Sleepy Hollow: Magnum Opus

We're on the home stretch now, so I may as well hang in there till the finale.

It appears the show has well and truly found a formula: each episode opens with Ichabod making a portentous comment that ends up being in reference to something completely mundane, some American history is thrown in as part of a National Treasure-esque hunt for a random MacGuffin that nobody's ever heard of before, Ichabod is confounded by some aspect of modernity, a Monster of the Week rears its ugly head while Henry smirks and Katrina flails, and if we're lucky we'll get Ichabod/Abbie discussing how important they are to each other.

As such, most of the show seems stale now. Moloch is wandering around as a sullen teenager, the horsemen have been revealed as emotionally constipated man-children, and the Monsters of the Week are getting increasingly silly. Despite this being the first episode in the build-up to the season finale, I just don't feel particularly engaged.

It starts with Katrina ringing up the Witnesses on the mirror-phone to tell them that she's failed to kill Moloch. Abbie doesn't look remotely surprised, and to add insult to injury it transpires that Henry has bugged the mirror and can rewind events reflected in it to find out exactly what the Witnesses are up to. So not only is Katrina useless, she's now actively making matters worse.

By using last week's MacGuffin (Dixon's journal) Ichabod and Abbie discover the location of this week's MacGuffin (Methusalah's sword), and by interpreting a code in the journal that is too convoluted for me to even attempt to unpack, they learn it's something that can stop Moloch. Just go with it.

Benjamin Franklin, blah, Freemasons, blah, Knights Templar, blah blah blah, and they eventually end up at the ruins Abbie glimpsed in her dream (I wondered if they had some relevance). After the Headless Horseman is forced to retreat thanks to the dawn, the Witnesses dig in the ground and find some easily-displaced bricks that lead to a perfectly functional trapdoor. It's a wonder kids on school field trips don't stumble down there every week.

And then... look, I know this show has done some crazy stuff in the past, but its use of golems and tree demons and nightmare monsters had an internal logic and thematic consistency that made it all work despite itself. But now Ichabod and Abbie are forced to face-off against ... Medusa.

Despite the awesomeness of the above shot, it's still a jarring addition to the show's mythos. They refer to it as a gorgon and even mention Greek mythology, so it's not like its inclusion exists in a total void, but still – it's incredibly strange.

Also thrown into the mix is the symbol of Ouroboros (why not?) and the Shofur Horn (that Henry just had lying around somewhere?) and even a little bit of Indiana Jones/Arthurian Legend when it comes to Abbie being forced to pull the right sword out of the stone and facing dire snake-related consequences if she fails (I was waiting for someone to say "she chose...poorly" but it never happened).

Abbie comes up with the idea to lure the Horseman down into the cave to fight the gorgon, arguing that it can't affect him since he doesn't have eyes to see with, but soon enough Abraham turns his attention to Ichabod. He finally gets the chance to say something halfway interesting, namely that he was meant to be the hero of this tale, not its villain, and though it soon dissolves into a pissing contest over Katrina, the close proximity and intense staring of the sword-fighting that ensues no doubt made a million slash-fans perk up in newfound interest.

There is some neat editing here, in which their battle is intercut with previous fights between the two of them (though oddly, not the definitive one that ended both their lives) but there just hasn't been enough tension built-up between the two of them for any of this to have any real resonance. Ichabod is finally at Abraham's mercy, but Henry sounds the shofur and Abraham just trots out of there. It's so contrived that it wraps all the way back around from "painful" to "eh, there's only three minutes left", and Ichabod and Abbie turn their attention to finding the sword.  

At this point I should say that throughout all this Ichabod has been haunted by the phrase "know thyself", which feels like an attempt to provide something insightful and profound about his characterization, but is the sort of self-indulgent navel gazing that can best be summed up (as ever) by Abbie's face:

The problem is not only that Abbie is completely left out of this "know thyself" narrative, but that it feels too heavy handed. From the opening game of "guess who?" between the Witnesses, to the myriad of flashbacks that are presumably meant to track Ichabod's path toward his destiny, to the lengthy monologues on Who He Really Is, you could feel the authorial fiat at work. The whole thing didn't really feel like anything that Ichabod would internally explore on his own; instead it was just something he had to comment on because it was in that week's script.

They eventually discover the sword's hiding place, but since extracting it involves teamwork it feels rather odd that only Ichabod gets to reach into the pillar and Excalibur it out of there. Shouldn't there be two swords? Or one sword that could be split into two? (see Da Vinci's Demons for an example).

Still, it's a fairly stirring moment, ruined only by Tom Mison's choice of expression:

Dude, it's just a sword.

Meanwhile, the B-plot has dealt with Jenny and Irving trying to make it to the Canadian border. Nothing much happens except when they reach a police stop-point and there's an hilarious moment in which Irving decides to bail out and Jenny patiently informs him that she can't slow down or it'll look suspicious so he'll just have to dive out of a moving vehicle.

Then he foregoes meeting up with her and instead opts to go bush – though I was left wondering if that was really him on the phone or if the forces of darkness are playing some other game.

Miscellaneous Observations:

We did at least learn that demons in this world are – as according to Biblical lore – fallen angels. A lot of shows (Buffy and Charmed spring to mind) present demons more like a destructive and dangerous species rather than an army of spirits that rebelled against the Almighty.

As disappointing as Abraham is without his head, I loved the shot in which Henry turns from the mirror (which reflects Abraham's face) to the door (where he stands headless).

Katrina is so much more interesting in the opening credits: raising the trees, running through the mist, glancing shifty-eyed off-screen. Why can't we have THAT character?

And she just left that bottle of poison lying around for Henry to find it? Worst spy EVER.

Abbie, you could rope in the Horseman to kill the gorgon for you, or you could just take a cue from mythology and take down a large mirror. The Ancient Greeks had this conundrum sorted out.

And hey, Pestilence is back! After being missing since last season, he's now back in the back. Who will he turn out to be? Abbie's long-lost father? Ichabod's disinherited nephew? Some guy who was fined for not returning his library books and is now really bitter about it?
And when's the fourth one turning up? Famine? Can't have an apocalypse without four Horsemen.