Sleepy Hollow, as I said last week, might be the coolest show on the air right now. But it’s more than just cool, and it goes deeper than the fanboy “wow!” factor (but don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of that too). The show doubles as a rollicking exploration of revisionist American history, and has so thoroughly embraced its roots in horror, camp, literature, and folklore, that it can sell a storyline like “Ben Franklin creates a Frankenstein monster.” Not only does Sleepy Hollow do this with a straight face, it makes it awesome to watch. I’m so glad this show is back, you guys.
There’s a new Sheriff in town – literally. Her name is Leena Reyes, and as played by House of Cards vet Sakina Jaffrey, she’s both hardnosed and understanding. She says she wants to bring the “sanity” back to Sleepy Hollow, then several scenes later apologizes to Abbie for the insensitivity of that remark (apparently Abbie’s mother is “kind of really out of her mind,” according to Abbie, which this episode doesn’t explore much further). It’s a great, humane touch, and in those two scenes we learn more about Reyes than most shows would teach us in several episodes. But Reyes does get Frank moved to Tarrytown Pyschiatric Institute, where she signs him up for electroshock therapy (which gets a bad rap, but is actually pretty helpful).
That’s all garnish, though; the meat of “The Kindred” is the story behind the titular monster, a Frankensteinian creation of Ben Franklin’s, a shambling monster built out of the limbs of dead soldiers. It’s so awesome, guys. I’d love to be in the Sleepy Hollow writers room – do you think anything gets turned down for being “too crazy”? Anyway, Abbie and Ichabod hit upon the idea of raising the Kindred (using the Horseman’s head, naturally) and using it to distract the Horsemen of War and Death so they can rescue Katrina from Abraham.
And that’s pretty much exactly what happens. They get the Kindred, go to Abraham’s hidey hole in Dobbs Ferry, and Ichabod raises the Kindred with an incantation straight from “The Call of Cthulhu” (“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and through strange eons even death may die…”). Then comes the best thing I’ve seen on Sleepy Hollow since last week’s Sleepy Hollow: the Kindred fights the Horsemen of Death and War, the latter of whom, if you’ll recall, is a walking suit of armor with a flaming sword that Henry controls with his soul. Oh, and Abbie shows up with a 12-gauge to make this whole scene even cooler.
This is frustratingly intercut with Ichabod’s visit with Abbie, who, to her credit, actually has a good reason to stay. If she leaves, Abraham will never stop hunting for her; if she stays, she can eavesdrop on his and Henry’s plans. Wow, a narratively convenient decision that actually makes sense! That’s way better than when that dickhead Bill wouldn’t drink the hep-V cure on True Blood.
So “The Kindred” is definitely a transitional episode – in the end, all forty-two minutes built up to a conversation and a fight scene. But Sleepy Hollow gets a ton of leeway for me for being so damn entertaining. The mythology is easy to follow, but not insultingly so, and if you need any more reason to be watching this show, please refer to the above screengrab. There is something at least that cool on every episode of Sleepy Hollow.
A Few Thoughts
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Jenny gets arrested for having, like, all the guns. She seems pretty blase about it, and so does Abbie, so it’s hard to get too worked up about this
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Henry shows up and pretends to be Frank’s new lawyer. He also gets him to sign a contract – but not before Frank pricks his finger, getting blood in the ink and therefore signing in blood. This cannot end well. But Orlando Jones is doing a great job of proving he’s more than the 7-Up guy
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Guys, this season hit the ground running. This is episode two!
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Giving Abraham his head back, at least in his scenes with Katrina, is a great touch
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