Xenapuff

Platonic Valentine #2

“So I’ve been trying to get it made since then.”

#TeamIchabod

Oh Daniel, Ichabod stole his first wife from her fiancé, who was his best friend. He doesn’t even like you.

Please live Joe!!!

April fools guys from the SH writers…

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.

a moment of silence for nicole beharie, stana katic, katie cassidy and all the other ‘leading ladies’ who got screwed over by the network/showrunners

Sleepy Hollow

I don’t care if Sleepy Hollow gets a 4th season. If Nicole Beharie/Abigail Mills isn’t back I won’t be watching.

Eulogy

I loved you, show.

I have never felt closer to a character than to Abbie Mills.

The color of our skin was different, but I felt her in my soul. She was beautiful. She was strong. She was weak. She was kind. She was closed. She was everything I hoped to be and feared to be. 

There is no show without her.

I wish Nicole nothing but the best. I pray this was her decision and she moves on to other things.

I am grateful for what the show gave me. A chance to write things I think are lovely. That I am proud of. A chance to meet people I know are wonderful.

I’m crying over a TV show. I wish I were not.

I believed in this show. And I can never be bitter for what it gave me.

But I can and will be angry about the racist, awful, pointless, casual way it tossed aside a character who will never die for me.

Abbie Mills is alive. She is happy. And she is with the person her soul was made for.

What happens to Sleepy Hollow is immaterial. I will not watch.

I hopelessly hoped. I believed. I rooted.

And this.

Good luck, Nicole. You do deserve better.

But Abbie Mills also deserved better. 

*slams fists on table* where’s my obligatory beach/pool filler episode!! what the fuck!!!

-tla

*not pictured here: crane drowning face-first by the shore after passing out

Abbie Mills Deserves Better

Sleepy Heads had more to say!