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| Sitting shiva for their marriage? |
Unfortunately, this hopeless romantic, moon-in-Leo, Valentine's Day baby could not make a lick of emotional sense out of it.
Opening with a schtick used many times—Ichabod's face in close-up, saying something terribly serious, that we later learn is but a platform for a humorous scene—we are treated to the single most unbelievable thing I've seen yet on Sleepy Hollow: a recently reunited Mr. and Mrs. Crane watching a Bachelor variant, fully-clothed, in bed.
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| For the record, I would just like to remind us all that the husband in question looks like this. |
But don't ask me to buy that Katrina Crane, proto-feminist, madly in love with her husband and separated from him for more than two centuries, would spend one nanosecond of their precious time together watching a TV show that sets women's liberation back ten trillion years when she could be ripping her husband's clothes off and making sweet, passionate love to him in every single corner of that cabin, post-partum convalescence be damned.
For his part, Ichabod Crane is a virile young man, supposedly filled with burning desire for his wife (according to the succubus we meet later) who has not had sex in more than two hundred years, and who managed to bore an electronic personal assistant to death with stories of his and his wife's idyllic love. I don't care how much Katrina lied, or how many of his ex-fiancees she may have murdered, he would not just be sitting next to his bird calmly watching tele when his fellow Witness walked in.
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| ...especially when the bird in question looks like this. |
(Look, if you wanted to keep these two out of bed for a while longer, you didn't need their marital woes, Katrina's convalescence, or bad TV to explain it. All you had to do was write a scene of them discussing their terror that any child they create now will be a target for Henry. And then at some point down the line, perhaps in response to Crane's increasing sexual frustration, you could have had someone explain birth control in the 21st century. Just a thought).
That said, the scene was gorgeously lit.
Delighted to be rescued from the marital bliss he hasn't enjoyed for two and a half centuries with a woman he loves so much he made the On-Star operator Yolanda weep, Crane hits the road with Abbie to investigate a murder. We already know our victim was killed by a femme fatale summoned for hell-knows-what-diabolical-purpose by Henry. So, this week's villain is a vamp. Sigh. You're going somewhere liberating, or at least interesting, with this, right Sleepy Writers?
At the crime scene, outside a nightclub, Crane interrupts Abbie translating 2014 to 1781 to assure his partner that he and Katrina were quite the libertines back in the day, frequenting such scandalous establishments to dance the gavotte, allemande...even waltz!!
Abbie indulges him. “Crane, you like to dance?”
“Wouldn't you like to see?” Crane replies, his voice dripping way more sex than that cabin saw in the previous week.
(YES, PLEASE)
With professionalism and resilience, Beharie and Mison manage to make the flirtation look fresh no matter how many takes they do. Beharie's Abbie throws back her head laughing, utterly convincing as the focused, straight-arrow detective bewitched against her own will by this time-traveling charmer.
Cut back to Henry and Abraham bickering like two magpies through the Disney mirror. Again, why and how is there a hierarchy among the Horsemen, and how did Headless end up at the bottom of it? Like his love for Katrina hasn't emasculated his villainy enough this season?
Our Witnesses problem-solve their way into Act II wonderfully as Abbie asks Crane, “Can you check the thing in the....”
“Indeed. Am doing so,” he replies. Gorgeous showing-not-telling of their intimacy, Mr. Kim. And just as Katrina starts getting involved in their work. Isn't that interesting?
Well, in theory, yes.
Meanwhile, Katrina-the-powerful-witch remains physically weak and in need of her consort to rescue her, even though she never actually gave birth. On behalf of every woman in the audience, Abbie is magnificently annoyed with Katrina's latest spell and Ichabod's subsequent solicitude.
“Can I get you something?” Abbie asks Mrs. Crane “(seeing as I really need your husband's head in the game right now and not fussing over you)?” But, no. Turns out Abraham used to bring Katrina quince tea to soothe her nerves, something Ichabod has no idea how to procure. Seeing her partner's distress, Abbie comes to the rescue physically and morally, offering to get tea and takeout, while showing insensitive Katrina that, she, Abbie, knows Ichabod's favorite Chinese food, thank you very much. Beharie makes Abbie's pain palpable yet professional when Crane and Kat leave without even saying good-bye.
