A lot of people were surprised last week by Sleepy Hollow. I don’t know of anyone really that was looking forward to this series, much less anyone who had what I would call “high hopes”, but lo-and-behold the premier episode surprised many of us and actually had us looking forward to the second episode to see if the show could keep its momentum.
There was no rest for the wicked in this week’s episode as the show continues to move full steam ahead. We find out that the two cops who witnessed the Headless Horseman have recanted their statements, once again leaving only Ichabod Crane and Lt. Abbie Mills to confront the weird-goings-ons in Sleepy Hollow. Last night’s weird-going-on was a resurrected witch running around town killing the descendants of those who burned her at the stake in order to fully come back to life. Lucky for Crane, his witch-wife was able to give him a head’s up via a dream sequence. Another highlight from this episode: broken-neck-evil-zombie John Cho.
Front and center once again this week was the fantastic balance of horror and humor. There were some genuinely scary and disturbing moments including the broken neck on John Cho, and the burned witch stalking her victims. On the other side of the spectrum, there were some spot-on humorous moments from Ichabod as he explored his hotel room covered in sticky notes regarding the functions of various switches and knobs, and his outrage at the amount of tax our government takes on purchases. One moment that I would like to highlight is when Ichabod fires the pistol Abbie gave him at the witch – and then immediately drops it. Abbie picks the gun up and points out that he dropped the gun, Ichabod is astounded to learn that there is more than one bullet in this gun. This was absolute genius for me; of course he wouldn’t just assume there was more than one round in this gun.
This week we also got some more small pieces to the puzzle of the overall story. We got our first look at the other three horsemen of the apocalypse; we found out more about Ichabod’s witch-wife, Katrina; and we found out a little bit more about the involvement of George Washington and his “secret war”.
Overall, Sleepy Hollow kept great momentum coming off of a strong premier. Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie have great chemistry and the supporting cast is solid. Obviously not every episode is going to be a homerun, but if Sleepy Hollow can keep cranking out solid stories while adding to the over-arcing plot and having this great balance of adventure, horror, and comedy then I am very hopefull that FOX won’t pull the plug on this one after just a single season.
But we know FOX likes to pull the plug on their good shows, and leave garbage like ‘Til Death on the air for 5 excruciating years . . .