ASGW Sleepy Hollow (ep 10 & 11)

So yeah, I pretty much stopped blogging over the winter holidays.  I was stressed, sick, and overwhelmed.

But last night was the Sleepy Hollow finale, so I thought maybe I should catch up on the blogging.

Episodes 10 & 11, way back in early December and then last week moved the plot forward mostly in this world, so there wasn't a lot of history to poke around at.  However, there are still problems with how this series is handling Christianity and now Judaism, which came out in these episodes, so let's dig in!

First problem:  There are more kinds of Christian than Roman Catholics.  And most of them were here in the colonies during the Revolution.  It's like the writers/directors/producers of the show think Americans won't know what a church is unless it has candles, and altar, a crucifix, and stained glass windows.  Also, there are more clergy than Roman Catholic priests.  Although I will suppose there aren't many Protestants that retain the old Medieval trappings of things like exorcisms.

Second problem:  they obviously have no idea who Quakers are.  Katrina tells Ichabod she comes to the memory of a the church and lights a candle in memoriam and prays for their son's soul.  Quakers don't pray for the souls of the dead (or even the souls of the presumed dead - there was a big reveal about their son in the finale last night, but it was pretty obvious in ep 10 that he maybe wasn't dead).  Quakers don't really pray at all.  They more meditate.  Also, they don't light candles in memoriam.  Quaker belief is marked by a lack of ritual and accoutrement.  They have very simple practises that, well, mostly consist of meditation and waiting in silence.  At this point, I'm just ready to give up on the whole Katrina-is-a-Quaker-nurse thing.

Third problem: what the hell kind of professor was Ichabod anyway?  He says he's more or less a history professor, but in ep 10, he references golems in the Talmud, and in ep 11, he says the demon is speaking ancient Aramaic.  I am 90-95% sure no Oxford professor before maybe the end of the 19th century even saw a Talmud, much less could read it.  Christians spent more time forbidding Jews from reading it than reading it themselves. Even by the Enlightenment, the anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe was fairly strong.  I guess if he can read the Talmud, he can recognize ancient Aramaic, because that's what the Talmud's written in, mostly, but it seriously defies belief that he would recognize it spoken.  I know a little Aramaic anyway, and whatever the demon was speaking, it wasn't Aramaic.  The word for negation (no/not) wasn't there.   But hey.

And one final note.  What the hell was up with the creepy doll???

ASGW Sleepy Hollow (ep 9)

Sleepy Hollow episode 10 airs tonight.  Only 3 more left!  I wonder if I'll manage to watch season 2.  This is the first season of TV since... I dunno, TNG that I have managed to watch a show every week.  I think it has something to do with the fact that the episodes are online, so I can watch them even when I'm away or forgetful.

Episode 9 was mostly about developing the various charactes' backstories.  For one, I so called it: Ichabod and Katrina had a baby.  A son, specifically, which will probably be important later on.  There was also some slight development in Abbie's story too, but not a whole lot.  Surprisingly, the captain got his fair share as well; we met his ex-wife and daughter for the first time, and his daughter was given some significant screen time.

This, if I may digress a bit, is why Sleepy Hollow rocks and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't.  Sleepy Hollow takes the time to put a kid on screen and give her her own monologue to establish her voice and backstory.  And she's just a supporting character, with no promise she'll ever even come back. Agents is so caught up in explaining the McGuffin of the week that we still don't know who the 6 top-billed characters are, and since we don't know, we don't care.  The only episode of Agents that really did any character-building was the one where Simmons got the alien flu.  Even Coulson explaining how Melinda May got the nickname "the cavalry" doesn't give us any insight into her character.  She's still a cipher, like everyone else on the show.

Anyway, nothing really objectionable in ep 9 for Sleepy Hollow except for the main antagonist.  Why does an Ancient Near Eastern god whose main characteristic is worship involving child sacrifice have a servant made of tree roots from deciduous North America?  I'm waiting to see if there is ever a connection between Molech's worship and Ichabod's and Katrina's child, but I'm not holding my breath.  There was no indication of it in the episode.

Ok, maybe, maybe you could draw something from Abbie's line, "As soon as your son was born, the creature attacked," but that sounds more like the baby is some kind of mystic key (hey, he's the child of a witch, right?), not that Molech needs more child sacrifice.

