Sleepy Hollow S02E10 – “Magnum Opus”
Sleepy Hollow “Magnum Opus”
Written by Donald Todd
Directed by Doug Aarniokoski
Abbie and Ichabod are playing an iPhone party game of Who Am I? because FBI profilers do it when stuck on cases. They’ve been relentlessly going over her ancestor’s journal for clues about what will kill Molloch, but are still stuck.
“George Washington? He was our liar in chief!” – Ichabod rants when he finds out the Washington tale of never telling a lie.
Katrina calls the pair by mirror to say she didn’t kill Molloch and he’ll be big enough to take over the planet in like two days, so they need to hurry. Then she has to go. She provides enough of a distraction to Ichabod he can now figure out the obscure clues to determine the goal is Enoch’s Sword, which Henry overhears as he’s spying via the same mirror Katrina used. Sleepy Hollow not only is a nexus for every Revolutionary War and Apocalyptic artifact, but it also has a river that is the exact same shape as the “Join or Die” snake from Franklin’s famous cartoon, a river that hasn’t changed shape in 250 years, and reveals the cartoon is a treasure map to the sword, with the sword being located at the mouth.
Yes, things have gotten that convoluted and wacky, which is why Sleepy Hollow packs in the fun. This episode packs in two extra things that help out a lot: A crazy monster, and the Headless Horseman becoming threatening once again.
It’s true this season the Headless Horseman has become the Chump Horseman, spending half his time being tossed around and dismissed by Henry, the rest being played by Katrina. Giving him a head outside of special events was a disappointment, Abraham Van Brunt is too whiny outside of action scenes compared to his Headless Horseman alter ego. When the Headless Horseman was the Headless Horseman, he was a silent threatening figure that you know wanted to kill you. Abraham’s head appearing should only be happening in episodes like this one, where he gets a head due to magic in a cave, allowing him and Ichabod to spar with words as well as sword/axes.
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Categories: Television Reviews Tags: Donald Todd, Doug Aarniokoski, John Noble, Katia Winter, Lyndie Greenwood, Neil Jackson, Nicole Beharie, Orlando Jones, Sleepy Hollow, Tom Mison
Superman: Unbound (Review)
Superman: Unbound
2013
Screenplay by Bob Goodman
Based on Superman: Brainiac by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank
Directed by James Tucker
“You can’t control a living thing without destroying what’s alive about it” — Zor-El
That quote is key for Superman Unbound, as Superman deals with a new threat to Earth, a threat from Krypton’s past that threatens the galaxy at large in addition to his adoptive home. Brainiac travels the universe capturing cities in bottles and then destroying their planet of origin, in an attempt to absorb all the knowledge in the universe. In order to prevent new knowledge from existing, Brainiac keeps the cities in the same state they were when they were captured. No one ages, everything stays the same, they are trapped in purgatory. As you can imagine, Superman is not okay with this fate befalling Earth, nor is he fine with leaving the lost Kryptonian capital of Krandor as a bottle decoration in Brainiac’s ship.
Superman: Unbound is based on Superman: Brainiac by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. Brainiac presented here is a cold, calculating monster that is an unstoppable force in the galaxy. He’s been at it for decades, adding city after city to his collection and leaving a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Brainiac brings up echo of the Borg, as he arrives in a lone ship (though his is shaped like a black skull), his robot troops adapt to the local defenses and absorb the knowledge of his victims. They both carve out cities from the ground, and Brainiac is more machine parts than organic at this point. But he’s also just one guy, as opposed to a collective consciousness. The motivations are similar but also different.
We begin with seemingly normal situations on Earth, massive violence in Metropolis (committed, they say, because Superman will obviously be busy with an earthquake in South America that happened a bit ago!) The heavily armed thugs manage the best the surprisingly militarized Metropolis police, but what they don’t bank on is Supergirl showing up to ruin their fun. Lois Lane (who volunteered to be their hostage) provides the snark as Supergirl rips through their defenses, joined by Superman, who faster than a speeding bulleted his way back to the US in time to take out the last of the bad dudes.
