Playing Fair within the Romantic Triangle

As mentioned on Votaries, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a decent story with a fantastic iconic final scene that--when made into a feature film--requires a great deal of filler. 

Unless one showcases the actor who plays Ichabod--or throws in a secondary story (as in Wishbone)--the inevitable focus will be the romance: Katrina using Ichabod to make Brom Bones jealous. 

The approach can be done in a very cute way. The romance in Wishbone's version is cleverly done since Katrina and Brom are speaking their own private language with a great deal of good-humor (while Wishbone, Ichabod, is mostly concerned with his hosts' food, which is true to the text). 

Wishbone: Jenni Tooley and Joe Nemmers

Otherwise, the use of a third party to make a second party jealous is less than palatable, especially since the third party is clueless (if avaricious). Hallmark solved the problem by having Brent Carver's Ichabod be a patronizing guy who has mislead Katrina regarding his "advanced" notions. 

If the Ichabod character becomes a serious contender, the script runs the risk of Brom Bones looking like a bully--and why would Katrina want to marry him?! 

On the other hand, if Ichabod isn't a true threat, why bother to scare him off? 

In the tale itself, the rivalry can slide by unnoticed, with a hint of ambiguity at the end. On film, it runs the risk of striking the viewer as rather unpleasant (Shelley Duvall's version of the tale is a bunch of ham actors behaving hammishly). 

Although the triangle in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow often fails due to lack of material, I suggest the triangle always runs the same risk: The audience may not like any of the participants at the end. See Friends.