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 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 5

A boy is playful teased by a young girl and he chases her through the woods, until he is chased him self by a man on the horse. He has a head and looks like Attila the Hun. The boy runs away and into modern day Sleepy Hollow. Lieutenant Mills, who has moved Ichabod into Corbin’s cabin, is called when they boy turns up unconscious, Ichabod invites himself along. The boy awakens briefly and begins speaking middle English.

Ichabod studied Middle English at Oxford (I mean, of course!) and tells Irving and Mills that the boy said “Evil Girl” The boy has “blackening veins” and the quarantine him. Ichabod goes and Skype’s in middle English. Abbie is still holding out the idea that the boy is modern and was being held by some freak show who taught him a dead language so he couldn’t ask for help.

They believe the boy is from Roanoke.. no no, not Virginia, the Lost colony. That’s a real thing by the way. First English Settlement in established in 1585. It vanished. BUT Middle English was only a thang until 1470… then they would have been speaking Early Modern English.. whatever.

Abbie: “Who was more sarcastic? Jefferson or Adams?”

The boy has never been vaccinated against anything, go figure. Others affected as a result of coming into contact with the contagion get black veins and die quickly complete with visions of the horseman (with the head).

Because he’s Pestilence, amirite?

Abbie and Ichabod hike through the woods and they find water deeper than it should be… so they walk on water… on a small island they find the colony. People are all sick with black veins, but they are well. It also has not changed at all in 400 years. On the island the illness is in stasis, but outside people become sick. They are protected by a spell. 

Ichabod become infected and on the brink of death, he sees Katrina. 

Morales (Abbie’s ex) is checking up on Ichabods credentials… which check out, somehow. What? Not that he should be checking, it’s none of your business, Morales!

Abbie prays to figure out what to do with Ichabod. And hides from Morales. Abbie decides that the spring water at the colony can save Crane and the boy… and, you know, the rest of the town. Abbie divulges the details to Irving and he gives her the go ahead to try it out.

Meanwhile Katrina is telling Ichabod that she is being held captive by Morlock. That she’s in purgatory. Tearful reunion and such. But Abbie wakes him (and Thomas) up and they are shaking and on the verge of collapse. Abbie says she won’t go without Ichabod and she gives him an adrenaline shot. Soon after they are on the run from Attila and they rush in just in time to submerge themselves in the spring and save the colony from the horseman and the afflicted from the illness. Then the colony disappears (Thomas was lured into their world by the “evil girl”) and everyone affected by the sickness returns to health… well, that doesn’t make that much sense… but sure.

The pacing in this episode was much better than it has been, the selective use of historical trivia is interesting, Abbie saved the day and Morales sets himself up to be the Doakes. I like it.

“I have officers retracing the trail as we speak” Is Ichabod an officer? umm….. no

in 3 weeks the horseman returns. Templar Knights, Walter Bishop, John Cho comes bach and Ichabod sacrificing himself?? Say what?! Can’t wait!