Relationship Spotlight: Ichabod Crane & Lt. Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)

Back when I started writing about Sleepy Hollow, I’d just caught up with the show’s first season, and I was in love with it, its lead characters, and the bond between them.  After that, season two happened, and I started cooling on the series.  I still liked Abbie and Crane, and at its core, I still liked what their relationship was about, but I feel the show lost its way somewhat when they tampered with the Crane-Abbie connection.  It’s not a dramatic shift but a subtle erosion, taking them further and further apart as another character monopolizes more of Crane’s time/interest and a wedge is slowly driven between him and Abbie.  However, monkeying even slightly with the show’s strongest quality was ill-advised, and I wasn’t a fan of the change or the reduced focus on Abbie.

Fast-forward to this week’s season finale, and I’ll cop to some internal Snoopy dances, because Crane and Abbie are definitely back.  They’re screen partners for the majority of the episode, and the show returns its attention to one of the finest demon-fighting duos ever.  Care is taken to address the damage and make amends for it, and in light of my high hopes for a restored dynamic in season three (if there is one!,) I’m finally doing a post on Team Witness.

In many ways, Abbie and Crane are cut from the same cloth a few hundred years apart.  Both are of course brave and dedicated, both are clever and observant, and both can kick some serious demon butt.  Upon learning of their role as witnesses, both go on separate journeys from skeptic to believer, stunned but ultimately pragmatic.  Additionally, both have a penchant for putting themselves in danger (I know they’ve signed up to do battle against the harbingers of the apocalypse, but even so.)  For both of them, their streaks incline towards recklessness, stubbornness, and adrenaline-junkiness.

However, Crane and Abbie are also quite different people – and I mean beyond the obvious, like the fact that she’s not afraid of the Internet and he’s a former pal of George Washington.  Though both wear a number of hats in carrying out their mission, they often come at it from different angles.  Abbie is a true-blue cop, probing a scene for clues and picking out the telling details.  She approaches things more practically and, on an unrelated note, doesn’t take herself nearly as seriously as Crane.  She takes her work seriously, of course, but she’s a lot more likely to own up to her flaws and make a joke at her expense.  Meanwhile, although Crane has loosened up a fair amount under Abbie’s influence, he’s still awfully buttoned-up and doesn’t always appreciate Abbie’s affectionate ribbing.  When it comes to the mission, he tends to use the combined tactics of research and memory.  He loves old books, old maps, old artifacts, and old recollections from his 18^th-century days.  This is understandable, given his history, but he’s not inexorably tied to the past; he’ll even brave Google for the sake of the cause.  Between our two heroes, these separate strengths are vital.  They make one another better, each complementing the other’s aptitudes and backing up the other whenever they need it.

Finally, at their best, these two will do anything for each other.  That penchant for putting themselves in danger gets cranked up to a near-biological imperative when one of them is in peril.  Though they disagree about things and sometimes opt for different battle plans, their general state is trust each other when it really counts, and they know each other well enough that they can pretty much instantly sense when something’s amiss.  Abbie-Crane for the win!