Review: "Sleepy Hollow" - Season 3

Wiseman, Len (Dir.) et.al., “Sleepy Hollow – Season 3”, Twentieth Century Fox, 2016.

The slow demise of this TV show has eventuated – after Season 4, there will be no more shenanigans in the ‘Hollow (of a cockily-proposed seven, sure-fire seasons) and, in the final analysis, these guys have no-one to blame except themselves.

The first season of “Sleepy Hollow” had chutzpah and a budget and very little else. With just these elements onboard, they forecast a silly, but entertainingly scary ride to come. By Season 2, they dropped all pretence of being witty or funny, and the entertainment factor went into a sudden nose-dive. Here, in Season 3, the budget has been slashed, the writing apparently outsourced to the junior staff and the will to live (or, at least, to act) strangled within all the performers contracted. What you’re seeing here, folks, is a death rattle. The shark, as they say, has well-and-truly jumped.

It’s really a shame, too. Initially, this series had a lot going for it – a handsome cast, a hefty budget and some interesting notions. However, they traded all of their advantages for a lazy complacence that has destroyed their credibility and alienated their audience. I’ve mentioned before how the writers assume that their viewers are au fait with other supernatural TV shows and don’t bother to explain or ground their own material as a result: “it’s like a wendigo, right? Y’know, like in X-Files? So yeah, like that.” Add to this that they short-cut required knowledge in any situation by putting the umbrella notion of an Oxford education circa 1770 over it, and suspension of disbelief goes right out the window. As a series of examples here are some instances:

The first steps towards deciphering Sumerian Cuneiform were made by Georg Friedrich Gotefend in 1802, published in 1815, but were generally ignored by the academic world. It wasn’t until 1857 that the language was considered definitively understood. Ichabod Crane readily translates a stone tablet written in this script which he rescues from a crypt beneath his (somehow, unoccupied, un-redeveloped, and un-demolished) ancestral home in – Scotland? (What: were they trying to channel “Outlander”?)

The earliest known reference to gunpowder dates to the work of Wei Boyang in 142 AD during the Eastern Han Dynasty of China. Jenny confidently attributes the discovery of gunpowder to scientists in the Tang Dynasty (618 AD – 907 AD) at one point. I would at least have expected Ichabod – as a Brit - to object to this notion on the basis that Francis Bacon is also often credited with the discovery.

Jesuit missionaries were active in China from the late 1500s. They published Christian theological materials in Chinese between 1593 and 1607. Louis XIV appointed a Chinese immigrant – Arcadio Huang - to catalogue France’s collection of Chinese texts and artefacts and, with Etienne Fourmont, he produced a Chinese grammar in 1742. The first European Sinology institute was established at Naples in 1732. Most other learning centres in Europe did not embark on any real study of China until after 1860, being more interested in the study of Assyria and Egypt (due to Biblical connexions) and, in the case of England, India. And yet Crane, who arguably wasn’t even in Europe during these events, can read Chinese. The Romanisation of the Chinese language – the Wade-Giles System – was published in 1892. So again, how can Crane read this stuff?

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was written in the 5^th Century BC and translated first into French in 1772, and again in 1782, by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot a Jesuit priest. A partial translation into English was published by Everard Ferguson Calthrop in 1905 as The Book of War; this was completed by Lionel Giles in 1910. And yet, Crane quotes Sun Tzu at length over games of chess with Abbie, a book which wasn’t even in common parlance in Europe during his lifetime, let alone the United States.

Starting as a paper in 1922 entitled “Old British Trackways”, Alfred Watkins published The Old Straight Track in 1925, outlining his theory about the concept of ley-lines, which he invented. This, however, doesn’t stop Crane spotting ley-lines all over the countryside.

The “Ynglinga Saga” is the first part of a legendary saga entitled Heimskringla, a history text originally written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson about 1225. It was first translated into English and published in 1844 by Samuel Laing. It outlines the history of the earliest Norse leaders, tentatively connecting them to the Norse gods. It’s not the grimoire that this show’s writers claim it is; it’s not a grimoire at all.

