A lil late on this blurb, sure, I’ll take that, but my love for the show compels me (See what I did there?) to weigh in on Sleepy Hollow’s Season Two Finale, “Tempus Fugit”—Latin for “Time Flies.”
First off, say what you will about Katrina. You love her, you hate her, you think her character sucks, she’s inconsistent, a supernatural flip-flopper, whatever. I dig her. The show would most likely never have made it past pilot without her, and tell you the truth I don’t think she’s actually “dead,” but sort of reunited in a different realm with Jeremy. Perhaps that was her pseudo-demon son’s plan all along in the previous “Awakening” episode. Perhaps they will return. What’s certain is that she’s obviously gone over to the dark side. What she did to that colonel in the makeshift hospital was simply sinister. Yes, I know what that dude tried to do to Mills, but damn, man.
Diehard fans, you know Katrina’s significance: Ichabod’s wife, a witch that is a force of good, Jeremy’s mother, etc. The truth is that it’s her magic and her spell and her love of Crane that made the entire show (and secret war) possible to begin with. Had she not chosen Crane, protected him in that living tomb after his and the horseman’s blood mixed on the battlefield, we wouldn’t even be squawklin’ about any of this right now, and the world as we know it in the Sleepy Hollow realm would most likely have been handed over on a silver platter to the forces of darkness, if not way back in Colonial times, then most definitely in the modern-day.
I can say this because I think there’s a case to be made that it was at least partially Crane’s love for Katrina and the prospect of a future with her that enabled him to conjure (See what I did there, again? Oh, you’re a sly one, Mister Tirana. Indeed.) the strength required to behead the horseman in that infamous battle scene.
Which brings me to the season finale. Amazing. Killer. Absolutely fantastic. Love the time-travel sequence. Love the historical figures and references. Love the potential of an alternate future. The latter scares the living shttt out of me, and sort of messed with my head just a wee lil as the scene went down, but wow, Holy Avocado, Batman, what great television!
I’m going to make a wild and potentially controversial statement here, but I’ve got to believe that for history fiends, like myself, the episode was no doubt by far one of the best, at least most memorable of the entire series thus far.
I know, I know. There you go, Tirana. Speaking for all us history freaks. You have no clue about us, Tirana. We are good people. Yes we prefer to live in the past, and okay, maybe, just maybe we have a way too unhealthy addiction to Civil War re-enactments. But who the hell are you to speak for us? Who the hell is Zachary B. fkn Tirana the Third or whoever to even consider representing all of us?!
Don’t crucify me. Not yet. This is technically my first post for the hallowed Squawkler. Rather, rejoice in my participatory communication.
Dare I say the time-travel Colonial scenes were spectacular? That we all want more of them? That I second a random television blogger’s suggestion that entire seasons could be based in such a period and we’d eat up every single souvlaki-slathered nanosecond of them?
There he goes again! Who the hell is this guy?! Damn it damn it damn it! And what the hell does he mean tucking a poorly veiled chicken souvlaki reference into a serious television column such as The Squawkler!?!? Dear readers, merely a student and a great admirer, I assure you. Merely a student of history and reveler in the imagination who does not possess cable, Internet or even a TV, but yet who loves to watch it and will feast upon the food of his brother and wife’s apartment not far from his own and glom, glom, glom the set, sputtering a healthy litany of expletives throughout (especially the disturbing shows, such as Criminal Minds, Stalker and, of course, The Following, among others) and loves every bloody second of it. More on this perhaps, in a future squawk.
The bottom line is that with Crane and Mills as guides, the ability to revisit Colonial America and meet some of the Founding Fathers—well it’s just awesome.
For me, at least, one of the most shocking, fascinating and defining scenes of this season’s closer was the Horseman’s decapitation (!!) of Benjamin Franklin (!!!!). Still thinking about that horrific moment, some two weeks out. His portrayal in the minutes leading up to that slaying was equally gripping—Franklin’s near-immediate acceptance of Mills’ revelations of the future.
Loved it, loved it, loved it.
On some level, it scared the living shtt out of me at the same time. His loss made me revisit yet again a discussion myself and another Squawkler have engaged on a number of occasions: the sheer, undeniable magic of this period and the almost divine, against-all-odds realities which had to coincide in just the right cosmic order for its success. Franklin, the Adamses, hell, Washington, Hamilton, Revere, or any of the lot of them all could have been slaughtered a million times over, at any time. The fact they persevered—and somehow existed at all at this exact pivotal, monumental moment in all of human existence—is just absolutely beyond mind-bending. Miraculous, really.
That’s one of the things I love so much about this show. That beyond all the insanely infectious adventures into the paranormal and spiritual realms and undeniably magnetic anchor of Crane and Mills & Co.’s bond, pseudo-science fiction bleeds into pseudo-history.
Of course, hope and love underpin it all—two themes intensifying on another one of my favorite shows, The Blacklist.
But that’s a future Squawkler.
