Sleepy Hollow Episode 12

There’s a map of leylines with a door into purgatory. Guess who has it? John Noble returns as the Sin Eater to help free Katrina so that she can defeat the second horseman. Jenny is very-much against the plan. Moloch guards purgatory an Moloch split up their family, but Abbie thinks it has to be done. Jenny delivers the best line of the night, “I have more than faith, I’m a mental patient with a gun..” and gets sidelined listening to Corbin’s tapes. They need an intern. 

In Purgatory Abbie awakens with a bump on the head. She’s reunited with Corbin and Andy. Ichabod Crane is greeted and celebrated by a bunch of powdered wigs. On is his father accepting him, in reality his father disowned him after betraying England. Corbin serves Abbie apple pie ala mode and they are in terrible danger of forgetting why they are there. 

The first test is temptation: Abbie tries to convince herself that it isn’t real.. the pie turns into blood and Andy’s head bends back… the house falls away. Ichabod’s unravels similarly.

Jenny finds a hint about ruins of an old church.

Demons with cloudy eyes and cut of ears, faceless crying girls, creepy fog and darkness don’t keep Abbie and Ichabod apart. They prove they are the genuine article with a secret handshake and venture after Katrina encountering all manner of creepy. But they find her only to find that she can’t leave unless another soul takes her place. womp womp. 

Abbie says she will take on Moloch while Ichabod gets out with Katrina. Katrina gives Abbie an amulet to protect her. Vowing to return to set her free. Katrina and Ichabod bust through to the real world. Katrina is excited, Ichabod is torn but staying focussed. Abbie hit Moloch with a stick and pushes the amulet into his flesh. 

Jenny gets to the church… and we cut away to Ichabod, Katrina and Henry to the spot where the second horseman will emerge. Jenny is trying to find why someone would want to hide the abandoned church’s name and she finds the sign… tearing off in her truck calling to warn Abbie that the Saint’s name is a sign.. literally the name on the sign. In her haste the horseman (the headless one) gets in her way and takes a shot at her. And you better hope he holds her up because Jenny is probably going to kill Ichabod and Katrina.

Abbie is hiding from Moloch in a kiddy cartoon house with a fragment of herself… the memory of the day that she and Jenny met Moloch.

Apocalypse means to disclose or reveal?! Thanks for the etymology lesson. Oh, and beeteedubs? Henry is the horseman. He’s used their faith against them. He explains his evil ways ad naseum and five minutes later Katrina figures out he’s the second horseman. But in the ultimate “what the shit?!” moment: Henry is their son. Katrina is actually happy that her son survived the “death hex” but of course he was just in stasis fully cognizant of time passing for 2 centuries. Moloch raised him out of the ground. He considers Moloch his father (the day he was raised was the day Abbie met Moloch).

Abbie tries to escape realizing what’s happened. 

St. Henry’s Parish was the name of the church… the former Jeremy took the name Henry Parish out of spite. Ichabod argues that Katrina suffered more than Jeremy (as if that would matter to him, Katrina was an adult and Jeremy was a child made to suffer for their actions… that’s not the same). 

Jenny’s outcold. Headless rides in. Ichabod gets sealed up underground… Abbie’s in purgatory… Dire circumstances… and no more until FALL?!?!?!

Sleepy Hollow- Episode 8

Death is trapped and Abiie teaches Ichabod how to fist bump.

But try as they might, they can’t destroy him. But he is trapped in a bunker designed by Jefferson and his wife’s witch coven.

They plan to interrogate the Horseman.

“I don’t think he’ll talk.” -Captain Irving.

Ichabod and Abbie decide to call in Brooks (John Cho)

Irving: “A dead man, a mental patient and a time traveller from the American Revolution”

Abbie: “That’s our team.”

Meanwhile; 2 hunters find the Hessian’s horse and one makes a phone call saying they must assemble a team. Then he shoots the other.

Jenny gets picked up while she was enjoying a sunny day and a soy latte. No reason, but Irving wants to talk to her. Irving wants to make sure she’s really down. 

In Andy’s things, Ichabod finds a tablet with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Andy freaks the hell out. Ichabod finds that Andy is the necromancer, he gives Andy a chance to redeem himself. Andy begs Abbie not to make him go to the horseman. His soul doesn’t belong to him anymore. He has no choice not to obey the horseman. But Abbie says please, and he agrees.

