Sleepy Hollow

There's a reason Sleepy Hollow has already been picked up for a second season and if you have yet to watch it there's no better time than the present. Now, we've heard the story before but we've never head it quite like this.

The show repurposes the legendary tale of Sleepy Hollow, and gives us a whole new twist as it brings its iconic characters into present times.

Ichabod Crane returns to our households, as a soldier out of his time. One moment he's fighting in a war beside George Washington, and the next he's waking up in a cave by the city limits for the show's titular town. While stumbling around this "brave new world," he has to figure out what brought him back to life and what exactly they want from him.

Here's where it gets interesting. Meet, Lieutenant Abbie Mills:

She's the show's other lead character, and boy does she come out swinging. Not only do we see a woman of color gracing our screens and taking an empowering position, but we see her shake off the two-dimensionality of a power-woman figure in mainstream television. Sure, she doesn't take no underlying-misogyny or racism from Ichabod, but she's able to joke around and have a personality outside of his future-shocked distress. She's a character who's given her own backstory and whose characterization stands up to the status she's been given. She gets scared by the axe-weilding horseman, but she's an officer (a Lieutenant) who's just made it into Quantico and the show doesn't let us forget that. She can handle seeing her father-figure's headless body, and she can damn well call for backup while doing it.

She finds herself suddenly dealing with the supernatural, as she too works to discover just what forces are driving the events of Sleepy Hollow. Therefore, it's no coincidence that she finds a partner in one time-jumping Ichabod Crane.

Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison go toe-to-toe, as their characters start off on rocky ground: one who's deemed insane and the other who's just shaken a similar stigma away. Still, their mysterious pasts intertwine their fates and they take off as an unlikely, semi-unwilling, yet pleasingly unconventional crime-fighting duo.

All shows have suffered from pilot-itis, and while Sleepy Hollow is no exception it doesn't leave that sour aftertaste that other pilots so often abandon in their new-born wake. The writing is unique, especially with the dialogue of its characters. There's something realistic about the way the deputies converse, how Abbie speaks, and how Ichabod stutters around this futuristic period.

It's a show that could easily fall into the plot holes that so often riddle classic television tropes: a man out of his time, a woman with a secret past, a town full of the occult. These are things that we might often shake our heads at, or worse, turn the channel from. But the show never really toes that delicate boundary.

It gives us a story that draws us in. We want to know more about the "Horseman of the Apocalypse." We want to know what part George Washington had in all this. We want to know more about Ichabod's witchcraft-dabbling wife. We want to see how the Sleepy Hollow of our childhood has been modernized into this version of our adulthood.

It's creepy, it's foreboding, it's intriguing, and it delivers a swiftly-massing cult-classic.

A great thing about both the writing and the production of this show, is that it doesn't take itself too seriously at places where others might cop-out. It fully recognizes that a headless horseman galloping around in 2013 is quite frankly ridiculous, but it keeps us watching through the siren's call that lies within the mythology already blossoming in the series.

For every frightening moment we get equal parts comedic and amusing. They take good care to poke the "Ichabod doesn't understand the future" punchline just enough that we can both sympathize and relate to his character without it becoming over-played.

In all actuality, I was completely fine with how the graphics came out (for being a pilot). Not only do I think the beheadings looked more realistic than most hollywood movies, but even the Horseman's red-eyed stead didn't make me pause and shake my head. All in all, high-fives to everyone in post for setting the tone and bringing these ghoulish characters to life.

The executive producers (Kurtzman. Orci, Wiseman, and Kadin) have to be given a lot of credit for not only making a show with a female person of color, but for adding in both people of color and woman into the background. So far, they have yet to use these as a prop but rather as an extension of the world they've created. It's 2013 people, woman can be cops and people of color can be leaders.

If the plot doesn't sell you, I'd watch it for the creative cinematography of Morgenthau. While the set designers/wardrobe/makeup/etc. did a stupendous job with dressing up both the scenes and the characters, the camera-work really put in an extra emphasis to all that was seen within a shot.

It propels us upside down, put us on windows and mirrors, and even allowed us the honor of being beheaded by Death himself. It treated the viewer as another character, one who watches from all angles, and there was something within this technique that had me completely enthralled with the action of the show.

Yes, it has quite a ways to go but I'd really push for you not to give up on the first episode. As far as pilots go, Sleepy Hollow leaves a lot to favor. Go ahead and pick it apart if you must, just don't lose you head over it.