Sleepy Hollow S02E09 – “Mama”

Mama Sleepy Hollow

Fake! This is faker than that “Moon landing” footage the government released!


Sleepy HollowMama
Written by Damian Kindler
Directed by Wendey Stanzler
Mama Sleepy Hollow

Just wait until we find out our dad is also a ghost!


Sleepy Hollow raises the bar this season with a disturbingly great episode that features some frank depictions of mental illness and suicide, in addition to having demons and ghosts running around. Somehow the balancing act works just fine, and the added heart-string tugs of Abbie and Jenny’s mom being one of the ghosts leads to some great bonding and background information about the Mills sisters.

What we do know of Abbie and Jenny’s mom before this episode wasn’t much. We know she has issues and was eventually committed to an asylum (the responding officer has become the new Sheriff), and Abbie and Jenny were then dumped into the foster system, leading to their rift. We know she had died, I can’t remember if it was specifically stated that she killed herself, but I think so. And because of all the strange and spooky stuff that has happened on the series, it is understood if not specifically stated that she might have been less crazy than it seemed. That turns out to be true, and we get to see a whole lot more of Lori Mills, including interactions with her daughters as they grew up as well as the spectral version running around the asylum.

Mama Sleepy Hollow

My favorite part of this episode is them instantly recognizing what this random jumble means!


Patient bodies are piling up at Tarrytown, the psychiatric hospital that Frank Irving is currently staying at and Jenny Mills and Lori Mills are former patients of. Three bodies in three days, all of which are suicides. Abbie is specifically assigned by Sheriff Reyes because of her knowledge of dealing with weird events, as demonstrated by the doomsday cult she helped bring in. Her family connection to the place is also a plus, and it means Jenny will be along to help, as she’s familiar with the location.

Ichabod is MIA because he has a cold, which leads to some cute character moments and him mentioning that he fought at Saratoga while having dysentery. But he’s no match for being sneakily drugged by Nick Hawley, who tags along. A view of the video of the latest suicide shows the room wasn’t empty when he died, there was someone in the corner. Thanks to the magic of the cameras having a night view mode (Enhance! ENHANCE!) we see the ghost of Lori Mills chanting in the corner!

Mama Sleepy Hollow

Why did mom want us to watch this video of a cat playing a keyboard???


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Sleepy Hollow S02E07 – “Deliverance”

Deliverance Sleepy Hollow

Babies bring such joy into the world…


Sleepy HollowDeliverance
Written by Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves
Directed by Nick Copus
Deliverance Sleepy Hollow

Fist bump for being back on track!


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.

Deliverance Sleepy Hollow

I can read that stone tablet, it’s got an additional 5 Commandments!


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.

Deliverance Sleepy Hollow

This week the vital clues were rendered in ink instead of pencil, what a twist!


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Sleepy Hollow S02E03 – “Root of All Evil”

Sleepy Hollow 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
Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

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.

Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

Tom Sawyer is a lying jerk, this isn’t fun at all!


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Sleepy Hollow S02E02 – “The Kindred”

Kindred Sleepy Hollow

Headless Horseman, He-Man, I’ll defeat them all!


Sleepy Hollow “The Kindred”
Written by Mark Goffman and Albert Kim
Directed by Paul Edwards
Kindred Sleepy Hollow

When horses get LASIK!


Sleepy Hollow both returns to bringing us monsters while continuing the Apocalypse storyline and tying up some of the loose ends that still dangled after the season premiere. We get introductions to new characters and begin the plot lines that will take us through the rest of the year.

The most important thing that happens in this episode is the monster, which seems not to be the case, but it is. The monster, called The Kindred, is created from parts of dead soldiers from the Revolutionary War. It was originally build by Ben Franklin (Timothy Busfield reprises the role, though with clothes this time!) but never finished. Abbie and Ichabod manage to finish the monster using the head of the Headless Horseman. The Kindred is said to be the match of the Horsemen of Death, and is seen fighting the Headless Horseman to a standstill. But as there are two Horsemen of the Apocalypse running around, the Kindred is outmatched, though Abbie helps a bit during the fight. What is interesting is the Kindred also helps Abbie, and seems to know the plan of the heroes, and most importantly, does not die at the end of the episode. In fact, the Kindred escapes into the unknown, so there is a random unknown monster running around.

Kindred Sleepy Hollow

This show put 2/3rds of its black characters in jail in this episode!


The Kindred is important for several reasons. His origin as the result of a Frankenstein creation of dead body parts parallels Sleepy Hollow being the creation of a bunch of goofy science fiction and fantasy tropes that somehow work together into making an awesome monster of crazy. The Kindred grins and hisses at his friends, and knows their plans, helping them achieving it will providing an equal to the might of the supernatural Horsemen. Thus, I’m predicting random Kindred appearances throughout the series when the plot dictates that the main characters have to overcome something that should kill them. It’s also important that this is the first monster who isn’t killed or defeated in some manner. He escapes on his own terms after accomplishing his goals. Perhaps the writers realized that killing off all their monsters of the week was bad, because you can’t use them again. It shows how the monsters have grown to be a bigger part of Sleepy Hollow and are becoming entrenched in the mythology of the series.
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