DearEvette

Notice how pops poured the liquor on his ice cream. I had to rewind that!

This was a great episode. Both really funny and kinda deep in places. If nothing else, the awkward dinner scene demonstrated there is no universal approached to "real" blackness. Both Andre and Bow made interesting valid points. You like fried foods and be 'hood' or you can be educated and use words like 'panoply' or you can be both or neither. Also loved the conversation Alicia had with Pops when he called her out on being D'Alicia from Memphis. "Don't be acting like there is no glass ceiling for for women with apostrophes in their name. The life I built was better than the life I had." I loved everything out of Jennifer Lewis' mouth, even the bleeped out ones. Liked the running gag of Beau Bridges being into black women LOL. His eyes when looking at Bishop Don Juan's Dancing (female) Deacons. ha! The kids were also great. The scene of them trying to convince Zoey that Rock Fox was actually her father: "They have the same eyes" and Diane saying to Zoey "See you Ol' Dirty" And Diane's improv of the murder trial they needed to witness as well as Jack's follow up "I think I'll need a snack". So funny. Fantastic episode.

I don't think Cookie dislikes Anika b/c of her being biracial, I think Cookie is jealous of Anika because she represents everything Cookie wishes she had. She was free, with Lucious living in his big ass house, by his side at Empire for years and being a mother-figure to her sons. She sees Anika (and rightly so) as a threat to her. So Cookie does what any good Alpha Dog does, she establishes dominance. I think Anika could have been a dark sister and Cookie would have been calling her a fake-ass Lupita. Regards the pace of the show --I think it is important to remember that tv storytelling today is not like tv storytelling of 20 years ago. This is a season of 11 episodes. They have to tell in 11 episode what Dallas & Dynasty got to tell in 23. This is also an environment where shows get cancelled a lot more quickly than they did 20 years ago. And I saw people dragging Empire before it even aired. They do not have the luxury of telling a slow paced story. They also compete with & have to take into account social media and other platforms that access their narrative. Also they have to be able to include songs. But in reality it may not be dropping pieces of the narrative it may just be piling up stuff for a crazy ass climax. It handled Andre's bipolar stuff really well, planting seeds earlier and letting them sprout into the full fledged forest last night. Also the trajectory of Hakeem & Camilla's relationship etc. The return of Billy Baretti from a blink and you miss it appearance earlier, the continuing mentions of Elle, the flashbacks that are fleshing out The Lyons' etc. And I don't think we have seen the last of the fall out from Cookie's hit on that guy. And finally I do think a couple of the episodes did slow down on the plots a bit to build some character development. Last week really was not plot heavy at all but it did propel a lot of character narrative.

I love that Porsha was a double agent! And how she and her girls rolled up on Anika outside that restaurant. LOL Also that last Andre scene was intense. The actor really went for broke in those scenes. The actress who played Rhonda had no dialogue but her quiet despair was well done. I felt bad for her. Great impromptu performance int he club of "You're Beautiful" I loved last week's high energy performance, but I also loved this kinda slow-vibe, stripped down groovy version too. I need to re-watch the first ten minutes. There were some prime Cookie quotes I missed when she was throwing Anika's clothes out of the house.

The BTS stuff with Sleepy Hollow this season at first was kinda titillating but by now it has become frankly exhausting. It feels like the parents (Orci, Kurtzmann, Wiseman) have been away and the bratty kids (Goffmann, Metzner) have been left in charge and have really trashed the house. I don't know what to think about the DVD S2 commentary thing, since honestly this was such a travesty of a season i wouldn't be inclined to buy it even if she was the first one they asked. I could barely stand to re-watch episodes on Hulu.

Ha. Diane's name immediately popped in my head as one of the saltiest kids on tv. Her line delivery kills.

Abbie/Ichabod ramblings: My feeling is that regardless if you are a shipper or not, trying to introduce a third party as a romantic partner for either one of them is going to be difficult. One of the many reasons that Katrina didn't work is because they tried too hard to make her a romantic wedge between Ichabod and Abbie and didn't try at all to make her a real character with fleshed out motivations. So my fear is if they do introduce another romance, the agenda will be for the same reason, to simply put the kibosh on Ichabbie shipping. This is not a good reason to introduce a romance for one of them. It rings false. As has been demonstrated the show is at it's best when they are working together and making soulful speeches about their bond. A third party unless introduced carefully would always be received with skepticism and inevitably be perceived as an interloper. Yup. Not only that but it would also explain the ease with which she ditched Ichabod in favor of Jeremy. I know mother-love is strong, but come on!. She kicked Ichabod to the curb in no-seconds flat. At least if she was never in love with him and he was part of her mission it would explain how remorseless she became in killing him.

