Sleepy Hollow Episode 10

So here we are: in the episode titled: “the Golem” (which should have aired during Hanukkah, but instead is parading as a Holiday Episode), Ichabod is all “bah humbug” and thinking of his son… How did he grow up? What did he experience? Which is fine: it’s great, it’s real. But the fact that that this is touted as “How far would one father go?” …This infatuation that we have with romanticising DNA and biology with family… It’s not the same thing. 

The Sin Eater/Henry (played by John Noble from Fringe yay… welcome back!) Chokes Ichabod until he sees Katrina. Wow. (that’s what Walter Bishop would have done)

His son’s name was Jeremy. Katrina gave him up for adoption (After Ichabod died, but before she got stuck in limbo… which makes for some odd timing, really) She sent the baby off with Abbie’s ancestors. Katrina was banished by her own coven. Ichabod vows to find out what happened to baby Jeremy (230 years ago…)  Ichabod awakens in front of the Sin Eater after seeing a monster bust in to the Sanctuary in Purgatory. Then this leatherfaced eyeless monster awakens in the real world.

Are any of Jeremy’s descendants still alive? Who cares? Ichabod crunches some numbers and discovers that he potentially has 6000 living relatives.

Orlando Jones, Captain Frank rving is having a crisis of faith. 

Ichabod goes to find info about Trinity Church (Irving’s Church), where Katrina left Jeremy. Jeremy is possibly a pyrokinetic having inherited Katrina’s “powers” …umm… wasn’t Katrina a practicing witch? I didn’t think she had inherited abilities… ummm… Was she an X-Man? Anyway… Abbie’s ancestor’s dies in the blaze, which Ichabod apologizes for. Abbie tells him it wasn’t his fault (which it wasn’t and she NEVER MET THESE PEOPLE, they died 200+ years before her birth… DNA does not make you a FAMILY… omg)

While they are investigating at the Historical Center Library… the squirrely librarian makes a break for it. She gets in her car and then is promptly smashed like playdoh in the hands of a toddler. Ichabbie and the Sin Eater seem unsurprised, unfased by the gore and really didn’t to seem alarmed at where the monster may have gone to.

The Sin Eater has a reaction to a possession of the librarian’s. It is a box with the crest of Katrina’s coven. It’s full of lies and sins!

Jeremy was abused and accidentally manifested a monster to exact revenge. A monster of rage and grief in the absence of someone to protect him… ANGST for Ichabod! He should have been there! Even though from when he was living during the Revolution to how long he has been awake/alive again, if that happened in a straight line… this child would not even be alive. So… obviously this is stupid, to me anyway. Maybe someone buys into this whole DNA MEANS HE’S MY SON!! But I …umm.. don’t subscribe to that. Meanwhile we have never heard about any other of his family members, of friends, colleagues or cohorts.

After a brief visit where Irving tells his ex-wife that she deserved better than what he gave; Irving is enjoying the day out with Macy (Amandla AKA Rue from Hunger Games) talking about how she is not helpless and that she will fight to get out of the wheelchair and be capable. While he buys her a hot chocolate, the hot dog vendor gets cloudy eyed and says “but how strong is she?” Irving shakes the man down and a spirit floats out of him (the man left bewildered) and floats into a woman behind.

The search for the monster, that they decided through dubious deduction is a Golem. The search leads them to a carnival and a group of creepy witches. They say that Ichabod will seal their fate and they will die tonight (who cares?) 

The coven, I guess, said that they would help Jeremy. But he refused. So they invoked a hex to stop his heart. 

“You murdered my son.”

But only his blood can end the Golem. 

….

Ichabod and his son HAVE THE SAME BLOOD …that is most definitely NOT how genetics work… but I guess it’s good enough for magic. Ichabod tells the Golem that Jeremy is gone and there is nothing left to protect. The Golem is unrelenting and Ichabod is forced to stab him. He holds the Golem while he dies and says goodbye to his son through the Golem. He tells him he has endured enough and to be at peace. 

Calling the creature a Golem, despite obvious difference seemed like another way to connect all this supernatural mumbo jumbo to the Bible (because we have to make sure the Christian pantheon stays relevant in all this, right?) the creature’s manifestation was quite different in that it involved blood magic instead of prayer and walking in a circle around the raw material… but actually the manner of vanquishing was as similar, usually one would decommission a Golem by saying the words backwards, walking in the opposite direction around the Golem… and the Golem had to be taken out by the same blood… actually… it’s not that similar.

The Morlock scene at the end was the CHEESIEST. MORLOCK IS COMING FOR ABBIE’S SOUL!!

we got a #mistletease with Ichabbie. 

Why did we have the one angsty episode and then Ichabod lays his son to rest (mentally) in the span of 45 minutes? 

Honestly what ever is happening with Frank Irving was much more interesting. Let’s have more Orlando Jones action hero. 

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.