Posting meme: *need a Sleepy Hollow icon*
I cleverly scheduled 
brewsternorth's request "Things you like/are looking forward to about Sleepy Hollow" two days after the finale, which would be tomorrow, but I'm going to answer it today because WHEEEE. In other words, the delightfulness is fresh in memory, as is the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger.
I wasn't prepared to like Sleepy Hollow. As I posted a few days ago, my suspension of disbelief is fully functioning, but there are limits, and this show seemed like it was going to push them (like, out of a skyscraper), and I'm still mad at them for the Middle English thing but… you know, never mind. I can take retconning of American history for Secret Battle Against Evil purposes, and certainly I can manage witches and demons and resurrections and all that, because after all I've done vampires and werewolves and Slayers. The comparisons between Sleepy Hollow and Buffy are pretty obvious; it's just that SH hung up the apocalyptic window dressing a lot sooner. But both shows depend on the chemistry and likability of the leads - they even both have a pleasant British accent dryly commenting on the action! - on teamwork and friendship, on snark, and on tapping a deep essence of what it means to be human, more than they do on the supernatural-heavy plot elements, even if there'd be no show without them. Both of them can be total camp one minute and then get serious the next. And I'm expecting to see an overall evolution from silly to deep on SH as well, hopefully without losing any of the entertaining banter.
The obvious difference, and what's given SH a lot of its press, is the casting; how half of the leads (I'd say more, because despite the opening credits Jenny is a lot more prominent on the show now than Katrina) and a lot of the supporting cast members are non-white, which is great and really refreshing on network TV. It's worth noting, too, that of the main cast the only obvious immigrant is Ichabod himself, and he's an immigrant twice over. So they can play a bit with what would be a really painful stereotype if it was, say, rural Guatemalan comes to live in the U.S. and is baffled by computers and donut holes. Looking at this from the perspective of a time travel writer, of course, that didn't occur to me for a long time; I was too busy enjoying how Ichabod adjusts to the 21st century (the voice mails! I will never not be in love with the voice mails. And in the finale, you can see that Abbie's enchanted by them too, and then he starts complaining that his phone isn't the latest upgrade, oh man, you are part of our century now. And the skinny jeans. And Starbucks. Etc. It's actually a brilliant way of showing how foolish our reality is, which perhaps makes the more spooky part of their reality less ridiculous? After all, it's all magic to Ichabod). They may still be trying either too hard or not hard enough on the social aspects, but they bring up things like race and slavery and sexism and the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers, which is, again, refreshing.
I haven't dipped into fanfic for SH yet (maybe I'll write some! that could be fun) but I'm assuming that it's one of those shows where slash takes a back seat to the obviousness of the Ichabod/Abbie pairing. Which… I am of two minds about. On the one hand, YES, but… well, first of all, Ichabod's married, even if his wife is a witch and neglected to tell him that and has been trapped in purgatory for centuries and I don't really like her that much. And secondly, I enjoy them as friends and colleagues ("colleagues" is putting it mildly. Fellow Witnesses Preventing the End of the World; stamp it on the letterhead). They are, in fact, absolutely delightful together, without adding even a hint of UST, although it's certainly there. And Abbie is a Strong Woman in that nice complicated sense that means she has a lot of vulnerabilities that don't get fixed by being in love with a man or having a man love her (though many of them seem to, and why wouldn't they). When she talks about loving and losing, it's about her sister and her parents and Sheriff Corbin, and it's her reunion with Jenny that hits the high emotional mark for the season. And that's fantastic. (I found the temptations she and Ichabod faced in the finale really interesting in that respect, but… spoilers.)
Then there are the Irvings, and… how wonderful are they? And I love how beautifully conflicted Frank Irving is, in his evolution through the whole season, right through to his actions in the finale, and how they tie up what might have been A and B plots into a near-seamless whole. (Also, Orlando Jones's full-throttle venture into fandom is delightful in its own regard. But that's a side benefit, akin to the benefit of getting to admire Tom Mison every week.)
I'm not even sure what I'm looking forward to, except more of the same but even better, and did I mention the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger? Fall 2014 - how are we supposed to wait that long?