Not on the Calvin train. Him sending her a text picture of herself was just a little stalkery-creepy. And he annoyed me most of the episode. But he was cute, i'll give him that. I think Abbie consciously friend-zones Ichabod but subconsciously she is in love with him and just hasn't admitted it to herself. I don't (uppercase) SHIP Ichabbie but I kinda do (lowercase) ship them, if that makes sense.

I don't think the Dre conversation with his co-workers is problematic in this instance, since the show has repeatedly established that Dre uses Josh, Charlie, his boss and an ever revolving (but not repeating) female co-worker as his consultants on sorts of personal issues. It is a schtick of this particular show. And Dre has always been a bit of an over-sharer & rather candid on issues of race in these conversations...maybe moreso than is true and healthy of real life. So I didn't find that scene too OOC. Also it was funny scene with the hysteria over the over-sexual pull of the French. I especially liked "I cheated on my husband with a French-Canadian. His Frenchness was so powerful, I forgot he was Canadian" So the Diane complinsult has returned. Start with a compliment "You are already the most beautiful person in the world mommy" and end with an insult "except your toes.. those are jacked up." I have to give it to the actress who plays Diane, her line reading is fantastic. I also have to give Jack & Andre Jr. shout outs after the 'Z'orphans' line and the way both their faces slowly fell from sneering scorn to shameful guilt after the 'Ze children whose parents have died from Z'Aids" line. i really enjoyed this one.

I'll join you there. i never got the outrage over Hawley. Katrina yes, she was driving storyline -- into the ground. But Hawley was just a hapless bystander in the mess. I actually liked him quite a bit. He had great chemistry with all the characters. And..hate me.. but I liked him with Abbie. If they hadn't tried to make some weird love triangle with him, Jenny & Abbie.. I would have very much been on board with him as a possible love interest for Abbie. But they messed that up too. Too bad. Not a UO, but if the showrunners hadn't been so blindly focused on making Katrina the center of everything, I think the show could have been great in S2. I'll go one worse... Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Fucking awful. Hated that movie. Hated Mathew Broderick.

Add in "sexless HBIC' or 'best friend sound-board to main white female' or just 'token black female with no character development' I just read an article in this week's Entertainment Weekly about the show Empire. And all but two of the writing room are POC. I think the number was like, 5 of the 7 writers are POC. The reason given by the showrunner was that "you need to represent the culture in your room in a very deliberate and specific way." I think this is true. And in Empire's case, I think that diversity in the writing room not only benefits the black characters but also the, perversely enough, the white character of Rhonda. She is the lone regular white character among a majority black cast. And say what you will about Rhonda, her character is getting some interesting character beats. She doesn't get a ton of screen time, but what face time she does get has impact. If this show were reversed where she was the lone black character with a writing room made up of all white writers, no way would her character be 1/10th as intriguing. I can't help but draw a comparison to another music-based soap opera Nashville, where the character of Zoey was introduced as the hapless best friend. She got no character development outside of expected to be the nanny to her boyfriend's not-really love child. And she was vilified because she didn't want to do that. She was advice sage, she was left over girlfriend, she had no story of her own and no discernible character arc. The one place where she arguably fit best, as a trio in a signing group that never really took off while she was on the show was taken over by the white regular character once she was written off and suddenly it became a real thing. Meanwhile they have introduced other white female characters who are immediately given their own character arcs. This happens is so many shows that I just scratch my head and wonder if predominantly white writers rooms think black women especially are alien and are really that clueless as how to just write a compelling story for them?

Man Tom Mison is the gift that keeps on giving: and whole thing: http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2015/02/23/sleepy-hollow-season-2-post-mortem-tom-mison-weighs-in/

Camilla: “I’m not one of your jailbird mates, OK?" Cookie: “I wish you were, you probably would’ve made a good bitch for me — you look like you got a long tongue.”

I actually felt bad for Rhonda. It is one thing to be a swinger and enjoy salacious sexual games with your husband. it is quite another to be .. as she called it... pimped out as a 'Geriartric Whore.' That was a line that Andre crossed and I am glad she called him on it. I loved that song. It was so damned catchy. And the scene with Jamal singing it and the entire crowd into it...man, the energy just crackled even on my tv screen. And I love how every single person in the family (except Lucious) showed their support.

