Yes, Sleepy Hollow is a series about the Headless Horseman and his fellow Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming back from the dead to wreak havoc on Earth, while Ichabod Crane (in modern times) pairs up with Officer Abbie Mills to stop them. But folks -- four ghostly horsemen are simply not enough for a vampy series with any sense of longevity (no offense to these Horsemen), so other evils must arise. Which is likely why the second episode of Fox’s new supernatural drama opens with Ichabod’s nightmare in which his wife Katrina rehashes last week’s dream sequence.
After helping out those people who didn't order last week’s episode On Demand to understand the basic premise of show -- we get it, Ichabod and Abbie are protecting the world from evil -- Katrina gets to the goods. The four Horsemen have names: Conquest, War, Famine and Death -- the John, Paul, George and Ringo of utter despair. Apparently, Death is the one whose head Ichabod severed on the battlefield. However, Death and the rest of the Evil Beatles aren’t able to just enter our universe willy-nilly and wreak havoc on their own; they have to send evil mercenaries in first so they can weaken us and then take their easy kill later on. Did the writers mean to make them look like lazy Disney villains who depend solely on their henchmen in their quest to give us season-upon-season of evil ass-kicking?
Anyway, Mrs. Crane fills them in on the first evil soldier that's coming for them during the Blood Moon. She says "she’s one of us," which Ichabod later realizes to mean that the assailant is a witch, like Katrina. But what he sees at the very end of his dream isn’t very witchy: someone who looks a lot like Mystique from X-Men if she managed to combine her DNA with that of the girl from The Ring taunts him. Fun fact: this is apparently what dead witches from the Revolutionary War look like.
And while Ichabod is dreaming (in the nude, I might add), Abbie finds out that the officers who saw the Headless Horseman recanted their statements because they don’t want to be accused of insanity -- and who can blame them? In this town, any small whiff of crazy gets you thrown into the asylum. What’s more, Abbie’s captain shows her the tape of Officer Andy in his cell: according to the footage, he ran head-first into a mirror and snapped his own neck… even though that could not possibly account for the 45-degree angle between the back of his head and his spine. Of course, Abbie knows there was a horned demon running around that cell, and apparently it can alter security tape footage. Fan-freaking-tastic.
Captain Irving (Get it? Like Washington Irving? Because books!) can’t seem to make up his mind while talking to Abbie about all this hoodoo. First, he says that he’s having Ichabod evaluated further, because while Ichabod may believe he’s from the 1700s, it also may just be his brain playing a trick on him. Still, Irving seems to believe that Abbie is right, on some level, about the supernatural nonsense behind all the violence in Sleepy Hollow. He leaves her to investigate further without embarrassing him, which I guess means, "Investigate this supernatural stuff without admitting that it’s supernatural, because it’s probably just your brain playing tricks even though there is actually no explanation for anything that is happening." Good luck with this wishy-washy leader of yours, Abbie.
After a fruitful morning spent discovering the wonders of television, automatic coffee makers, running water and light switches, Ichabod allows Abbie to retrieve him from his guarded motel room and she gives him donut holes, a meal he can’t believe costs four dollars -- and neither can I. (Seriously, are those donut holes sprinkled with gold flakes?) While devouring the wildly overpriced breakfast, Ichabod tells Abbie about the "the first dark spirit" who is prepping to enter their world. She suddenly doubts him again, because now she feels crazy. He’s rather calm about all of it, after all; she’ll believe him when the evil spirit shows up, which should be any minute now. Plus, he’s got his own personal tale of disbelief for her: when he found out that Katrina was a witch, his precious logic was demolished. Abbie accepts his story for the time being, but still encourages him to take up a fake identity so he can avoid being sucked like a magnet back to his cell at the asylum.
While Abbie is coming to terms with this onslaught of information and preparing to attend Sheriff Corbin’s funeral, the something wicked that Ichabod warned her about is emerging. The same horned demon who killed Andy brings his cadaver back to life, readjusts Andy’s broken neck and then forces him to throw up an amulet, which is the key to releasing "someone," but of course we don’t know who that is because Jabba the Horned Hut doesn’t speak English. Spoiler alert: "someone" is the strange, naked blue lady who visited Ichabod in his dream. After releasing the undead witch, Andy delivers the message that she must take the flesh of the living to reclaim her own and immediately finds her a victim on a deserted road, but gets his full name -- Jeremy Firth -- before letting the witch torture him with Frank Sinatra’s "Witchcraft" and finally, a ball of flames.
While this walking proof of Ichabod’s crazy dream is sauntering around upstate New York, Abbie is still bitter that this supernatural nonsense is keeping her from her FBI dreams. Ichabod is convinced that her resistance is built on the fact that she hasn’t fully mourned Corbin yet (but also that her professional dreams have been shattered, you mild chauvinist). Ichabod and his apparent superpower for extreme intuition knows that Corbin believed the vision Abbie saw as a young girl was real. Abbie doesn’t deny it, but instead confirms her inability to move past Corbin’s death, because he was such a solid father figure for her in the wake of the visions that sent her sister to the loony bin.
