Sleepy Hollow: The Sin Eater

The plot of this episode draws upon the bond that Ichabod and the Headless Horseman share with each other: their "lives" are connected due to the fact that they "killed" each other (even though neither of them are dead - don't you just love genre television?)

 

By simple dint of his existence, Ichabod poses a threat to the entire world, as while he lives, so too does the Horseman. Killing Ichabod removes the threat of the Horseman returning to Sleepy Hollow, and so he is kidnapped by a group of Freemasons who first question him to confirm his identity, and then provide him with a vial of poison so that he might take his own life.

 

Abbie is obviously gonna have none of this, and so (having received a tip-off from Katrina) goes in search of a man known as the Sin Eater, who possesses the power to break the blood-tie between Ichabod and the Horseman. In doing so, she also ropes in Jenny, knowing that she's an expert on these matters.

That's a great setup, especially as it provides us with some insight into Ichabod's past, Abbie at her most vulnerable, Jenny getting on board the investigative train, and some much-needed focus on Katrina. And for the most part, the whole thing worked. We now know how Ichabod met Katrina and why he turned on his own country, and get a bit more of the emotional strain that exists between the Mills sisters. Throw in a Freemason conspiracy, and bingo! Even the climactic scene when Ichabod decides to drink the poison was immensely effective: though we knew he wasn't going to die, the actors made it work by selling the hell out of it.

 

But here some my caveats about the storyline...

 

I'm afraid I couldn't quite get my head around this concept of a Sin Eater. I loved John Noble's performance, as you could see in his eyes the physical and mental toll that his gift took on him, but... let me get this straight. A Sin Eater is someone who can cleanse the wicked of their sins, not through absolving you (like a priest) but by reaching inside you and taking the sin. Not to get all metaphysical here, but that feels like an utter cop-out on a deeply spiritual level. Does this mean that a remorseless criminal could meet with a Sin Eater and simply have their crimes removed as though they'd never done anything wrong in the first place?

 

To me, a person can only be freed from sin if they actively and knowingly repent and go in search of forgiveness. This made it sound like the process of being absolved by a Sin Eater gave a person a clean slate through no effort of their own. And apparently this was exactly what Ian Kellet was doing when he visited death row inmates...?

 

We talk about how the act of killing is bad because we don't have the right to appoint ourselves judge, jury and executioner over life and death, but I'd argue that neither do we have the right to simply remove a person's sins for that exact same reason. I know this may sound like nitpicking, but I just can't get behind the idea of a Sin Eater, and it didn't help that his sanctification of Ichabod was (somehow) tied up with his guilt in not saving Arthur Barnard's life. What exactly did that have to do with his bond with the Horseman and the spell that Katrina put over him? It was a tentative link at best.

 

As we discovered over in the flashbacks, Ichabod was originally a British soldier who was ordered by a superior offiicer (actually a demon in disguise) to oversee the torture of a freed slave in order to find out the identity of an insurrectionist called Cicero. This man, Arthur Barnard, coaxes Ichabod into switching sides, but is killed anyway by the demon. Ichabod carries the guilt of not letting him go sooner, but Arthur appears to him and basically says: "if I hadn't died, you would have never found your destiny, so it's all cool." Heck, I don't even have to paraphrase. The line is literally: "my death saved your soul. Only you chose to see it as a sin when all along it was your salvation."

 

On a less diversive show this scene would have been pretty unforgivable, but whatever way you want to justify it, I really, really hope my purpose in life isn't to die so that some white guy, no matter how nice, can have a wake-up call about his destiny. That would really suck.

Oh, and that the Sin Eater turned up out of nowhere at exactly the right time for no apparent reason was also a bit daft.

 

Elsewhere, Katia Winter has the utterly thankless task of expunging mountains of exposition, but something about her in this episode emerged that caught my interest, which sadly I haven't seen discussed yet. According to the Freemasons she and her coven were in league with them before she betrayed their trust by hiding Ichabod's body from them. By doing this, and knowing full well that Ichabod and the Horsemen were connected, she chose to leave open the opportunity for the Horseman to return. It's the old "do I sacrifice a loved one for the greater good?" conundrum, and it says a lot about her that she was willing to risk the world to save her husband's life - as was Abbie.

 

She's still more of a plot device than a character at this stage, but I think the writers have a couple of secrets up their sleeve in regards to her.

 

Miscellaneous Observations:

 

Okay, I know this is going to make me sound like a spoil-sport but...yelling abuse at umpires is a really shitty thing to do. I didn't like seeing my favourite characters doing it. Sorry.

 

I loved Abbie/Katrina's shared vision, and I wonder how much of the detail will be important later. Like, what was up with the crying doll in the baby carriage? Or the George Washington (?) figure with the noose around it's neck? Or the veiled women sitting at the table? It was great to see these women in their first scene together, but - jeeze Katrina, couldn't you have waited until Abbie wasn't driving a car? You nearly got her killed!

 

Craig Parker!!! Okay, I know everyone else was excited by James Frain and John Noble, but here in New Zealand, Craig Parker is one of our local celebrities. (You probably know him best as Haldir from The Lord of the Rings).

 

That red contact that they put into Arthur Barnard's eye to denote a burst blood-vessel looked really fake.

