Sleepy Hollow S02E03 – “Root of All Evil”

Sleepy Hollow “Root of All Evil”
Written by Melissa Blake and Donald Todd
Directed by Jeffrey Hunt

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.

The meat of the episode is Parrish puts a cursed coin into circulation that makes people act out their resentment in violent fashion. The coins were originally going to be dispersed upon America during the Revolutionary War, but luckily Ichabod and Benedict Arnold stopped them from being distributed by counterfeiters. Unfortunately, Benedict Arnold touched one of the coins and that’s when he decided to turn traitor. The coins cause a nice lady to rob a bank, a nerdy guy to blow up his dad, and Jenny to try to gun down the new Sheriff, Sheriff Reyes.

Sheriff Reyes continues to be a thorn in the sides of the heroes, she hates Ichabod and demands to see his ID (a problem solved by the end of the episode thanks to a new recurring character). She hates Jenny and locked her up, only for Jenny to be freed with community service thanks to Abbie being friends with a judge. She makes snide remarks about Abbie and Jenny’s mom, but then relinquishes the sealed case files on their mom, showing she does have a bit of a heart. She also guns down a bank robber and is still at work the next day, so the Sleepy Hollow police force obviously doesn’t bother doing investigations into officer-involved shootings, which is sort of a glaring problem given recent events in Missouri.

The most important addition to the episode is relic hunter mercenary Nick Hawley (Matt Barr), who helps Ichabod and Abbie with information on the coin and how to stop it. Ichabod HATES him. HATES HATES HATES. Which means we all know he’s going to be Abbie’s love interest this season, because that will drive Ichabod bonkers. Nick Hawley is okay as far as roguish characters go, though I hope he’s the last major new character added so we can focus on the already large crop of people running around Sleepy Hollow. The scenes where he and Ichabod have to work together to steal some stained glass from a church (and Ichabod ends up doing confession) were pretty funny. I look forward to Ichabod trying to one-up him week after week.

There was some good Ichabod man out of time scenes, including the revelation Ichabod knows about gays thanks to Baron von Steuben, and because he watches Glee! He must be the only one left… Ichabod is totally against wearing hats indoors, though.

The villain being just evil money and being vaguely familiar was sort of disappointing, and kept the show from going into awesome territory. Had a guy in a rubber mask popped out of the coin to fight everyone, then things would have gone bonkers like we love. There was some nice sister bonding as Abbie talked down the possessed Jenny, so it wasn’t a total loss. Still, we need the nutty stuff to run around in between the character development. The Benedict Arnold angel was fun, I was wondering when they would work him in. Perhaps he will return as a tortured soul servant of Molloch at a later date.

Next week’s synopsis does sound wacky, so maybe the nutso stuff will be back with a vengeance. Let’s all hope Sleepy Hollow never becomes either of the words in its title!