Sleepy Hollow S02E05 – “The Weeping Lady”

Sleepy Hollow “The Weeping Lady”
Written by M. Raven Metzner
Directed by Larry Teng

Sleepy Hollow has seen all manner of monsters run around in the small town, every single one of which somehow has roots to the Revolutionary War and Ichabod Crane. Once again that happens, as the angry wet haired Japanese ghost gets a colonial makeover and causes trouble for Abbie, Ichabod, and Katrina.

While the monster gives Abbie and Ichabod something new to fight this week, the reasoning for the monsters appearance cause some unneeded cracks into existing relationships that feel so obviously forced that they are distracting. The ghost lady killing people is an old acquaintance of Ichabod’s, particularly she was his betrothed back in England, though he canceled the engagement upon journeying to America. Mary Wells followed him there, popping up while he was chatting with Katrina (back when she was still engaged to Abraham Van Brunt, Ichabod’s best friend and eventual Headless Horseman), and goes immediately crazy with jealously and throws out stalker vibes. She disappeared the next day, Ichabod thinking she returned to England thanks to a note. But that turns out to be a lie, Mary Wells actually accidentally died in a scuffle with Katrina, and became a vengeful ghost of legend called the Weeping Lady, who has haunted Sleepy Hollow for 230 years.

She is brought back by Henry Parrish and specifically targets any woman around Ichabod, first attacking Miss Caroline – the Colonial fanlady that makes Ichabod’s clothes (and also wants to jump his Colonial bones!), who turns up in the river. Abbie declares that Miss Caroline “had a case of Crane on the brain”, giving a name to the obsession of many Tumblr fans. The Weeping Lady next attacks Abbie, because Abbie is always next to Ichabod and it looks a little weird (even Miss Caroline thinks Abbie was his girlfriend!) Though Nick Hawley is also in the library, because of course he is, and he knows mouth to mouth so can save Abbie, because of course he does. Hawley is basically the guy you get assigned to your group in school who is too cool to do the actual work, but smart enough to already know everything and his lack of helping is more frustrating that if he was just a dolt who tried but knew nothing.

Katrina sends a love note to Ichabod which falls into the hands of the Weeping Lady, so she targets Katrina next. Ichabod and Abbie go to try to save her, but it’s too late. Or is it? Because the Lady drags her victims to the river by teleportation, Ichabod and Abbie make it to the river and still manage to save her. Good thing she was close to the river, I guess…

Eventually Katrina just casts a spell that takes out the Weeping Lady, but her dying pointing at Katrina prompts Ichabod to dig a bit and find the truth of her disappearance. Ichabod gets rather upset that Katrina lied to him yet again, because we got to force this wedge in their relationship so she can fall in love with the Headless Horseman by the season finale, see? That’s dumb as heck, and I hope they don’t go through with it.

Someone who is also mad at this episode is Molloch, who threatens Henry Parrish because he put Katrina in danger, and Katrina needs to be safe so she can give herself willingly to the cause (I guess they are going ahead with it…) and he yells at Henry so much, he starts weeping when he’s teleported back to Earth. You sort of feel sorry for Henry Parrish, so full of rage he only knows how to lash out, all his complicated planning is just child’s play to his true master, who restricts his independent actions even more, cementing Parrish’s role as just a slave. As annoying as Henry Parrish becoming the new bad guy of the week and making the Headless Horseman look like a chump again and again is, this is far more interesting, for is Parrish going to eventually betray Molloch? Or will he still do his own thing and Molloch spends episodes helping the heroes to keep his long term plans going? Plenty of potential stuff could happens, so hopefully it does.

There is a coda at the end where we find out Jenny Mills and Nick Hawley used to hook up, because of course they did. But they don’t again, because she realizes he sort of likes someone else. Which we all know is Abbie and now we got weirdo sister rivalry going on. The episode loses some points for lack of Orlando Jones, but gains points for Ichabod Crane’s quaint idea of what goes on at Lover’s Lane. Unfortunately, he’s going to have to find a new source of clothing, or else Ichabod might soon be running around in shirts with photos of cats with sunglasses on. Actually, that’s be cool, do that, Sleepy Hollow!

Overall, besides a few cool happenings, this episode was largely a disappointment and felt forced in order to drive a plot point no one wants nor cares about. Hopefully it is just the nadir of the season and things are only going to go up from here. Hopefully.