Sleepy Hollow S02E03 – “Root of All Evil”
Next week we’ll see him reading Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
Sleepy Hollow “Root of All Evil”
Written by Melissa Blake and Donald Todd
Directed by Jeffrey Hunt
I can finally buy cold medicine for that guy with the bad teeth outside of Walgreens!
Money sucks, unless you got money, then it’s awesome. But what if it was cursed money? Money that made you go crazy? Like what happens to everyone who wins the Lotto? What if the cursed money was part of Judas’ 30 pieces of silver? And what if that made this episode have the same transferring evil gimmick as last season’s Fallen-inspired episode? Well, then you get an okay episode that could be better.
For starters we still have a dearth of Captain Frank Irving, who the heroes are prevented from visiting at the psych ward by his lawyer – Horseman of War Henry Parrish. He does make a small appearance once Ichabod figures out a trick to be able to see him, but it is only a brief bit where Ichabod dumps a bunch of info on him and then immediately leaves. Hopefully there will be more Irving next week.
What Sleepy Hollow has fallen in love with is following Henry Parrish around. John Noble is awesome, but his character is going to become tiresome if he continues to be the focus of every week’s evil conspiracy. Not only is Parrish inciting cursed actions in the community, he has whatever deal he’s doing with Frank Irving going on, and he’s gone full Beetlejuice and is making a miniature model of the town of Sleep Hollow. He’s living in the house from “Sanctuary” where he was born, because there is a very loose plot string of him still having some humanity left in him and reconnecting with his parents dangling around. Will it become the string that unravels his sweater, leaving him naked and lying on the floor? Or are they just filling time until the next Horseman arrives?
Speaking of Horsemen, the focus on Henry Parrish has given the other Horseman, the Headless Horseman aka Abraham, very little to do except be snotty to Katrina each week. Which is sort of sad, Headless Horseman is now suffering from Darth Vader Syndrome, where Darth Vader was cool until we met Anakin and his whines about sand. Headless Horseman was cool when he was only in a few episodes, didn’t speak, and just shot at everyone. Now all he does is complain.
Tom Sawyer is a lying jerk, this isn’t fun at all!
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Sleepy Hollow S01E11 – “The Vessel”
Turn around, bright eyes!
Sleepy Hollow “The Vessel”
Story by Mark Goffman and David McMillan
Teleplay by Melissa Blake
Directed by Romeo Tirone
Jenny Mills could win the war of apocalypse and still have time for breakfast!
Sleepy Hollow returns (finally!) for the first episode of 2014, and the last lone hour episode before the two-hour season finale next week! We continue the story straight out of Fallen, with a demon jumping between bodies and threatening Captain Irving and his daughter, Macey (Amandla Stenberg). Then things get horror movie crazy, but not before some cute character moments and Jenny Mills, kicking butt.
The Vessel asks what would you do to protect the people you love, especially if there was a crazy demon chasing after them? It becomes a recurring theme through the episode, as Captain Irving goes to extraordinary lengths to protect his daughter Macey, who is specifically threatened by the body-jumping demon, Ancitif(an actual demon) There is new revelations about Jenny Mills, who was also a possession target for the demon (as hinted in her first appearance), as we discover that she often would commit crimes in order to be incarcerated so she wouldn’t hurt Abbie while possessed. It’s an extreme form of sisterly love, one Abbie wasn’t even aware of (as Jennifer correctly deduced that Abbie wouldn’t have believed her, anyway.) But once Ichabod tells her, the healing process between the sisters is swiffened.
Pleased to meet you, don’t you know my name?
One thing Sleepy Hollow has been doing a lot of is using familiar cinema scenes in order to set the tone for certain characters and events. This episode has a glaringly obvious example as parts copy Fallen and parts copy The Exorcist (and related knockoffs!) An argument could be made that producers Orci and Kurtzman have a history of stealing iconic scenes in films to use for their own, most glaringly when used in Star Trek Into Darkness. The difference between the STID use and things happening in Sleepy Hollow, is STID was a transparent attempt to use nostalgia to make up for lack of actual characterization/plot/everything that is essential in telling a story. In Sleepy Hollow, things like Jenny’s introduction being a copy of Sarah Conner in Terminator 2 is a shortcut to let the audience know she’s a complete badass. Jenny’s arc then goes in its own direction, with her character’s tone already established. In Vessel, when things switch over to The Exorcist, an effort is made to make the result play out differently, even subverting an iconic effect.
