.

Something I can't throw into that cabinet is your playing the first Native person we meet in Sleepy Hollow as an environmental villain for laughs. Of course there are Native people who pollute as badly as non-Natives, but without any context or understanding of how that came to be, this is wildly inappropriate; attributing such behavior to a medicine man borders on idiocy.

This season, so far, we've been told that Crane was trained to hunt by the Abenaki. Hawley questions Crane's sanity given that the Abenaki have been gone from New York State for 200 years. I'm still wondering how much time the Abenaki have spent in New York State period.  Doesn't Abenaki mean “People of the Land of the dawn,” or “Eastern people,” as in, the first folks to see the sunrise?

More to the point, the Abenaki are simply used and exploited by the writers to give Crane forest cred. No discussion of the impact of the colonies or the War on the Abenaki is even attempted.

This brings us to Episode 2.6, wherein we learn the mind-boggling “facts” that Ichabod Crane was close friends with Daniel Boone, lifetime enemy of the Shawnee, and close friends with the Shawnee, so much so that he is fluent in both the Shawnee language and spiritual customs.

Really, Sleepy Writers?

First off, why would Crane have known Boone or the Shawnee? While Boone fought in some battles, largely far from the center of Crane's activity, his primary purpose as a Revolutionary militiaman was facilitating the settlement by Euro-Amercans of the Shawnees' land, through force and terror if necessary. The vast majority of this land was west of the original colonies at the time Crane was active on the Revolutionary scene.

For Crane to have become fluent in Shawnee language and customs he would have had to have lived with the people for a substantial period of time and earned their trust. There's no way that could have happened and he remain a friend of Daniel, or Squire Boone, Jr. There's no way that could have happened and he be surprised, ala Episode 1.02, to learn that the majority of Native Americans are dead.

The Schoolhouse Rock version of American history you guys settle for and twist beyond recognition usually doesn't bother me, because a) it pertains to the “victors” in both the Revolutionary War and imperial expansion, and because b) the actual history of the events you're perverting is well-established in the American consciousness.

This doesn't work when we're talking about victims of genocide, particularly a genocide which continues to benefit the political and biological descendants of those who perpetrated it. Particularly when the genocide is still going on.

One can only conclude that you're either completely unaware of American history, or you're literally trying to whitewash it, painting the Boones and the Shawnees as pals after the fact (after, for example, the Shawnee killed 2 of Daniel Boone's children in battle, captured him and captured his daughter—sounds like a Crane family reunion). It's bad enough that you're exploiting Native people for storytelling purposes while giving absolutely no airtime to the injustices Euro-America continues to perpetrate against them, but this is way, way too much.

I should not have to give you props for hiring an indigenous actor--Sicangu Lakota Eddie Spears--to play Big Ash, but props nonetheless since last year you brought in (excellent but not indigenous) Australian actor Michael Teh to play a Mohawk medicine man despite the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of talented, skilled, and unemployed indigenous actors in this country.

Spears gave a fine performance (though the Chihuahua is still my favorite character in that scene), given what he had to work with. I'm right up there with Genevieve Valentine: if we need to have new recurring characters, I'll take Big Ash over Hawley any time. But how is it Hawley managed to make friends with not one but FOUR Shawnees in upper New York State? Granted, Shawnees can be found anywhere these days, but I lived in Denver—the unofficial “capital” of Indian Country—and in 15 years I only met 3 Shawnees, two of whom were related to each other, and the other of whom was just passing through.

How did Ichabod know that Frank was the medicine man (for the love of God, please stop using the word “shaman.” There's no way a man who lived so closely with Native people would use that word)? Is it because he's the elder? That's not a requisite for being a medicine person. Never mind the more obvious phlebotinum leap, his calling this group of men a “Shawnee hunting party.”

Please, Sleepy Writers. You are so much better than this. Be better. How?

The show Longmire was recently cancelled, much to my dismay. While fans and producers are working hard to get it a new home, the show's indigenous consultant, who did a phenomenal job, Marcus Red Thunder, may be in need of a job.  Perhaps you could give him a call? 

http://alldigitocracy.org/how-aes-longmire-gets-it-right-when-portraying-american-indians/

Or, better still, hire a Native consultant who is actually from the Sleepy Hollow area. And then find yourself an excellent Native writer to join the writing staff and be with you in the room 24-7. This is not only good business, it's necessary reparation.

As for what worked in the episode, both the story and the themes of the episode were just marvelous. Every scene between Beharie and Appelman rang true, the theme of a soldier/warrior being cursed with both “nostalgia,” aka PTSD, and a “monster within,” by War was gorgeous, and largely well-executed. Thank you for giving at least a tiny bit of Frank Irving as a man who manages to fight the monster within and remain true, in the end, to himself, Henry Parish be damned.

However, speaking of people of color in Sleepy Hollow, enough with the White Guys already. Last year, you gave us three magnificent characters in Abbie Mills, Jenny Mills and Frank Irving. With the exception of Abbie, you've all but deleted those characters from the story, in favor of Nick Hawley, Abraham van Brunt, now Joe Corbin, and even Henry Parrish. Don't get me wrong—I love all four actors, and with the exception of Hawley, all four characters. But I don't want them in my show at the expense of Jenny and Irving. Even Reyes I'd be more interested in spending time with—she's proven herself a powerful, strong, brave woman, and one of these days I have a feeling she may also prove interesting.

I mentioned in my critique of Episode 2.4 that I was waiting for Hawley to go Full Han Solo on us and redeem himself. Not only has he yet to do so, but his character in 2.6 proved even more reprehensible, selling a “sacred mask” the Shawnee inexplicably and unbelievably sold to him. If you want us to accept Hawley even slightly as a suitor for Abbie, you have got to give Matt Barr beauty in something other than his biceps.

As for Crane in this episode, Mison did a largely credible job, at times very moving. But the scene in which Joe Corbin asks him if he loves his son did not land. Mison's subtlety in response to the question was spot-on, but tonally did not work at all because you preceded that exchange with the running joke of Henry going through “a rebellious phase.” I like both of these—Ichabod's pained love for his son, him treating Henry like a poorly-reared 3-year-old—but not together. As a result, I absolutely did not believe Ichabod when he said he loved his son. And I need to believe him; that's important. What happened to that passionate, angst-ridden father of “The Golem”? Has Henry's burying him alive gotten rid of all of that sense of protectiveness and guilt?

As for the scenes in which Crane is introduced to more aspects of the modern world, while I absolutely adore you for putting Tom Mison in long wig and yoga clothes and having him flash us his belly in a handstand, it's completely unbelievable that Abbie hasn't noticed yet that the man needs no help whatsoever in the abs or “double jug” department (no one could execute a handstand that well if he did). As for Ichabod playing video games, no, guys. Just. No. It's believable that Joe Corbin, a war vet who grew up with video games, would find himself playing them for relaxation upon his return from Afghanistan. It's completely unbelievable that a man as sensitive and empathetic as Crane, who fought a war in which more often than not he felt the breath of the man he killed on his face as he died, would find such a thing anything but deeply disturbing (see, for example, his reaction to the reenactors in last season's finale).

Finally, we're only six episodes in, and already you've used “bitch” twice in scripts. Please stop. I know it's the hip thing that all the cool kids are doing these days, but a large percentage of your audience comes from a demographic that deeply resents that word being used ever, in any context.