Speaking of Katrina, one nitpicky bit:  Why is the letter Ichabod wrote to her in case he was killed on the battlefield folded up and hidden in a book when she was right there when he died to cast the spell that kept him alive? preserved? in some kind of magical stasis? for 200+ years?

Also, after the first episode where Ichabod met her, Katrina has looked and dressed nothing like an 18th century Quaker.  I think I already addressed that as Katrina Van Tassel, a Dutch woman in rural New York, she shouldn't be a Quaker at all.  Oh I didn't?  Well, she shouldn't. Quakers were British and largely centered around Philadelphia.  They could have made her Mennonite, which would have fit better, actually.  Mennonites were/are pacifists, like the Quakers, and the Plain Mennonites grew out of the German immigrants, not the Dutch.  So it wouldn't have been out of place for her to wear those fancy dresses and jewelry.  Also, Quakers were disowned if they married non-Quakers, and Abraham was obviously not a Quaker. 

See?  I should be hired as a TV/movie research assistant.

ASGW Sleepy Hollow (episodes 7 & 8)

blogablogablog.

So yeah, I took a break from blogging Sleepy Hollow for 2 reasons:  1) I was trying to finish my Ph.D. applications (done!) and 2) Thanksgiving in Arizona.

And in retrospect 3) these two episodes are basically a two-parter, with ep 8 picking right up on the cliffhanger ending of ep 7 and finishing out the story.

These episodes were great.  I got the feeling that they were setting up for what would have been the ending if the show hadn't been renewed for a second season, but it was, so they ended up just being a really tightly written adventure.

However, since this blog series is all about the problems with the show, let's get to criticizing!

UV lights can substitute for the sun in magic.  What?  It's magic.  There's something special about the sun, daylight, and good and evil.  While it was awesome to see the headless horseman start to smoke from the lights, replacing magic with science and technology is always uncertain ground to walk on, and I wasn't convinced that GE can project anti-evil.

Also, those are totally not Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

One thing they got very right, although I don't know if it was on purpose, was Captain Irving's emphasis on the word "scientifically" when explaining to Ichabod that DNA evidence had established that there are descendants of Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson.  An educated man from the 18th century Enlightenment would definitely respect anything backed up by "science."  But then, our own culture is so heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, it's hard to know if the writers had to even take Ichabod's cultural moment into consideration.

On the other hand, it was so awesome seeing Abbie teach Ichabod about what a fist-bump means :)

And watching Ichabod try not to be seduced by an internet porn popup is characteristic of why I love this show!  To say nothing of his voicemail to Abbie.

ASGW Sleepy Hollow (episode 6)

wah. so i was out of town last week and didn't get to post onthe last episode of Sleepy Hollow.  Am doing it now quickly before tonight's!

Ok, so continuing biblical problems: which horseman are they running from?  Seriously, people.  Just go back and read Revelation 6 again and decide what the hell you're doing.  Because the Headless Horseman is death, but he's the last horseman to emerge in chapter 6, not the first.  *sigh*

However, their definition of sin got really weird.  First thing you notice from the Sin Eater's sanctifying scene is that you define what's sin for you.  So if another redcoat had gone out and shot Arthur Bernard but didn't feel guilty about it, it wouldn't be sin?

And then, wait, what is Ichabod feeling all guilty about?  That he couldn't save the man from getting shot by a demon?  But it was totally ok for him to torture the guy?  No regret at all about torturing a man for days, but he fails at saving him from a demon and this is what connects him with "sin incarnate"?  I don't know if this is just callousness at torture's current position in American society or if the dialogue was handled/cut/edited badly, but it seems really weird to me that Ichabod would be totally ok with torturing a guy but then would flagellate himself over failing to save him in the woods, at night, from a demon.

On the other side,  I totally loved that Katrina can contact Abbie as well.  And was there a hint that Katrina and Ichabod had a baby?  In her vision, Abbie sees this baby carriage (and also note the toy in the bed) and hears a baby crying.  But of course it all turns creepy.  More to come, hopefully...

