This week in Sleepy Hollow, there’s
nothing like a demon-infested home for the holidays, as Abbie and
Ichabod march into a haunted house like they’re new around here, and
find out more about themselves than you can shake a stick monster at.
Haunted-house episodes are a genre of
their own; they have the built-in creep factor of a shelter turning
on you, and are thematically ripe with ghostly responsibility
(family, old sins, some other ghost’s problems you’ve been
reluctantly dragged into since you picked up an amulet on the street
because you lack the common sense of a waffle). Sometimes they’re a
trick to sustain, because the scariest parts of a haunted house are
its hostile geography and the inevitable separation of any entering
party into its freaked-out and flashlit components as they SCULLAAAAY
for each other for two minutes in the middle, but with enough
interaction, they’re good silly-spooky fun.
And Sleepy Hollow,
a show that loves its genre seriously so much, throws itself
wholeheartedly into the entire business (except for missing an
opportunity to bring back its early monster-of-the-week music cues,
robbing us of twenty seconds of “Come On-A My House”). It
also tries maybe a little too hard to include everyone in its
thematic bounty, but we’ll slam that door shut when we get to it.
Lena Gilbert, rich
lady, steps out of a car and decides to run into the old family
estate even though this house is clearly crawling with bad ideas.
I feel you, Doomed
Bodyguard. Lena may think she’s on House Hunters, but you know just
what genre you’re in.
He’s right; choking vines in the house immediately swallow Lena.
Victim ahoy!
Back at the precinct, it’s
Thanksgiving! Abbie got Ichabod some fries to celebrate. Ichabod is
ashamed of the speed at which meals are taken (eh, times change),
mortified by McDonald’s (fair cop), and horrified by Abbie’s
assumptions about the first Thanksgiving having cranberry sauce and
pumpkin pie. His face pulls in on itself in sheer disgust.
“The Pilgrims didn’t have any
sugar to make a sauce, let alone a pie!”
History note: Probably true. The
Pilgrims, thanks largely to the agricultural outreach of the
Wampanoag, held a celebration around 1620, with a feast that likely included duck, seafood, venison
(probably courtesy of the Wampanoag), squash, corn, and a heaping
helping of the dramatic irony of what this holiday would become after
the genocide of the Native American nations. Ah, awkward holidays.
But of course, the real point of the
holidays is to feel alone and overwhelmed, and Ichabod and Abbie get to
remind each other that they’re two fundamentally lonely people;
that’s a little odd for Abbie, since Jenny spends her screen time
this episode trying to throw a Thanksgiving dinner that Abbie is flat
not interested in — but lonely people make for better haunted house
stories.
Speaking of which, they have a case!
Lena is brought to their attention by Irving, who long-sufferingly
suggests you’re not supposed to lose billionaires. (Tom Mison nails
the pauses in his incredulous fact-checking: “Meaning…she has
a billion…dollars.”) And since Lena wrote “Katrina C.”
on a notepad before she disappeared, the case is theirs. Abbie
suggests it’s a coincidence, but Ichabod accurately metas that “when
the two of us are involved, rarely is a coincidence a coincidence.” They have faces about it right in line with the way they feel about it most of the time.
Turns out she’s a descendent of
Continental Congress member Lachlan Fredericks, who owned a big house
up the road from somewhere. Ichabod, of course, knew him.
Cillian Murphy, financial backer of the
Revolutionary War.
Upon pulling up at the house, Ichabod
reminisces about the time he made a visit with Katrina, whose hair is
the most complex thing about her so far.
Turns out everyone at Fredericks Manor
was free; Katrina coos that “they choose to work here” for
fair wages and protection, and the place was a known sanctuary.
Except not for Lena, obviously, or for these two when they breeze
over the threshold into a suspicious house that has already eaten at
least one person that they know of. That is some first-season X-Files
amateur move, you two.
They find the bodyguard clawed to
death, and bloody handprint skids on the floor, and only THEN does
Abbie call for backup, at which point all of us sit back and laugh
and laugh as the doors slam on them one at a time. It gets worse as,
while following a ghost that appears to Abbie, they demonstrate that
knowing about haunted houses doesn’t give you any bright ideas about
handling them, because they walk through dozens of doorways in
leisurely single file as my blood pressure ticks up and up.
(Abbie’s feelings about haunted houses are my feelings.)
As they leave plenty of room between them while entering doorways, Ichabod chats about meeting Fredericks
and house matron Grace Dixon, who chat with Katrina about the house
as sanctuary. Ichabod wraps like he knew all along, “In
retrospect, it might also have been a sanctuary from supernatural
evils.” Monologue foul, Ichabod.
But at least they find Lena!
AW JEEZ. (I’m easy to creep out, be quiet.)
As soon as they yank her out of there,
Ichabod sits her down and gives her his coat, which she accidentally side-eyes (she may be falling prey to a house vine
demon, but that coat is so 232 seasons ago), and uses his condor arms
and Romantic Lead Face to soothe her out of her impending panic
attack so they can start getting the hell out.
Irving, meanwhile, is wondering why
Abbie’s not taking his calls, which seems oddly oblivious for a guy
who sent Abbie to a suspicious house where someone disappeared. You
called backup last week, sir! Have you forgotten how?
Nah, he hasn’t forgotten; judging by
Jenny in his office, he hasn’t forgotten a thing. Not the guns she
stole, not the melodious sound of her voice, not her sparkling eyes,
not her Thanksgiving invitation, not her jokes about stealing more
things, not his ex-wife.
*needle scratch*
But he’s thrilled to see his
daughter, Macey (Amandla Stenberg, the honestly cutest), who he
greets with a dad-hug and, “My little bean!”
Family!