Irving takes Jenny to the scene of a faked robbery. The shop owner, hiding in a room behind a fake wall, has been shot. And something that could break the hex spell on the horseman’s cell has been stolen. Jenny surmises that they will take out the grid next so that the UV lights that weaken the horseman will go out. 

At the interrogation, Ichabod pushes the horseman and a  necklace belonging to Katrina falls from his uniform. Then we are treated to a flashback of Ichabod, Katrina and Ichabod’s friend who Katrina was originally betrothed to, Abraham. 

At the power grid, Irving and Jenny are teamed up and suited up. Irving gets snuck up on, but quickly gets the upper hand (Orlando Jones is such a badass lately). 

The Horseman says he knows Katrina’s destiny. Ichabod taunts him. The Horseman lashes out and says he will kill Ichabod. Ichabod was his mission, Washington’s prized soldier. The Horseman set out to avenge the death of Abraham (who Ichabod betrayed and killed!?)

The power goes out. UV lights are off. The Horseman releases Andy from his control. 2 hours until the power is back on and every minute the horseman grows stronger.

Abbie wants to know what happened with Abraham. Devastated after Katrina broke her troth, the pair were on a clandestine mission to deliver the Declaration and Resolves. Abraham is concerned about how he will look with Katrina leaving him! Ichabod confesses that Katrina admitted her love to him and he asks for his blessing (really, you thought this was the time?). Abraham challenges him, at first Ichabod refuses to draw his sword and yields, but Abraham does not decline. Hessians shoot Abraham while Ichabod is at his mercy and they surround Ichabod and Abraham, the other man orders Ichabod to flee and finish the mission. 

Abbie tells Ichabod that the interrogation must stop because he is out of control. Irving and Jenny come down to the tunnels. Irving suggests back-up, Abbie and Jenny disagree, could be dirty cops again. They decide to keep everyone out of the tunnels, but leave to get heavier artillery. Ichabod stays behind, unwilling to leave the horseman alone. Andy pulls a talisman out of his gut and recites an incantation that summons demons and will free the Horseman. He had tried to tell everyone that he had no choice and wouldn’t be able to stop something like this.

The Horseman challenges Ichabod to a sword fight. During the duel, he realizes the Horseman is really Abraham. Morlock came to Abraham as he died and he made a deal with the devil.He says that Katrina is held for him and will be his.again. At the last second before the Horseman has his revenge on Ichabod, Andy calls the acolytes of Morlock to secure the Horseman. Ichabod lives and the other two disappear.

Talking it over with Abbie, Ichabod says he created a monster. Abbie says that Abraham made his own choices and that people are responsible for themselves. They discuss Katrina and Ichabod says that she is the key and must be freed.

This episode was truly awesome. Action packed. Jenny’s back, Irving played a great role. 

Unfortunately… it didn’t really make sense overall. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse… you know, from the Bible, had mythology that long predated the American Revolution. So how is it that Abraham could be one of THE Horseman? The whole universe revolves around Ichabod? a little ridiculous. Just a little. And why did it take so long for them to decide to get Katrina out? You’d think Ichabod would have been working on that somewhere in between contracting the plague and getting kidnapped by freemasons. But I’m glad it’s being addressed so she can either be free or dead and there is some sort of resolution either way with how Ichabod’s affections will go. 

I am pumped that Jenny and Irving and Andy were all in the foreground this episode, certainly the most diverse cast in genre fiction TV at the moment. Although this might hold more meaning if events of biblical proportions weren’t all centered around Ichabod (a true American patriot), his “true love” and a jealous jerk.

5 more episodes this season, I hope to see John Cho again and sincerely hope that we get more Jenny and that Captain Frank Irving gets his action on. After being skeptical and hands off in the first few episodes it’s nice to see him show what he is made of. 

Sleepy Hollow- Episode 7

We’re taken back to Boston for Paul Revere’s ride. The Hessian (with his head) shows up and starts decapitating those sending out the signal.

Present day: Abbie explains bottled water. She’s hoarded some supplies in case they need to hunker down at the cabin if the Hessian comes back. Jenny’s out of the institution tonight, Morales tries to reconcile a friendship with Abbie. She agrees to go out for coffee with him the next day. Later on that night John Cho, shows up and confronts Luke Morales.

