Sleepy Hollow: Deliverance
November 3, 2014 7:16 PM - Season 2, Episode 7 - Subscribe
Demon spawn, attempts to reach out to Henry's inner child, a primer on modern day voting issues, gross veiny Katrina and drunk goth girls.
Katrina stories are always the weakest because they tend to be resolved by magic/MacGuffin that has not been introduced previous to the episode. Her powers are not really defined, so oftentimes she ends up being the MacGuffin herself, which can be pretty uninteresting and downright frustrating if you start to think about "hey, why didn't she just do X three weeks ago when Y was attacking Z?"
I was talking about this with a coworker and she proposed that Katrina's problem is that she is a main character in her own story - she's the most powerful of the "good guys," has her own backstory independent of the Watchers, and goals beyond the town. She could be the POV character for the show herself, but a lone one which would skip out on the Ichabod/Abbey dynamic (and thus be not as good).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:52 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
I was talking about this with a coworker and she proposed that Katrina's problem is that she is a main character in her own story - she's the most powerful of the "good guys," has her own backstory independent of the Watchers, and goals beyond the town. She could be the POV character for the show herself, but a lone one which would skip out on the Ichabod/Abbey dynamic (and thus be not as good).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:52 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]
This episode really made the Headless Horseman pathetic. I mean this is a show based in Sleepy Hollow, shouldn't the Horseman be a little less whiny and easily whipped by Henry and his goons?
Having him mooning about over Katrina (especially since she left his butt centuries ago and isn't all that compelling as a character anyway) is a waste. He needs to be beheading people and riding his cool demon horse.
posted by Julnyes at 7:24 AM on November 4, 2014
Having him mooning about over Katrina (especially since she left his butt centuries ago and isn't all that compelling as a character anyway) is a waste. He needs to be beheading people and riding his cool demon horse.
posted by Julnyes at 7:24 AM on November 4, 2014
The writers really lucked out with the timing of the mid-term elections, the voting booth opener was great.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:38 AM on November 4, 2014
posted by oh yeah! at 7:38 AM on November 4, 2014
Yeah, Ole No-Noggin is really suffering from The Worf Effect / Make Way For The New Villains.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:50 AM on November 4, 2014
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:50 AM on November 4, 2014
I'm really disappointed with the fact that Jenny and Irving remain off screen or sidelined to such a great extent, especially when the show has plenty of opportunities for them. I cheered up watching Abbie recon the bad guys because I figured she'd have Jenny right there with her, but nope. I don't know if this is showrunner interference or what, but it seems like big chunks of what made the show so good in the first season have been pushed to the side for lots of stuff that isn't working.
I dislike the fact that I dislike Katrina so much, but I think it's true - her character as constructed just doesn't work for the show. She's a powerful witch but never does anything, she's damseled to hell and back (uh, literally, I guess), and they don't even follow up on the gestures they occasionally make towards her actually having something to do. (She's a spy! Except all she sends Ichabod are love notes and not any useful information!) And apparently Abbie and Ichabod are always a supernatural fire and rescue squad, but they don't ever go on the offensive - it's always reacting to whatever Henry has just cooked up. (Does he have Moloch in a bottle now? Is he the new King of Hell?)
I'm quite fond of Abraham, weirdly, but it's true that he's also just sitting around, along with half the cast. Maybe Katrina taught him how to knit.
posted by PussKillian at 9:09 AM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
I dislike the fact that I dislike Katrina so much, but I think it's true - her character as constructed just doesn't work for the show. She's a powerful witch but never does anything, she's damseled to hell and back (uh, literally, I guess), and they don't even follow up on the gestures they occasionally make towards her actually having something to do. (She's a spy! Except all she sends Ichabod are love notes and not any useful information!) And apparently Abbie and Ichabod are always a supernatural fire and rescue squad, but they don't ever go on the offensive - it's always reacting to whatever Henry has just cooked up. (Does he have Moloch in a bottle now? Is he the new King of Hell?)
I'm quite fond of Abraham, weirdly, but it's true that he's also just sitting around, along with half the cast. Maybe Katrina taught him how to knit.
posted by PussKillian at 9:09 AM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]
Katrina stories are always the weakest because they tend to be resolved by magic/MacGuffin that has not been introduced previous to the episode.
Except that practically every story in every episode of this show is resolved by magic/MacGuffin that has not been introduced previous to the episode. Usually the monster hasn't been introduced previous to the episode, either. The standard episode arc is: open with scene of Ichabod interacting humorously with the modern world; find out about new monster; figure out that monster is related to some aspect of colonial history; use that to figure out which never-before-mentioned-McGuffin will defeat monster; get McGuffin; defeat monster; never ever mention or re-use McGuffin again. (I'd like to think they will eventually re-use a few of these, like hey remember that time they made a giant scary Franklinstein's monster and left it to roam free around town? Because after all it's not like they've ever been in a situation since then where a giant scary monster on their side would have been handy.) It's perfectly fair to not like Katrina-centric episodes but it's weird to object that they're bad because they follow the same arc as all the other episodes do.