Back in the Completely Avoidable
Haunted House, Abbie, the three of them compare notes about
family history (Fredericks was a warlock! Katrina was Ichabod’s
“relative,” thanks to a good save from Abbie) and get
chased by sound effects. Into the house tunnels, quickly! Abbie: “Go
ahead, I’m right behind you.” ABBIE, ARE YOU NEW?
Ichabod manages to escort Lena to
safety, but then offers the vine monster a hand out of the tunnel by
accident (I laughed), and loses Lena in a flurry of crows. Abbie’s
fared a little better, since the ghost of Grace Dixon is guiding her
into a nice safe flashback. It’s Katrina! And she’s having a baby.
It would be great news, except for
those crows flinging themselves into the windows outside. (Crow lump circled above.) They imply
the baby’s in danger, but my horror-ology studies suggest that baby is
probably his own bad news. Only the next few episodes will tell us
for sure!
Smile while you can, Katrina.
Macey, meanwhile, honestly-cutestly
confronts Jenny for being a coward about dating her dad. (Show,
please, I’m ready to ship it, it’s just that a lot’s going on right
now!)
Macey assures Jenny a lot that she’s
cool with not seeing her annoying dad all the time; I call
shenanigans, and so does Jenny, who knows from not seeing your family
much. I’m excited at the implication we will be seeing more of Macey.
Said dad is sitting down with Cynthia,
who points out that for a guy working in a small precinct, he’s been
absentee. Irving, of course, can’t explain, though he wants to make
things up to Macey; Cynthia portents that “What happened,
happened, and we’re dealing with it,” but lays down the law
about custody. (This is more interesting to me than some of
the haunted house – I like the real world intruding among people either aware of or able to dedicate themselves to
this investigation of the creepy-crawly.)
Speaking of, Abbie and Ichabod reunite when he grabs her in a dark hallway.
“Portrait of Abbie About to Punch
a Dude in the Face For Doing That Thing You Should Never Do, What is
Wrong With You,” oil on panel, 2013.
Abbie immediately puts on her game face
and drops the news about the baby. Ichabod, staggered, insists it’s
not true: “She would have told me.” Oh, buddy, if Katrina
has a definable character trait, it’s Doesn’t Tell You Stuff.
(Tangent alert: I’ve talked about
this show’s hold on its subplots and mythologies, and my issues
with how Katrina’s been presented. I realized this week that to
some degree, they’re the same thing; in weaving together everything
possible, the easiest link to the past is Katrina,
whose involvement feels retrofitted to what every week requires, like
when she jumped from Quaker to gentry to make room for a love
triangle. Even this week, which arguably gave her the most to do so
far – seeking sanctuary while pregnant, fleeing with her
infant son and Grace Dixon in an uncertain break for safety – still
makes Ichabod’s rage the primary emotional focus. And sure, he’s a
lead, but ostensibly so is Katrina, and right now she’s still a
walking backstory. I hold out hope she’s a double-blind and is just
evil as all get-out.)
(Katrina, seeking sanctuary among the Spanish moss-draped houses of New England.)
In the house, Abbie explains the vine
monster, the birds’ attack, and how Fredericks opened the front door
without looking and was immediately impaled because of course, but
when Ichabod drops his second-ever Abbie (“Abbie…what happened
to the baby?”), she has no answer for it. That’s for the finale,
sir.
Nicole Beharie is wonderfully resigned
to delivering all this, and Tom Mison adequately staggered by the
news, and they’re so caught up in their subplot that it takes a
reminder scream from downstairs for them to remember there’s a woman
trapped by blood vines. Time to shoot roots until they bleed and
rescue her (via the passage Grace took Katrina and the baby through).
But Ichabod’s pissed, and comes back into the house to hack the crap
out of this vine monster as payment for his missing son.
(A moment of appreciation for the
person inside this latex thing for three to six days.)
Also, did I miss something with the
blood vines? Is it Ichabod’s family blood? Lena’s ancestor’s blood?
Moloch’s blood? Has he weakened anything but the actual demon with
all this bloodletting? Was it important that there be blood? Were
sprays of sap and groundwater not as exciting?
For me, the most interesting part of
this is Abbie’s second moment of pause with Ichabod in two weeks
when he warns her, “Do not follow me.” She trusts him, but
not blindly (she’s not the type), and I’m enjoying her wariness; so
long as it doesn’t sideline her to Concerned Partner, I’m in.
Since it’s the holidays, though, of
course they make up afterward; she finds him in the Batcave, mourning
the world’s last hair tie, lost in the desperate flight for life
inside the haunted house.
They trade holiday anecdotes, in which
Ichabod talks about his father’s hopes for him and his for his son,
and Abbie talks about not having a family (except Jenny back
home cooking turkey for nobody), and they pore over Lena’s Fredericks
House effects until more family emerges: Abbie’s a descendant of
Grace Dixon, world’s most helpful ghost.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. On
an episode level, it provides good reason for Abbie to make
connection with Grace, even if a lot of her time this week was witnessing
things to tell Ichabod, a missed chance between character who probably would have had a lot to discuss about the
idea of sanctuary. But I hope Moloch didn’t choose them
for their bloodline. This show loves itself some destiny, but Abbie and Jenny’s
selection by Moloch is creepy because of the randomness with which
they were chosen – it’s ruined their lives in some ways and made
them stronger in others, and it’s cool just as it is. (Also, if we’re going to go
there, note that Abbie is now the descendent of a free woman who
lived in a tiny utopia among widespread slavery. That’s lucky!)
At least one person is thrilled about it, though: Ichabod literally could not be happier their fates
are entwined by precedent (their fates being entwined is his
second-favorite thing next to free water), and in an angle that looks
either like them toasting their cups or them each grabbing one bulb
from that lamp, they see us out with a holiday toast:
“To family.” “To finding
family.”
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! No pie!
