Me in 2013: "Wow, Sleepy Hollow has a fun premise and looks promising. Gonna have to check it out."...
Flash forward to 2022
That's me. Always on the cutting edge of pop culture.
Pilot episodes have a lot of heavy lifting to do, and in the world of modern broadcast TV, where running times are 10 minutes less than they were when was growing up, this means taking a lot of shortcuts. And boy do they here. The whole affair feels rushed and under-cooked. I think it would've benefited immensely from a longer, "2 hour" (see; 90 actual minutes) pilot to help flesh things out a bit and keeping it from feeling like it was on fast forward.
Sleepy Hollow has a lot of very good elements, but, in the pilot at least, the total was a tad less than the sum of its parts. This is likely because its dramatic sinew is extremely contrived. Almost insultingly so. I know you have to suspend disbelief when you watch or read fantasy, but it still has to make sense in the context of the world it's attempting to create, and here it just doesn't.
As much as I enjoyed the look (the sort of perpetual New England autumn we associate w/Halloween) and the cast, this has the feel of a series that started with no end game in mind. Where the contrivances build up, one on top of the other, until it just collapses in on top of itself. In the end, I don't think I'll be returning to Sleepy Hollow.
Now, time to check our that hot new series Glee...