I actually like when the show references films, because it’s not relying on them to provide the entertainment. The entertainment comes from Ichabod struggling to fit in with modern society. It comes from Abbie coming to grips with her destiny and making amends with her sister. It comes from Captain Irving dealing with his family issues while also holding back the apocalypse in what he thought would be a stress-free assignment. It comes from crazy demon scares and monsters that have their own agendas despite being part of a greater war. It comes from Ichabod’s struggle to save his wife while dealing with everything he knew about her being a lie (and discovering he had a son he never knew!) Sleepy Hollow provides all this, and more. It’s consistently diverse, not filled with token minorities, but characters who are rich and developed. The makeup of the cast of Sleepy Hollow reflects modern America, and it does so without pomp and circumstance, it just IS. And it’s great. I’m still amazed Sleepy Hollow became my favorite new show of the season, and amazed at how it just blows Agents of Shield away.
Kissy-kissy!
Captain Irving’s paranoia from last week results in one of the possessed threateners being questioned at a lie detector, where he professes to have no idea what is going on. Another witness shows up, who is the current host of Ancitif. Thus, the demon is now jumping around the police station, and calls Irving on his phone to demand the George Washington Bible, or Macey’s gonna get it!
He’s seen Carrie Underwood’s The Sound of Music, and he’ll never be the same!
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Sleepy Hollow S01E05 – “John Doe”
Not so sleepy anymore…
Sleepy Hollow “John Doe”
Directed by Ernest Dickerson
Written by Melissa Blake
This flower is my baby!
It’s Sleepy Hollow time again! After last week topped everything so far, this week’s Sleepy Hollow pulls back while switching gears to do a mysterious disease episode. There is also exploration of more colonial American myths (at this rate they’re going to run out of actual historical stuff to revise by season 2!) and let’s use know that the other three Horsemen of the Apocalypse aren’t just sitting around eating pizza. Okay, maybe Famine. That guy’s a jerk!
There are some mysteries hinted at that should pay off later, and Captain Irving and Detective Morales both have moments beyond scenes to remind people they exist. Even Ichabod’s wife shows up again, having barely appeared in the last two episodes (and she even comments on that fact!) The main problem with “John Doe” is it is following a stronger episode, so I’m just being more picky. Will Morales’ partner turn out to be evil? He seems way to nice to not be secretly evil. Also has anyone seen John Cho? Or smelled John Cho? Because he should be pretty rank by now and easy to track down. I’m sure he’ll appear again before too long.
Nobody told me I would be in this episode!
The focus on a different Horseman means we might just have episodes dealing with each one of them trying things as the series progresses. Maybe even the Horsemen will grow some brains and team up. Will the War guy have Sleepy Hollow be invaded by foreign powers? Was Red Dawn set in the Sleepy Hollow universe? A mystery to contemplate…
A mystery kid in old timey clothes peeps on a mystery girl in the woods. The girl is collecting flowers and wants to play with the boy once she sees him, running off and daring him to catch her. He does so, but soon she vanishes and is replaced by an armored dude on horseback. The design is familiar because we’ve seen him before, during the shot of all four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Blood Moon. Though we don’t find out right away, this guy is Pestilence and he’s not very nice.
Pestilence chases the kid to the highway, at which point the horseman and his horse vanish into dust. Mystery Kid is confused by the highway and cars, and his old timey dress indicates that he might be a time traveler like Ichabod.
Food in the future is weird!
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Categories: Television Reviews Tags: Ernest Dickerson, Katia Winter, Melissa Blake, Nicholas Gonzalez, Nicole Beharie, Orlando Jones, Sleepy Hollow, Tom Mison