That said, I did think the supernatural-pregnancy plot was a poor choice and not handled terribly well, but on the bright side they swept up Katrina into their typical frenetic pace and tore through the entire supernatural pregnancy thing in a single episode and can move on. Hopefully they'll keep her from getting re-captured by Headless for a while - I think she'll do better if they keep her around to be the gang's magic expert for a bit instead of being off elsewhere having her own slow-paced mostly-unrelated plot going on.
And, yeah, poor Headless, the whole Katrina plotline has not only been unkind to her and to the show's pace but also been quite unkind to his Scary Factor, culminating in this episode of him just getting smacked around and seeming kinda feeble. I'm hoping they're building up to a Headless-says-screw-this-Moloch-shit-and-goes-rogue plotline (perhaps by preying on Katrina's belief in the good in people to get her to find a way to release him from Moloch's control) in which he could easily become very very scary again.
posted by mstokes650 at 1:57 PM on November 4, 2014
Except that practically every story in every episode of this show is resolved by magic/MacGuffin that has not been introduced previous to the episode. Usually the monster hasn't been introduced previous to the episode, either. The standard episode arc is: open with scene of Ichabod interacting humorously with the modern world; find out about new monster; figure out that monster is related to some aspect of colonial history; use that to figure out which never-before-mentioned-McGuffin will defeat monster; get McGuffin; defeat monster; never ever mention or re-use McGuffin again. (I'd like to think they will eventually re-use a few of these, like hey remember that time they made a giant scary Franklinstein's monster and left it to roam free around town? Because after all it's not like they've ever been in a situation since then where a giant scary monster on their side would have been handy.) It's perfectly fair to not like Katrina-centric episodes but it's weird to object that they're bad because they follow the same arc as all the other episodes do.
That said, I did think the supernatural-pregnancy plot was a poor choice and not handled terribly well, but on the bright side they swept up Katrina into their typical frenetic pace and tore through the entire supernatural pregnancy thing in a single episode and can move on. Hopefully they'll keep her from getting re-captured by Headless for a while - I think she'll do better if they keep her around to be the gang's magic expert for a bit instead of being off elsewhere having her own slow-paced mostly-unrelated plot going on.
And, yeah, poor Headless, the whole Katrina plotline has not only been unkind to her and to the show's pace but also been quite unkind to his Scary Factor, culminating in this episode of him just getting smacked around and seeming kinda feeble. I'm hoping they're building up to a Headless-says-screw-this-Moloch-shit-and-goes-rogue plotline (perhaps by preying on Katrina's belief in the good in people to get her to find a way to release him from Moloch's control) in which he could easily become very very scary again.
posted by mstokes650 at 1:57 PM on November 4, 2014
I always compare this show to Fringe, b/c I bingewatched Fringe right before starting on this show, and also b/c Roberto Orci was an executive producer on both, and I have to point out that Fringe also had an ep w/ a super accelerated pregnancy, so it felt EXTRA lame and derivative to me.
I also second the comments on the lameness of Abraham! (And Henry last episode.) They are two of the HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, why are they so whiny and easy to beat up? I'm having a hard time seeing any of these demons as a legit threat now if DEATH is defeated by sunlight, come on.
posted by leesh at 4:35 PM on November 4, 2014
I also second the comments on the lameness of Abraham! (And Henry last episode.) They are two of the HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, why are they so whiny and easy to beat up? I'm having a hard time seeing any of these demons as a legit threat now if DEATH is defeated by sunlight, come on.
posted by leesh at 4:35 PM on November 4, 2014
I never had any particularly strong pro/anti-Katrina feelings, but I'm definitely nervous about how her presence will affect the Ichabod+Abbie scenes going forward. Even in this episode - Ichabod only learned about CPR as of last week, wouldn't it have been better if Abbie had been doing the chest compressions and telling him when to give the breaths? Instead they just had her sitting there silently emoting while Crane did the whole resuscitation himself.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:33 PM on November 4, 2014
posted by oh yeah! at 7:33 PM on November 4, 2014
I take ten episodes with Katrina over one episode with Hawley.
posted by Pendragon at 1:27 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Pendragon at 1:27 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Apparently Selfie has been canceled, so maybe we'll get John Cho back, which would be great.
posted by PussKillian at 8:07 PM on November 7, 2014
posted by PussKillian at 8:07 PM on November 7, 2014
I mean this is a show based in Sleepy Hollow, shouldn't the Horseman be a little less whiny and easily whipped by Henry and his goons?
Yeah, I felt really bad for him this week, and also really irritated that Katrina didn't explain more about he tried to protect her from Henry's creepy doctor goons. Hopefully they will all end up working together to throw Henry into scenery-chewing hell with his facepeeler buddy forever.
John Noble has always been hilariously OTT but it is really starting to grate on me.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:50 AM on November 9, 2014
Yeah, I felt really bad for him this week, and also really irritated that Katrina didn't explain more about he tried to protect her from Henry's creepy doctor goons. Hopefully they will all end up working together to throw Henry into scenery-chewing hell with his facepeeler buddy forever.
John Noble has always been hilariously OTT but it is really starting to grate on me.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:50 AM on November 9, 2014
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I was really disappointed that they didn't bring Jenny in for some exposition, because I have a feeling that Jenny and Katrina interacting would be amazing.
posted by dinty_moore at 5:37 AM on November 4, 2014