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Alexander Gould, animated, Bob Goodman, Diedrich Bader, Frances Conroy, Gary Frank, Geoff Johns, James Tucker, John Noble, Matt Bomer, Molly C. Quinn, Stana Katic, Stephen Root, super heroes, Superman, Wade Williams
Sleepy Hollow S02E08 – “Heartless”
Sleepy Hollow “Heartless”
Written by Albert Kim
Directed by David Boyd
Sleepy Hollow takes steps forward and steps backwards in an episode that seems like it is on a way to make things cool again, and then tosses it all away with some ridiculous stuff that puts the awful Ichabod and Katrina are having relationship issues thing back on track. Also there is an evil baby, but that’s not the focus this week, it’s a Succubus, who is running around chomping on people who have hidden desires, in order to feed souls to the evil baby. Souls are florescent pink, btw, which means they are probably strawberry flavored. Yummy!
We start with things all cool, with Ichabod and Katrina watching a Bachelor ripoff and arguing about love and who is the guy’s real favorite. They also mention rebuilding their trust. But Henry Parrish is up to no good again, this time using a heart in a jar to summon a nude lady! No, Fox hasn’t yet fulfilled the prophecy from The Simpsons and become a hardcore porn station, Henry just summoned a succubus. She goes out and quickly finds a nerdy victim at a club, easily seducing him to the back of his car for some soul-sucking. And I don’t mean sex.

So the Horseman of War’s defense was that kid’s Halloween game where you stick your hand in a jar of peeled grapes?
Damn, the Succubus is going to wipe out all the tech workers from Sleepy Hollow, preventing the city from cashing in on the Web 3.0 economy and reduce the annual tax revenue by 0.7%! Diabolical!
Oh, wait, she’s just killing dudes and sucking out their souls, which she later barfs into a jar. No problems here, kill away!
The Succubus is played by Caroline Ford, who does a good job considering she has to become a different person each time she seduces someone, to become their heart’s desire of the perfect woman. She also goes full heavy metal demon babe at a few points, complete with giant horns.
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Categories: Television Reviews Tags: Albert Kim, Caroline Ford, David Boyd, John Noble, Katia Winter, Neil Jackson, Nicole Beharie, Sleepy Hollow, Tom Mison
Sleepy Hollow S02E07 – “Deliverance”
Sleepy Hollow “Deliverance”
Written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves
Directed by Nick Copus
Every science fiction series seems to do a demon baby episode, to the point where it’s more interesting when the pregnancies produce normal babies with no real problems. On that note, Sleepy Hollow‘s demon baby episode was surprisingly sound, because it was less about the demon baby and more about everything else. With the End of Days/Book of Revelation texts that Sleepy Hollow is cribbing off of already featuring birth sections, it’s only natural that one of the ways the demon Molloch would try to enter into the world would be out of a woman’s vagina. But Molloch must learn the way of the modern day society, which is a woman’s body is her business, and no demon who mysteriously has the same opinion as conservative Republicans has the right to intrude on anyone’s uterus.
Aside from the demon baby story, Deliverance follows the threads from prior episodes of Ichabod and Katrina having relationship issues because her entire life is one gigantic lie of things she hasn’t informed Ichabod of. There’s the dealing with the new Sheriff and her dislike for Abbie, and we find out exactly what the mysterious jincan poison is being used for. Though despite Ichabod’s declaration just last week that he’s not going to give up on his son (it’s even included in the recap!), he still needs further pushing by Katrina.
But enough of that plot stuff, it’s time for the fun! We start out with Ichabod delivering a hilarious rant about the abysmal voting rates, followed by Abbie owning him by pointing out that as a Black woman, it took two Constitutional Amendments for her to be able to vote. Ichabod also concedes that since she doesn’t own large tracts of land, she’d be turned away for that back in colonial times. And there’s a hilarious “Shush!”ing of Ichabod as he tries to give Abbie suggestions on what to vote for inside the polling place.
Katrina opens by dreaming of being in bed with Ichabod just before he left for war the last time. They speak of what their children will be like, sort of ironic because soon after she has Jeremy, who becomes Henry Parrish, Horseman of the Apocalypse. And she’ll get preggers in this episode, with demon baby Molloch, though not by any natural means. Her dream becomes a spider-spitting face-ripping-off nightmare before she awakens.
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