Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: A | 53 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT How to Dig Up a Dead President
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.20.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.As Sleepy Hollow barrels towards its conclusion, Abbie and Ichabod are again confronted with the possibility that Ichabod will betray his partner in evil ass-kicking when they learn that Washington's Bible is meant to lead them to a map that will then lead them to purgatory. That's right: they've got a map… to another map.
But this week's journey isn't that simple. Andy Brooks has also returned and he begs Abbie to hand over the map so that they can sit up high somewhere in Moloch's new order and that Ichabod will betray her. She's not really down with the new order destroying the earth, so she declines and reconvenes with Ichabod, albeit with slight apprehension about the betrayal prophecy that keeps rearing its head.
At the rectory, Ichabod has solved a little riddle that's led him to Lazarus in the Bible, where he applies more secret ink decoding goo and reveals a letter to him from George Washington. Apparently, George did write "December 18" on December 18 because he was resurrected in order to draft a very useful map of the path from the living world to purgatory. Ichabod quickly realizes—because he's obsessed with the concept—that finding purgatory will let them bring Katrina back.
Rather quickly, Abbie and Ichabod put together the pieces and find that the Sleepy Hollow reverend, who was a Warlock, was the one to resurrect Washington with the beads he regularly wore. Naturally, they dig him up and have Henry Parish sin eat the beads, since only something dark could have created beads that could resurrect someone. The sin eating process burns his hand to a crisp and almost kills him in addition to bringing out more shatter-prone demons we saw in past episodes, but he does see a vision of the reverend ferrying something to a secret spot along a creek.
Abbie is convinced that they don't need this map and that it will create more problems instead of solving them, but Ichabod thinks that that is exactly why they need to find it. They continue on and realize, thanks to Ichabod's masonic knowledge, that the map would have been buried with Washington and that to avoid it being found, they would have placed Washington in a secret grave.
They find their way to the island in Henry's vision and while Ichabod finds the grave, Henry tells Abbie the prophecy about her and Ichabod could be real, but that they can avoid it coming true. Ichabod then finds the stone that leads to Washington's grave after a little expert twisting and a magical door just opens up in the floor and beckons them underground. Once there, Ichabod identifies booby traps to avoid and he and Abbie figure out the trues resting place of the president. His coffin—which looks like a U.S. senator's wet dream—appears and they grab the map from his skeleton hands just as Brooks closes off the entrance and descends upon them.
He's been made into some sort of slimy cone-head demon dressed like Neo from The Matrix and he grabs Abbie by the neck to attempt to get the map from her. She speaks to Andy and manages to get him to overpower the demon long enough to get away, but not before she "releases" Andy by poking a ridiculously easy hole in Demon Andy's head. They manage to escape with a minor hiccup when Demon Andy rises again, and once outside, Abbie begs Ichabod to destroy the map.
She knows that it's his way back to his wife, but she says that if it can help Moloch win the war, it's for the greater good that he destroys it. He does, but fails to remind her about his photographic memory, which he uses later to draw the map anew.
While all this is going on, Irving is forced to turn himself in for the murders possessed Macy committed in order to save Macy from being arrested since her DNA is everywhere. Of course this means that going into the final episode of the season, Team Ichabod is already down player. Odds of survival aren't looking so hot.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!As Sleepy Hollow barrels towards its conclusion, Abbie and Ichabod are again confronted with the possibility that Ichabod will betray his partner in evil ass-kicking and this time, Abbie's the one who gets the warning.
We open on Abbie's apartment—apparently she does actually have one and vegetables exist there—where she's cooking and leaving the most Ichabod voicemail she can possibly muster. He texts her back with an autocorrect flub fit for a Buzzfeed listicle (how topical! LOL! Sideways man's face!) and all that mirth comes crashing down when she realizes that Andy Brooks has found his way into her humble abode.
Of course, Brooks is never just there to do Moloch's bidding. His messages are always tinged with his undying love for Abbie and so he tells her why Moloch is after Washington's Bible—the artifact Ichabod is presently pouring over in their secret hideout—but rather the map that the bible serves as a map towards. Hey, redundancy. Sitting cuffed to the radiator, Brooks tries desperately to convince Abbie that if she gets him the bible she'll have a seat in the new order. He fails to mention the part where the new order means the destruction of civilization, so Abbie says no dice. His last ditch effort is to bring up the prophecy once more: Ichabod will betray her (and oh, by the way, no one will ever love her like Brooks does, he adds). Clearly rattled, Abbie stupidly turns her back to call Ichabod. The part where undead Brooks has jelly bones comes in handy and he escapes the handcuffs while she's talking to Ichabod's voicemail.
With no Brooks and Ichabod's inability to answer phone calls, Abbie heads to their secret lair where Ichabod is pouring over Washington's bible, trying to understand his meaning. He remembers back to a meeting with Washington when he said "Good will always rise like Lazarus." Clearly, he wants Ichabod to check out the Lazarus portion of the bible.
By the time Abbie gets there, Ichabod first manages to blame his phone for his inability to answer her calls (see: the trick played by every spoiled teenager the world over) and demands a new one. She offers to switch temporarily so that Ichabod can attempt impossible conversation with a Siri clone. But then, they get to the real reason for her visit: Brooks said Ichabod would betray her and he knew everything about her early family life. She swears her fear surrounding the encounter is Brooks' level of knowledge, but it's clear she's starting to worry about her fellow Witness.