 

Another bit of moral screwiness that was on par with the Sin Eater was Katrina telling Ichabod (after the executions): "do you think you'll be forgiven just because you didn't pull the lever?" Well, technically the guy who pulled the lever isn't responsible for their deaths either. He's just doing his job. The man who ordered their deaths is the one responsible for it.

 

Katrina looked really cute in that little Quaker cap. We should bring those back. And it was SO NICE to see her smile finally. "You are a terrible liar, sir. It's quite endearing." D'aww.

 

Nice linguistic link between Ichabod's role as a Witness and Katrina's line: "you have the power to bear witness" (ie, see demons for what they truly are).

 

That was a beautiful monologue from Abbie about how she continues to lose people and articulates exactly why she needs Ichabod so much. Nicole Beharie has a wonderful way of making Abbie as tough-as-nail and utterly vulnerable at the same time.

 

Best line of the night went to Jenny: "the next time you see that witch in a dream, tell her to be more specific."

 

"And through these centuries, against the impossibility that we would find each other, we did - and I am most grateful for it." Be still my heart!

 

Combining the voices of Abbie and Katrina each begging Ichabod to stay with them was a wonderful way of establishing his transition between life and death.

 

Finally, great ending sequence with the Horseman finding Ichabod's resting place. Let's hope those that were assorted in the basement at the end of this episode (Jenny, the Freemasons, the Sin Eater) are still around next week.

 

In Hindsight:

 

This is the most pivotal episode of the season thus far, though none of us were aware of it at the time. I'm referring of course to the fact that Henry Parrish is actually Jeremy Crane, coming face-to-face with his father for the first time, and that all this is the first step in Moloch's master plan, one that culminates with Abbie in Purgatory, Ichabod six feet under, and Katrina in Abraham's clutches, and it starts with Abbie seeking out "a Sin Eater".

 

Wow. It's so obvious once you know.

Katrina is the one who initially drops the term, which if memory serves, is fed to her by Parrish himself without her being aware of it. Having already risked the safety of the world by keeping Ichabod alive (and with that, his connection to the Horseman), she reaches out to Abbie with a way in which to sever the two of them without the need for Ichabod to sacrifice himself.

 

Of course, the jury is out on whether Parrish is a Sin Eater at all. Apparently sin eating is a genuine practice, and it's likely that Parrish was simply posing as one as part of Moloch's elaborate long con. His attempts to save Ichabod were in fact nothing of the kind, but rather a way to prevent the Horseman from being nullified, which is what would have happened if Ichabod had gone ahead with his self-execution.

 

But if one thing doesn't quite mesh, it's Abbie and Jenny establishing that Parrish used to visit death row inmates. Granted, they only presume that he's abolishing them of their sins (perhaps he was actually enlisting a bunch of serial killers to Moloch's army - plot bunny!), but there's a genuine sense of goodness about Arthur Baynard that's difficult to reconcile with what's actually going on in Parrish's head.

 

Arthur Baynard's appearance is played with sincerity, and (regardless of Parrish's ulterior motives) he allows Ichabod to shed the guilt that was binding him to the Horseman. This may have had dire consequences later down the road, but in the here and now it's an indisputably good thing, an act of sanctity and forgiveness that doesn't feel like it should (or could) be channelled through a corrupt mediator. Yet our only other option is that the whole thing was a carefully choreographed fake-out, one designed to make Ichabod get over himself and free the Horseman. If so, it worked.

 

But watching John Noble's performance with full knowledge of who he really is makes for an intriguing study. Did Noble know his character's backstory? There has been more than one crime drama that held back on delivering the final script to the cast so that the killer's identity wouldn't be compromised by an actor's performance, but watching what Noble does here certainly leaves that open for debate.

 

When Abbie and Jenny first confront Parrish, there's a strange sort of vibe about him, one which I first took to be reflective of the physical and mental toll of being a Sin Eater, but which could  just as easily be the twisted reverence of a man who has waited an awfully long time for this meeting to take place. There's the sense that he's playing coy in the face of their desperation for him to save Ichabod, and deliberately refusing to go with them in the attempt to sell his reluctance.

 

And after the Mills sisters leave the apartment, we get one last glimpse of Parrish as he stares out into his garden:

 

 

Blank hopelessness? Long awaited anticipation? You be the judge.

 

It's during the scene in which he absolves Ichabod of his sin (or whatever the heck he was actually doing) that things get really interesting. Lines like "so long I've hoped for this day" certainly take on a more sinister edge as we realize they're coming from a man who is not finding his purpose, but fulfilling the first step of a master-plan. The strange relish with which he goes about the sin eating doesn't quite gel with the haunted reluctance he displayed to Abbie (who isn't here to see this ritual), and it's easy to suppose that his mask slips a bit here; that his excitement at meeting his father for the first time can't quite be contained.

Well, played show.

 

For the record, Katrina's entire time-line is still hopelessly convoluted. At this point in time she's apparently an undercover witch  posing as a Quaker nurse in league with the Freemasons who are looking for one of the Witnesses...? How she goes from this to a proper Georgian lady engaged to Abraham is a complete mystery to me.

 

But Abbie's vision at the start of the episode did indeed bear fruit, most obviously with the appearance of the golem in the baby carriage and the veiled coven at the table, complete with evil laughter. Still not sure about the hanged George Washington doll in the crib, though the eagle is possibly a call-back to how Katrina contacted Ichabod in the first episode.

 

"See yah soon!"