This show about Sleepy Hollow, gets off to a bit of a sleepy start, and well, we're confused about just how long the two leads can survive fighting off this same big bad. It's not like a headless guy who can only come out at night is really able to blend in with society all that much.
Back in 1781, the Revolutionary War was in full tilt in the Hudson Valley and the unlikely hero of our story (Ichabod Crane, in case you've never heard the age-old tale of the Headless Horseman) was dodging bullets and looking dashing while doing so. Well, until a big intimidating dude with a black metal mask on, who looks like Bane shows up. The Bane guy wields and ax and has a strange cross burned into his hand. He stabs our hero (who has the worst shocked expression ever), and in retaliation, Bane dude gets his head whacked off.
We fade to black, hear some vague talk of there not being much time, and flash to see Ichabod crawling out of grave in a cave. His awakening is so compelling that jars bust open and frogs spring to life (even though they looked to be in formaldehyde)… so maybe the reviving mojo had a wide radius? He examines his healed scar, sees the cave entrance and stumbles out where he crosses a lovely cement dam and walks through the woods until he encounters a paved road. Of course since it is foggy out, he's nearly killed by several moving vehicles. When one driver gets out to check on him, he runs fast away, but not before we see him staring at a bird for a really long stretch of time.
We then move to a diner where two cops are eating what looks like some truly delicious food. Sheriff Clancy Brown sees an unsolved homicide in the paper in a nearby town and decides to see if he can help. Abbie (introduced thanks to the extremely helpful waitress) steals some French fries, and I can't say as I blame her… they are a perfect golden brown. Sheriff Clancy Brown starts talking about the unusual amount of unsolved cases in the area, and a priest looks over at them suspiciously. He says she's going to miss all this excitement when she takes off for Quantico. She's excited that she's part of an FBI feeder program, but he thinks she's really just running away. The priest and sheriff share a brief acknowledgment of each other's existence before the Sheriff and Abbie leave.
Once outside they get a call from dispatch a local stable that has some spooked horses, most likely coyote related. There's an unnecessary shot that tries to be artsy by flipping the image upside down, and then we are at the stable and it is suddenly thundering to add to the mystery of it all. Abbie (aka Lieutenant Mills) is looking for the owner of the property, while the Sheriff heads off to the barn to see the horses. Abbie notices that the owner's truck is there, but with the door open. A shotgun is on the ground. Abbie walkie-talkies the Sheriff to tell him that she's found the weapon, and then a minute later that she's found a headless stable owner, but in the meantime the Sheriff has run into some troubles of his own. He's got a headless revolutionary soldier who appears to be bulletproof and still good with his ax. Abbie hears the shots and heads to the barn, just in time to see the ax go through the door, and the rider head off on a beautiful white horse, without his head. Also, Poor Sheriff Clancy Brown's decapitated head is laying in the dirt.
She starts calling in that there's an officer down, and John Cho gets the call. But he's stopped in the middle of town when he almost hits a bedraggled Ichabod. He presumes that this sexily dressed homeless man is somehow involved in the stable incident, and cuffs him. When Abbie arrives at the station, she immediately informs John Cho that the suspect in custody HAS a head, so simply cannot be the sheriff slayer. Ichabod hears the description that Abbie gives, of the marking on his hand and his outfit, and asks if he's carrying a broad axe. He thinks it's impossible, as the last time he saw the Bane-doppelganger, Ichabod was personally slicing and dicing his head.
She wonders who Ichabod is, and then we see a lot of footage of Ichabod being videotaped, and him questioning the polygraph test. He delivers his biography, about how he worked as a professor of History at Oxford, but was enlisted to come stateside to fight for the Queen's army. There isn't a blip on the polygraph test. He admits to defecting, and he became a spy under George Washington. Orlando Jones is there chuckling at this tale. After Ichabod cut off the head of the horseman, he was taken to triage where he saw his wife Katrina who was a civilian nurse. He lost consciousness and woke up in the cave. When he's done with his history, he starts demanding answers about where he is and the detective simply informs him that when is the bigger question, since his side won the war, but it was 250 years prior. He shows him money as proof.
Captain Orlando Jones (who goes by the name Frank Irving, perhaps in a nod to Legend of Sleepy Hollow author Washington Irving) wants Crane to be taken for a psych hold. Abbie overhears this and runs after the Captain, in order to interrogate the suspect before he's taken away. She's denied as he doesn't think she really wants to go on record as talking about a headless murderer. But she starts throwing out facts about how the blade would have been heated, because the guillotine style deaths were all tidy with little blood, but there was no sign of a fire source. She thinks that Crane might have some clue. He gives her permission to transport him to the hospital, with instruction that she limit her questions to the car ride.