“Rumors of my demise have been… pretty much true.” 

He warns Abbie’s wanna be suitor to stay away from her. That there are forces in play he can’t begin to understand.

Ichabod attempts to meet up with the freemasons, hears signs of a struggle and finds them with their heads removed. The horseman is watching. The Chief arrives, CSIs in tow. Cult Ritual Suicide is the official story. Irving decides that there’s still no proof the horseman exists… umm… eye witness accounts? The missing heads everywhere?

Pages torn out a freemason’s book enrage Ichabod. No one’s gotten Ichabod proper clothes yet. Ichabod is taking this personally for the life he lost, the lives of his brothers, Abbie reminds us that her mentor, Corbin, was killed by the Horseman as well. Ichabod surmises that he attacked the freemasons in search for his skull. They decide that they must destroy the skull. Ichabod guilts Irving into helping them recover the skull, it’s been sent out to another lab. It’s also evidence.

Paul, they lab tech, is puzzled by the treatment the skull received.

“No signs of life. Yet… there it is.”

While looking for a box (for the skull), the Hessian arrives armed with an automatic weapon. Irving (played by the hilarious Orlando Jones) pulls off some matrix level stunts and tries to take out the Horseman. He narrowly escapes. Now a believer he confesses that he wanted it to be a lie. And still no one will believe them, the surveillance cameras cut out, destroying evidence of what happened at the lab.

In the Freedom Tunnels IchAbbie try to smash, bash and explode the skull.

Paul Revere’s lanterns system (one if by land, two if by sea, you might have heard of it) 4 lanterns… what does that mean? 4 if by death? The lanterns are the heads of the freemasons, he lined the skulls with silver to reflect brighter and be seen further. Ichabod remembers seeing a heptagram, a devil’s trap, on a manuscript of enemy secrets back right before Paul Revere’s ride.

Abbie and Ichabod take to the history museum to find the manuscript. Ichabod takes over a children’s tour and sets straight the misconceptions that a commonly perpetuated about the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere discreetly informed others that the “regulars are coming” not the British, since they were all still British at the time (fact checked, real thing). Abbie excuses herself to call Morales and she is almost grabbed by Andy Brooks, she clocks him hard and dislocates his jaw. Andy sold his soul, but it’s the horseman who won’t let his service be over.

Ichabod accidentally discovers porn. “Paul Revere. You Rum Beggar.” In an connection that I don’t understand, he hid the password on the back of the teeth in the horseman’s skull and Ichabod finds it.

Andy gives Abbie tips on trapping Death rather than trying to destroy him.

“Is that the sheriff’s turncoat?”

Ichabod sends Andy with a message for the horseman, to meet at the cemetery at nightfall. Ichabod knows how to trap the horseman. In 1782 the masons included in the manuscript a way to trap the horseman. A witch must be summoned. Everyone immediately thinks of Katrina. But they don’t need witches, they have UV light (like in Thor 2 where a soul forge is a particle accelerator). Cicero is the password, btw, (which last episode was the code name of the traitor).

Ichabod and Abbie lament over their loneliness… but atleast they have each other.

But night is falling, so it’s time to lure the horseman to his death. They trick the horseman with fake skulls everywhere, Abbie lures him after her, faking helpless and Irving and Ichabod blast him with UV light. He’s successfully incapacitated.

This episode was great. The special effects were consistently awesome, from the scene with Orlando Jones where the Horseman is armed with an assault rifle, to the illuminated decapitated heads of the freemasons to the beyond awesome last scene. I like that Abbie and Ichabod are getting closer as friends… but on the negative: no Jenny OR John Noble this episode?! And why does Abbie hate tap water so much? Bottled water steals natural resources from impoverished areas, it’s shipped around wasting gas, causing pollution due to shipping and also the unnecessary plastic bottles. Plastic bottles can also introduce contaminates to the water inside as the plastics degrade.

The Abbie/Morales situation is still up in the air and the previews for next week show more John Cho and Ichabod losing his cool while the Horseman is their prisoner. I’m glad Irving is on board now.

Sleepy Hollow- Episode 6

After three weeks, Sleepy Hollow is back! And so is the Headless Horseman (well… a little) in this episode, titled “Sin Eater.”