This entry was originally posted at http://hedda62.dreamwidth.org/78231.html. There are currently
comments there. Comment here or there.
brewsternorth's request "Things you like/are looking forward to about Sleepy Hollow" two days after the finale, which would be tomorrow, but I'm going to answer it today because WHEEEE. In other words, the delightfulness is fresh in memory, as is the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger.
I wasn't prepared to like Sleepy Hollow. As I posted a few days ago, my suspension of disbelief is fully functioning, but there are limits, and this show seemed like it was going to push them (like, out of a skyscraper), and I'm still mad at them for the Middle English thing but… you know, never mind. I can take retconning of American history for Secret Battle Against Evil purposes, and certainly I can manage witches and demons and resurrections and all that, because after all I've done vampires and werewolves and Slayers. The comparisons between Sleepy Hollow and Buffy are pretty obvious; it's just that SH hung up the apocalyptic window dressing a lot sooner. But both shows depend on the chemistry and likability of the leads - they even both have a pleasant British accent dryly commenting on the action! - on teamwork and friendship, on snark, and on tapping a deep essence of what it means to be human, more than they do on the supernatural-heavy plot elements, even if there'd be no show without them. Both of them can be total camp one minute and then get serious the next. And I'm expecting to see an overall evolution from silly to deep on SH as well, hopefully without losing any of the entertaining banter.
The obvious difference, and what's given SH a lot of its press, is the casting; how half of the leads (I'd say more, because despite the opening credits Jenny is a lot more prominent on the show now than Katrina) and a lot of the supporting cast members are non-white, which is great and really refreshing on network TV. It's worth noting, too, that of the main cast the only obvious immigrant is Ichabod himself, and he's an immigrant twice over. So they can play a bit with what would be a really painful stereotype if it was, say, rural Guatemalan comes to live in the U.S. and is baffled by computers and donut holes. Looking at this from the perspective of a time travel writer, of course, that didn't occur to me for a long time; I was too busy enjoying how Ichabod adjusts to the 21st century (the voice mails! I will never not be in love with the voice mails. And in the finale, you can see that Abbie's enchanted by them too, and then he starts complaining that his phone isn't the latest upgrade, oh man, you are part of our century now. And the skinny jeans. And Starbucks. Etc. It's actually a brilliant way of showing how foolish our reality is, which perhaps makes the more spooky part of their reality less ridiculous? After all, it's all magic to Ichabod). They may still be trying either too hard or not hard enough on the social aspects, but they bring up things like race and slavery and sexism and the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers, which is, again, refreshing.
I haven't dipped into fanfic for SH yet (maybe I'll write some! that could be fun) but I'm assuming that it's one of those shows where slash takes a back seat to the obviousness of the Ichabod/Abbie pairing. Which… I am of two minds about. On the one hand, YES, but… well, first of all, Ichabod's married, even if his wife is a witch and neglected to tell him that and has been trapped in purgatory for centuries and I don't really like her that much. And secondly, I enjoy them as friends and colleagues ("colleagues" is putting it mildly. Fellow Witnesses Preventing the End of the World; stamp it on the letterhead). They are, in fact, absolutely delightful together, without adding even a hint of UST, although it's certainly there. And Abbie is a Strong Woman in that nice complicated sense that means she has a lot of vulnerabilities that don't get fixed by being in love with a man or having a man love her (though many of them seem to, and why wouldn't they). When she talks about loving and losing, it's about her sister and her parents and Sheriff Corbin, and it's her reunion with Jenny that hits the high emotional mark for the season. And that's fantastic. (I found the temptations she and Ichabod faced in the finale really interesting in that respect, but… spoilers.)
Then there are the Irvings, and… how wonderful are they? And I love how beautifully conflicted Frank Irving is, in his evolution through the whole season, right through to his actions in the finale, and how they tie up what might have been A and B plots into a near-seamless whole. (Also, Orlando Jones's full-throttle venture into fandom is delightful in its own regard. But that's a side benefit, akin to the benefit of getting to admire Tom Mison every week.)
I'm not even sure what I'm looking forward to, except more of the same but even better, and did I mention the HORRIBLE OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU DO THAT cliffhanger? Fall 2014 - how are we supposed to wait that long?
This entry was originally posted at http://hedda62.dreamwidth.org/78231.html. There are currently
comments there. Comment here or there.