She goes into the jail to see Ichabod, and he makes comments about her being a woman, and about her being black and then of course comments about slavery. She wonders if he is going to break character. As she explains that she has a gun and will use it, he insists that he was a supporter of the abolitionist movement. He tries to bond with her about their sightings of impossible things. But she's really in no mood to admit that there might be a headless killer. Why not? Is the story of Sleepy Hollow not available in this town? Have they never heard about Ichabod Crane? Wouldn't that name and the horseman's arrival at least make you think there was a copycat killer of sorts on the loose?
Anyway, Ichabod is just fascinated by the automatic windows in the car and she deems this annoying. He goes through reminiscing about what used to be in place of the Starbucks on the corner and is confused by the amount of them around. Because jokes about the abundance of Starbucks just never get old. They then have a painful "discussion" about if he peed at all in the past two and a half centuries, and then she asks if she can see the cave he crawled out of. As he agrees, they pass the church, and he sees the familiar priest from the diner. There are awkward glances as the priest was the one who whispered that they didn't have much time when he was first injured.
Abbie shows Ichabod how to use a flashlight, and then they start looking around the cave, which seemed to have a lot more light in it when he crawled from the ground. He finds the bible, with the passage about the book of revelations and the story about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. He talks about how George Washington told Ichabod about how this was bigger than a land battle, and was a war for the future of mankind. General/President Washington gave him orders to kill a mercenary with the bow mark, but Washington didn't mention that the dude looked like Bane. Abbie has had about enough, but she's not willing to believe the whole apocalypse stuff.
We then see the headless rider and the poor horse who's eyes have turned blazing red. They are heading towards the church and the priest. The priest has a magic trick with chains, but they don't stall the horseman for more than a few minutes. The Priest says, "I'll never tell you where it is," right before he gets his head lopped off.
Abbie and Ichabod are driving and they head to the crime at the church and she asks him to stay in the car. He tries to follow her, but he can't figure out the car door locks. The familiar bird from the road at the beginning lands on the car in front of Crane. (A crow maybe? A raven? I'm not an ornithologist). Abbie and the Captain are going over the case of the poor Reverend's beheading, when Orlando Jones spots Ichabod wandering around the crime scene following the bird. He's not thrilled, but Abbie says that he was in her custody so he's clearly not the killer, but she says he's a lead on finding out what really happened. The Captain isn't interested and wants Ichabod taken to a padded cell. John Cho also tells her that Ichabod is dragging her down. No one mentions her imminent departure to Quantico. Either they don't know or don't care.
She goes traipsing off into the cemetery where Ichabod is walking around. He says that a bird led her to a specific grave, and you'll be shocked to know that it is the headstone of his wife Katrina… who was burned for witchcraft. He wants to know what additional proof she really needs. She then mentions that she's got one more week on the force, but he says that she can't because their fates are now entwined. She says that she's not going to be arguing an unexplained case… again. He picks up on that clue, but she refuses to give him details.
She takes him to his private room at the psych ward, and he jokes that it is a step up from the cave… which is true. He seems overwhelmed and depressed, so she decides to spill her story. In high school, she was with her sister in the forest and they saw four white trees that seemed suspicious. They heard a strange voice and then they blacked out. Later they were found on the side of the road and everyone thought they were crazy. Her sister is now in and out of psych wards. She wants to believe him, because she knows what it's like to be called nuts. Before she leaves, he expresses her condolences for the loss of her partner.
She goes to the Sheriff's office, and starts looking at pictures. She finds a key and tries a bunch of locks before finding the right one. It's a locked cabinet with a bunch of case files and a tape recorder. It's a lot about the occult and witches that seem to be so popular in Sleepy Hollow, and causing all of the unsolved cases. He's trying to figure out the connection between them and the cases up and down the east coast. There's information and a clipping about Abbie's case, and a tale of a farmer from many years prior. The farmer said the trees were the four horsemen and talked about a demon. Sheriff Clancy, who is at least present in voice, if not actual physicality, admits that he wants to tell Abbie but he's waiting to figure it out. She's interrupted by the Captain, who wants to know why she's in the Sheriff's office, and she says she's looking through old files to see if anything relates and he instructs her to let them do their job. But isn't she one of them? And wasn't she called to the church for the reverend and filled in on what was happening? Isn't she doing exactly what she's supposed to be doing? Then again, she does seem to have stolen a few files and tucked them in her back.
