First Impressions: Sleepy Hollow ‘Pilot’ – Scratching the Surface

The first of the fall’s new network dramas, FOX’s Sleepy Hollow comes from Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, best known as producers on FOX’s last big serialized procedural, Fringe. Like its spiritual predecessor, Sleepy Hollow brings supernatural elements to the real world, importing Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman from Washington Irving’s short story, dropping them in the modern world to cause all kinds of Revolutionary-flavored ruckus. It’s a tale of two pilots: the first half, which is a wildly effective, over-the-top mystery – and the much less enjoyable second half, a mindfuck of plot twists and characters screaming to the audience about how things are just beginning and we’re only scratching the surface of what horrors await the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow. Problem is: thanks to the convoluted, caricature-filled second half of the pilot, none of that stuff really seems that interesting.

It gets off to a promising start: the first fifteen minutes or so of Sleepy Hollow is a very stylized pulp thriller, opening with a series of mystical-tinged flashbacks, and quickly moving to a present-day scene with our protagonist policewoman Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), talking to her partner about their characteristics in overt fashion (as most pilots unfortunately have to do). It quickly devolves into a well-executed horror film, with a chilling sequence involving a beheading and the first real look we get at the Headless Horseman in 2012.

Unfortunately, once the show starts digging into why Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) arrives in 2013, the show becomes a mess of cliche plot lines, convoluted mythology, and nonsensical situations, that are too implausible, even for a show about a Headless Horseman who lives underwater for 250 years. The problem is twofold: many of these mysteries or intertwined character reveals feel silly in their overwrought, tongue-in-cheek nature: those involving George Washington are the worst, closely followed by the many prophecies the script details to the audience from the Bible (the single most unsettling thing about this show: it spends numerous scenes reading lines from a specific book in the Bible, desperately trying to attach meaning between it and its characters).

There are moments where the show allows itself to have a little fun: a priest who gets all too little screen time chief among them, or whenever Ichabod is allowed to be the goofy guy who doesn’t understand technology (jokes that aren’t particularly inventive, but entertaining). However, there’s a lot more time trying to explain ominous visions or hit very predictable character notes with Abbie: she’s got an insane sister, and she turns down a promotion to Quantico to pursue the dangerous truth – that so conveniently turns out, was the same truth her mentor was searching for himself (which she finds in the pilot’s single most ridiculous scene, where a voice recorder will most likely illicit eye rolls from the audience).

Sleepy Hollow tries to bring too much to the table: and more so, what it brings to the table isn’t interesting. There’s the mysterious map, the book of answers, the completely unexplained conversation between a man and his dead wife that explains the ENTIRE mythological premise of the show, the black cop who gives sassy answers (Behaire goes way too hard on these notes – one of the problem’s pilots is her overacting simple character traits, something that I’m sure will dissipate as she grows more comfortable with the role, and the writing hopefully gains some nuance)… the list goes on and on with the tropes that this pilot hits, right down to characters declaring to each other that “this is just beginning… things are going to get a lot worse”, and the show’s laughably trite conclusive statement about itself, setting up a multi-year timeline that the show will never, ever be able to reach with the ratings demands of network executives.

For those who like batshit television that doesn’t concern itself with things like complex characters or unique narratives, Sleepy Hollow might be right up their alley. There’s a much-needed bit of camp factor to Mison’s performance as Ichabod, and Len Wiseman’s direction of the pilot sets a stylistic standard I’d hope future directors would try to follow (a POV beheading shot is a personal highlight, as is a shot that bleeds an upside down view of a highway into a descending look onto a woodsy landscape). And with the trappings of a pilot behind them, Sleepy Hollow might be able to relax into the campy procedural it wants to be, with some seriously weird overarching story lines. But to do so, Sleepy Hollow both has to be more confident in the stories it will tell, and find ways to tell stories that don’t rely on vague plot hooks or predictable character beats to keep viewers engaged.

Grade: C

Sleepy Hollow

Airs: Monday nights at 9pm ET on FOX

Created by: Akex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Phillip Iscove, Len Wiseman

Pilot Director: Len Wiseman

Pilot Writers: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Phillip Iscove & Len Wiseman