SLEEPY HOLLOW Recap: The Lesser Key of Solomon

We open with the Boston Tea Party, Ichabod and a bunch of dudes running after some other dude in a red coat, and mentions of General Washington—never mind that he wasn’t involved in the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War hadn’t begun yet.  Anyway, they follow the red-coated man, who starts chanting in German.  Suddenly, we switch gears and see clips of Katrina paired with Ichabod’s voice over about Katrina being taken from him and what he now understands about love.  We find him sitting in a car, making Yolanda the OnStar Lady cry.  Way to go, Ichabod!  Yolanda should submit his speech to notalwaysright.com.  She’d definitely win their monthly themed giveaway.

Then Abbie tells Ichabod that Jenny escaped the mental hospital.  Back at the station, she and Irving argue about letting her find Jenny before he puts a warrant out on her.  He gives Abbie 24 hours.

That “Boom Boom Boom Boom” song that was used in Skyfall and that haunts me with its proper-namelessness plays while Jenny meets up with a bartender ally of hers in a seedy dive and she talks about how Sleepy Hollow is going to Hell.  Yes, show, we know.  Find some other aspect of the apocalypse to talk about, like Thor getting swallowed by a giant serpent.  Who says we can’t include Ragnarok in this hot mess of Hellish crazy?

Meanwhile, a middle-aged piano teacher (let’s call him Herbert) gets a call from a demonic voice, so he takes some minions to the seedy dive, where they question the bartender.  They use pool cues to restrain the bartender, so that’s five points to Slytherin for creativity.

At the station, Abbie makes some calls while Ichabod delves into her past, which includes a father who bailed, a mother who had a nervous breakdown, seven foster homes, and some world-traveling.  This leads them to Jenny’s abusive former foster mother, who is currently neglecting another girl who reminds Abbie of herself and Jenny.  She threatens the foster mother with a call to family services, so the woman tells Abbie about a cabin that Jenny would visit.  It belonged to a friend of Jenny’s but the foster mother doesn’t know who that person was.  They also find out that Sheriff Corbin arrested Jenny once, but let her go, even though she told Ichabod they never met.  Abbie says she’ll call social services anyway, and “get that girl some food.”

Abbie and Ichabod pay the cabin a visit.  Abbie picks the lock because her old wily ways “die hard”, and this amuses Ichabod.  Once they’re in cabin, they both get confused because it turns out this is Sheriff Corbin’s cabin, and while Ichabod is aghast that Jenny lied to him, Abbie looks betrayed.  Then Jenny shows up with a gun, she and Abbie argue while pointing guns at each other, and Ichabod must intervene.  The Mills sisters manage to settle down in their hostile way and Jenny explains that Corbin seemed to he was being hunted the night before he died, so he sent her up to the cabin to find something.  She’d already procured him some objects that would give him answers during her travels, and she knew about Corbin’s relationship with Abbie.  So they decide to find the Something when Ichabod spies a sextant, which dictionary.com tells us is a “an astronomical instrument used to determine latitude and longitude at sea by measuring angular distances, especially the altitudes of the sun, moon, and stars.”

The sextant looks to be from Ichabod’s era, so this allows him to launch into his recounting of the Boston Tea Party, which his regiment orchestrated (with Sam Adams’ help) to create a diversion so that they could steal a stone chest that Washington apparently needed.  Wait, why would his regiment exist if the war hadn’t started yet?  And didn’t Ichabod start out as a Redcoat, as he stated pilot?  Ugh, continuity.  So he and his men found the chest, but it was guarded by a Hessian (and our good, apocalyptic friend, Headless Hal, was disguised as a Hessian).  He attacked and only Ichabod survived.  After that, Ichabod sent the chest to General Washington and never saw the stone chest again.  After this bit of exposition, Ichabod, Abbie, and Jenny discover that the sextant becomes a projector that shows a map of places around Sleepy Hollow.  Then Herbert the Evil Piano Teacher and his minions show up and start a chicktastic gun fight.  Both Abbie and Jenny have mad combat skillz and I love them for it.

