Last night marked the last Sleepy Hollow before the middle of January, in which the show will oddly be back for only two weeks: Its last two episodes, airing on January 20th, will be shown as a two-parter. If Fox hadn’t renewed this series back in October that’d be a point of concern. Either way, this was a great episode, not least because it shook up the formula a little bit.
Namely, this time the evil running around smashing people isn’t some sort of demonic plague, but rather a being Ichabod accidentally brings back with him when he goes to Purgatory to confront his wife about his son. It turns out Jeremy Crane spent most of his short young life being treated like crap, and when you’ve got Mom’s witchy superpowers and Dad’s badass streak, that manifests itself in bringing a Colonial Uglydoll to life to start killing the people trying to hurt you.
Thus, our heroes now have a mess on their hands they need to stop. Also making a welcome return is John Noble as Henry, the Sin Eater. Noble always elevates the proceedings, and it’s a nice touch that he adds a lot to the episode, both kicking off its action and helping our duo at key points.
As something of a minor b-plot this episode, we also see Frank Irving trying to reconnect with his family. After the last episode, this probably caused no shortage of grumbling… at least until he got threatened by a demonic hot chocolate vendor with shades of Fallen. Now, of course, it’s personal, and to be frank, after what we saw in the last episode, Moloch’s mouth has written a check his ass is probably not going to be able to cash.
It’s a nice way to wrap up the year with this pleasant surprise of a show. It’s a shame that we don’t have many more episodes, but at least we know a second season is on the way.
Some more thoughts:
- Something I guarantee you happened in the writer’s room: “John Noble is back? Score! That guy could make a train timetable interesting and full of gravitas.” “Five bucks says he can’t.” “You’re on.”
- Your Golem today will be played by Kickpuncher from Community. No, seriously, that’s Derek Mears under that quite good creature makeup.
- Ichabod should really be more familiar with the tendency of witches to be rules lawyers. The “Four Who Speak As One” said they “stopped his heart”, not that they bumped him off, so I’m guessing we’ll be seeing Jeremy sooner rather than later.
- Ichabod’s grousing about how language has changed, and Abby’s comeback about “awful intercourse” almost makes up for Abby not realizing that Charles Dickens was a bit past Ichabod’s time.
- This episode really only had one on-screen fatality, but it was amusingly gruesome even by this show’s standards.
Any thoughts? Let us know in the comments!
