I liked the bit with the plants.

( Spoilers will never fail to be amused by Hessians in black leather )

Having had the chance to watch the finale now, some thoughts about this show's first season that aren't about Hessians. First of all, something nobody told me when advertising the show to me but which I spotted at once when reading the opening credits was that it was created by that enterprising duo, Orci & Kurtzman, whom I started to notice as scriptwriters for J.J. Abrams in Alias, who also contributed scripts to Lost and Fringe and who did, of course, write the scripts for both Star Trek Reboot outings at the cinema. With this in mind, it was easy to guess what the virtues and flaws of Sleepy Hollow might be.

It's highly entertaining, fast-paced, and stands by its crack. This is a show where a character can ask "Father of the Nation George Washington or Zombie George Washington?" and it's both a serious question and an intentional quip. The partnership that develops between its leads is lovely to watch, all the more so because the female partner isn't treated in anyway as subordinate to the male one by the narrative, and she has other important relationships in her life, notably the one with her sister. Both powerful friendships and messed up family reationships are what I expect from Orci & Kurtzman & their fellow Abrams-schooled scribes, and they delivered. Which is also why I'm totally on board with ( a finale spoiler. )

On the downside, while partnerships and messed up family relationships are usually their forte, romances rarely are. (Says she whose opinion on Sydney/Vaughn and Olivia/Peter went from toleration to dislike depending on the season.) Nothing to dislike so far on Sleepy Hollow, it's just that while the show keeps mentioning Morales is Abbie's ex, he's an incredibly bland character, there is no sense as to what might have drawn her to him in the first place or of any lingering emotional connection, and thus both his and Brooks' fixation on Abbie comes across as more Because Why Not than being believable or a valuable part of her backstory. And poor Katrina through the season is saddled with being the Exposition Witch, delivering warnings and backstory to Ichabod, helping to convert him to the Rebel's cause in the past and giving him someone to rescue in the present, but not as a character in her own righ. Mind you, this could change; it's nothing that's not fixable if you give her scenes that aren't about providing backstory to Ichabod or being a damsel, and I really DON'T want the show to kill off the character because that would smack of taking the easy way out (not to mention it would make me suspect we're headed for an Ichabod/Abbie romance, and I appreciate their platonic partnership - and am burned by Fringe, so badly burned, because I had originally liked Olivia's relationship with Peter Bishop before it turned romantic).

Much in the way of logic is also not something you want from an O & K plotted tale. I mean, never mind the operetta Germans, I may have missed something but I'm not clear as to why Moloch & Co. were ever invested in the victory of the Loyalists/the British Army. Not that I'm against the idea of the British Empire being supported and ruled by demons! (Though it's a tad unfair to Mr. Pitt and "Farmer" George III., about whom Byron memorably wrote I grant his household abstinence; I grant/His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want/I know he was a constant consort; own/He was a decent sire, and middling lord./All this is much, and most upon a throne;/As temperance, if at Apicius' board,/Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown./I grant him all the kindest can accord;/And this was well for him, but not for those/Millions who found him what Oppression chose..) I just think that any self respecting demon would soon realise the empire with a future to support is the American one. Also, when our heroes went through the requiste old books and came across a depiction of Moloch, it suspiciously resembled a William Blake painting, despite the book in question being supposedly medieval. (Though it wouldn't suprise me to learn William Blake was a time traveler. Would totally explain his claim to have chatted with the Prophet Ezekiel!) (Incidentally, wasn't Blake pro American and French Revolution?) As is most show's want when having a character from Olden Times (= any time predating the 20th century), Ichabod Crane manages to have magically escaped any bias of his time of origin. He was anti slavery and has no problem working with a woman; he was best buddies with the Indians and is shocked to learn of their post American Revolution fate. (Because clearly, all that land grabbing by settlers only started after the Brits were gone.) The only time the show addresses the fact that maybe not all of the American Revolution was about Truth And Justice For Everyone a bit is when Ichabod, Abbie and Frank Irving have that chat about Jefferson, which was all very well but Jefferson was hardly the only Founding Father or American Revolutionary who owned slaves. But hey - history is also not something one expects out of a O & K produced how. (I do hope for a Rambaldi tie-in one day, though. The red ball must turn up SOMEWHERE!)

In conclusion: charming and entertaining tv. I look forward to the next season and more partnership and convoluted family relationship goodness. I also expect that come s3 at the latest, fannish disgruntlement will start, but who knows? The pattern could always change. As Abbie pointed out to Ichabod, there is always another way.

My Sleepy Hollow marathoning has arrived at episode 4, wherein the operetta Germans zahrawithaz warned me about show up, and they are indeed hysterical. Oh, and Ichabod getting congratulated for his German is on a level with Duncan MacLeod getting congratulated for his German in the Highlander episode Valkyrie, meaning neither actor knows how to pronounce a single word. Otoh, the actors who play the Germans in this episode don't, either (in the opening scene, the only reason why I knew it was supposed to be German that the guy in red talked was because Zahra had warned me), so it's understandable their characters think Ichabod is fluent. (Clearly, they themselves are zombies hypnotized into believing they're Hessians by watching too many Hollywood movies.)

No offense to the good citizens of Hesse, but the funniest thing is the repeated declarations that Hessians have a reputation for ruthlessness, because err, well, um, not so much. (They have a reputation for having the easiest-going school system in the German states, though.) At least not in the martial toughness/brutishness sense the term is used in the episode; otoh Hesse produced the most famous German poet of all time, who also spent a lot of years in politics (not in Hesse, though; in Thuringia) and was the first German writer to establish a copyright (thank you, Goethe), and he could certainly be ruthless in another sense. Also from Hesse: one of our former secretaries of state, Joschka Fischer, with a curriculum vitae from taxi driver and radical violent protester against the state to second most powerful politician of the country, so there's that. But the Hessian accent can't help sounding soft to this Franconian's ear, and I hear it at least once a year when I go to Frankfurt for the book fair.

As for the Hessian soldiers in the American War of Independence: I have no idea how ruthless, or not they were then, but the one contemporary thing that immediately comes to my mind when thinking about German soldiers in the revolutionary wars is a scene from Schiller's drama Kabale und Liebe, in which he attacked a practice that was all too common then among the princes of the dozens of German principalities. All of whom wanted to have their mini Versailles which was costly, and several sold regiments to the British. Not regiments of volunteers, mind. Regiments of gangpressed farmer's boys. The scene in question, which is one of Schiller's most famous, has the mistress of the duke receiving new jewelry from him. Which she's fairly indifferent towards, since both she and the Duke at this point are over each other, eying greener pastures. She does, however, notice that the man delivering the necklace seems to be upset over something, barely holding it together, is curious, pushes him a bit and then it bursts out of him that his sons are among the pressed-in-to-service-and-sold-to-the-American-wars which are paying for her finery and goodbye jewels. 7000, the old valet says, and describes how anyone who protested or questioned was clubbed down or shot: Wir hörten die Büchsen knallen, sahen ihr Gehirn auf das Pflaster spritzen, und die ganze Armee schrie: Juchhe! nach Amerika! -

("We heard the guns shoot, saw their brains on the cobblestone, and then the whole army cried: 'Hooray! To America!' -")

So I'm sitting over here, imagining the scared out of their wits gang pressed sons of the valet in Kabale und Liebe....ending up in a weird place where everyone makes a fuss about tea taxes as unbearable tyranny.