Abbie is teaching Ichabod about the modern American dream as expressed through baseball (aptly timed, since the world series was last week). Ichabod still has not been shopping for modern attire. After  heckling the little league umpire, Ichabod goes to visit Katrina’s grave. He is hit with a dart in the neck and kidnapped.

Driving home Abbie goes into a trance and ends up in an echo house that Katrina communicates through. Katrina tells her about the Sin Eater. She says that the blood bond between Ichabod and the Horseman could be reversed (as now, the horseman was summoned, so Ichabod woke up. And if the Horseman dies, so goes Ichabod.)

Abbie wakes up behind the wheel with a message to find the Sin Eater and nearly collides with a tractor trailer truck. Abbie heads to the chief and tells him about the Sin Eater. He doesn’t buy it. Ever the skeptic, even after meeting a known time traveller, a body awakening in the morgue, reports of a Headless axe murderer, a ghost plague that could only be cured by crossing over to a time portal occupied by residents of the lost colony. So instead Abbie goes to recruit Jenny (back in the institution while Abbie’s guardianship paperwork processes- paperwork has to process on a TV show?! say what!?). Jenny is still feeling sassy, and slighted. But joins up quickly at the mention of the Sin Eater.

Ichabod awakens in a room full of candles. With his captor, Rutledge, and does some Sherlockian stuff to prove that Rutledge is a freemason. Rutledge asks about the phrase “Order from Chaos” and Ichabod remembers Arthur Bernard, a freed slave suspected of treason (by the British, for inciting the American Revolution), Ichabod was asked to torture him, which is where he met Katrina. Ichabod, of course, wants to show Arthur mercy and Katrina does also, because she “is a quaker”

Abbie and Jenny are looking for the Sin Eater. Jenny had previously researched a man visiting death row inmates globally, when those he visited met their death, their parting words we’re all the same, “I am sanctified.”

Arthur tells Ichabod that there are demons all around. Ichabod protests against the usefulness of public hangings, is threatened by his commander and then the other man goes all demon face. Katrina and Ichabod have a heart to heart and she finds out he knows about the demons.

Jenny cross references every death row inmate’s visitors log… umm… seems impossible, but okay. Abbie hashes out why Ichabod is so important to her, and then Abbie gets to go Sherlockian to find that the Sin Eater has been taking the identities of the dead death row inmates. His real name is Henry Parish (Walter Bishop… I mean, John Noble). Abbie says she knows what he is and who he is and says she needs his help. He says he doesn’t do that anymore. After telling him how important it is, four horsemen of the apocalypse important, he tells Abbie that Ichabod is underground with freemasons.

Seems like it would be hard to find an underground lair of a secret brotherhood… but whatever,

Back in the 1700s, Ichabod is ordered to kill Arthur, who says that if Ichabod pulls the trigger he will live with sin inside his heart forever, that he will beg for salvation. Ichabod spares him, intentionally missing, but is caught by his demon commander who shoots Arthur in the back. Ichabod drags himself to Katrina to heal him and says “Order out of chaos.” His sin is not acting sooner to free Arthur.

The freemasons have Katrina’s diary with the account of this tale and are satisfied that Ichabod is the real Ichabod (apparently they have been fooled before, how does that come up?) They convince Ichabod that he must kill himself to kill the Horseman forever.

Ichabod is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Abbie says no. But tearfully relents.

Ichabod drinks the poison, but the Sin Eater arrives. He stops the poison from flowing to Ichabods heart and says he will save Ichabod from the poison and his sin. He asks Ichabod to summon Arthur and Arthur forgives him as a reenactment of the initial battle between Ichabod and the Horseman commences.

Ichabod is sanctified as wind blows and candles explode in the underground lair.

But it’s nightfall, and the Horseman is riding.

A great episode for sure. Good pacing, Abbie and Jenny using their wits, John Noble joining the team!

Ichabod is getting close with Abbie despite missing his wife, Katrina, and reminiscing about their complicated introduction. Although, I would have thought that the fact that his British army superiors were demons would have come up sooner (and frankly, this *true Americans fight on the side of goodness and humanity against evil* is a terrifying political sentiment to me). Also, I’m glad that Ichabod did not kill Arthur, because portraying that as forgivable would not work for me.

