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Sleepy Hollow: Spellcaster

"You are walking the wrong path."

Yet another escapee from Purgatory wreaks havoc in Sleepy Hollow. The flashbacks just shot past the eighteenth century to the seventeenth. And did they just open up the possibility of time travel?

Solomon Kent, who rocked that tacky pilgrim outfit, was a good witch in Salem who went very bad, turned on his coven and had Katrina's grandmother Helena Van Tassel executed. His "blood magic" was pretty darned creepy.

But of course, Solomon Kent was there to point out to the audience that Katrina was flirting with the Dark Side of the Force. During the warehouse witch death match and while Ichabod and Abbie were conveniently unconscious, Kent said that Katrina was not "one with herself" and that "seeds of darkness" were within her. Katrina's magic comes from nature, so we got the very obvious symbolism of Katrina turning a white flower blood red at the beginning of the episode, and then dissolving it into black powder at the end.

What happened with Frank Irving was all about the Dark Side, too. He was acting totally like his old self and I thought he was completely in the dark (pun intended) about the state of his soul — right up until he stomped on Kent's neck and took the Grand Grimoire. Frank is Henry's creature. Sigh. Why did Katrina lie? She had to have known. Was she just looking for information about Henry?

It was great to have Henry back (I'm a John Noble fan — he's the main reason I got through five seasons of Fringe) and I thought at first that he had truly changed. Henry implied that he regretted killing Ichabod, and his interest in Mary the motel manager and her son Ronnie seemed well meant. Instead, he was just hiding in a motel room watching infomercials and creating new little house models until he figured out that instead of serving a creature like Moloch, Henry wants to be a creature like Moloch.

And yet, Henry did take down (okay, murder) the punks who were harassing Mary and Ronnie, didn't he?

Last but most certainly not least, it was so cool that Ichabod's interest in and growing familiarity with his new time period was a big part of defeating Solomon Kent. ("In the twenty-first century, we make our own lightning.") It made me happy that Ichabod and Abbie were together and bantering throughout the entire episode about househunting, modern chemistry, Edward R. Murrow and Communism, and that the two of them talked seriously about the importance of not just fighting evil, but fighting for something good. It was also nice to see Ichabod going all Rambo to avenge Katrina's family, a reminder that the lovely old-fashioned gentleman within him is still very much there. (Not dissimilar to what Henry did for Mary and Ronnie. Hmm.)

With Hawley gone, Henry and Frank on the side of evil and Katrina carrying the "seeds of darkness" within her, is everyone but the Witnesses going bad now? Okay, there's Jenny out looking for an orb somewhere so that we knew why she wasn't in this episode, but it feels like the walls are closing in. Maybe it's because there are only three more episodes, and we're certain to get an end-of-the-season blow-out, and I'll bet there's a major cliffhanger. We'd better hear about renewal pretty darned soon.

Bits and pieces:

-- Ichabod and Katrina are both living in the cabin, but they don't seem to be a couple. I'm a little confused about what's going on there.

-- It was confirmed that Henry is no longer a Horseman.

-- I comment often about the resemblance of the Sleepy Hollow universe to Supernatural's, and that was all I could think about during the teaser at Claridge's auction house. A very Supernatural teaser.

-- Grace Dixon's journal contained a traveler spell, and Kent opened up a portal to seventeenth century Salem. Seriously, did they just open up the possibility of time travel in this series, not just the one-way thing that happened to Ichabod and Katrina? That would be cool. And also Supernatural-like.

-- John Dee was prominently mentioned. Here's a link to his Wikipedia page, if you're interested.

-- Ichabod learned about pixels.

-- Magic can't be reloaded like a musket. Good to know.

-- In this week's hair report, Katia Winter also played Katrina's grandmother. I think the blond hair was her own.

Quotes:

Ichabod: "Generous though you've been in allowing me Sheriff Corbin's cabin, sooner or later I must find a place of my own. Preferably with granite countertops."

Henry: "Fathers are never what they're cracked up to be."
That was more about Moloch than Ichabod, I think.

Abbie: "So Katrina's going to do her mystical radar thing."
Ichabod: "Yes. If Kent or the Grimoire are here, her spidey senses shall inform us."
Abbie: "Someone's been catching up on his reading."
Ichabod: "Only the classics."

Ichabod: "Curb thy foul stench, unholy minion."
Abbie: "You really need to work on your trash talk."

Frank: "I was just watching TV. Do you know there's a show where people go on dates naked?"
Abbie: "Yeah. It's on after the one where they cook naked."
Frank: "I should have stayed dead."
These shows aren't on my radar at all. What a sheltered life I lead.

Ichabod: "The epithets I hurled at Kent during battle. That was good… good trash talk?"
Abbie: "Wasn't bad. But for some real practice, I'm gonna have to take you to a hockey game."
Ichabod: "Hockey?"

I wasn't that happy with the earlier season two episodes, but this one was pretty good. Three out of four granite countertops,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

3 comments:

  1. I am just starting to really get into this show. I watched it sporadically last season. I really hope it gets renewed because I'm enjoying all the things always mentioned here, notably, the rapport and chemistry between Abbie and Icabod. I also love when they remind us that Ichabod is a man out of time, but instead of him being constantly baffled, he's fitting in quite nicely... it's just all new to him. That's delightful. I do have a hard time seeing Henry so bad. It's tough to see John Noble like that for me, and somehow, it makes him seem smaller than Walter Bishop in a way I can't explain. However, I'm intrigued by the relationship between him and Irving. I also like that they find reasonable ways to have the sister off doing something important, yet when they need her, Jenny is there. And what to say about Katrina? I agree that she's an awkward fit and takes away from the Ichabod/Abbie bond, but I like that they have someone else from Ichabod's time. I like that link. I think, otherwise, Ichabod might become a gimmick.
    And yes, the similarities to the Supernatural world are not lost on me, and has a huge fan of the Winchesters and their world, it's great. Hope that this show gets its buzz back soon.

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  2. At the beginning of the episode I commented to my wife, "Hey, that guy looks just like [Robert E. Howard character] Solomon Kane!" Then they said his name. Heh.

    I am a bit confused about Katrina's ancestry. Based on her appearance, she couldn't have been any older than her 30's in the 1770's, so she would have been born around 1740. If Katrina's mother was ten or so in 1692, she would have been about sixty when she had Katrina. That doesn't sound right. The Van Tassel who knew Kent in 1692 should have been Katrina's great (or possibly even great-great-) grandmother, not grandmother. Or was Katrina actually supposed to be several decades old when she met Ichabod, and only appeared youthful because she's a witch? Or maybe witches do have children at sixty years of age? Or maybe I'm putting more thought into this than the writers did...

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  3. Still feeling "wait and see" with this show. I guess it is a good sign that they are finally bringing Katrina around to the Dark Side, and are showing their hand a bit more with Henry and Irving. But, on the flip side, it probably isn't a positive sign that my favorite part was Ichabod's admiration for Edward R. Murrow (and that's only because we watched Good Night, and Good Luck two weeks ago --- David Strathairn was really great!). The rest was mostly 'meh' for me. When an episode feels like rehashed Buffy and Supernatural plots, it just doesn't do much for me, unless the Abbie and Ichabod stuff really sings. And that dynamic is still feeling a bit forced to me. It certainly wasn't as awkward this week as it has been of late, but from my perspective it's not quite back in their natural groove.

    Ah, well. I'm in through the rest of this season at least. Maybe they can recapture the magic before the end.

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