Spirit cabinets – or manifestation cabinets - were designed by fraudulent spirit mediums to fool séance members. The medium would invite an audience member to tie their hands and then draw the curtains over the medium inside the box. Despite being tied, musical instruments inside the box would play, “ghostly” hands would emerge from behind the curtain and so on. Of course it was all stage magic of a low order and yet our cast make use of one in actual, serious, magical endeavours. Perhaps this is an in-joke on the writers’ part, evidence that they know that what they’re shovelling is pure hokum? Naaah…

And finally, the giant-killer: Sleepy Hollow was founded in the Nineteenth Century as “North Tarrytown” a village in the orbit of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York. Located between Mount Pleasant and Tarrytown proper, the village was re-named “Sleepy Hollow” in 1996. Rather than being the haunt of decapitated Hessians, it is better known as the birthplace of Mythbuster, Adam Savage.

I could go on. All of this information can be discerned by a quick stroll through Wikipedia via a Google search, but did anyone connected to this show even bother? Of course not. And here is where they made their fatal error: they can’t be bothered, but their audience can, and by relegating the intelligence of their viewers, they’ve killed their cash cow. Writers be warned: judge your audience at your own peril.

But the blame for the show’s demise cannot be laid entirely at Ichabod Crane’s door. As before, with Abbie’s career, the show’s writers use this as another egregious umbrella to cover a multitude of sins. First – it only takes nine months at Quantico to become a Federal Agent? Seriously? If this was the case, why aren’t all the ISIS sleeper cells putting their representatives through the routine in order to tool them up? Why doesn’t everyone in the US take the course as, I don’t know, some kind of military service? And afterwards, when you’ve graduated, you get to be posted wherever the Hell you want? I’m certain that this isn’t the case: schoolteachers don’t have this luxury; I’m pretty sure Government law-keepers follow suit.

As in previous seasons, Abbie’s blanket “career” allows her to do all kinds of investigate-y stuff, but there’s never any blow-back from when she’s derelict in her duty. She ignores cases, procedures – even her superiors – every time it interferes with her (lacklustre) ghost-busting activities. At one point she even quits, but the Bureau keeps her job open for her to come back to if she wants. Seriously? With all of the cadets coming through Quantico after their nine-month internship, you’d think job vacancies would be filled in a heartbeat. As before, the writers never let the exigencies of the real world interfere with their weekly monster hunt.

And speaking of which: in past seasons, there were some actually scary opponents to face. Now, with the budget being so obviously trimmed, the villains are all definitely B-grade, even recycled from previous seasons, and the wow-factor has diminished accordingly. This season’s main nemesis, Pandora – she of the Box - is obviously where the money went and even then the writers fail to capitalise on all of the funky set-dressing by giving her a focused rationale. By the mid-point of Season 3, she seems mostly bored and regretful of ever coming to the ‘Hollow. That’s okay though, because Abbie also loses the plot and appears to have much better (unspecified) things to do elsewhere.

In the first season, Crane exhibited bursts of outrage about the state of the country which he fought to create. These were, by and large, the best thing about the show. Season 2 toned them down almost into pastiche, and in Season 3, they’re entirely absent. Given that these moments were the best thing about the show, I’m gobsmacked that they got relegated. Rather than being a fish out of water, Crane is simply an oddity, and not a very good one at that. I’ve said before that you need to leave your degree in American History at the door before watching this show; by this stage, the savaging of American history is the least repellent thing about it. I’m prepared to believe that Ben Franklin’s glass armonica was a device for controlling resurrected corpses, or that Paul Revere built caskets to contain god-summoning widgets, or that Betsy Ross was an arse-kicking chop-socky wunderkind, but only if the show’s designers build a vaguely-credible rationale around these concepts. Instead we get this.

Did I mention that there’s a crossover episode to the “Bones” franchise? If there’s one truism in TV-land, it’s that you can’t prop up two dying televisual commodities by marrying them together.

It’s over, folks. After Season 4, there is no more – the money has spoken. There are only two words to sum up this wasted effort: Sloppy. Hollow.