“For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.” Katrina says this to Ichabod. It’s an Edmund Burke quote. Burke felt the British government was fighting “the American English”, with a German-descended King employing “the hireling sword of German boors and vassals” (AKA Hessians, one such, the Headless Horseman himself) to destroy the colonists’ English liberties. Meaning; the Americans were more English than the English who were too, German.. On topic of American Independence, he wrote: “I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity.” Which is very sensible and also very in line with Ichabod’s “personal beliefs.”

Sin Eating is also a real idea, presumably Welsh in origin in which the chest of the deceased is salted and then bread placed on top, a beggar or relative of the deceased, depending on who you asks (or how fond the family is of eating off of corpses) is passed a bowl of ale over the body, drinks the ale, eats the bread and the sin is absolved. Not quite at all the same from what was present in the episode, but interesting none the less. Want to know more about interesting European death rituals? Read here.

Sleepy Hollow- Episode 4

Who’s the monster of the week?

 

Not the horseman. Something more human.

Flashback time: Ichabod back in colonial days are looting a British ship and stealing a create. Then he is waxing poetic about his love Katrina who is lost in time. “Give in to nothing less than certainty when it comes to the matter of the heart.” He’s talking to OnStar employee Yolanda.

The episode picks u[p just where we left off last week, with Abbie just discovering that Jenny escaped. 

Jenny heads to the bar. She knows the bartender and she does a shot. Which is exactly what I would do. She picks up so “things.” A nefarious piano teacher discovers that Jenny has escaped and he and some cronies go into the same bar. Bartender draws a gun. Piano teacher flings him away like he’s a fruit fly.

Stacks of cash passport, guns, picture of her sister. She looks into the mirror. 

Captain Irving is investigating the decapitated pinata of a corpse of the bartender. 

They visit Jenny’s last foster home. The woman is taking in kids for the checks, one girl is sleeping on the floor, malnourished. Abbie tells her she’s calling child services. And the old woman brings up that Abbie turned her back on Jenny. She was a child. She was a child and she knew that she could get what she wanted if she didn’t tell the truth. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:

 

BASIC NEEDS: like having a safe home to live in. Abbie was in foster care and they were FINALLY in a good home. She thought they would be taken away. And she was right! Abbie made the best decision, she has nothing to explain to some random scumbag, or even her friends who weren’t even there. Maybe she has to repent to er sister, but frankly, that’s it.

Abbie tracks Jenny to a cabin and they have a standoff that Ichabod talks down.

“Nice to see you again, British guy.”

The sheriff, Corbin apparently sent Jenny on missions to find artifacts. He hid something in the cabin. A sextant. Corbin visited her and said he knew death was coming for him.

Ichabod invented the tea party to steal something from the British. *giant eyeroll* the man guarding the weapon was also a Hessian. Ichabod was the only one who lived through it. It was covered in the same markings that were with the sextant (and on the horseman). The sextant hides a projector of an old survey map of Sleepy Hollow. 

The piano teacher and cronies (who have better guns) steal the sextant, but Jenny turns the leader into a hostage. Turns out he’s a demon. Or a Hessian? I think a hessian. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should be because I was looking for a picture of Abbie in her red leather jacket. Somehow I found THESE

 

DragonSlayer Vambraces …whaaaaaat?

Any way, they talk about a black magic book by King Solomon that unleashes demons. 

“We’re your neighbors, perhaps even your friends.” Unhindered by remorse. He spills some of the beans and then cyanide pills. His last words: “Morlock shall rise”

The girls argue and Sherockabod busts out the photographic memory. They find out where the book is. The bad guys get there first and start reading in German calling the demons. Demons come out of a fiery hole, they look like they are screaming and wiggling around under melting trashbags… whatever. One of the Hessians tries to throw Jenny in the demon hole but Ichabod saves her. 

“Drop the book or your sister dies.” Jenny tells her not to do it. Abbie chucks it in the demon hole and the trio fight their way out. 

At the station they quote Revelation Chapter 11, about how Abbie and Ichabod are the Witness. Jenny thinks its unfair that Abbie was picked to fight the good fight. Abbie says that she can get Jenny released into her custody.

