cynic

100 episodes used to be the magic number for syndication. I think common wisdom has it at 88 now. That is a generality though. They're only at 49 episodes now. Assuming season 4 is thirteen, that will put them at 63. Still a long way to go.

Eric Heisserer didn't work for Sleepy Hollow. (He doesn't generally work in tv.) So, his information isn't first-hand. He probably is getting whatever information he does have from gossip from other writers, which they may not even be getting first hand. Even if he heard it from Metzner himself, that doesn't mean he knows the whole story. He got one guy's side and of course, he's sympathetic to the writer's side. He is probably not privy to, nor likely cares about, the stuff the led up to Beharie wanting out of her contract. I doubt any Sleepy writers were like, "Hey Eric, we treated Beharie like crap for two years and then she got fed up and wanted out, which put a real crimp on us." And honestly, the guy seems to be whiner who casts writers as these poor victims while everyone else is behaving badly. His skirmish with Mo Ryan is pretty telling. Also, his hypotheticals could be an amalgam of different incidents. He does say he is talking about four shows that this has happened to. Who knows what is really true? But yeah, none of us, not anyone here, knows what went down at Sleepy Hollow. All we really know is what happened on our screens and how people comported themselves in public. From what I saw, I don't blame her for wanting to leave after seasons 1b and 2 and I don't blame them for writing around her in 3 (though I do blame them for the helper BS at her death and the overall dullness). However, if this leak is coming from them, I think they are classless individuals.

Sleepy Hollow has been slated for the spring schedule on Fridays. It doesn't say how many episodes it will get, but that probably means thirteen, right? I'm not sure if holding it until the spring is a good or bad thing for the show. On the one hand, a long hiatus generally isn't good for the ratings in network tv. On the other hand, maybe it's better to let the controversy and bad feelings die down a bit before premiering the show. Either way, it doesn't look like Fox has a ton of confidence in SH. Then again, the schedule as a whole doesn't look great. Maybe SH will even squeak out another season after this. Hey, Fox has to fill all those AI hours somehow. http://www.ew.com/article/2016/05/16/fox-schedule

A further reduced workload, apparently. From the supposed hypotheticals, Mison fought for and got a reduced workload in season 3 after Beharie did. Guess that makes him difficult too, right? The only specific allegation that Heisserer made to show how "difficult" Beharie was being over her wanting out was her pressing for a reduced workload. He complained how hard it was to write for the show, especially after her co-star got the same deal. And now, he's fought for even more, which will really hamstring season 4. What a diva! Oh wait, no one is saying that about him. And yeah, a season four with with no Mills, less Crane, and more Sophie/Jenny doesn't sound appetizing at all.

Oh, I have no doubt that Beharie wanted to leave. My issue is the laying of blame at Beharie for wanting to leave without considering why she wanted to leave. It was pretty clear two and a half years ago which way to wind was blowing. Beharie signed up to be the co-lead of a show where she was given great material to work with, but before the first season was even up, she was pushed to the side and devalued in favor of a producer's pet. I'm sure that affected not only what happened onscreen, but the working environment as well. Goffman's feeling towards her were apparent in every interview he gave. I'm not going to blame her for wanting out of a toxic situation that was a sinking ship as well. Even though the showrunner was changed in season 3, by then, the well was poisoned. I find Eric Heisserer and his "hypotheticals" to be gross. If it's true that "the actress" had a doctor's note for a reduced schedule, than him using that as ammunition against her is tacky as hell, regardless of whether he thought it was legit. He's not privy to her medical situation and cannot judge and spreading that information is an invasion. And to couch the whole thing as the actress wanting to leave so she could do movies? Really? Not even a mention that there could possibly be another reason that someone might want to leave one job for another? Cause there's been no inkling of anything else wrong on the SH set, right? He put it that way to put maximum diva spin on the situation, so he could act like it's the writers who are really the victims here. It's the poor writers who can't even let anyone know that they are the put upon ones, because they aren't allowed to tell anyone, except somehow they are still managing to tell everyone and spread these rumors and basically act like the mean girls in the lunchroom. Over three years, Beharie has said pretty much nothing about these people, despite the legitimacy of her grievances clearly playing out on our screens. That should be a clue about who the likely troublemakers were. Be free, Beharie. Stay classy and good luck on your movie career.

I love that line too. The jail scene, not so much. I'm in though, hokey or not. I love time travel stories and I appreciate that this one does have diversity and isn't skirting it, albeit imperfectly. Plus, Lem! I miss Better Off Ted so much.

This doesn't surprise me. There's a tendency to slap any women, particularly black women, who stand up for themselves and refuse to take crap with the "Diva" label. Rumors will be spread and shade will be thrown painting her as "difficult" to distract from how badly she was treated to try and make this renewal more palatable to viewers. And there will be plenty of people who will eagerly eat it up, because they want to continue watching and don't want to deal with all the associated ickiness swirling around it. They want to believe it was all Beharie's fault, it's easier to believe it's all Beharies fault, and so they were just waiting for spin doctors to come out and give them something to latch on to while conveniently ignoring that, whatever her behavior was, it was in reaction to how she was treated basically since the tail end of season 1. "It's not the writers' fault! She wanted to leave." Well, it's pretty likely that it is the writers' fault THAT she wanted to leave. I just hope that she is prepared for the backlash that is going to come from her not playing the game. As a black woman, she's not likely to get the benefit of the doubt or as many chances as even people whose reputation is based on much more evidence than vague comments and speculation. On a completely unrelated note, Katherine Heigl's new drama was just picked up by CBS.