It was in the S1 two part season finale. They found a map to purgatory. Ichabod was bound and determined to rescue Katrina using it. But Abbie was convinced that it was too dangerous because Moloch's minions could use it to free him. Finally Ichabod agreed and they burned the map. He did a pinky swear. But after Abbie left, safe in assuming they had averted a crisis... Ichabod redrew the map from memory because....Katrina' vortex of stupidity. To be fair, he shed a manly tear of betrayal while doing it.

On re-watch just realized that even in 1781, Abbie shot a gun at Headless. Does this mean she's used a fire-arm at a bad guy in every episode? And Katrina is still the worst spy. The minute she asked "and where is this madwoman' Ichabod, whose suspicions had been somewhat allayed by the supposedly pregnant neighbor story, got immediately even more suspicious.

ITA!! That really got me as well. As much as has been talked about this episode flipping the script with Abbie & Ichabod and Abbie being the man out of time, it did something else. It allowed her see him. Whereas Ichabod Crane first got to meet Lieutenant Mills. This allowed Miss Abbie Mills to meet Captain Crane. It was a nice synergy in so many ways. The bell also rung which theoretically activated a coven full of evil witches who could theoretically use that grimoire if they got their hands on it. So between the grimoire, the fugitives from Purgatory and the (theoretically) possible still Apocalypse -- there is a lot more story to tell.

This was so fab. Honestly, this felt very Mison and Beharie... not just Ichabod and Abbie. I love how Abbie is using the camera to comb out her hair. Sigh.

Another tv line interview from Tom Mison http://tvline.com/2015/02/24/sleepy-hollow-season-3-spoilers-tom-mison-katrina-dying-katia-winter-leaving/ I love this line about Nicole shipping Ichabbie:

Well I am going to be that person and say even in her evil incarnation, Katrina was not interesting. All she did was basically kill people. Oh random stranger bystander, here, let my eyes go white and "whoomp' you're dead. I love how Grace and Ben Franklin were so thrilled to see Abbie and were completely convinced right away! And I liked the juxtaposition of Abbie working on removing an old-fashioned nail out o a bench with no modern tools to jimmy a lock, while Ichabod was figuring out her smart phone. And of course the little glimpse of the old Ichabbie magic when Ichabod comes to "save' her after she's already kicked that guy's ass.

Ha. I love how in the comments people are like ' He's so full of bullshit" LOL.

Abbie Mills is the American Dream. Why yes, she is Mr. Franklin. That was fab. I need to process it a bit more. But the episode moved! and there were more callbacks to the pilot (Abbie 'playing with' the windows in the carriage, the starbucks comments. LOL. And I think it took me minutes to process that Katrina was gone. I waited to make sure it wasn't a fake-out dream sequence.

Here is some more Mison being candid, haven't seen this one before: http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/sleepy-hollow-season-2-finale-tom-mison-1201439685/ I liked this quote: And also regarding a possible redemption for Katrina (already with this?): And wait? What? I don't remember the finer details of Sanctuary or The Golem, but I thought Grace was married to a black man?

Katrina may may not die, but Ichatrina is dead. I mean, if Ichabod could forgive his wife for traveling back with the express purpose time to kill him (after trying to kill Abbie right in front of his face) ... he just isn't worth our time. So I am thinking, yeah, Ichatrina is done. I would go so far as to say they not just ignored the fans who enjoyed the Ichabbie chemistry but that Goffman et. al. actively set out to suppress the Ichabbie chemistry. You can not convince me that the S2 agenda wasn't in some large part about stopping the Ichabbie stuff cold. The constant racing to Katrina's rescue, the corset & jeans, the date night... all of it was pointed right at the Ichabbie shippers. 'See, look, this is what we've been telling you. The Cranes are in love.' They grossly miscalculated, they were so narrowly focused on the shippers, they forgot about the rest of the fans. Because the vast majority of fans of the show are not necessarily Ichabbie shippers, but are Ichabbie fans. Big difference there. They couldn't figure out that people watched the show for Beharie & Mison's actorly chemistry not necessarily for their romantic chemistry. They also forgot quite a number of fans are fans because of the diversity of the show and the the actors of color in supporting roles were not just tokens but fully realized characters. The sad thing is that looking back they could have made Katrina a bigger part of the show (and Hawley too) without sacrificing the Ichabbie partnership, without appearing to disrespect Abbie's place in the show, and without sidelining Jenny an Irving. Had they been smarter about their storytelling rather than just blindly reactive, Goffman could have built a better fanbase for his pet. Oh well. We can only hope we can put the mess of S2 behind us, we get a renewal and that wiser heads prevail for S3 and onward.

Some ppl responded with "eh" to the picture and he basically said "talk to me after you watch the scene on Monday" so maybe the screen grab doesn't exactly convey the emotion well?