Last time it was Abbie, and today it’s a closer look at the other member of Team Witness. All the way from 1781, it’s Ichabod Crane!
As with Abbie, I liked Crane pretty much immediately in the show’s pilot. After the 18th century prologue, Crane awakes in the present day and, as he’s interrogated by the police, adopts an instantly self-assured attitude. He demands to speak with the local magistrate, comments on Abbie’s apparent “emancipation,” and speaks confidently about his encounter with the horseman. There’s no “You wouldn’t believe me!” hemming and hawing, no “I know it sounds crazy!” apologies – he merely reports the facts as he knows them and turns up his nose at the officers who question his sanity.
A layered, thoughtful characterization follows this first impression. I really like that, while Crane is cast in more of the “believer” role to Abbie’s “cynic,” he’s not painted as some ignorant fellow from the past who unquestioningly accepts all manner of superstitions. On the contrary, Crane is highly educated and knowledgeable. He acknowledges that this world of demons, witches, and magic is just as incredible to him as it is to Abbie, but he’s accepted the truth of it because of his personal experiences. Now, he devotes his education and intelligence to researching the supernatural and displays courage and cunning in fighting the good fight. (He also makes it clear that ideas like racial equality or sexual diversity didn’t spring to life fully formed out of the modern age. Not that it doesn’t surprise him to see Abbie working as a police officer, for example, but he’s no old-timey backwater bigot.)
Of course, being from the 1700s means Crane also provides us with plenty of fish-out-of-water humor. He takes to some aspects of the 21st century, like trash-talking umpires at baseball games and driving, with gusto, while the appeal of other things, like yoga and skinny jeans, eludes him. He’s forever perplexed by what Abbie and her contemporaries do or don’t know about prominent figures from his era – he criticizes the label on a Sam Adams bottle because the aristocratic Adams would’ve never been so coarse as to roll up his sleeves, and it rankles him that a blowhard like Benjamin Franklin is so well-regarded. Sometimes, however, Abbie’s 18th-century knowledge goes beyond his; there’s a great montage of his outraged reactions to hearing her “slander” about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. And aside from his general exposure to modern life, I love the 18th-century mindset with which he approaches it. His voicemail is composed as a formal missive complete with a salutation, and I never get tired of his shock and disgust at our levels of taxation. Why haven’t the people taken to the streets, indeed.
All of this is funny, obviously, but I also like what it tells us about Crane himself. He’s a self-assured man who’s used to knowing everything (the eidetic memory doesn’t hurt,) and it frustrates him to feel behind the times. He still hasn’t gotten the hang of the Internet and handles Abbie’s computer a bit like it’s a bomb, and Abbie sometimes teases him when he refuses to admit he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. At the same time, though, he puts a lot of effort into learning about the customs and conventions of his new home. Despite the overwhelming amount of new information, technology, and popular entertainment out there, he dutifully chips away at it whenever he’s not being attacked by monsters from assorted circles of hell. A tall order, but he’s up to the challenge.
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