Ichabod finds that Molock was the demon that they saw in the woods. He guards Katrina, he lead the other demons in a war with Heaven. Monster of the week next week? …Maybe? actually it looked like a plague was coming to the Hollow. 

 

I like Abbie and Jenny a lot. I am interested in seeing how their relationship grows throughout the season. They are managing to stay away from the goodgirl vs badgirl stereotypes for the most part and are showing realistic points of view from their vastly different experiences. 

I’m tired of Ichabod finding the good leads. Abbie was going to the FBI, she should have thought to check with Jenny’s last foster home. But honestly, Ichabod didn’t have too much to do this episode, so I’ll forgive it. Jenny really stole the show.

Sleepy Hollow episode 3

“Last thing we need around here is an episode of the Twilight Zone.”

Abbie’s having nightmares about herself being interrogated, demons, Ichabod having freaky eyes and being in captivity. She then gets a call from the police. A Dr. Vega is in the midsts of committing suicide, she confesses that everything Jenny saw was real and she knew it (but she locked her up anyway). 

Abbie says the doctor’s eyes were glazed over white. The cap suggest drug use. The medical examiner says “cataracts” and then the eyeball explodes and sand flows out.

Abbie’s prophetic dreams mean that she is one of the foretold Witnesses. She’s more into doing the regular police investigating thing and they collect files showing that the psychiatrist knew Jenny wasn’t crazy.

Most recently Jenny was locked up for stealing $4,000 worth of survival gear from a sporting goods store that she needed for “the End of Days.” Jenny declines to speak to Abbie, Ichabod offers to talk to her instead. She greets him with: “What’s your name, ‘tall, dark and British’?” Bitter over being locked away for telling the truth about what they saw, she says her conscience is clear and that she won’t help anyone fight the horseman. Abbie had told Jenny not to say anything (about the demon coming out of the ground when they were kids), Abbie said she didn’t see anything and kept quiet while Jenny got dragged away. The rancher who found them in the woods all that time ago saw the demon, too (and never said anything). 

Abbie and Ichabod go to see him. But the demon gets there first. Followed by the cops. Abbie and Ichabod show up to a hostage situation there where he says he will speak only to Abbie. 

She heads inside and sees the rancher in the kitchen, his eyes whited out. He says that the Sandman is coming for Abbie next… next time she falls asleep, she’s dead.

Ichabod talks about the Mohawk tribe that were crucial to the Revolution. He said that this creature is one of their legends that would kill those for turning a blind eye on his neighbor’s plight. They go see the only Native American Abbie knows, he sells cars.

“Hey, you guys into time travel? I have a tricked out Delorean back here.”

At first he declines, and feigns insulted. The he says that his conscience is clear. But it won’t be if he turns his back on Abbie. He gives her a tea to get her into the dream world to fight the faceless demon. If she dies in the dream, she dies in real life, Freddy Krueger style. Ichabod decides he’s going, too. and then some scorpion voodoo.

Abbie enters the dream world, interrogated by the demon. her and Ichabod get into some sandy trouble. 

Abbie stops making excuses for what she did, confesses, and destroys the demon. 

She goes to try again to make amends with Jenny… who has escaped the institution.

I am enjoying the show so far… although I have noticed that the build up to the “monster of the week” is drawn out in comparison to the actual fighting of the enemy (same thing happened with the batter against the witch). The investigating and finding out what’s happening and who will be affected takes the majority of the show, then they find someone to help them, then they have a badass but far too short confrontation. I hope they venture from this before it becomes too formulaic… (well, more so).

And the only remaining Native American in Sleepy Hollow… made a point to assert that no one was having pow wows or smoking peace pipes. But then he just happens to have jars of scorpions? 

 

Speaking of being the only one: HERE is an article about the real Sleepy Hollow’s only black female cop.

I’ve been noticing a lot of broken mirrors on this show, mirrors are sometimes considered “portals” through which spirits can be summoned (think Bloody Mary, Candyman) and found this interesting bit of mythology: 

“Mirrors were often used in magical and psychic rituals for scrying – remotely viewing another person or place – and communicating.”

…”Ancient Chinese believed that mirrors frightened away evil spirits who were scared by their own appearance. If the mirror was broken, the protection was lost.”

Interesting! 

Looking forward to next week to see where Jenny turns up, and when/if she’ll join Abbie’s side! Hoping we get back to some more decapitations.

