Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

The Third Hundred Years.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 15, 2015

Baby Boomers who are fond of cult television shows may remember a short-lived situation comedy from the 1967-68 season entitled The Second Hundred Years, where an elderly gentleman played by Arthur O’Connell was gobsmacked to discover that his father, long presumed dead in an Alaskan avalanche that had occurred long ago during the Gold Rush, had been discovered and “defrosted”, appearing in the form of the young and dashing Monte Markham. The show played with “generation gap” issues, albeit from a deliberately skewed perspective, with a “son” who looked like the “father”, and vice versa. Sleepy Hollow’s similar reanimation of Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) after an even longer bout of suspended animation than the prospector in that long ago series has allowed this reinvention of Washington Irving’s appropriately timeless tale to work up considerable whimsy and humor as Crane, very much like the prospector in fact, has had to cope with a new, modern world for which he is spectacularly ill equipped. However, in a very real way, this second season of Sleepy Hollow hews even more closely to The Second Hundred Years by offering up a major subplot featuring Ichabod’s son Henry Parrish (John Noble), a man considerably older than his putative old man. Sleepy Hollow continues to ply historical waters in much the same reconstructionist way that National Treasure 1 & 2 tried to do, reimagining “real life” events and characters in sometimes deliberately antithetical ways. Sleepy Hollow often walks right up to the precipice of outright silliness at times, but its own brand of sometimes sly humor and a generally appealing (if often overwrought) mythology continue to make the series oddly fascinating a lot of the time.

There are several problems inherent in Sleepy Hollow’s premise that continually strain credulity and, for certain audience members at least, patience as well. The whole “meta” mythology of the show deals with forestalling if not outright eradicating the Apocalypse, at least as it’s personified by the harbingers known as the Four Horsemen. Kind of interestingly, Irving’s iconic character of the Headless Horseman becomes a bit less of a central focus in this second season, as the Second Horseman (of War) and his supposedly secret alter ego (which won’t be spoiled here) often take the limelight instead. That deprives the series of one of its most redolent sources of imagery, though the headless one does recur, albeit at least at times with a projection of sorts that finally posits a cranium atop the body, at least for those who are magically enabled to see it, as in the case of Ichabod’s hapless wife Katrina (Katia Winter).

But the fact is, does any member of Sleepy Hollow’s loyal fan base really think that there’s going to be an Apocalypse, or even a destruction of Ichabod and his contemporary sidekick Abbie (Nicole Beharie)? That means that all of the brouhaha involving various ostensible threats to the pair often rings hollow, for without Ichabod at least, could there even be a Sleepy Hollow? The show starts wading further and further into historical waters this season, perhaps in an effort to distract from this fundamental issue, offering sometimes waggish reinventions of famous figures like Benjamin Franklin (Timothy Busfield), here a sometimes nudist whose experiments with a kite and a key have completely “new and improved” import courtesy of the show’s emphasis on the portals to purgatory and famous mythological beings like Moloch.

The second season offers several other diversions along the way, including quite a bit of content for Abbie’s sister Jennie (Lyndie Greenwood), and (in fits and starts, anyway) put upon cop Frank Irving (Orlando Jones). Jones’ pre-announced departure from the series has caused some consternation amongst fans, and in an effort to perhaps stem the tide of viewer dissatisfaction, a new character named Leena Reyes (Sakina Jaffrey) is introduced as the new quasi-nemesis on the police force, with a completely predictable connection to the backstory of Abbie and Jenny. (Without offering too much of a spoiler, some wags might be thinking at this point in Sleepy Hollow's history that the show really should have just been set at the town's mental hospital, since so many of the characters seem to have either ended up there or at least "visited" for a while.)

Several longer story arcs involve Katrina and the Headless Horseman, now revealed to be a former suitor named Abraham Von Brunt, who works with Parrish to reignite the flames of romance between the pair, whether or not Katrina wants those flames fanned. In fact the interwoven story lines of Katrina and Parrish provide a lot of the ongoing momentum this season manages to achieve, and the not exactly surprising denouement offers an out of sorts to the writers who have struggled at times to balance Ichabod’s simultaneous relationships with his wife, spectre though she may be, and Abbie.

Sleepy Hollow continues to balance rather precariously between its increasingly convoluted mythology and its more accessible if occasionally just silly “fish out of water” elements. It seems like the writers are struggling somewhat to provide enough distractions to misdirect audiences away from the central problem that should the Apocalypse actually occur, Sleepy Hollow will obviously not be continuing. Overstuffing the series with a bunch of new characters and increased participation from supposed historical figures provides the requisite entertainment value, but when a series repeatedly shows that death itself is not in fact the "final" frontier, can there really be any sense of real threat?

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While this digitally shot series continues to look largely fantastic in high definition, this season shows just a bit more dusting of video noise in some of the darker scenes, though nothing ever rises to really problematic levels. Once again various bells and whistles have been applied to the imagery, including digital grain, distressing and various kinds of color grading. Fine detail continues to be excellent to exceptional, especially in close-ups, though CGI and other special effects can occasionally look on the soft side.

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season features an often nicely immersive lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. The sound designers of the series delight in offering elements like fulsome panning sounds for everything from horses galloping to cars zinging throughout contemporary Sleepy Hollow, and a number of the bigger special effects sequences offer excellent surround activity. Dialogue is very cleanly rendered and is well prioritized. Fidelity remains excellent throughout the season, and dynamic range is also unusually wide for episodic television.

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One:

• A Salute to Sleepyheads (1080p; 14:04) is a fun look back at the last two Comic-Cons, and how fan appreciation for the show has increased in the interim.

Disc Two:

• Audio Commentary on Mama by Nicole Beharie and Mark Goffman

Disc Three:

• Audio Commentary on The Akeda by Tom Mison and Mark Goffman

Disc Four:

• Audio Commentary on Tempus Fugit by Tom Mison and Mark Goffman


• Mysteries and Mythology: The Secrets of Season Two (1080p; 24:32) is a spoiler filled tour through several of the major plot arcs of this year's episodes. There's some fun behind the scenes footage.


• Monsters and Mayhem: The Creatures of Season Two (1080p; 13:23) looks at some of the things that go bump in the night (and, frankly, day) this year. This provides some brief looks at the fabrication process for some of the creatures.


• Hollow History (1080p; 10:16) focuses on the intersection between real life history and the show's often whimsical "recreations" of various epochal events.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 15:31)


• Gag Reel (1080p; 4:14)

Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sleepy Hollow manages to keep its head above water (no pun intended), though its mythology is getting to a tipping point where things may simply port over into self-parody territory. Performances continue to be quite winning, and Noble pretty much walks away with this season as the machinating Henry Parrish. Certain plot developments seem to suggest that relationships between Ichabod and Abbie (at least) are changing, but the spectre of reanimation means that some characters may not in fact (to quote Monty Python) be "quite dead yet". Technical merits are strong, the supplemental package is enjoyable, and Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season comes Recommended.