Sleepy Hollow: The Kindred.

Posted on September 30, 2014

Sleepy-Hollow-Season-e-Episode-2-Review-Television-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLOPinNicole Beharie and Tom Mison in FOX’s “Sleepy Hollow”

 

Franklinstein’s Monster.

Franklinstein’s Monster.

FRANKLINSTEIN’S FREAKING MONSTER, PEOPLE.

We should just end our review right here because honestly, what else is there to say after that? We’re done here.

Okay, fine. We’ll keep talking.

It should probably go without saying, since we and everyone else who ever reviewed this show keep saying it, but the gleefully insane twists and turns of this show are its second biggest selling point (the first being the leads, as we noted in last week’s review). It’s not enough that they came up with the idea of a patchwork man made by Ben Franklin; it’s not enough that they then plopped the head of the legendary headless horseman onto it, but when you take an undead monster constructed by Ben Franklin, add the head of the headless horseman, and then stage a three-way fight between the two owners of the head AND an empty suit of armor with a flaming sword, you win all the gold stars for being the most imaginative TV writers currently working in network TV. Where else are you going to find stuff like this? It’s like Game of Thrones as devised by an 8-year-old high on sugary cereals.

In fact, it’s so much fun watching the two extremely likable lead actors, with their off-the-charts chemistry, doing and reacting to all this nuttiness that we didn’t even get mad at them for screwing things up so badly. Not only did they fail to rescue Katrina, but they literally created a new monster to torment this poor town. We should really be upset that they essentially both shrugged it off at the end with reactions that didn’t feel entirely like something a real human being would feel (“My long-lost wife is shacked up with an immortal psychopath and we just unleashed a horrifying monster into the world. Fist bump, Leftenant?”), but it’s hard to sustain anything with this show but feelings of delight and wonder.

But if all the show had to offer was its insanity, it would be a pretty boring show after a while. And even the two leads can’t keep all the balls in the air, narratively speaking, which is why we got some potentially game-changing scenes with the supporting characters. First, Katrina and Ich have a very short-lived reunion, until she makes it clear that they can’t be together just yet. A show like this can wind up with some awful contrivances to explain why certain characters are kept apart, but this one actually makes sense for now. And besides, anything that keeps Katrina in the margins is a good thing. We like neither the actress nor the character and the story comes to a grinding halt when it relies on her to keep things moving.

What doesn’t quite make sense to us is Abbie essentially shrugging off Jenny getting arrested again. We know there are still a lot of unresolved issues with these two, but “Thanks for taking one for the team. Seeya.” seems pretty damn cold. In related news, there’s a new police chief in town and we can’t tell if she’s eeeeeeeevil or if she’s just kind of a bitch with good intentions. She seems to care a great deal about Abbie (to the point that it makes us, and apparently her, squirm a little), but then she also seemed to be willing to all but cut Frank open in order to get more information out of him. We’re intrigued by her. And we’re especially happy (in a twisted way) to see Parrish and Irving together, even if it does mean bad things for Frank (Pro tip: Never a good idea to sign anything in blood). He’s been on the periphery of the story for too long now. In fact, we half-thought he was going to be written out of it before he signed that document. With Frank having signed over his soul (probably) to Parrish, a new police chief who doesn’t exactly have “ally” stamped on her forehead, Katrina shacking up with the horsemen, and Jenny in jail, it looks to us like Abbie and Ichabod are worse off than they’ve ever been but don’t quite seem to realize it.
 
[Photo Credit: FOX]

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