ASGW Sleepy Hollow (episode 5 - now with screenshots!)

so i was really looking forward to watching sleepy hollow last night and letting my brain turn to mush after a second PhD open house in less than a week.  but it was a rerun of the pilot, bah.

on the other hand, this gives me the chance to catch the blog up since i missed episode 5 last week.

there wasn't really any theology in ep 5, but there was a ton of awful history.  so here we go!

well, ok, first up: the horseman of pestilence.  also conquest because that actually follows the text of Revelation 6.  but why is he dressed as a samurai?

But, the major problem in this episode was historical:  a kid from the colony of Roanoke speaks Middle English. 

um.  no.

as wikipedia helpfully points out, Roanoke was a colony in North Carolina, founded in 1585 and disappeared sometime after the first recorded birth in the colony in 1587.

Middle English started to fade away in 1470.  it was replaced (again, wikipedia) by a dialect from London.  so the colony of Roanoke was founded slightly over 100 years after Middle English started to die out.  Also, let's please note that most of the colonists came from London or the south of England and so were closer to the linguistic shift and even less likely to still speak Middle English.  not only that, but the 1580s were well into the Great Vowel Shift, especially in the south, making Middle English even less likely.

further, Ichabod Crane is an Oxford history professor in this telling (in the original, he's just a schoolmaster).  the chances of a history professor being fluent in Middle English by the late 18th century are slim to none.

a seminary grad watches "sleepy hollow" (ep 1 & 4)

i am watching and loving the new tv show "sleepy hollow," but they are getting just about everything wrong about christianity and a lot wrong about history too.  so since fact-checking is all the rage, i think it's going to be fun to blog through the season (already renewed for a second, woo!) noting all the silliness.  potential spoilers, be warned.

unfortunately, i don't know a whole lot about native american religion, so i'm just assuming they got the Iroquois sandman-dream demon in episode 3 as wrong as they got everything else :)

i posted my initial reaction to the pilot already, but let's flesh it out a bit more. 

the apparently Roman Catholic priest who gets beheaded in the pilot is dressed as a cardinal.  what?

Ichabod reads Rev 6:1 and 6:7 as both referring to the headless horseman, who is identified as "death" (the other 3 are war, pestilence, and famine).  problem #1: 6:1 is talking about war, and 6:7 is talking about death.  problem #2: the series has death as the first horseman, but in Revelation, death is the last (hence 6:7).**

then he appears to keep reading and refers to 2 witnesses.  in Rev 6, there is a multitude, not 2.  so what the heck is going on?

that answer comes out a bit better in ep 4.  Jenny and Abbie were conveniently dragged to bible study as kids and forced to memorize scripture passages.  helpfully, they both memorized Revelation, apparently.  the two witnesses come from Rev 11:3, although the show leaves out the "in sackcloth" part of the quote.

more problems in episode 4:  the final demon summoning takes place in what apparently is a Dutch Reformed church, except the first shot of the church's interior shows a statue of a female saint or the virgin Mary.  not only is the Dutch Reformed tradition exceedingly Protestant so there would definitely be no statue of a saint or Mary, but it's also part of the Prot tradition that removed all art from churches, so there shouldn't be any statue at all (the same goes for the stained glass windows).  another problem is that as far as i could tell, they put the book on what appears to be not a lectern, but a portable baptismal font.  which is fine, except that the demons also come out of a font in the  middle of the room.  what church would have 2 fonts?

the book, referred to as "the lesser key of Solomon" was supposedly written by king Solomon and found during the crusades by the Knights Templar.  problem here:  they say "twelve centuries later" except that Solomon lived closer to 900 BCE, so it should be twenty two centuries later.  and there were no such things a books in 900 BCE; it should be a scroll.  assuming it's the actual parchment that Solomon wrote on, which since it's a book of black magic, i'm willing to suspend disbelief on that one :)  (Solomon gets the tradition of being a magician and sorcerer eventually, so i'm not going to criticize them for picking up on that).  fun thought: if this is the "lesser key of Solomon" is there a greater key out there somewhere?

i just laughed when Ichabod referred to Milton's "Paradise Lost" as a "theological text."  if you want to know who Moloch/Molech is, go read Leviticus, and I and II Kings.  and i'm pretty sure the last shot of the illustration in the book is William Blake (who is my most favourite crazy poet ever).

**in keeping with the series context, i'm giving all links to Bible passages in KJV.