When the police find Firth’s burned car, Abbie finally gets the kick she needs to believe Ichabod: there’s a mark where someone reached into the dead, ashen remains of the driver’s chest. Ichabod saw this on the battlefield during another Blood Moon, where he and his fellow soldiers found bodies burned the same way. George Washington told him (suspend your disbelief, suspend your disbelief, suspend your disbelief) he believed the redcoats were working with a dark coven of witches to defeat the rebels. And ping goes Abbie’s metaphorical light bulb: in Corbin’s records, he wrote about two covens in Sleepy Hollow -- one good and one evil. stop: Corbin’s missing files.
But first Luke, Abbie’s very recent ex who broke up with her when she was supposed to leave for the FBI, approaches Ichabod and attempts to poke holes in his new cover story. (See: agitated detective who’s jealous that Abbie’s spending so much time with a tall, dark, and handsome Englishman.) Ichabod’s fake backstory is rather brilliant: he’s an Oxford professor who teaches courses on the American Revolution and he’s on leave. Perfect… unless anyone thinks to call Oxford or, I don’t know, check Google. Nevertheless, here’s our requisite romantic complication, folks. But as cute as he is, Luke does not give off positive, love-riddled vibes.
Luckily, Abbie and Ichabod hop over Luke the Hurdle and Ichabod breaks through a wall to reveal the secret tunnels under the town -- just how many resources did these poor rebel soldiers have? The tunnels not only take them to the super-secret storage room that looks more like something out of Harry Potter than the municipal system, they spy stockpiles of witch bones and old timey ammunition on the way -- and yes, the Chekov’s gun rule applies to bones and boxes of 200 year-old dynamite too. This is where something big is going down.
But first, the tunnel leads them to Corbin’s files. They finally find the right piece of Corbin’s research, an old book written in Greek, which we’re told is the language of the gypsies. Ichabod takes this moment to explain that he speaks Greek (huzzah!) and is probably a trove of other useful knowledge because he has a photographic memory (make way for mounds of inexplicable knowledge at the drop of hat, trusty viewers!). The book explains that there is a witch named Cerilda who was weakened by the good coven with their white magic, making her vulnerable to mortal attack. The townspeople caught her and when she was about to burn, she vowed that she would live again and the ashes of their ancestors will be hers. Quick deduction determines that Jeremy Firth, who was burned in his car while listening to Frank Sinatra, was a descendant of the man who sentenced Cerilda to burn and that his only other living ancestors are members of the Hemington family.
Unfortunately, Andy has already marked the Hemington’s sweet little son for Cerilda, who moves in on them in the dead of night. Just as Cerilda is about to kill little Kyle, Abbie and Ichabod come rushing in, but Cerilda still manages to get away with something: the ashes of Kyle’s father. It turns out that Kyle was adopted, so she’s actually succeeded because Mr. Hemington was the last of Firth’s ancestors. Drat.
Moving just a little too slowly, Abbie and Ichabod realize that Cerilda also needs her bones from the secret tunnel network in order to become whole. When they get arrive underground, Cerilda and Andy have already retrieved the bones and Ichabod comes upon her just as she finishes her ritual, turning her from a blue, ashen demon to a hot, Victoria’s Secret model who looks more like a castaway than a witch.
Ichabod is luckily smart enough to know that bullets aren’t going to stop the sexy witch (unlike Abbie, who deems this a good time to chastise him for not understanding the modern automatic weapon), and they run to the stockpile of old timey ammunition so they can ignite it and burn Cerilda. But before they can get her, they need to hear her message: in Greek, she explains that Katrina is the one who bound her and that Katrina is stuck in the world between worlds. (Side note: I know they’re pretty, but can we please get some legible subtitles that don’t look like the names stamped on a Halloween gravestone from Target?) Pleased with this information, Abbie and Ichabod run, duck and throw torches at the ammunition, which doesn’t light at first (for no other reason than dramatic effect) and then explodes like the innards of the Death Star, managing to somehow spare our heroes from becoming extra crispy supernatural detectives.
Despite almost dying at the hands of a witch who said she could "smell Katrina’s stench" on his heart, Ichabod takes from all that nonsense that he should clearly seek out the world between worlds so he can save his witch wife, but all Abbie wants is for everything to go back to normal. And since that would render this show about as thrilling as watching Abbie filling out police paper work, she then dreams that she’s speaking to Corbin in his office, demanding that if he haunts her, he has to be helpful. Oh good, that’s just what a girl who thinks she might be crazy needs: a ghostly guardian angel. His first drop of hallowed wisdom: he tells her that fear always crippled her and that she shouldn’t be afraid of number 49 because "that’s where you’ll find you’re not alone."
Cut back to that dreaded asylum, where Room 49 holds Abbie’s mentally ill sister, Jenny. The younger Mills sibling does not seem to be drinking the asylum Kool-Aid (or taking the pills), and instead is working out like a prison inmate. Now, I know she’s supposed to be Abbie’s helping hand according to Corbin’s ghost, but am I the only one who thinks there’s something sinister about her? After all, if she were good, she’d threaten Ichabod’s role as Abbie’s right-hand man and we certainly can’t have that.
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