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.

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.

Because we can’t go two episodes without Nick Hawley showing up, here he is to get rejected by Abbie once again, try to get some strange, end up with a Succubus, and saved in the nick of time by Abbie and Ichabod (though helped by a magic crystal he had on him!) Dang it, we just can’t get rid of Nick Hawley! So he and Ichabod team up to track down the Succubus at the club (called Club Twerk, because of course it is!) and Abbie and Katrina team up to track down the jar with the heart on it so it can be spelled and the heart destroyed. Why Henry Parrish put the jar at some random location instead of the basement of the house he’s in is never addressed.

The Succubus is technically called the Incordata, which is the name of a type of succubus where one was defeated long ago by a priest who gave the heart to a Roman Emperor, who dubbed him St. Valentine, and that’s why we give hearts on Valentine’s Day. I’m pretty sure that’s made up for this episode. Katrina also mentions vita vis points, which I guess are supposed to be vis vitae points because they are explained as the same thing.

There are a few other cute things besides the reality television scene, including Ichabod hinting he can dance and him and Katrina were fixtures at a local private dancing club back in the day. But beyond that, there isn’t much special going on with the funny scenes, the episode more focused on the body count and coming up with an excuse for Katrina to go back to live with Henry and the Headless Horseman at the end of the episode. Which she does (BOOOO!!!), and her excuse is she’s going to kill the demon baby Molloch, but when she sees it, she sees a real baby, so demonic infanticide probably won’t be happening.

The whole thing is dumb and quickly happens at the end, Katrina running off and doing it without even telling Ichabod, just Abbie. What sucks is she fits in with the Scooby team and their crime solving, giving them an extra member since this week Jenny and Captain Irving are MIA. But the plot’s going to go where it’s going to go despite logic and common sense dictating otherwise, so we’re stuck with this until they decide to shake things up again. Though judging from the spoilers I’ve seen thanks to following cast members on Twitter, the thing that shakes things up in a few episodes isn’t what I want to happen at all. Until then, keep it sleepy!