Sleepy Hollow S02E09 – “Mama”

Sleepy Hollow “Mama”
Written by Damian Kindler
Directed by Wendey Stanzler

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.

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!

As you can imagine, the daughters are a bit freaked, and soon memories come flooding back. Lori Mills was paranoid of demons, claiming anyone could be a demon, and had the girls take specific routes home from school, not to deviate or even talk to any one. The issues of the mom seem like purely mental at first, but as things begin to reveal themselves, we find that Lori Mills was aware of Abbie’s role as a Witness, and many of the things she did was to protect her children from actual demons who were causing trouble.

Because we are at Tarrytown, we get some more Frank Irving, but it’s never enough Frank Irving. There is a creepy nurse running around, who is just enough of a featured character for us to know she’s up to no good in the Tarrytown neighborhood. The episode doesn’t insult our intelligence and try to make her being bad a surprise, saving the surprise for just what exactly she is. On the flip side, the inspirations for her character are a bit too numerous to be comforting if you need to stop by the hospital… Cynthia Stevenson does a great heel turn as Nurse Lambert, I’ve only been familiar with her playing relatively innocent or sweet characters, but she goes full Louise Fletcher/Nurse Ratched in the end.

The emotional scenes with Lori Mills sold the episode. The scene with Lori and young Jenny sitting in the car, mom’s eyes filled with tears as the radio plays and the garage fills with carbon monoxide, Jenny oblivious as to what is going on and just wanting to show the drawing she made to Abbie…my goodness! Then there is the reveal of the mural beneath the layer of drywall, which was also awesome (though why they just built over it instead of repainting I don’t know).

There is a tiny bit more of the Mills history of battling demons, as we know an ancestor of theirs helped guard a pregnant Katrina Crane and delivery Jeremy, and they passed down a journal filled with demon fighting tips that Jenny uses to help take down Nurse Lambert.

Frank Irving’s relatively smaller role does see him fall under the influence of Nurse Lambert, leading to a just in time saving of his life. The asylum is just so creepy of a place already, all the creeping happening things ramp it up more. Luckily, it looks like we’ll have a bit more Frank for another two episodes. A great episode that might be the high point of the season for me.

Katrina’s attempts to kill Baby Molloch are thwarted by seeing the demon baby as a real baby, but as the baby corrupts her body, she discovers the truth and sets out to actually kill him, only to find the child is now around seven years old. Demon babies, they grow so fast ::gets weepy eyed::

So next week the Scooby Gang must kill a child, but they need a magic sword to do so, as you can’t just kill a child normally. That’d be weird. Or they could just wait for him to hit puberty and then he’ll have demon-powered acne. Then when he’s distracted squeezing a zit….STABBO! I can dream, can’t I?

Until then, stay Sleepy!