On the show it's supposed to mean that he didn't really die. Obviously not perfect but it works for a silly, but awesome, show. But I am George Washington and the demons are coming for me!
I just made a dentist appointment for July and wrote it on my calendar. Maybe Washington was planning to have his wooden teeth adjusted?
What I found interesting about the date... four days after his "death", is that in reality Washington expressly told his family to wait three days after his death before they buried him. According to the docents at Mount Vernon, he was supposedly so concerned at potentially being buried alive and wanted to be sure he was dead before they committed him to the ground. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/washington.htm Still... I don't understand why writing the date means he was alive on that day. It wasn't like it was a diary entry. Wouldn't writing the date, in secret ink, mean that something secret was scheduled to happen on that day?
Actually while I can see why the show is popular, it's at odds with the beliefs of seminal futurists like Toffler (Future Shock). The opposite is true about past generations coping with technology up to and including the 21st Century. Having the expectation that Ichabod Crane cope rapidly to such dramatic changes is not believable. I was struck by this even in the first episode. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock Toffler was considered practically a visionary in foreseeing a generational inadaptability to computer tech among many other aspects of technological change (like medicine and ethics). I hope it's getting better. It was pretty light entertainment in the first episode.
Which is completely obliterated by the real world, in which people from numerous tribes that have remained disconnected from the modern world have had individuals acclimate to said modern world with relative ease (considering most of them didn't speak a language even remotely similar to English). Especially considering how huge a disconnect their world was from ours, as opposed to Ichabod Crane who not only was way ahead of his time, but exposed to real magic and technology and concepts that were also ahead of their time. Also, Crane accepts the modern world and the changes that have occurred, but he's hardly acclimated to it yet, let alone mastered many of the things we take for granted.
Hardly obliterated. The opposite happened in American culture with a whole generation who never sat down to a computer until fairly late, for they would often say, "I might break it." I can honestly tell you that computer technology was so puzzling to a large segment of the older generation, that they didn't know what to do, even when the words on the screen might say, "Press the left mouse button now." Likewise such things affected early Internet access. It affected cell phones, video cameras, simple things like setting the time on a VCR, etc. There have been interesting experiments to support your thesis. One technology group created a free standing computer that could access the internet. They placed it in a remote Indian village, and with no instructions. After a short while, some young children began to experiment with it, pressed some buttons, and began to learn how to do simple things with it. In turn, they taught their friends. However this again supports my thesis that young people could cope with technological change. In the experiment you didn't see older folks using it at all. A person from Ichabod Crane's generation would literally be in shock at things like postmodern morality, equality of the sexes (such as it is), changing gender and sexual identity, law, religion, etc. That's why the premise while humorous, wasn't believable but mildly entertaining. It could have been much more. EDIT: I've actually worked and volunteered with young Sudanese men who were originally herdsmen (shepherds of goats) in Southern Sudan. They later came to the US from Kenyan refugee camps. It took a huge amount of effort to aclimate them to American culture. They literally had to learn everything, for things like sensors that automatically flushed toilets, or made water dispense from the sink, were like magic to them. I can recall sitting with a group of 40-50 of them, and we were discussing the difficulty for them to find American wives. Believe me, the role of a wife within a herdsman Sudanese culture in which teeth are knocked out at puberty to demonstrate manhood, and large cuts created across their foreheads, might have some difficulty in American dating rituals. In fact, when we showed them a film on dating, many of them complained because there were so many beautiful women in the film, and that they felt tempted. That's not to mock them, for I count them as sincere friends, even brothers, but immediately adjusting to the 21st Century by Ichabod Crane was nonsensical. It's not been my experience for any refugees who entered America, whether Cuban, Croatian, or Sudanese, etc. In science fiction, there's long been a plot device that displacing someone through time can literally result in death or madness. You can see that in Terry Gillam's film 12 Monkeys. The reason is simple, such a change moving someone from their culture and uprooting them from their frame of reference does have a severe effect on their behavior. That's even an aspect of delerium (rarely )as well as cognitive disturbance (common) in aging patients.
What immediate adjustment? Again, he's accepted the changes, but he certainly hasn't adjusted to them. He's about as savvy with a computer or remote control as a 90 year old great grandmother, and he can't even stay in modern clothing for more than a minute without freaking out and going back to his old outfit. Buying water boggles his mind, as does numerous other modern conventions, as demonstrated in just about every single episode of the show so far. Nevermind, once again, that he's an outlier. A highly enlightened individual who was already exposed to technology, magic, and concepts way ahead of their time, long before he woke up in the future. (Also, why are you trying to paint him as a senile old man set in his ways, as opposed to the young, open-minded, and sophisticated man he is? Jesus.)
Indeed, he is a product of the Renaissance; a contemporary of Benjamin Franklin and other great thinkers, futurists and inventors of the times. These were folks that understood what could be possible with the human mind if applied in the proper way. If anyone would be able to acclimate to our era, it would be people of that era.
My wife Skypes every week with her 93 year old grandpa. Often their topic of conversation is the latest books he's read on his Kindle. That being said, he still refers to our "colored" President. Sometimes people have a hard time adjusting to new things, but it certainly doesn't make it unrealistic to show someone that has adjusted.
My comments were strictly based upon the initial episode not being compelling. I was curious if the show had gotten better since the first few episodes of many shows have weak writing as well as it taking time for the actors to feel comfortable in their roles. So far, I guess it's not going to be a show for anyone who's well read and a good critical thinker, only a show for mass appeal. I'll pass. The Renaissance comment made me laugh hysterically, but then most people have a poor sense of history.
I was thinking Sheldon from BBT, but yeah, that works too. The implication being, if you like this show, you're clearly a toothless rube.