I might have actually been curious about season 4 if they had jettisoned everyone and rebooted the show with Mison working with a new team in the secret organization. This, though, just makes me think it's going to be just like season 3 sans the Abbie bits. No thanks. Regardless of how I feel about Abbie dying, this doesn't tempt me to watch the show because I found season three to be mostly boring as hell. And now there's not even going to be the intermittent goodness of Crane\Abbie interactions to keep me hanging on.

Petty it may be, but I kinda hope the show crashes and burns.

I feel horrible for the parents, but yeah, I think they are in deep denial. I think the most likely explanation is that he was suicidal, especially since he gave away his possessions. Even if he wasn't though, it was clear he was was having serious issues. His parents' refusal to believe that when it was so apparent makes me think that they probably disregarded any more subtle clues that may have happened prior to this. And while it's easy to second guess things after the fact, I'd like to think that if my child was sitting at a rest stop for nine hours after telling me that he was driving home, I would probably go up and get him. That's not normal behavior.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-sleepy-hollow-finale-was-so-terrible-im-still-upset-1772492018 "The Sleepy Hollow Finale Was So Terrible I'm Still Upset Two Weeks Later" Me too, dude, me too.

I've never seen any indication here that liking Mison is unpopular at all. I personally love him, but it's not enough to overcome not enjoying the rest of the show.

Abbie also sacrificed herself in the midseason finale. For a show that seemed to constantly change what it was about, it remained remarkably consistent about some things.

Three. Headless was the Horseman of Death. Henry was War. We also saw Pestilence in the Roanoke episode. If they had done Famine this season (maybe with a reprisal of pestilence since he was used as a motw), we could have ended the series stopping the Apocalypse.

Oh, that's right! I should've remembered that since the living in sin part was the main issue. And yeah, it's totally possible that a rebooted SH could defy expectations, but it does have an uphill battle considering the mothership's ratings are pretty terrible already.

I could see the comparison with Angel. I don't think the production team here is anywhere near as good as that franchise though, nor does it have as strong as a foundation in the mythology. But who knows, they could pull it off. However, I have been thinking of season 4 more as Three's A Crowd, the terrible spinoff that dropped the main premise and most of the cast members from Three's Company and gave Jack Tripper a wife and father-in-law. Sometimes the breakout character isn't enough to carry a show. Either way, I won't be watching. I've been mostly bored with the writing of SH for 2.5 seasons. The only thing that kept me watching was the chemistry between Crane and Abbie. I can't imagine that I'm suddenly going to start enjoying the writing more at this point.

They didn't even revisit what was arguably the most pivotal moment in her life - encountering Moloch and the four white trees. Granted, that was probably because the didn't want to remind us of how much better this show was in the first season and how much mythology the show threw away in the subsequent two. The finale would have been so much more palatable if she had died battling the last horseman and stopping the apocalypse, instead of a boring, generic big bad that was just conjured up for the season and didn't fit with the original concept of the show. ]

That's so crazy. It's not like she's against interracial relationships. She not only was paired with Michael Fassbender in the movie Shame, but she also dated him in real life. Lucky girl.

The soul transfer thing came out of thin freaking air. It's like they meant to kill Abbie off and just move on without another thought, but then someone reminded them that 1) she's kinda important to the entire mythology of the show and 2) people might actually miss her, so they came up with this "twist". What hacks. It's bad enough that they basically gave Abbie the same "death" twice, like they changed her mind about letting Beharie leave at mid-season and just redid the exact same story at the finale, but it's infuriating that they are really going act like she's interchangeable. I totally feel like Fox tried to recreate the hot Brit out of water/tough female cop thing with Lucifer. (Of course, there are differences, like she's a blonde and the show telegraphed their OTP-Ness from the start.) I liked it initially, but the procedural aspects are super generic and tedious and his shtick gets old fast. I need more than a hot Brit to keep watching something.

I don't know about that. iZombie hasn't had the best track record handling black females. Yeah, plenty of people will latch on to "well, she wanted to leave" to excuse the show's decisions and terrible writing without taking into consideration WHY she would have wanted to leave and despite not even knowing if that is true or just Hollywood spin. Some will even try to blame Nicole and start rumors about her behavior to justify the writers or in some kinda misguided attempt to support Tom. They might even start talking about Nicole's fans like they weren't good enough fans or were watching it wrong. It's not farfetched. The show's always had its apologists.

I would argue that the original creators envisioned the show the way we view it. The pilot and first half of season one clearly showed Abbie as just as important as Crane. It was when the creators relinquished control to the business as usual Hollywood showrunners that it changed. The show never recovered.

Oh Catrox, I agree. I meant the writing was bad in all of 3b. The writing in the finale is a whole other...I don't even have the words.

If she was supposed to die mid-season, but then the show changed course, it would explain why the writing felt so muddled and rushed.

I've thought that most of this season was mediocre at best, but I stuck with the show hoping that it would end up being worth it in the end. Well, jokes on me, I guess. I should have peaced out a long time ago, like most of the other viewers. I really feel stupid that I wasted so much time on this. The next time producers and rabid fans preach "patience" and other condescending crap like viewers aren't allowed to give up on something they no longer like, I'll point to this idiocy. Oh well, I wish Tom and Nicole the best. They were great. (I do realize that Tom will still be around if this gets another season, but for me, the show wasn't about Crane or Abbie, it was about them together, so it's over in my eyes.)

Adjusted down to 0.6. http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2016/04/04/friday-final-ratings-april-1-2016/