Sleepy Hollow S02E06 – “And the Abyss Gazes Back”

November 24, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Best screenshot of the season!

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

Help the deer are fighting back!

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.

Once again important monster information is conveyed in hand drawn form…

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!

Wait, this isn’t an incantation, some high school student is calling his teacher a perv!

InTelevision Reviews

Sleepy Hollow S02E05 – “The Weeping Lady”

November 17, 2014ByTars Tarkas

BP strikes again!

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

I’m not crazy, and I’ll eat the liver of anyone who disagrees!

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.

Sexual tension!

InTelevision Reviews

Sleepy Hollow S02E04 – “Go Where I Send Thee…”

October 18, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Yes, Ichabod, contaminate the bone evidence of murder with your DNA!

Sleepy Hollow “Go Where I Send Thee…”
Written by Damian Kindler
Directed by Doug Aarniokoski

Frank Irving is trapped in a generic movie poster!

If there is one thing Sleepy Hollow is good for, it’s providing completely crazy monster scenarios. This weeks episode, “Go Where I Send Thee…”, is a prime example, thanks to a demonic Pied Piper who dates back to the Revolutionary War. How often do you see demonic Pied Pipers on your television screen? And yet, Sleepy Hollow does so brazenly, and it fits right in with their on-going mythos, to the point where no one is batting an eye!

The Pied Piper is the monster of the week, and he’s kidnapping a young girl as part of a family curse that has been happening for generations. Like all the prior family curses on Sleepy Hollow, it all dates back to the Revolutionary War period. Fake Revolutionary Daniel Forbes Lancaster (who Ichabod explains joined the rebellion only after it was apparent the Colonials would win) had a British detachment of troops staying in his house, which got a little too grabby with his daughters. So he hired a local demonic Pied Piper assassin to kill them. I guess back in the 1700s, you could just hire demonic fairy tale assassins with relative ease. In any event, after the Pied Piper slayed all the troops (in super fast cool knife fighting moves!), Daniel Lancaster has the demonic Pied Piper shot with arrows and dumped in a lake. This betrayal doesn’t end well, because demonic powered assassins tend to not stay dead, and he returns every generation to abduct a female member of the Lancaster family on her 10th birthday.

First of all, why would you betray a demon-powered assassin? That’s just looking for trouble. Secondly, why would you betray one with a Pied Piper theme, since the town’s betrayal of the Pied Piper in the original tale ended badly? It’s like he’s too stupid and arrogant to learn the morals of these fairy tales. And the Lancaster family now has trouble for generations. Good going, moron!

Look, there are a thousand variations of “Abbie gives Ichabod a bone” jokes I could make, or I could go so meta I’m beyond the joke while still making it. I choose the latter!

InTelevision Reviews

Sleepy Hollow S02E03 – “Root of All Evil”

October 9, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Next week we’ll see him reading Handbook for the Recently Deceased.

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

I can finally buy cold medicine for that guy with the bad teeth outside of Walgreens!

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.

Tom Sawyer is a lying jerk, this isn’t fun at all!

InTelevision Reviews

Sleepy Hollow S02E02 – “The Kindred”

October 2, 2014ByTars Tarkas

Headless Horseman, He-Man, I’ll defeat them all!

Sleepy Hollow “The Kindred”
Written by Mark Goffman and Albert Kim
Directed by Paul Edwards

When horses get LASIK!

Sleepy Hollow both returns to bringing us monsters while continuing the Apocalypse storyline and tying up some of the loose ends that still dangled after the season premiere. We get introductions to new characters and begin the plot lines that will take us through the rest of the year.

The most important thing that happens in this episode is the monster, which seems not to be the case, but it is. The monster, called The Kindred, is created from parts of dead soldiers from the Revolutionary War. It was originally build by Ben Franklin (Timothy Busfield reprises the role, though with clothes this time!) but never finished. Abbie and Ichabod manage to finish the monster using the head of the Headless Horseman. The Kindred is said to be the match of the Horsemen of Death, and is seen fighting the Headless Horseman to a standstill. But as there are two Horsemen of the Apocalypse running around, the Kindred is outmatched, though Abbie helps a bit during the fight. What is interesting is the Kindred also helps Abbie, and seems to know the plan of the heroes, and most importantly, does not die at the end of the episode. In fact, the Kindred escapes into the unknown, so there is a random unknown monster running around.

This show put 2/3rds of its black characters in jail in this episode!

The Kindred is important for several reasons. His origin as the result of a Frankenstein creation of dead body parts parallels Sleepy Hollow being the creation of a bunch of goofy science fiction and fantasy tropes that somehow work together into making an awesome monster of crazy. The Kindred grins and hisses at his friends, and knows their plans, helping them achieving it will providing an equal to the might of the supernatural Horsemen. Thus, I’m predicting random Kindred appearances throughout the series when the plot dictates that the main characters have to overcome something that should kill them. It’s also important that this is the first monster who isn’t killed or defeated in some manner. He escapes on his own terms after accomplishing his goals. Perhaps the writers realized that killing off all their monsters of the week was bad, because you can’t use them again. It shows how the monsters have grown to be a bigger part of Sleepy Hollow and are becoming entrenched in the mythology of the series.

InTelevision Reviews

Sleepy Hollow S01E13 – “Bad Blood”

January 22, 2014ByTars Tarkas

You’re a shotgun bang! What’s up with that thang? I wanna know how does it hang?

Sleepy Hollow “Bad Blood”
Written by Alex Kurtzman and Mark Goffman
Directed by Ken Olin

We’ve been kicked out of better planes of the afterlife than this!

Hey, ho! This is IT! The epic last part of the Season 1 Finale of Sleepy Hollow, the show that became one of the best shows on television despite (or because!) of how ridiculous it is! It’s sharply written, with a fantastic cast that constantly brings their A game. It’s got a rich mythology while still has the freedom to disregard or retcon things that don’t quite work. It expands from it’s Biblical influences to become a broader narrative. It is incredibly diverse, with many well written black characters who aren’t just thrown in to add a bit of color to the cast. Sleepy Hollow brings together many great ingredients into an incredible stew of deliciousness. So make sure you grab yourself a bowl, because it’s going to be a long long wait until fall!

When last we left Sleepy Hollow (in what was the first part of a two-part episode combined together despite not originally being written that way), Ichabod and Abbie had just retrieved a map to Purgatory from the secret crypt of Zombie George Washington, and then burned the map to keep Moloch from getting it. Ichabod then drew the map again from memory, because he can do that. Captain Irving was arrested while protecting his daughter from crimes she committed while being demon-possessed, and Katrina didn’t appear except via flashbacks (as usual!)

I’m going to cut things off here, and there will be SPOILERS below the fold, because there always is anyway, but these are season ending spoilers of all the cool things that happen, so be warned if you haven’t bingewatched these episodes from your DVR!

Yep, we’re going to use another “I lost my head over Sleepy Hollow” joke!

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