Ichabod's in the hospital and the bird is in the room. He looks in the mirror and sees Katrina. She explains that the bird is her way of leading Ichabod around. She says that her body wasn't buried in the grave he saw, but that's where the horseman's skull is hidden. She says that when Ichabod and the horsemen collapsed due to their injuries, their blood intertwined on the ground and they became linked, through some sort of supernatural STD. The only way to stop the horsemen was to cast a spell on them both and buried Ichabod in the cave and the horsemen in a coffin in the river. There's an evil force that woke the horseman, and is keeping Katrina trapped in this foggy tree world where she can only travel as a bird. She says that the horseman needs his skull to be reborn, and that he can only ride at night, and that Ichabod needs the bible to get the answers. Katrina yells at him to wake up, before a demon looking creature grabs him.
Back in his hospital room he's thrashing around and a doctor is trying to have him sedated. Abbie walks in and says she's taking him into custody. He says that he knows what the horseman is after. Also, aside from the high boots, his clothes look very modern. His shirt has a lovely slim cut and looks like maybe it is Hugo Boss or something, and his dark coat doesn't look particularly period either. Not that I really wanted to spend all season looking at him in dirty clothes, but did someone give him a fresh change of clothing, and was he never forced into a hospital gown or anything like that? If so, are prisoners given a selection of wool coats and designer clothing to wear? Because being incarcerated in Sleepy Hollow seems a hell of a lot nicer than it does on Orange Is the New Black.
Abbie and Ichabod are in the car talking about the Sheriff's tapes and his "meeting" with Katrina and what they've learned in the last random handful of hours (it is really difficult to tell how much time has passed on this show, it could be hours, it could be a full day). The horseman rises up out of the river, and the red-eyed horse is waiting for him. Abbie calls John Cho, who doesn't seem pleased that she wants him to call all units to the church. He says he just worked 36 hours and is just getting home. How many people are on this police force? Sometimes it seems like a mom and pop small-town operation and other times I feel like I'm watching Law & Order and the staff is endless. John Cho gets to his apartment, and the door has been forced open. He approaches cautiously and sees that his safe is ajar as well. He turns his back, and then the horseman pops up from behind the chair. To save his life, he says that he knows where "it" is.
But Abbie and Ichabod are at the church taking "it" out of the ground, which makes it mighty convenient for the horseman. If they had just left it buried, he might have at least had to work to figure out which grave it was hidden in. The horseman arrives and starts shooting at them. He tries to shoot Ichabod, but Abbie shoots at him and at least distracts him for a moment. John Cho arrives on the scene, she asks him for a rifle from his trunk (guess he doesn't keep them in the center of his car all Southland style), he opens the trunk, lies that he called in the case and then hits her over the head.
Meanwhile, Ichabod and Abbie are fist-fighting, which seems like the least effective method of killing each other. John Cho says that he warned Abbie to stay away from Ichabod, and now I'm confused. Why did the horseman arrive at John Cho's apartment? What did he have to do with anything? Did he know about the horseman before the breaking and entering incident? Is he on the side of the demon apocalypse supporters? Anyway, she bites his fingers and then makes him handcuff himself to the door… instead of doing it. I don't get the impression that Abbie's going to be a very good FBI agent. John Cho goes on that she can't kill the horseman because he is Death.
Two more cops show up to provide some ridiculous comic relief, of sorts. They see the horseman in the street and tell him to put his hands on his head. Then one guy wonders if the horseman can hear them. Yup. Real laugh riot. The sun is starting to rise, so the horseman takes the automatic weapon and starts littering the area with bullets. So now the horseman has a high-powered modern weapon at his disposal? That seems really great. The two guys are alive, the horseman takes off because he can't be out in the light (he needs one of those Vampire Diaries daytime rings) and Ichabod has the head.
The Captain wants to throw Abbie in jail, but John Cho confessed, he's seen the head and there are two cops that back up her story. She doesn't have the answers that he wants, but she admits that she's not going to Quantico. Ichabod says that Katrina referred to him as the first witness, but the Bible he's been pouring over says that the book refers to two witnesses who are bound together for seven years to protect the world. Seven years? Well, that's kind of lofty hoping that this show will run for that long. They go to question John Cho, who's sitting there stewing, but before they can get there, a shadowy demon comes in, tells him he's failed (so obviously he's been working with the dark side for quite some time) and then seemingly kills him. Abbie and Ichabod arrive just in time to see the demon escaping in the mirror.
And that's it. Again, not sure about how this show will last and it seems like it could become a murder of the week sort of thing (with the same murderer every time). Then again, we weren't sure how the occult-y Supernatural would last and that seems to be the show that won't ever die, so there is a chance that this show could last forever.