SLEEPY HOLLOW Recap: 1.12 The Indispensible Man

This recap is late because my local FOX affiliate bumped the listing up an hour so they could show local news at 9:00 p.m. instead of 10:00 p.m.  St. Louis’s CW affiliate does the opposite, airing news at 7:00 p.m.  Local affiliates are weird.

We start this episode not in the woods, a dream, or Corbin’s cabin, but in Abbie’s house, a setting we’ve seen very little of this season.  She leaves a message for Ichabod (or as he puts it, “Captain Ichabod Crane, Esquire”), and she receives a garbled text response about “POOR.  TELEPHONE.  RECEPTION.”  Oh, the wonders of Ichabod and Autocorrect.  Just as we all giggle at this, Andy Brooks shows up, undead as ever, to warn Abbie about Moloch’s prophecy of Ichabod’s potential betrayal.  Abbie cuffs him so he can’t escape.  Brooks wants the Bible because it leads to a map that will help Moloch start the Apocalypse.  Then he starts professing his love for Abbie, breaks his finger to get out of his handcuff, and escapes.

Meanwhile, Ichabod flashes back to George Washington telling him that “Good will always rise like Lazarus from the tomb.”  This leads Ichabod to look up Lazarus in Washington’s Bible.  Then Abbie arrives at the Archives and fills him in on Brooks.  Ichabod tells her that he looked up Lazarus’s story and she notes that it’s ten verses too long.  So Ichabod uses the invisible-ink-revealing sauce on those two pages, revealing a letter from Washington to him.  Washington had warlocks zombify his body so that he could write this letter that tell Ichabod about the map to Purgatory that Brooks talked about.  It turns out that Reverend Alfred Knapp (the beheaded reverend from the pilot) was present at his death and was probably involved in the zombification ritual.  Abbie and Ichabod remember that Knapp had prayer beads that are probably full of sin if they helped raise someone from the dead, so they need to contact Henry Parrish, the Sin Eater.

While all of this is going on, Irving is being interrogated, and “evil” is the only lead he can bring himself to provided.  So his superior, Tom, has forensics take samples of Macy’s DNA, since DNA was found on the priest she killed while she was possessed.  Irving and his wife are understandably freaked out.

At Knapp’s grave site, Ichabod babbles to a fictionalized Siri about Katrina, but she proves unsympathetic.  He declares that Yolanda the OnStar Lady was a far better listener than Fake!Siri.  Then Henry Parrish shows up.  Abbie and Ichabod show him Knapp’s perfectly (magically?) preserved remains and Parrish grasps the prayer beads to absorb what they know, but he burns his hand.  The prayer beads are hexed, and Abbie does not want to find the map anymore when she realizes that.  She thinks the dangers outweigh the benefits and that it will set off the Apocalypse.  She asks Ichabod if he would still be so insistent on finding the Purgatory map if Katrina weren’t involved, and then she points out that he may eventually have to choose between his wife and the greater good.

Also, at some point, Ichabod dated Betsy Ross.  Because of course he did.

Parrish decides that the he can face the hex and he grabs the prayer beads again, absorbing so much magic that it knocks him backwards.  He sees Washington reanimate and Knapp rowing along a shoreline, but that’s it.  He stares at his hand while Abbie and Ichabod close Knapp’s grave.  Parrish’s burned hand heals itself, and then demons attack, but Abbie vanquishes them with her almighty gun.

In the tunnels, Brooks offers himself up to be Moloch’s weapon, and some bugs come out to put him in a cocoon.  He eventually pops out as a really creepy looking, naked demon with no hair.

At the Archives, Abbie and Ichabod figure out that Washington had decoy birthdates and death-dates, so he must have had decoy graves so that he could be buried near or with the map.  He had graves at Mount Vernon and in DC, but he’s most likely buried on one of the Hudson River’s islands.  They go to Bannerman’s Island, which Washington used as a penal colony, so his body is probably there (just roll with this loose logic).  As they look for the grave, Abbie compares the map to the Manhattan Project, which gave us nukes.  In the wrong hands, nukes can destroy the world, she says.  Ichabod asks what happened when the right hands used them.  Parrish says they ended a world war.  Nice metaphor, show.

Ichabod unlocks the underground grave by moving a stone on the ground.  All three of them enter the grave, which looks like something out of Indiana Jones or National Treasure.  It’s also full of Masonic pyramids and angel statues.  Whatever you do, DON’T BLINK!  Amid all of this, Ichabod notices a panel that says “The Indispensible Man,” Washington’s nickname, but that’s too obvious for George to hide behind.  So he turns his attention to a panel featuring Cincinnatus, and Abbie explains that he was a Roman general who used the absolute power the Senate gave him to defeat Rome’s enemies, but gave it up afterward and retired to the countryside (he lived out Maximus’s dream from Gladiator).  Ichabod says that Cincinnatus was Washington’s hero, and indeed, George is featured on Cincinnatus’s TV Tropes page.  Sure enough, George Washington’s body rests in an inner chamber behind that panel.

The map rests firmly in Washington’s now-skeletal grip.  Ichabod grabs the Purgatory map, apologizing as he does so.  Just then, Demon!Brooks shows up and puts Abby’s neck in a death grip.  He also knocks Ichabod backward, knocking over one of the torch stand, which starts a fire.  Parrish disarms Demon!Brooks by absorbing his sins, which brings him back to being halfway normal.  Brooks tells Abby to destroy the map because it will only help Moloch start the apocalypse that much faster.  Abbie, Ichabod, and Parrish shuffle into the inner chamber looking for a backdoor when Demon!Brooks reemerges.  Abbie asks Ichabod how sure he is the tomb is Masonically booby-trapped and he’s not sure if it’s 75% or 64%, but he and Abbie spy a level, so he tells Abbie to shoot it.  When the bullet hits the lever, giant boulders start rolling down around Brooks as the flames rise, most likely dooming him.  Ichabod finds a back door out of the tomb, and Abbie and Parrish follow him to the surface.  Ichabod realizes he’s been obsessed with rescuing Katrina at the expense of the greater good, so he burns the map.  Parrish groans at this.  Just remember Ichabod’s eidetic memory.

This half of the finale closes with Irving confessing to Possessed!Macy’s crimes and his following arrest.  Then we segue into “Bad Blood.”

*

My general thought on the finale can be found in the “Bad Blood” recap, but I have to say this: this kind of episode shows that the storylines and the character interactions are stronger when Katrina is not directly involved.  Katia Winter is doing well with what the show has given her, but Katrina’s character will have to be reworked in order for her to be as affective as the showrunners want her to be.  Maybe now that she’s out of Purgatory, she can become a more dynamic character.  It’s strange that Katrina is a rather flat character when Abbie is so dynamic.  This show’s strengths and weaknesses seem more obvious than those of other network shows and this is just another example of that.

Anyway, I’m still looking forward to next season.  See you then, folks!