By Deb | Just About Write
I know that Sleepy Hollow wasn’t canceled, but come on. It totally should be canceled. They pulled something incredibly stupid when they killed off Abbie Mills. Like, so stupid I actually broke my promise not to say the really bad swear words on Twitter when I watched it. In one of my reviews here on Just About Write, I called Abbie Mills the linchpin of Sleepy Hollow. I stand by that statement. Sleepy Hollow is — or should have been — a dual-lead show, with equal importance split between Abbie and Ichabod so that its fantastical and procedural elements could balance out. Ichabod could provide the ooky-spooky wonderment and time travel hijinks all he wanted, but it was Abbie who pulled viewers in and made them feel connected to the show’s outlandish narrative. It was Abbie who grounded its bizarre premise with something human and real: a character full of strength and emotional vulnerability, certainty and fear, unhealthy compartmentalization and calm understanding. I think I’ll probably always list Abbie Mills as one of my favorite TV characters of all time. There was something incredible — and incredibly original — about her, a tough-as-nails cop who could shoot a gun without blinking, but couldn’t quite meet her best friend’s eyes when she had to deal with the emotional stuff. She was a character who could rise above Sleepy Hollow’s sloppy writing and shine brilliantly, remain interesting, and remain miraculously complex. Because — and maybe it was all thanks to the absolutely stellar acting abilities of Nicole Beharie — even when it felt like the show was trying to push Abbie into the realm of cliches, she deftly avoided them. The most painful thing about Abbie’s end might be the fact that the show couldn’t even manage a decent send-off for such a wonderful character. They stumbled their way through a half-baked explanation for why she had to die and could never come back, botched her story by making her a stepping stone in the life of Ichabod Crane, and threw the whole show under a bus by making her soul transfer to the next person in line. Like Abbie’s soul was a cheap old umbrella swiped from a restaurant’s Lost and Found box. Jeez. So I guess it all boils down to this: Abbie Mills deserved better.
