Sleepy Hollow: Abbie Mills & Ichabod Crane, Revisited

The new season of Sleepy Hollow has aired two episodes so far, and I’m a bit surprised that my stance on Crane and Abbie has changed.  While I’ve always loved them as friends, compatriots, and witnesses, the third-season premiere marked the first time I’ve really wanted to view them in a will-they won’t-they light, leaning heavily on the will-they.  (Some Crane family spoilers.)

Don’t get me wrong – platonic friendships are my jam.  When I began the show, I was all-too-happy to see Abbie and Crane as such and hoped they’d stay that way.  I was fine with Katrina’s rescue from purgatory in season 2, but as her screentime increased, Abbie’s diminished, which was not okay.  And yet, I didn’t resent Katrina for being Crane’s wife or blocking any potential Crane/Abbie romance.  I was only annoyed because Abbie ≥ The Bomb, which is not true of Katrina, and I’d rather watch Abbie being amazing than Katrina doing her thing.  While I didn’t like Katrina’s presence upsetting the Crane-Abbie dynamic, it was the friendship I was missing.  Fast-forward to season 3, and I’m cautiously, happily dipping my toes in the shipper pool where Crane and Abbie are concerned.  In the most recent episode, as they have roommate adjustment issues (Crane is currently without a residence, and Abbie offered to let him stay with her) and open up about secret regrets… Well, I didn’t squee, but let’s just say I could have.

The Katrina-heaviness of season 2 is part of it, I think.  Seeing the Cranes together in the present shows how ill-suited they are for each other, and how simpatico Abbie and Crane are by comparison.  Not that I think a relationship is automatically better if it involves romance – far from it – or that two people of corresponding orientations belong “together” if there’s a bond between them.  Nor does Crane “deserve” Abbie on the grounds that she’s better than Katrina, like Abbie is something to bestow on him.  Not at all.  But… I don’t know.  I see the way he desires the love of someone who understands him, someone he can trust implicitly, and in many ways, I think he and Abbie already are that for each other. 

And as for Abbie, I mentioned before that I like how romance is a non-issue for her.  I still like that she’s not defined by her relationship status and that she has pursuits that are all about her.  However, I’ve tried to think more closely about her character and the intersectionality between her race and her gender.  It feels progressive to me that the female lead in a series isn’t instantly paired with or earmarked for a male partner, but does the same hold true when that female lead is Black?  We’ve seen a couple of Abbie’s exes and others expressing interest, but we’ve never seen her with a boyfriend, or even on a date.  When this dynamic plays out with a Black woman, is there an unconscious underpinning that she isn’t desirable in that way?  There’s also a tendency to think of female characters without romantic attachments as stronger or more feminist (a trap I’ve fallen into before,) but that’s just one narrative.  A strong woman doesn’t “need” a man (or woman or otherwise-gendered person, obviously,) but does that mean she can’t be with one if she wants to?  An unexpected side effect of attempts to highlight a woman’s independence and capability can be to imply that men aren’t interested, not really interested, in being with a woman like that.  In Abbie’s case, it’s not as clear-cut, since she’s definitely had guys interested in her, but it’s getting conspicuous that we’ve still never seen her in a romantic situation.

But back to the specific pairing at hand.  The biggest thing preventing me from whole-heartedly shipping these two is concerns about the writing – the show doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to romance, and I’d hate for a) Abbie’s character to be assassinated in the process of an Abbie/Crane pairing, and b) the lovely relationship Crane and Abbie have now to be sacrificed for something more typical and not as good.  If, however, they can be written as lovers the same way they’ve been written as friends and witnesses, it could be spectacular.  Their trust, their confidences, the way each relies on the strength of the other, the way they bounce ideas off each other, the way they share both the demon-researching and the demon-fighting, Abbie’s teasing, Crane’s regard – that could look fantastic as a romance.  

Lastly, to be really honest?  I think a tiny part of it is the hair.  In the season 3 premiere, I noticed Abbie’s new, shorter haircut and thought it looked good on her.  But when Crane make his first appearance (after the two have been apart for months) and his hair is cropped, too?  I dunno.  It just clicked.  There’s something endearing about it, a nice little “in-sync” note that, for whatever reason, finally cemented it for me:  Abbie/Crane?  I think I want it.

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!

Favorite Characters: Ichabod Crane (Sleepy Hollow)

 

Last time it was Abbie, and today it’s a closer look at the other member of Team Witness.  All the way from 1781, it’s Ichabod Crane!

 

As with Abbie, I liked Crane pretty much immediately in the show’s pilot.  After the 18^th century prologue, Crane awakes in the present day and, as he’s interrogated by the police, adopts an instantly self-assured attitude.  He demands to speak with the local magistrate, comments on Abbie’s apparent “emancipation,” and speaks confidently about his encounter with the horseman.  There’s no “You wouldn’t believe me!” hemming and hawing, no “I know it sounds crazy!” apologies – he merely reports the facts as he knows them and turns up his nose at the officers who question his sanity.

 

A layered, thoughtful characterization follows this first impression.  I really like that, while Crane is cast in more of the “believer” role to Abbie’s “cynic,” he’s not painted as some ignorant fellow from the past who unquestioningly accepts all manner of superstitions.  On the contrary, Crane is highly educated and knowledgeable.  He acknowledges that this world of demons, witches, and magic is just as incredible to him as it is to Abbie, but he’s accepted the truth of it because of his personal experiences.  Now, he devotes his education and intelligence to researching the supernatural and displays courage and cunning in fighting the good fight.  (He also makes it clear that ideas like racial equality or sexual diversity didn’t spring to life fully formed out of the modern age.  Not that it doesn’t surprise him to see Abbie working as a police officer, for example, but he’s no old-timey backwater bigot.)

 

Of course, being from the 1700s means Crane also provides us with plenty of fish-out-of-water humor.  He takes to some aspects of the 21^st century, like trash-talking umpires at baseball games and driving, with gusto, while the appeal of other things, like yoga and skinny jeans, eludes him.  He’s forever perplexed by what Abbie and her contemporaries do or don’t know about prominent figures from his era – he criticizes the label on a Sam Adams bottle because the aristocratic Adams would’ve never been so coarse as to roll up his sleeves, and it rankles him that a blowhard like Benjamin Franklin is so well-regarded.  Sometimes, however, Abbie’s 18^th-century knowledge goes beyond his; there’s a great montage of his outraged reactions to hearing her “slander” about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.  And aside from his general exposure to modern life, I love the 18^th-century mindset with which he approaches it.  His voicemail is composed as a formal missive complete with a salutation, and I never get tired of his shock and disgust at our levels of taxation.  Why haven’t the people taken to the streets, indeed.

 

All of this is funny, obviously, but I also like what it tells us about Crane himself.  He’s a self-assured man who’s used to knowing everything (the eidetic memory doesn’t hurt,) and it frustrates him to feel behind the times.  He still hasn’t gotten the hang of the Internet and handles Abbie’s computer a bit like it’s a bomb, and Abbie sometimes teases him when he refuses to admit he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  At the same time, though, he puts a lot of effort into learning about the customs and conventions of his new home.  Despite the overwhelming amount of new information, technology, and popular entertainment out there, he dutifully chips away at it whenever he’s not being attacked by monsters from assorted circles of hell.  A tall order, but he’s up to the challenge.