Thursday, October 3, 2013

Sleepy Hollow 1.03: "For the Triumph of Evil"

“I saw a demon. I saw a demon in the woods and I lied to protect myself. I was a coward and I betrayed my sister. I turned my back on her when she needed me and I will not do it again. It’s my fault. You can come at me all you want but I see you and I am not afraid anymore.”
- Abbie

Before we begin this week’s recap I thought I’d share the good news. Fox has renewed Sleepy Hollow for a 13-episode second season. This excites me because it shows the network has faith in the show and they’re keeping to shorter runs to keep the story tighter. And now onto the recap!

This week starts with Abbie being called into an interrogation by Captain Irving. A psychiatrist is present to help and we see Ichabod interrogating a suspect. That’s the first thing that clues Abbie in to something bizarre going on. The fact that he’s interrogating teenage Abbie is even creepier. Ichabod’s eyes go completely white, Abbie gets locked in the interrogation room and a white eyeless, mouthless demon shows up. Abbie wakes to a call from dispatch about a possible crisis sitch. It turns out Abbie is not in fact having a good night at all. The person who is in crisis is the same doctor she saw in her dream (whom she’s never met). The woman treated Jenny back in the day and lied about believing her story. The woman leaps to her death and then her eyes filled with sand pop. It’s definitely icky. Abbie and Ichabod start looking into the doctor’s files and we see her talking to Jenny on tape. Ichabod still thinks Abbie had a prophetic dream and it has to do with her role in averting the apocalypse but Abbie still wants to try good old fashioned police work.

Ichabod seems to win out a bit when he suggests the demon Abbie saw in her dream was connected to the doctor’s death and it seems to have something to do with what she and Jenny saw as kids. So his logical conclusion is to talk to Jenny. Abbie is reluctant and not just because they haven’t seen or spoken in five years. Jenny got arrested for breaking and entering and theft and so there’s the whole cop/criminal dynamic working against them. Still, Ichabod thinks they ought to try and when Jenny refuses to see her sister, Ichabod scores a brief interview. There’s some amusing banter between he and Jenny (not the same kind as with Abbie) before he informs her that he believes her and so does Abbie. Jenny’s skeptical since it appears she and Abbie fell out long ago over the woods incident. She tells Ichabod to ask Abbie if her conscience is clear about what happened.

Abbie is reluctant to dish on her past but Ichabod impresses upon her that keeping silent may also keep them from learning the truth. So Abbie admits they were missing four days and when they woke up they were found by a rancher. The guy saw the demon, too. Abbie told Jenny to keep quiet about what they saw since they just landed in a decent foster home and blathering on about demons would shunt them back into the system. Obviously Jenny didn’t listen and Abbie denied seeing anything. Apparently the rancher kept silent, too. We see him fall asleep and the demon from Abbie’s dream shows up. Our heroes are already on their way when the cops get called in. The rancher is holding his wife hostage. Abbie goes in and yet again fails to save the victim. This is really not her day! But before the rancher blows his brains out, he warns that Abbie will be dead the next time she falls asleep.

She and Ichabod head back to the secret archive room to do some digging on the demon. Ichabod recalls a Mohawk chieftain recounting a story about a demon that kills people who have turned a blind eye to justice. No denying Abbie fits that description. I really like the way they are working in pieces of history and making it interesting and not what you’d expect. Ichabod recounts that the Mohawks were secret allies with the colonials. Who knew! We also get a rather amusing comedy bit where Ichabod tries Red Bull for the first time and it’s clear he’s not a fan.

Armed with the knowledge that this week’s evil beastie is a Mohawk demon, Ichabod recommends seeking out a shaman to help corral the sucker. The closest they have in Sleepy Hollow is a car salesman. After a little arm twisting and throwing around some historical quotes about evil triumphing when good men do nothing, the guy agrees to help. He explains that he has some tea that will put Abbie to sleep so she can enter the dream world and scorpion venom will help control what happens. Seeing as if she dies in the dream, she’s dead period, Ichabod chugs some tea along with her. I think it was partly an excuse to get Tom Mison shirtless. In the dream world, Ichabod and Abbie are separated for a while until they both end up in the interrogation room. The demon keeps demanding that Abbie admit what she saw. It even goes as far as to start torturing Ichabod. She finally admits that she lied because she was scared and that she should have told the truth and not abandoned her sister. And most importantly, she’s not afraid anymore. The demon turns to glass and she shatters it, releasing both Ichabod and herself from the dream.

They end up back at their fortress of solitude to recover but Irving drops by and asks how they got in. Ichabod admits to breaking a wall and in an attempt to keep our time traveler from doing so again, Irving promises a key to the front door. Probably easier than climbing through old Revolutionary War tunnels. Oh and I can’t tell if he’s a believer yet and what side he’ll end up supporting. After Irving departs, Ichabod urges Abbie to mend fences with Jenny. Abbie was already a step ahead of him. I’m glad we’re getting some more back story on Abbie. I adore Ichabod and I want to know more about his history, too but Abbie deserves equal screen time. The writers are doling out information at just the right pace to keep the flow nice and even. And as usual, they mix the humor and the creepy wonderfully. Unfortunately, our dynamic duo is going to have anew dilemma on their hands. Abbie shows up to apologize to Jenny only to find her sister has flown the coop! I’m hoping Jenny is able to put her animosity for Abbie aside and help them kick some demonic ass.

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