 

Sleepy Hollow #1

Our story begins during the revolutionary war during a battle, a red coat rides up on a horse with an axe and starts destroying everyone. A patriot starts slashing at him and it’s to no avail until he takes off the horsemans head. The two collapse, and the American soldier wakes up… some time later in a cave…

It proves to be much later than expected as a modern car comes down a paved road.

Abbie is having a meal with her crotchety old partner when they get a call. She finds a weapon on the ground and then… a decapitated body. a fight ensues in which her partner gets decapitated and she sees a headless horseman ride out of a barn. She reports the details saying that he was wearing an old military uniform. She leaves out the part where he has no head.

Is that Harold from Harold and Kumar? It is!!!! John Cho (of Star Trek and Harold and Kumar) sees a man, looking confused and freaked out and assumes it’s the murderer.

Now in custody, Abbie sees Ichabod in the cell and says it’s not him. that she saw, but how many people could be running around Sleepy Hollow in colonial style military uniforms?

Ichabod asks, “Did he carry a broad axe?”

Ichabod Crane was a defector from the Queen’s army and a history professor. Proved accurate by a lie detector. Regardless, no one knows how this could be possible and the lieutenant gets orders to send Ichabod to a mental institution.

“You’ve been emancipated I take it?”

“Do you see this gun. I’m authorized to use it on you.”

“If you’re thinking I advocate slavery, I’m offended.”

“You’re offended?”

They also bicker about women wearing trousers. Then she heads off with him to check out the cave where he woke up. Ichabod tells a tale that he was sent to stop one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The Headless Horseman is death itself and somehow he has returned to Sleepy Hollow to finish what he started.

The horseman goes after a priest who says, “I’ll never tell you where it is, I’m prepared to die.” …and he does.

Even the men on the street signs get decapitated.

During the live tweet we were discussing similarities between Ichabod and Sherlock. I wasn’t quite on board til this gem of a line:

“I am insane and therefore impervious to simple commands”

But he’s more like Johnny Lee Miller than Cumberpatch. 

He goes the see his wife’s grave. Abbie admits that she’s leaving Sleepy Hollow and this is messing up her career. She confesses that when she was young her and her sister saw four white trees and a creature in the woods and then blacked out, everyone thought they were crazy. Her sister, after being labelled crazy, ended up in and out of institutions.

Abbie finds recording of an investigation into colonial times deaths of  witches in Sleepy Hollow and discovers that her partner was privately investigating strange murders that are connected, and someone else who saw a creature near four white trees believing that it symbolized the four horsemen.

The captain, Irving, seems to want to keep her off the trail

Ichabod’s wife comes to her in a dream and says that she was never buried in that grave, it’s where the horseman’s skull is. She says the answers are in Washington’s Bible. He wakes up being held down by the medical staff at the institution.

Abbie tells the staff not to sedate him and that he’s back under her custody. She tricks them with phony paperwork and they tear off. Abbie explains what she found and calls Andy (John Cho) and asks him to meet her at the church. Only, when Andy Stops home, the horseman is waiting for him. Andy confesses that he knows where to find what the horseman is after (COWARD!) Abbie and Ichabod are digging in his wife’s grave and find the horseman’s skull. The horseman shows up and goes after Ichabod and Abbie shoots him to no avail. Andy hits Abbie over the head and stuffs her in the trunk. She bites him, gets free and reinforcements show up to take aim.

“Put your hands on your… what the hell?”

The Headless Horseman runs off at dawn and Andy is taken into custody.

Andy is in a holding cell when a demon shows up. He is pleading for his life, trying to get another chance and gets….

 

 

I don’t actually know official Headless Horseman lore (Ohhh, do I have more nerd homework this week?) but this whole “We need a true American Patriot to save the world from an evil demon plot from Hell” seems… concerning.

I like Abbie, she’s sassy and savvy, but she’s believable, too. She thinks quick, but her impulsive decisions keep her at odds with her status as a police officer. No one just “lets her get away with this stuff” but she doesn’t exactly ask for permission, either.

And Ichabod, even as a History professor and a military man: I don’t buy how smart he is. I think it’s overdone. But there were some really choice lines.

Some of the effects were… silly. But eyecatching enough.

Certainly tuning in next week for more.