The minions escape, but Abbie captures Herbert.  During some cabin-based questioning, Ichabod realizes that Herbert is the Hessian who guarded the chest, based on a tattoo on his chest.  It turns out Herbert the Hessian is part of a sleeper cell run by the Blurry-Faced Demon.  Herbert and the other Sleeper Cell members (he has no idea how many there are) are searching for the chest, which holds the Lesser Key of Solomon, a black book written by King Solomon himself which will unleash 72 demons from hell upon Sleepy Hollow and the rest of the world.  Then Herbert says “Moloch will rise” and bites a cyanide pill, and Irving and the SHPD S.W.A.T. team show up.  Abbie and Jenny argue about involving the cops—they both make good points, consider each sister is on the opposite side of the law.  While they bicker, Ichabod uses his eidetic/photographic memory to redraw the map the sextant showed them.  This will lead them to the stone chest.

The stone chest’s hiding place turns out to be in a reform church, where the minions are setting up a crazy blood ritual that involves setting a baptismal font on fire.  My inner Catholic is screaming for it.  On the ride to the church, Jenny tells Ichabod and Abbie about how she was a freedom fighter all over the world because you have to fight for what you believe.  Jenny is very good with all her digs at Abby.  Then they arrive at the church, where Abbie and Jenny approach the sleeper cell minions and whip out their action-girl moves again.  Jenny holds her own better than Abbie, who needs Ichabod to knock the minion off her.  To be fair, the guy was twice her size.  Meanwhile, demons start to climb out of the BURNING BAPTISMAL FONT.  Thanks, show, now I’ll always pause before dipping my hand for holy water so a demon doesn’t bite it.

As the fight reaches its climax, the minions threat Jenny in order to make Abbie put their Lesser Key of Solomon/Necronomicon/Book of Shadows/Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them copy down, so she does.  Right in the pit of fire surrounding the baptismal font.  Then she, Jenny, and Ichabod toss the minions into the ring of fire, and as they go down, the flames get higher until the ring disappears.

At the station, Abbie cuffs Jenny in the interrogation room and they talk about their hard feelings via Bible quotes.  Jenny’s not ready to forgive Abbie, but Abbie secured paperwork that would let her have conservatorship over Jenny and get her out of the hospital so they can get answers.  Jenny also calls Ichabod “Prince William,” and my brain goes, “Prince William?  Why not Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch?”  I guess the mental hospital wouldn’t give her internet access and/or Tumblr.

When Abbie leaves the interrogation room,  Ichabod calls her over and lets her know that the name Moloch shows up in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where he’s named as a demon who rebelled against heaven and was obsessed with child sacrifices.  Moloch, Ichabod tells us, is the Blurry-Faced Demon.  Thank God he has a name now because I could not type out “Blurry-Faced Demon” all season long.  Note about Paradise Lost: only the parts with Satan’s angst are interesting.  What does that say about humanity (and/or John Milton)?

This might be my favorite episode so far because it has a very brisk, breezy pace and does not get bogged down in exposition as much as previous episodes.  This world finally has some proper legs to stand on with a confirmed recurring villain. and I can’t wait to watch it grow more complex.  I also really enjoyed Abbie’s and Jenny’s interactions: the bickering feels organic, not forced, because events in their lives have led them down opposite paths.  The actresses have solid chemistry together and I’d love to see more of this sibling relationship.  I’m already rooting for them to mend things.

The Wisdom of Ichabod Crane

The OnStar speech: “Surviving death, separated by time, tests the bonds of love.  The moment I saw her, I knew the bravest love is born again with each new day–the kind of love that makes the mundane a marvel, that bewilders with its magnificence, until fate’s cruel hand intervened, and in the blink of an eye, Katrina was lost to me.”  “I am so, so sorry!”  “I offer this tale, no matter how cruelly he may have treated you, to suggest that you do not give up nor give in to anything less than certainty in matters of the heart.”  “No one’s ever said like that!  Thank you!”  “No need.  It is I who should thank you, kind woman, for unlocking this vehicle from afar and showing me how the entertainment system operates.  Farewell, Yolanda.”

“An officer of the law with a criminal past.  Imagine the delinquency we could perpetrate if we really put our minds to it.”

Sleepy Hollow airs on Mondays on FOX.