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Sleepy Hollow: The Way of the Gun

"Well. I did not see that coming."

You know what? I was impressed. I wasn't expecting crazy time travel goodness coming out of left field. And yet, I should have expected something extreme. Sleepy Hollow endgames have always been nuts.

The painfully cute opener with Molly's school play about Washington at Valley Forge seemed like it was just another opportunity for Ichabod to say something Ichabod-like in a public setting and make an adorable spectacle of himself. Plus it was an opportunity to show us that Diana and Molly were edging back toward as much normalcy as possible under these unusual Witness-related circumstances. Instead, the scene acquired a bit of poignancy when we learned, later in the episode, that it was the last time Molly ever saw her mother alive.

The way they introduced Lara (Seychelle Gabriel) was skillful. From the beginning, it was clear that this mysterious young woman knew all about Team Witness, which didn't seem possible. I mean, she sneaked into the Vault while they were all there to take a specific book right out from under their noses. It all seemed outlandishly brave and strange when you didn't know that Lara was the adult Molly from the future, but it made sense the moment we found out. Of course, future Ichabod would send Lara back in time, armed with enchanted crystals and with a mission: to save Diana from being turned into the Horseman of War. It didn't quite have the same impact as Abbie going back to Colonial times and interacting with past Ichabod, but it was still quite cool.

This opened up all sorts of interesting time travel questions that I don't think have been addressed as yet in the Sleepy-verse (correct me if I've forgotten anything). If Team Witness manages to completely change the future — and they've certainly changed something major already, since Ichabod just took The Bullet and became the Horseman of War instead of Diana — what happens to Lara? Will she vanish because that version of Molly will never exist? Will she stick around as an anomaly? If she does end up trapped in the present, who is the Witness? Molly or Lara?

It's also interesting that Lara (I'm going to keep calling the adult Molly "Lara" to decrease confusion) knows Dreyfuss so well and seems determined to save him from himself. I never would have thought, considering how creepy he seemed in "Child's Play," that Dreyfuss would have been kind and generous with little Molly while raising her to stand up for herself. So okay, Dreyfuss isn't scaring me and I'm finding Jeremy Davies' performance amusing, but it seems so inconsistent that Dreyfuss was also fully embracing his inner Darth, sarcastically overacting when Diana shot him, and practically cavorting with evil glee during the "showdown at the Eternal Flame Corral."

I'm also confused about why Lara is a member of the "Arma Mutata." And how come it sounds so much like "Hakuna Matata."

So now, Ichabod, our hero, has been transformed into the Horseman of War. How can this be, since he is the one character this show cannot lose? Dreyfuss' master plan appears to involve the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse assassinating the president at Camp David, which is over the river and through the woods from the Eternal Flame Corral. I am now picturing a shootout between the Four Horsemen and the Secret Service, which sounds a little silly, so I bet that won't be what happens.

Moving on to the rest of Team Witness, Jenny desperately wants to go on the artifact hunt and has convinced herself that Jake and Alex can handle the scary stuff alone, but she was wrong. She left them in the woods and they were promptly captured and tortured by Jobe in an interesting time travel sort of way: Jobe showed Jake what he planned to do to make them tell him where the Gun was, which was burn Jake and kill Alex. So Jake told them everything.

It's too bad that Alex didn't have a moment to finish confessing to Jake that she loves him, that they aren't just "best friends." Well, there are still two more episodes. I really do wish we weren't getting so much foreshadowing of doom for them.

Finally, this is the third time we've seen Benjamin Banneker (Edwin Hodge) in flashbacks this season, and I'll admit that his storyline has been a bit more interesting than Betsy Ross's. I particularly liked his discussion with Ichabod about their views of the America of the future, a good fit for the overarching plot of this season. Has there been a reason for Banneker's recurrence? Will it be revealed in the finale? (I haven't seen the final two episodes yet.)

Bits:

-- Lara is surprisingly formidable. She defeated Jenny in the tunnel fight, and then nudged Jobe "outside of time" with one of her crystals.

-- I was surprised that there was no mention of Henry Parrish, Ichabod's son and the former avatar of War.

-- Was Molly's play about Valley Forge supposed to parallel the current situation of Team Witness as a low point before a major American victory?

-- Diana and Ben Banneker both asked Ichabod if he'd ever been an actor, and Ichabod's response was, only in the bathtub. I think Ichabod would be a terrific actor, but I'm probably projecting that from the exceptional talent of Tom Mison.

-- The restaurant scene with the reservations was fun. The story about how the barn was rebuilt was so detailed that it almost felt like a set-up for something more.

-- Malcolm and Jobe seem to be actual friends. I enjoyed their discussions about food and clothes.

-- Because pretty much everything on Sleepy Hollow reminds me of something on Supernatural, the totem of War with bits of famous blades reminded me of the Colt.

Quotes:

Ichabod: (clapping loudly) "Yes! Yes, indeed! Huzzah! Very well said and said very well!"
Diana: "Crane, we are not even a minute in. Not that your enthusiasm isn't appreciated by the cutest of Colonial militia."


Diana: "Not historically accurate enough for you?"
Ichabod: "The choreography is so stiff and stolid, it's practically a minuet. These are enlisted men. It should be a rowdy spree."

Ichabod: "God's blood, man! This is a theater, not a morgue!"

Diana: "You ever get that feeling, like someone just walked over your grave?"
Ichabod: "In my case, that may have actually happened. Twice."
Foreshadow much? Diana said that the very moment when Lara walked into the room.

Diana: "Was there a part of the war you weren't a part of?"
Ichabod: "The Treaty of Paris. And most of the naval engagements. My sea legs are a trifle shaky."

Diana: (entering the recreated restaurant) "We've died and gone to Brooklyn."

Not a perfect episode, but I was surprised by Ichabod becoming the Horseman of War and pleased with the time travel twist of Molly showing up as an adult. Three out of four avatars,

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

2 comments:

  1. I was wondering if the writers planned on introduced time travel adult Molly from the beginning or did they retool after realized they wrote themselves into a corner with the new witness. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bingo. They realized the child witness wasn't going to work so they introduced Lara. Half the time with Molly, the cast had to babysit her. This is why you don't have kid heroes. Too late to save the show. Still bitter about Abbie.

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