I enjoyed the episode. I wasn't expecting them to bring another Horseman so soon. I like the fact that their boss isn't a total moron. He seems to realize that there is weird stuff going on, and is willing to let Abbie and Ichabod do their thing, which is nice. In a lot of these shows, they have the clueless boss constantly getting in the way, so it's nice to have one who is actually fairly useful.
Not only isn't he a total moron, I think he knows more than he lets on, since he knew about the secret room where all the old witch files were kept.
The premise of this one didn't quite work for me. I'm not fond of the myth of the disappearance of the Roanoke colony, because it's not really a mysterious disappearance at all. A lot of early English colonies in North America failed due to the settlers' agricultural incompetence; they simply starved to death, because the authorities responsible for selecting colonists didn't choose them based on survival ability but rather on more political or religious considerations (or something like that). Often those settlers who did survive only did so with the help of neighboring Native Americans who taught them how to farm -- or, in the event of total colony failure, absorbed them into the indigenous communities. That's most likely what happened to the Roanoke settlers -- they suffered famine and the survivors ended up adopted and assimilated into the Croatan population, interbreeding with them so that their European traits blended into the indigenous gene pool. People in later centuries have played up the CROATOAN sign left behind as though it were some big mystery, but that's just because latter-day historians downplayed the presence and agency of native peoples in colonial history, a trend that began in the 19th century and has only been reversed in the past few decades. Arguably it's not mysterious at all -- it's literally telling us where the survivors went. But the most massive problem was the use of Middle English. They're off by about a century there. The Middle English period ended around 1470. The Roanoke Colony was founded in the 1580s, when William Shakespeare was in his twenties. So their speech should've been Early Modern English, nearly as recognizable as that of Shakespeare's plays or the King James Bible. The archive room is hardly secret; it's part of a government building. The only secret was the access tunnel that led there.
The archive room isn't some mysterious chamber where Sleepy Hollow's police force have stored mystical artifacts and information. It's simply where the police/town put away files and things for storage. The only reason it has files on mystical events is because that's where the items in the Sheriff's office were put after it was cleaned out and he had hidden files on supernatural events. The stuff with the witch bones and things that were shown in a previous episode were not in the archive room. They were in the underground tunnels between the police building and the archive room's building and had been sealed for decades/centuries possibly.
Man, I was kinda hoping ancient aliens had something to do with the colonists' disappearance. I would've loved to hear Giorgio Tsoukalos' theory on Roanoake.
"Isn't it possible that aliens could have abducted the colonists, or even, since they were *cooooooooooooooolonists,* recruited them by offering them a new colony on another planet?" Let's face it, it's not much of a challenge to figure out what his take on anything would be...
This! So much this! I was watching the show and ranting like a lunatic about colonists, the natives, how unprepared the colonists were, etc. And... the total of Middle English? They were not Chaucer's contemporaries. However, I still liked the show. It is campy good fun, and the leads sell it.
OK... So I've watched it again and upon further viewing, I have a couple of things sticking in my craw.. 1. Who was the little girl that Thomas saw in the forest? A figment of his imagination created by the horseman to lead him to the road? The horseman was obviously chasing him in that direction, so why bother with the little girl? 2. The captain tells Mills and Crane that he has a way to get them out of the quarentine area... How in the hell can a police captain get them out of a secure CDC lockdown? Maybe a deleted scene can explain that, but unless that's the case, we're now left with "plot convenience theater..." 3. So what happened to Roanoke? Were they really spirited away to some little Island near Sleepy Hollow all those years ago? And as such, how did they avoid detection? Did they just stay there until the population eventually died of old age, or were they there in some kind of protected stasis bubble that kept them alive until the curse was lifted.. Obviously something was there on the island, as Crane was left standing in the ruins of the fountain. Or maybe I should just relax and enjoy the show for what it is...
1. the girl was the carrot, the horseman was the stick. 2. Not sure what the problem is here. In the subsequent scenes he tells them that crane and the boy are being transferred. Mills steals the ambulance and that's how they escape. Did you take a pee break at the wrong time? 3. ghosts, magic, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.
They really didn't have to go with Middle English to make the boy difficult to understand and make Crane necessary. Early Modern English itself may have read similar to what we know now, but it was different in pronunciation. http://curationgalore.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/original-pronunciation-shakespeare/
Yeah, Middle English made no sense. (Well, Shakspearen English just sounds like a mishmash of English, Irish and Scottish accents )
Episode 2 was still fun. I'd have voted to get the witch on side, or, y'know, lick her to death or something, but still... Obviously the producers have been impressed by Linda Hamilton in T2. Nice to see Clancy Brown still in it despite getting killed at the beginning of the first episode!
Yeah, they explain that an overflow facility has been set up to handle the deluge of new victims and that Crane and Plague Boy are being relocated to the new facility . . . or so they say!
A professor I had spoke a passage in Middle English in class, then asked for descriptions. Those given were off, to me, so I offered: the harshness of German, with a bit of the nasalness of Swedish, toss in some lilt of Irish, and then speak as if you had marbles in your mouth. She said I nailed it! ETA: As soon as I heard Middle English, all I could think of was NOOOOOOOO!!!!! Wrong era! Middle English in the 1400s, this was MUCH later. But...it's just a tv show. Still, a silly choice.
In the Sleepy Hollow-verse, the citizens of Roanoke were huge Chaucer fanatics and chose to speak Middle English in tribute.
^ Best explanation! I just learned from Entertainment Weekly that this will be a short season of Sleepy Hollow. I'm excited to see Fringe's John Noble in upcoming episodes.
They need to just do "Story so far" to the tune of "Carry on Wayward Son" and get it over with. I mean that in a good way.