TheCheshireKitten

So I did what I said I wasn’t going to, and watched the first three episodes of season three. Wanted to give it a shot, even though my favorite character is gone.

While I thought Whispers in the Dark was decent, bordering on solid, I found the S3 premiere and this episode to be very mediocre - and what’s worse, BORING.

If I could only attach one word to season 3 right now that’s the only word I could use. It’s sad, because this show…it’s been many things, but it’s rarely ever been boring.

It’s like in their attempt to reboot/re-imagine/separate from season two/whatever…. They’ve sucked out all the life, the original atmosphere, the uniqueness of the show. It feels more like Supernatural (the later seasons) than SH.

And Abbie’s FBI related scenes feels like an invisible hand is taking the character and depositing her into another show: a crime procedural. While I guess this is their attempt to give Abbie an individual storyline and I wanted that for her, I wanted that to fit within the atmosphere and framework of the show - the small town police department fit this show a lot more than bringing in a branch of Feds. And of course they made Daniel her ex, and now her boss, so I don’t expect they’ll revisit anything there. Really, what will the point of it all be for Abbie‘s character? It seems like it will be nothing but a waste.

I would say Abbie and Jenny’s father coming into the picture and how he could tie into the storylines and the characters is intriguing, and it really would be, if I thought the writing quality was there to support it. Prove me wrong, writers.

I have minor interest on the Jenny/Joe side of things with this stuff on Corbin, because I‘ve always felt there was story to be mined there and he was such an important character no matter how little screen time he had. Even having said that, I don’t have all that much faith the destination with it will be all that satisfying, either.

No need to go into Sexy Betsy, she speaks for herself…..I about fell out of my chair when I first saw the opening credits, and her boobs falling out of her corset. They’re not even attempting to disguise it this year.

Pandora is basically a female Henry, just not related to Ichabod (which doesn’t automatically make her a superior villain). She‘s just throwing up random monsters at them. I’m totally uninterested in her and her endgame, whatever it is.

This episode basically replaced Henry with Pandora, and the coin with the knife. The Jack the Ripper thing wasn’t all that well done to me. Just didn’t care on any level.

Reviews seem to be generally positive on this season overall so far, so I guess I’m in the minority. But I can safely say I prefer the beginning of season two, no question. This is War and The Kindred are far superior to me on just about every level, and this episode was basically just S2.03 Root of All Evil revisited. And more boring.

The writers don’t appear to know what to do with this show, maybe they’re just figuring they can write a few Ichabod and Abbie scenes, throw women at Crane, and with everything else they just wing it. And what’s bad is that some of Ichabod and Abbie's scenes together don't even work for me. Some of them feel awkward, even when it doesn’t seem like they’re supposed to be. Abbie seemed cold holding Ichabod at the end of this episode, after he’d been stabbed. There was very little emotion from her. Some of their “banter” has fallen flat, too.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s a general lack of enthusiasm behind the scenes of this show. It feels like it with what’s onscreen, to me, anyway.

The writing continues to be a major problem - their lack of a vision, their lack of creativity/work on their mythos, of long term storylines and goals for those storylines and paths for characters shows.

On a more shallow note, the location difference is jarring to me. Maybe more so because I lived in Georgia for a year. I don’t care for the difference.

And of course, I miss Headless. I’m almost afraid of what they’ll do with him/to him, though, if they bring him back in, so, yeah…… I’m sure they’ll do a BS retcon and disappear Abraham from Headless, if they haven’t already when Pandora sucked him into her box. Instead of writing. But they’ve done a lot of unnecessary things instead of just improving the writing.

This season so far has been the definition of lackluster. The "reset" didn't do anything to fix this show that quality writing wouldn't have done a thousand times better.

I’ve been re-watching this show from the beginning, too…..just makes me sad to see the difference.