Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Sleepy Hollow 1.02 Review: A Long Burning Revenge


If you don’t have this routine down by now, let me reiterate. All those that have yet to watch the second episode of Sleepy Hollow, titled ‘Blood Moon’, that aired last night, and wish to do so spoiler free, now would be a good time to exit this review. As with all my reviews, there is a chance that there are spoilers ahead. THIS BLOG MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! You’ve been warned.
Jumping right into things, I’ll begin with a couple things I liked about this episode. I’m definitely happy to see John Cho still kicking around. When I heard he wasn’t going to just be a one-off character, I thought maybe it would be due to flashbacks of some kind, or perhaps a spirit of some sort, but he’s back in the flesh, neck wrinkles and all. I do think he was a little monotone in this episode, for the most part, but otherwise he wasn’t too bad. I particularly liked when he disappeared from behind Abby when she turned around, typical scary movie kind of stuff.
I was really excited to see that this series has opening credits, although they could’ve been longer. Too few shows nowadays have more than just a title credit, especially network shows in this day, and I may be one of the few that enjoys having them, but I think they help to illuminate the type of show a person is watching. I am surprised there are only four series regulars evidenced in the opening credits, and also seeing Irving in there, he wasn’t all that present in this episode, but perhaps he will in future episodes.
While very little to do with the episode overall, I am excited to see Len Wiseman as an executive producer of this show, backing up a couple of the Fringe series creators. Helps me think I can expect great things from this series. I definitely get the Fringe vibe off this show, being that it is a procedural type series with something more, although this time is more supernatural than sci-fi.
From this episode alone, the make-up department deserves some type of award. I’m guessing they were in charge of the burnt witch, because it doesn’t look like computer graphics to me, and I applaud their capabilities. So many times people go the CGI route, and on TV it doesn’t often look that natural because it’s too expensive to do that. If this was TV make-up, I’m happy to see them going the Buffy route, using props and make-up to make it appear realistic, especially being that this is ten years after that series concluded. The villainous witch in this episode just looked so realistically like burnt flesh that it helped to immerse myself into the episode.
Compared to the pilot, I don’t think this episode was quite as good, but I understand that this show still kind of needs to find it’s footing, in which way it’s going to go, direction wise. It was good enough that I expect to continue watching, and there were parts I greatly enjoy, but I do think there could have been a bit more. Particularly with the ingredients the witch needed for her spell to be made flesh again, I think only needed the ashes of two people was a little lacking. I would’ve expected more deaths than that would be needed to bring someone back to life. Especially since family trees after two hundred plus years can end up stretching to encapsulate a large group of people.
Just a few questions before I sign off. Why is Death the only horseman that came to town? Why was he the one to come first? Being that this headless horseman ties in with the four horsemen of the apocalypse, why Death? He is first introduced during a war, so shouldn’t War have been the first horseman? I expect we’ll get answers to these questions as the series progresses, but they’re just something to ponder.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Best Lines:
“Something got in there and snapped his head backwards like a Pez dispenser.” – Abby, referring to Dunn’s death in the previous episode.
“I will literally pay you to stop talking.” – Abby to Crane, after he explains things in great detail.

All right, I’m now off to go watch and review The Blacklist, so check back in an hour or so for that. Then follow up later with my reviews for New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Trophy Wife, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

No comments:

Post a Comment