Sleepy Hollow S1E02 “Blood Moon”

Hrmph. Well, I did not have as much fun this week as I did last week. The opening sequence with the Sith Lord and Sauron chasing Ichabod Crane was cool. And the sticky note instructions in the hotel was a great touch. But then we jump into 40 minutes of exhausting exposition, plot, exposition, plot, exposition, plot. It’s all very cool stuff, but it’s SO MUCH with not a lot of depth behind it.

Spoilers behind the cut....

Sometimes, it is great to go full throttle into a story. But, when you’re at the beginning, it’s cool to just relax and stretch into the story. Give us some time with the characters. Let them settle into their new situations. Build the world in which the characters live and then let the audience live in it as well. Show us there are secrets to be revealed but don’t reveal them. Give me the monster’s point of view for a bit.

For instance, our Monster of the Week (MotW). Our witch was generic and not all that frightening and gone before we knew her, or her motivations, at all.  Bad guys are pretty awesome when we get to know them and their plans. What did work was John Cho creeping around town and calling out the witch’s victims. He was far scarier than the actual witch and we don’t know how he got into this mess. That is a secret, probably filled with bad things, that I hope they take a little time to reveal.

And, on another note, yes, witches are cool to use. But, when using them in the context of actual witch trials where hundreds (if not thousands over the years in Europe and America) of women were tortured and murdered and legitimizing those executions by having your story say “They were guilty all along!” ehhhhh sort of not cool. I don’t mean it can’t be used, but lets maybe at least try to talk about it with some historical accuracy. Maybe, in this world, there were a handful of baddies and innocent women died in the midst of this war, but at least mention it.

The tunnels under the city, and the explosion that I guess no one noticed, were hilariously hokey and a totally convoluted way to get to the Sheriff’s files. I get that this will be their Batcave/Library/Walter’s Lab/Men of Letter’s bunker so lets spend some time in there with Crane and Mills really pouring over the files and researching together.  When you look at what works well for MotW type shows (X-Files, Buffy, Supernatural, Fringe) it is the time the team spends actually investigating. Not just remembering convenient plot points they can spew out, but actually working together to solve the puzzle.

The overall mythology seems alright. The apocalypse is being ushered in, one baddie spirit at a time to build an evil army? That’s the gist of it...I think.  But it was explained so quickly in the opening sequence that it didn’t have a lot of time to sink in.

I’m not giving up yet, though. Hidden underneath all of the go-go-go was some interesting stuff. Mills and her conversation with the dead Sheriff was stellar. I loved how quickly she accepted it and told him to get to the point. Mills’ sister coming into play so early is exciting. I thought that might be a mid-season play, but I’m happy to meet her sooner. And of course, there’s some fairly cool effects spreading a neat creepiness all over the town of Sleepy Hollow.

I hope that the frenetic pace of these first two episodes will settle down by episode four at least.  I’m currently rewatching season 1 of Supernatural with some friends and the contrast is stark. Supernatural doesn’t even hit their major mytharc story until mid-season. They spend 11 episodes slowly building the characters and their relationships, foreshadowing and hinting at secrets so that when it does come and they hit the throttle to go-go-go, the tension and stakes are built up considerably.

Sleepy Hollow needs to have faith that the audience can handle it if they sit still for a bit and allow themselves to really sink into the thick of it.