Denial-Acceptance

“I thought all was lost.”

Ichabbie 3.15

Too little too late Danny!!!! 😭😭😭😭

Abbie Mills x Daniel Reynolds | Sleepy Hollow 3.16

More thoughts

I posted this at Project Fox in the hopes that maybe they’d listen. I know. Crazy, right?

But I needed to do it for myself.

Interested to know all your thoughts, too. :)

I have thought about this a lot and I wanted to post an opinion here in the hopes that maybe someone at Fox would actually listen. Perhaps a futile hope, but one I wanted to attempt.

A lot of people are upset about the treatment of Nicole Beharie and the character, Abbie Mills, and how she represented a viewpoint of a severely underrepresented population in American TV. And I am fully sympathetic to that viewpoint, even if I can’t fully understand it, being a Caucasian woman myself.

I don’t want to address that here. What I want to do is to address the problem with the writing and direction of the show.

I’ve got 20+ years of experience in writing, in a myriad of forms. And I understand that television writing is a group effort with a lot of creative control over a script being out of the hands of any individual writer. Raven Metzner intimated as much himself in one of his interviews.

However, there needs to be someone at the helm with whom the buck stops–who has a definitive, overarching view of the overall narrative and where the story is headed.

And that, right there, is what the problem is with Sleepy Hollow.

The original fans of the show tuned in due to its crazy premise of a time traveling Ichabod Crane fighting monsters, in particular, the famous Headless Horseman, with the modern day police officer, Abigail Mills.

The second season tampered with what made it successful. It stymied the action by coming to dead halts in the narrative. Emotional problems for the Crane family became the focus of the story. So the fans who came for the romp with monsters and who weren’t interested in emotional drama left.

And what you were left with were either (1) fans of emotional drama who liked Katrina and the romance with Ichabod or (2) people who came for the relationship between Ichabod and Abbie–whether they wanted them together romantically or not.

These fans were your base.

And season 3’s removal of Katrina, Henry and Frank Irving took a lot of those characters’ fans with them. So you’re left with people who have stuck with the show only for Ichabod and Abbie.

Season 3 didn’t bring back the comic book boys because the mythology was suddenly changed. The Headless Horseman was captured. The definition of witnessing was retconned. The history of Ichabod Crane was retconned and ruined by having him have romps with Betsy Ross during the time period where he should have been in love with Katrina. Those creative choices made certain that the fans who watched the show for those reasons had no reason to return.

Season 3 had basically nothing happen. Interesting characters and mythology would be introduced, only to be destroyed in the next episode. The villains provided no real menace and lurked around doing nothing. The week to week episodes came off as if they reflected arguments in the writing room where one writer would attempt to push a certain aspect of the show forward–an Ichabbie moment, or a well written history moment or a particularly fleshed out B plot–and then, the next week, the next writer would gleefully stomp on what the previous writer had attempted to do.

It came off as incredibly disjointed and unprofessional. And it seemed as if it was an adage of too many cooks spoil the soup.

The only reason people remained is because of the talented ability of Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison to elevate the material and to find moments that rang true for the characters and kept the fans on the edge of quitting staying.

So to kill off Abbie Mills completely demolishes what is left of the show. The relationship of the two characters is the binding of the story. Without that binding, the book falls apart. It cannot survive.

The failure of the writing staff to understand that is what has killed the show. Whatever backstage arguments there were, and believe me, we know there were, are irrelevant to that fact.

A fourth season for Sleepy Hollow reincarnated as a historical X-Files would have to find a completely new audience.

The genre audience is small–and well networked. And no sane fan who reads the history of Sleepy Hollow and what terrible things they did to the mythology, the characters, the actors and the fans is going to touch the new season with a ten foot pole.

And the remaining fanbase died when Abbie did.

It is time for the creative people on Sleepy Hollow and the financial people at Fox to acknowledge the mistake, let the actors and crew free to find other work and cancel the show.

It is not saveable.

—“You have endured an ordeal few can even imagine.” —“Except you.”

That look you get when your would be girlfriend invites another man to join Monster Club.

Platonic Valentine #1

Ichabod Crane + living the “What Would Abbie Mills Do?” life

Sleepy Hollow

Yeah, spoilers. This is a hate letter. 

I’m almost 47 years old. And this is the first time in my history with television  that a single episode of something has made me regret ever watching a show to start with. I regret the time I spent on Sleepy Hollow. Because they just erased everything I loved about it with a single swipe. 

The Witnesses were the heart. How they were always there for each other. They came as a PAIR. You cannot kill one. That undermines every moment that one saved, supported or protected the other. All those “destinies entwined, we found each other, I do what you do, we will always be certain” moments have been undermined by her death. They’ve killed the beating heart of it, the bond that we’ve all been there for. 

If Nicole wanted out, they should have thought about the whole point of the show and either let them both live and ended it, or killed them both and ended it, or even killed them both and moved one with two new witnesses. ANY of that would have been better than killing one and leaving one alive, because that’s not what we’ve been here for over the last 3 years. 

The Witnesses, together, are the show. They’re a matched pair, a set, for better or worse. By killing Abbie and leaving Ichabod to carry on, they’ve stabbed the heart of the show and made every wonderful partnership moment meaningless. 

I am in awe that I cared more about the integrity of the show and the characters than the writers. But that’s fixed now, because I regret ever watching it. That is how much the death of Abbie Mills has soured me on the entire universe. I don’t even want to read fanfic. I am forever ruined on this show and its world. I never thought they could manage that, but god damn, they did. 

Goodbye Sleepy Hollow. And fuck you. (ANd if you’re renewed, and the new witness is white, I hope you all drop your genitals into a blender bye)

A Broken-Hearted Ex-Fan

Ichabod and Abbie confess that they’re in love with each other, get married, move to California, and open up a bookstore specializing in rare & antique finds. They’re happy. Season 3 never happens. The end.

Reblog if you are Team Ichabbie