Abbie Mills from Sleepy Hollow: Best New Female Character In Years

I'm writing about the same show twice in a row? A new show?

Weird.

Anyway, I just feel the need to talk a teeny bit more about Fox's Sleepy Hollow. 

And that's mostly to say that I already adore Abbie so so so much. 

She is the type of female character I have been yearning for all these years. She's tough, smart, emotional, and also cuts to the chase. She isn't out-right denying what's happening around her (anymore) but is going "Okay, I may not understand what's happening, but I still need to do something to stop it. So, get out of my way."

She has the potential to be the next Dana Scully. The next Sidney Bristow. The next Olivia Dunham.

Those last two aren't exactly a surprise, as Sleepy Hollow has Orci & Kurtzman's fingerprints all over it. And while I do have major issues with how those gentlemen write plots, they are damn good at creating great characters. And I have to give the show major props for not just creating a bland sidekick for the fish-out-of-water that is Ichabod Crane. Abbie is the heart and soul of this show, there is no doubt about that.

However, both of the episodes that have aired have had ridiculous and blah final acts to the episodic plot. They need to pull their shit together on those or get rid of them entirely. The second episode especially suffered from having a pretty damn weak and old-hat build-up for the contained plot. Which is a shame, as it started off strong with pulling an unexpected move very early in the episode and then never being able to top it, other than once again doing a quick spook at the end with the demon (which, if I'm reading the end credits correctly, they're calling "Blurry Man"? My eyes hurt from rolling) similar-but-lesser than how it was done in the first episode.

So Sleepy, So Hollow

At one point in the pilot episode of Sleepy Hollow (which you can watch on Hulu, here), the Headless Horseman gets a gun and starts shooting like crazy... and, because it is TV, he does not successfully hurt or kill anyone.

But, I realized, he was doing pretty good for a headless guy. At least he was aiming in the correct general area! And, of course, now I must bring up the beginning of David Sedaris's famous "6 to 8 Black Men" essay.

But back to Sleepy Hollow. It was... good-to-average? Great guest stars for a pilot- John Cho and Clancy Brown both bring a lot of credit to the show. And hopefully, the show will continue to play recordings of Clancy's amazing voice, as no one can read slightly-religious-end-of-days text like Clancy Brown can (except for maybe Kiff Vanden Heuvel from Bioshock Infinite). And it's kind of sad how nice it is to see a genre show with a black woman as the leading actress. It's really nice, actually.

And Orlando Jones doing dramatic acting! I've had a weird soft-spot for Orlando Jones for years, mostly from that two year period where he was almost famous- between The Replacements, Evolution, and the 7Up commercials (did he also do collect calling commercials? I think he did). So it's really nice to see him proving himself as being able to tone it down and be a stern authority figure.

I just wonder if the show will keep its momentum or slow to a deadly crawl. Fox really struggles with genre procedurals (that are not The X-Files) and I worry that it will fall into the same issues. Because it does really feel like a Fox show. Like Fringe and New Amsterdam had a baby. Maybe with a touch of Bones and John Doe.