Remembering Sleepy Hollow

Recently I’ve been thinking about the Sleepy Hollow. The tv series one. As a tragic example of the creators being totally blind about the thing they created and destroying everything that was good about it in the process. There is no question that the creators should be able to tell the story they want to tell. The problem was, the story they wanted to tell – the one of Rip Van Winkle, a man out of his time, wasn’t the one anyone wanted to watch. They actually pitched it initially as the updated Rip Van Winkle, weren’t approved and moved on to updated Sleepy Hollow idea. (I read it somewhere and cannot find the source right now). Anyway. Judging by the way it went for four seasons they still wanted their story to be about a lonely white man from 18th century finding himself in 21st one.
Fair enough. The problem was it was not the story we wanted to watch, and it was not the story we initially saw – in season one. And we, the viewers, loved that story! It was a story of two sisters, two Black girls, Abbie and Jenny Mills who were both close and the opposite to each other. Sudden appearance of the inexplicable and terrifying Headless Horseman made Abbie, a policewoman in a small town in Upstate New York to re-think a lot of what she was convinced she knew about life and to battle apocalyptic forces with a weird man out of time, Ichabod Crane. It was crazy, it was glorious, it was delightful. The relationship between Ichabod Crane and the present, 21st century were a lot of fun, and his bouncing of Abbie Mills no-nonsense attitude had a lot of sparks. The supporting cast was amazing, and they all seemed to be fully alive characters, even the ones that were actually dead. And were played by the people of color (many of them, that is). The only problem seemed to be Katrina, the wife of Crane, stuck in the purgatory. The only thing we knew about that she is a powerful witch. Which is not really a character by itself.
Many hate her, but I can’t – I can’t hate an empty space. It was not her fault the was nothing else to do. Maybe another actress could have invented a personality for the heroine by herself, but it was really the writers’ job. And the only thing writers could come up with for the second season was the love triangle. I still has no idea about her. Why was she a witch? Why she married Ichabod? What she loved? Whereas the characters played by Nichole Beharie and Lindsay Greenwood, Orlando Jones, John Cho, Clancy Brown, Nicholas Gonzales, etc were memorable and understandable.
Anyway, the creators seemed to be really in love with Ichabod Crane, and they believed the fans, too. So they got rid of all the interesting characters beside him and turned it all into a family melodrama. Abbie Mills got relegated to the sidekick until the opportunity arose for her to sacrifice herself for the pretty white man. And they got surprised when everyone hated it.
I still have my dvds of season one, full of delight and hope. But every time I think about the Sleepy Hollow, I feel regret – the show wasted great actors and great possibilities and the goodwill of the viewers so thoroughly by not seeing what they created and why it worked at the beginning. Alas. But we’ll always have the beautiful scenes when Abbie Mills and Frank Irving were mocking Ichabod Crane.