I’m pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to TV shows.  I don’t think it’s entirely conscious, but I’ll usually wait a few seasons before I watch any new series.  I didn’t watch The Office until a couple years ago, have seen Jon Hamm on Saturday Night Live more times than on Mad Men, and I heard that Breaking Bad program is showing some promise. I’ve been spooked in recent years by shows like Rubicon or The Event.  Half-decent packaging and premise with my overactive imagination had me thinking these shows could be alright if done well, but alas.  What do I get for my time?  Shit in a Shinola can.  Call me a tv-snob, call me a prick, I won’t argue.  I’ll contend that my delayed-reaction policy saves me from wasting my time on shows like Fox’s confused new take on Washington Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow.”

I mean, I know that it’s kind of a faux pas in recent years to have an original thought on network tv.  Whether it’s a retelling and co-mingling of every fairy tale ever told or just historical/literary reimagination, it’s hot to have a good old rehash in your network’s lineup.  Fox, however,  being the adolescent male of the network tv family, took the loosely viable idea of a story recycling project and tried entirely too god damned hard.

What little appeal I’ve found in ABC’s recycle drama Once Upon a Time is the neat way the writers at least attempt to stay true to the spirit of the story while weaving each independent fairy tale together.  In contrast, it seems that Fox has decided to take the name from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and little else.  I can look past the modern setting and accept it as la coqueluche du moment.  That said, I seem to recall Ichabod Crane as a sort of willowy intellectual – scrawny, smart, selfish and scared.  This show would have you believe he was a broad shouldered double agent-soldier-spy-detective played by a poor man’s Jim Caviezel.  Irving’s Crane was quite literally scared to death or exile at the thought of an approaching practical joker on a misty night.  Fox would have me believe he was a soldier with the ability and fortitude to stare down and decapitate the masked Hessian.  Or was he decapitated by a cannonball?  I can’t remember.

I had to abandon any wish for alignment with its namesake or I would not have been able to pay attention for an hour.  What did I find?  A complete mess.  Not only is this show playing favorites with the story, but it picks and chooses from popular themes.  You want an apocalyptic show?  Period flashbacks?  Witches, demons, supernatural cop drama?  This show does it all!  Notice that i didn’t list among its charms such elements as storytelling and acting.  Frankly, the only thing I found entertaining about the whole thing was predicting that The Fucking Kurgan (Clancy Brown) would get his head lopped off and quickly being proven correct.

In case you couldn’t tell, I thought this show was clumsy in all aspects of execution.  Ham-handed is the term that comes to mind when I think about the direction of this pilot.  Foreshadowing doesn’t work well when it’s made to be so obvious as the lingering slow zoom to a tense, pensive face.  Harold (John Cho) doing his best Butters impression with a “just walk away” really precluded the “surprise” that he was a corrupt cop involved in the centuries-if-not-millenia old coven resurrecting the pale rider and bringing about the end of the world.  Did I just fucking say that?

Maybe it was just a poorly executed pilot, maybe I’m just hopelessly cynical, but this show at best caters to the least common denominator.  It’s less than typical network television drivel.  I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this show.  I’m pretty sure my mother-in-law would love it, and I’m pretty sure that’s all you need to know.