Sleepy Hollow S02E06 – “And the Abyss Gazes Back”

Sleepy Hollow “And the Abyss Gazes Back”
Written by Heather V. Regnier
Directed by Doug Aarniokoski

With the sixth episode of the season, Sleepy Hollow manages to give us some good crazy as well as character development and even ensures the yet another additional character they introduced won’t be in every episode to take time away from the actual stars. Plus, it brought back the phrase “double jugs”, and if Sleepy Hollow is cancelled tomorrow, it can reflect on a job well done based on that alone! As a bonus, we get Ichabod not only doing yoga, but also playing video games!

And the Abyss Gazes Back brings some focus on a character who is often mentioned but never seen on Sleepy Hollow, Sheriff Corbin. Partially because he was killed in the pilot. But Corbin has remained a presence on the show regardless, as his hobby of collecting weird stories and artifacts has given the heroes a treasure trove of information that has aided their fight. He also mentored a young Abbie Mills, putting her on the straight and narrow path that led to her becoming a police officer. And he used Jenny Mills to acquire artifacts by more black book dirty methods, which is part of the reason she’s a badass. Despite that Corbin himself has barely appeared on the show, and we really know nothing about the man. Now we learn that he has a son named Joe Corbin. A son old enough to have signed up for the marines and gotten stationed in Afghanistan. A son that doesn’t particularly care for his father, feeling he spent too little attention on him and too much attention on Abbie Mills. As Abbie used to babysit for Joe, his resentment against her is a new development she has to now deal with.

The monster of the week is everyone’s favorite American Indian skinwalker legend, the Wendigo! Which if you haven’t figured out by now will be Joe Corbin, then you haven’t been paying attention that much. It becomes very clear very fast after the first attack that he’s the monster, as he’s the only survivor and is ranting catatonically. The Wendigo is depicted as a monstrous man beast with big antlers, making it look like this week’s Sleepy Hollow would be right at home as an episode of Hannibal!


The fact that Joe Corbin an his dad didn’t get along allows for Ichabod to have some reflection that he still loves his son, Henry Parrish, despite Parrish being a Horseman of the Apocalypse, burying Ichabod alive, and also being the one that cursed Joe Corbin (using the bone flute he got from the Pied Piper monster via Nick Hawley.) Joe Corbin also gives Abbie a chance to show how she can still have faith in people despite all the problems they’ve encountered the past two years, still hoping they’ll cure Joe even after all real hope is lost.

Some cool Ichabod – Man Out Of Time sequences. The opening that looks like upside down torture is just yoga, which basically is torture. Ichabod dismisses it, becomes uncomfortable at the use of the word “buns” to describe his butt, which he refers to as his “double jugs”! Oh, double jugs, where have you been all my life? The term has already hit my vocabulary! Ichabod then toasts George Washington as they drink beer, using a toast written by Ben Franklin. He’s also been reading up on super heroes, referring to Peter Parker as “that arachnid fellow” and trying to remember the secret identity of Superman. Ichabod caps off the episode playing a first person shooter as a way to unwind, except he gets fragged by his own troops and starts screaming a torrent of Ichabod-level obscenities at the two guys, who probably did it for the lols. But, hey, a show is talking about players named ChiefWiggum49 and Haloismybitch12, which means the world wins no matter what! (Ichabod’s tag is IchabodCrane1749!)

Just when you think they’ve run out of Colonial people Ichabod knew, they toss in another. Daniel Boone gets mentioned, who stirs a debate about rodent hats with Ichabod and Abbie. Also Daniel Boone wore his coonskin cap because it covered scars on his head given to him by his brother, Squire Boone, who became a Wendigo after the winter of Valley Forge. The term they used for PTSD back then was “nostalgia”, and that’s the official story of Squire Boone, but Daniel Boone and some Shawnee tribespeople had to go hunt down the Squire Boone Wendigo. Luckily, Nick Hawley knows some Shawnee people, who are basically a biker gang, and they aren’t too fond of Nick at the moment. Ichabod manages to smooth things over and get the help of the medicine man because he knows the story of Squire Boone. Thus he’s got a skull with an incantation written on it, that they have to read before Joe Corbin kills during his fourth Wendigo transformation, which means he’ll be a permanent Wendigo. Sort of a problem is he’s already turned, they need to stop him before he manages to off some unfortunate extra.

Henry Parrish cursed Joe Corbin as a trade for the cure in exchange for an artifact Sheriff Corbin had, a poison called jincan (aka gu), which is made by combining a bunch of poisonous animals together until they eat each other and the remaining one makes a super poison. There is finally some more Orlando Jones! Ex-Captain Frank Irving wants his soul back, and Henry Parrish will give it back…if Irving kills a man. A life for a life. And conveniently the drunk driver who paralyzed Irving’s daughter is also in the prison. Irving says he won’t be a killer…..but. By the end of the episode he sends a rambling phone call to Abbie where they learn the situation and promise to find out how to free him. That might have to wait, as Henry used the jincan to make a magical poison spider that crawls into Katrina Crane’s mouth as we jump into the cliffhanger for next week! Poison magic spiders, antlered monsters, half skull Indian incantations, people not liking Nick Hawley, father/son character development, video game rage, yoga slams, super heroes, and double jugs…this episode is a winner!