I love scenes like this, even if they are a tad obvious. Hey, this is broadcast TV; we don't have a lot of time for Edwardian subtleties.
And now back to our villain. Okay guys, mega props for making the next of victim of the succubus a woman but did you have to introduce it so awkwardly? “It's not him you want, but women?” Really?
We get a nice poetic shot of the “Pizza for One” box as Abbie calls her partner about the succubus' latest kill. As Crane continues to chastely babysit his wife—oh, and look up things--Abbie goes in search of unaccounted-for-artifacts from Ben Franklin's inventory, which unfortunately requires meeting Hawley at
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| "Which part of 'not even to stop the Apocalypse' was unclear?" |
Not surprisingly, Hawley proves useless. Surprisingly, Abbie lets him off the hook for his caddish behavior with “guys will be guys.” (Abbie, to quote your fan-base, #AbbieMillsDeservesBetter). But when Abbie figures out that a man who gets into the back of his own car, as the first victim did, expects to “get lucky,” it's magical, as is Beharie's easy shift into humor.
“So, he was with a woman,” Abbie says, reaching over to underscore her tender translation with a hand on Crane's knee. Gorgeously, Katrina enters speaking, right on cue. “Of course. Why did I not see it sooner? The signs are classic.”
Magnificent, Mr. Kim. I see what you did there. Very nice.
As Katrina explains that a succubus is drawn to hidden desires and can mimic the object of them, we see Hawley back at the bar getting picked up on by our villain, actress Carolina Ford, marvelously channeling Abbie Mills. Matt Barr does a beautiful job conveying Hawley's attempt to make sense of this pseudo-Abbie.
Katrina announces that she can track Sucky's energy and demands a map. The look that Abbie gives her is priceless. Beharie raises the tension in the room at least 50% without saying a word. Abbie deduces that the succubus is going after Hawley (so at least now we know why he was taking up valuable story-telling real estate). I guess because Katrina's “too weak,” Ichabod and Abbie leave her at the cabin, at night, a place Henry knows well, with a jealous ex-boyfriend/Horseman of the Apocalypse a-hunting for her, and rush off to save Hawley.
Hawley, safely saved from his one-night stand with Sucky, wastes no time reminding us why he will never be good enough for Abbie Mills. “Well that settles it,” he says in a lame attempt at bro humor. “I'm definitely not buying her breakfast.” Not to be outdone dissing Hawley's date, Abbie dubs Sucky “Miss Love 'Em and Eat 'Em” and gives the boys some time to bond while she telephones Katrina for tracking help (and to see if she's even still there, hasn't been beheaded, etc).
Crane figures out Hawley has a thing for Abbie a tad too easily, but the lovely, infatuated look on Hawley's face when Abbie suggests he stay in that night and read a book is wonderful. You know, when he's a man instead of a bro, Hawley's not half-terrible.
Driving back to the cabin, Crane finally acknowledges he, too, has been distracted of late. “Katrina,” Abbie deduces, saying her name like it's a disease. But Abbie gives her partner some tender, mature advice. Crane tries with delicious awkwardness to reciprocate in kind as he gives her permission (being the only responsible male in her life) to date Hawley. When Abbie shrugs off the possibility as a complication in her life she can't afford, Crane asks her with grossly unfair tenderness, “since when has opening our hearts to new possibilities been a complication?”
She stares at him meaningfully, just this side of long enough. “Since always.”
Back at the cabin, Katrina has a nightmare about Baby Moloch and Crane deduces she's struggling with post-partum depression. Annoyed, Katrina reminds him that she was carrying a demon from hell through no fault of her own, thank you very much, and no, actually, that isn't what she's feeling. Alas, then Katrina has a vision and again her powers weaken rather than strengthen her.
And, naturally, the idea to focus her visions, thus giving Abbie and Crane the final answer to this week's mystery, comes not from Katrina but from her husband. Katrina focuses her visions easily, and sees Moloch in demon-baby form, being fed by Henry and the succubus at a vine-laced, decrepit, modern-day Fredericks' Manor. Horrified, she figures out why she's having these painful visions--the creature who was inside her is still alive.
