Episode Report Card Kelsea Stahler: C+ | 100 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Mr. Sandman, Skip the Dreams and Grow a Pair
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.30.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Last time I checked, Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane were supposed to be facing off against an onslaught of evil straight from the mouth of hell on Sleepy Hollow. However, we seem to be watching little more than a procedural in narrative drama clothing. This week, they faced the Sandman, and by the time they found this evil demon, his defeat was about as painless as ripping off a bandaid (which isn't all that bad, wimps). What gives?
The episode opens on Abbie dreaming about being called into the station, where she watches herself being questioned by Ichabod until a white demon with black eye sockets and no mouth comes after her. She awakens and is called in to the scene of a crime, where a jumper is asking to speak with her. She doesn't know the perilously perched Dr. Vega, but the doctor treated Abbie's sister Jenni when she entered her first psych ward and despite believing Jenni's story, allowed her to stay locked up. After making contact, Vega then jumps to her death and it's not long before Abbie realizes that despite not knowing Vega until this night, she'd met the doctor in her dreams about the white demon. Are you spooked yet?
It gets spookier when Irving, Ichabod, and Abbie examine Vega's suspiciously white eyes later that morning. The deceased's white eyes are very real, but they burst into piles of sand seconds after exposure. Clearly, something is up, so Irving puts Abbie and Ichabod on the case and they visit Jenni (in room 49, as Corbin's ghost predicted) to learn more about this Dr. Vega, but thanks to Abbie's past betrayal, Jenni will only talk to Ichabod. She's still furious over Abbie's refusal to acknowledge the demons they saw in the forest before the doctor when they were kids. Abbie's silence sent Jenni to the asylum while Abbie frolicked freely. Jenni says she can't help Abbie because Abbie is the one without a clear conscience, which kind of makes sense because she left Jenni in a psych ward.
Abbie starts to figure out the connection between the demon and the cause for Dr. Vega's death. Too late, they realize that the demon may come after Mr. Gillespie, who also saw the vision, but refused to tell the doctor or police (just like Abbie). He's already been visited by the evil Sandman, who's possessed him: Gillespie has milky white eyes and it's not long before he, too, takes his own life before Abbie's eyes. She finally sees the pattern: they and Abbie all wronged Jenni by staying silent and this demon is making it right.
Ichabod's ever-growing base of knowledge comes to the rescue: he once worked with the Mohawk tribe who spoke about a dream demon who tormented people who'd failed to help others. They need a shaman, but apparently, the next best thing is the owner of Geronimotors, who's initially offended but eventually agrees to help them. He gives Abbie tea to help her enter the Sandman's dream world, where she can fight him. Upon hearing that Abbie could die for real if she dies in the dream world, Ichabod immediately drinks the tea as well, so that he can help her. (Unfortunately for these guys, the second step to dream land is getting stung by an angry scorpion in a jar. Fabulous.)
In the dream world, Ichabod and Abbie are separated, both forced to find their way to the final confrontation from different angles. Eventually, they both find the room where teenage Abbie and Jenni are being questioned about their demon vision. The doctor turns into the Sandman and begins to threaten Abbie until Ichabod steps in to save her, but this is Abbie's fight and with no real weapon, she decides to kill the Sandman with the truth about her cowardice that led her to abandon her sister. Her truthfulness destroys the demon and he turns to glass, allowing Abbie to shatter him completely and return herself and Ichabod to the real world. After barely five minutes of "fighting" this villain is gone just like last week's easily vanquished witch.
While Abbie's sister (who's missing immediately after Abbie vanquishes her dream tormentor), is clearly up to something, it still seems rather weak that each week we get some flimsy demon whose death is as expected as the headless horseman missing his cranium. You've got the entire supernatural catalog at your fingertips, writers. Must we run the gamut so speedily?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Pay attention, because this episode of Sleepy Hollow packed about an episode and a half of story into a tiny, 45-minute package. The show opens with Abbie being pulled into the precinct to watch a suspect being questioned. Things take a turn for the weird and immediately, we know it’s a dream. Ichabod has milky white eyes and is interrogating the suspect, who turns out to be teenage Abbie.
Finally, adult Abbie enters the room only to find that she’s trapped and Ichabod is actually a white demon with black eye sockets from which streams of sand are pouring. Right on cue, she wakes up in her own bed only to get an actual call from Captain Irving asking her to come down to a crime scene. Even before Ichabod tells Abbie, we know what’s up: our girl is having premonitions.
At the scene, Dr. Mara Vega is threatening to jump from a building while requesting to speak with Abbie, who she’s never met. "It’s not her fault. I believed her and I lied," cries Dr. Vega with the milky white eyes Abbie saw in her dream before telling Abbie that "we" all deserve what’s coming and leaping to her death. When they check out the body after Abbie tells Irving the eyes were glazed white, Vega’s creepy eyes erupt into sand. With the eye color, sand, and emergency phone call (all of which happened in Abbie’s dream ) accounted for, Abbie makes the final connection: while she knows that Dr. Vega treated her sister Jenni at the asylum, she’s never met or seen her and yet the woman appeared in Abbie’s dream. Luckily, we quickly find that the dream is created by the white demon with the sandy eyes. Abbie is not adding "oracle" to her already extreme title of supernatural detective. That would be a little much, no?
Realizing that "I believed her and I lied" refers to Dr. Vega’s interaction with Jenni, Ichabod and Abbie return to their dusty unofficial headquarters to read through Jenni’s records and interviews. In case it wasn’t already obvious (it was), they "figure out" that Vega knew Jenni was telling the truth about seeing the demons in the forest with Abbie, but she lied and kept Jenni institutionalized rather than risk looking foolish. Abbie rationalizes that Vega killed herself out of guilt, but, girl, don’t you realize what’s happening yet? This is supernatural territory, so just accept it. Rational answers are never going to be right.
Luckily, Ichabod reins Abbie into their reality where the more fantastical explanation is actually a far safer bet: this mysterious demon is clearly sending evil mercenaries after Abbie and her sister, so they should probably visit the younger Mills sibling in the asylum. Jenni won’t see Abbie, but she will apparently see Ichabod while Abbie has a panic attack as she realizes that Jenni is the "49" Corbin warned her about last week.