Fall TV Season - Sleepy Hollow

It's almost that time of year again!  :-D

I'm so excited!  HORROR MOVIES!  When I can revel in the horror that is the fear and chaos of someone else's imagination, instead of the fear and chaos that is my life.  lol  My October Horror movie review-a-thon starts in nine days!  Time to whet my review-whistle and start reviewing the Fall TV season so i can prepare myself for the daily grind of writing Horror movie reviews.  lol  As if watching horror was a grind!  heh  But, on to the review of Sleepy Hollow!

I've always loved the legend of Sleepy Hollow.  The idea of a Headless Horseman, practically an inescapable force of nature, seemingly mindless, but with ruthless cunning and a palpable sense of evil emanating from the gaping hole of a neck where his head used to be.. well shit, I think I just soiled myself.  Ever since I saw the disney cartoon about the headless horseman when I was a kid, narrated by Bing Crosby, of all people, I was hooked.  Poor Ichabod, a helpless school teacher, is matched up against the Headless Horseman, the decapitated ghost of a hessian mercenary, much to Ichabod's detriment.  There are many who would say that it was jealously what killed Ichabod, that his catching the eye of a local beauty made the son of the local magistrate jealous, and that jealous rival for the beauty's affections was Ichabod's undoing.  Some would say that his murdered body lay still in those swamps around Sleepy Hollow, waiting to be found.  But you and I know.  We know the truth.

So I was psyched as soon as I heard about this show.  Which was probably about ten minutes before it aired.  But still, psyched.  But they switched everything around on me.  Ichabod Crane wasn't a helpless school teacher, transported 250 years into the future to deal with the Headless Horseman in modern times.  No, Ichabod Crane was some sort of revolutionary war hero / James Bond style secret agent.  Sure, he was born british, but sided with good old George Washington.  And he personally beheaded the horseman in battle.  That certainly doesn't add anything to the Headless Horseman's mystique, or make me fear him any more, quite frankly.  I mean, sure this guy Ichabod is supposedly some sort of master swordsman, fearless in battle, intelligent, cunning...  nah, I'm not buying it;   The guy's name is Ichabod.  And who the HELL names their kid Ichabod?  Honestly?  Ichabod?  Ichabod Crane?  Come on.  Not a very heroic name, by any means.  "Say, Horseman, who took your head?"  "Well, I'm in battle, cutting down guys left and right, and this guy named Ichabod comes along and..."  "Wait, wait.  What'd you say his name was?"  "Ichabod."  "HAH!  Are you serious?"  "Yea, so he comes along and-"  "Are you seriously telling me, a guy named ICHABOD took your head?  BWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!"  After that, the Horseman was probably the laughing stock of the Headless Community.

So, now that they've made Ichabod a musket-toting Ninja, what do they have to do to the Horseman to make him seem more fearsome?  They made him one of the four horseman of the apocalypse.  Yea, so apparently, the show's going to be one of those supernatural-flavor-of-the-week type shows, with random appearances by the horseman.  Now don't get me wrong, there's demons and devils and all sorts of creepy shit going around in this thing, so it looks promising, but I don't know how much I'll be able to get into it.  I would have LOVED the idea of a scared-shitless Ichabod trying to wrap his brain around being transported 250 years into the future to try and escape the headless Horseman's wrath AGAIN.  I mean, if you remember the legend, both ichabod Crane AND the headless horseman disappeared that same night.  Supposedly because, once the headless horseman took ichabod's head, he didn't need to go around hunting for more.  But what if they just went into the future, maybe at the mere moment of Ichabod's supposed death?  I think it's GENIUS.  But that's not what this show is about.  Ah well.  Maybe in the next retelling.

Something else that had me TOTALLY PSYCHED for this series.  First thing I see once the show starts is one of my favorite actors playing the sherriff.  Clancy Brown.  Who i instantly recognized and had NO IDEA what his name is because he's been in hundreds of things but never became famous.  I was THRILLED.  And then... he dies.  lol  Yea.  9 minutes in.  I should have known.  Minute I like an actor in one of these things, BAM he's a dead man.  Sigh.  Now seriously that would have been a good show, Clancy Brown as the Sherriff, fighting against the Headless Horseman, while a scared ichabod ran around trying not to piss himself.  That's good drama right there.  But no.  No.  Sherriff loses his head, as it were.  I love how the deputy calls it in, too.  "Officer down!"  LOL  Yea, send an ambulance for that.  See if you can sew that back on.  lol  interestingly enough, that makes at least twice in Clancy's career that his character lost his head.  Yes, that's right, he was Kurgan, facing off against Christopher Lambert in the Highlander.  Unfortunately, no spectacular pyrotechnics or gouts of blood marked Clancy's demise in this one.  This is network TV, after all.

So what I am left with is a mamby-pamby flouncy-dressed revolutionary war-era secret agent, paired with a cop who was about to transfer out of the department.  I really hope they play up the scary shit, because I really can't identify with either of the show's main characters.  But I am hopeful.  I never really got into Supernatural because, well, let's face it, it's a sausage fest, and I'm a straight guy.  I tried to watch the Walking Dead, but it just got so predictable and boring, I could tell you what was going to happen at the end of the hour by the first 5 minutes.  Vampire Dairies, well.  I'm not an emo teen.  Which left me with NOTHING.  I haven't been this bereft since Buffy went off the air, and finally, there's hope on the horizon.  Maybe there will even be some other good shows coming out this fall, who knows?

Sleepy Hollow airs monday nights at 9 pm on FOX, at least, where I am.

Horror movie review-a-thon in nine days...  So PSYCHED!  Time for some SCARY SHIT!  Been saving up aaaalll my horror movies on Netflix, just for next month.  Waiting patiently, like a monster on the prowl...  (spooky music plays ominously)

Can't WAIT!  :-D