In the next act Abbie deduces, incomprehensibly, that while Crane was trying to destroy him, Moloch “must have shunted his energy somewhere.” Seriously? Shunted? First a spider made of liquid poison impregnates Katrina with Moloch by crawling into her mouth, then Ichabod terminates her one-day, Alien-lite pregnancy using a Revolutionary War-era northern lights prism of Ben Franklin's, and now Moloch just “shunts” his energy to a test tube whilst Henry raises a succubus to forage the local nightclubs for baby food as Team Evil's Plan C?!?!
What follows is an extremely unsatisfying scene of overwrought conflict between Abbie and Katrina. Abbie's tired of trying to convince Katrina that Henry must be destroyed, and Katrina's tired of Abbie not appreciating that a) he's her son and b) he therefore must be redeemable and redeemed. The subtext, namely Abbie's anger at Katrina infiltrating hers and Ichabod's partnership, finally comes out, and Katrina finally shows real anger too, though not at her husband or son, both of whom really deserve it.
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| I think Abbie speaks for all of us. |
While I must confess it makes me happy to see Abbie take a swing at Katrina, and almost as happy to see Katrina not back down, this scene rings really false to me. These two women were so mutually respectful in the previous episode, despite the Henry conflict. However committed to the cause Abbie is, she would have some understanding of and empathy for Katrina's position. Similarly, Katrina, a lifelong warrior for the cause, would have some compassion and respect for Abbie's position. I know that the energy behind the conflict is actually about Ichabod's attention and loyalty, but Abigail Mills is a mature enough woman to recognize that, and fight with the appropriate person, namely Ichabod.
I also loathe the fact that it takes Ichabod again coming between two strong women to get them to stop fighting. Ick. And not in the cute-English-time-traveler kind of way.
Back in the archives, Abbie figures out that Sucky is “the Inchordata,” Ichabod figures out this means the creature literally has no heart, and I figure out that even though the show's artists drew the demon with a womanly figure, including strong arms, legs, and meat on her bones, the producers inexplicably hired a very slim model/actress to play the character. Ichabod also finds a creatively ludicrous origin story for Saint Valentine's Day, thus allowing Abbie's resentment of being put in third wheel position again to surface. Confusingly, though, her aside hints at romantic feelings for her partner as she kvetches “and now single people everywhere have to drown their sorrows in tubs of Rocky Road.”
It turns out that the Inchordata's heart is stored separately from the rest of her body; once it's found and destroyed, she can be killed. Brilliant Abbie reminds us that she put a trace on the Horseman of War's online activity (spend a moment with that clause, if you will), and that intel proves very helpful in locating said heart. Katrina just happens to know the heart would be stored on consecrated ground and she also just happens to know that an immolation spell will destroy it. Uh-huh. You know, like her husband just happens to know how to play a Chinese bone flute.
Crane then assigns resentful Abbie to protect his wife on her mission to destroy the heart, while he reluctantly partners with Hawley to take out the Inchordata.
Let me just make sure I've got this. Crane was willing to leave his wife in the clutches of not one, but two Horsemen of the Apocalypse, where her magical powers were blocked, leaving her no self-defense but her own wiles. He was willing to leave her alone, weak if not incapacitated, at his cabin while Abbie and he went off to protect Hawley. But suddenly he needs to send Abbie to protect Katrina when she goes to a cemetery, where everyone she's likely to encounter is either, by definition, dead, or an immortal villain, and therefore immune to Abbie's bullets? Have I got that right? Okay. Just wanted to make sure.
Not unlike her husband, Katrina thinks that the middle of a dangerous mission in enemy territory is the perfect time to discuss difficult relationship matters, and a good thing too, since that's obviously the real reason Ichabod sent the gals off by themselves. Katrina doesn't start off well, taking liberties with her counterpart's name. Calling her “Abigail” out of nowhere--something even Crane doesn't do unless one of them is about to die--Katrina acknowledges how she must appear to Abbie. “You think I'm being irrational, willfully blind even.”
“Condescending” Abbie adds without a missing a beat. She's not going to be seduced by this woman as easily as the fellas are. Abbie then tries to help Katrina get a grip by telling her “My mother loved me and Jenny, but in the end, it wasn't enough.” Huh? Mama Mills couldn't love her girls enough to...protect them from her? To protect them from demons? While Mama Crane can't love Henry enough to...turn him from his evil ways? But Abbie and Jenny are good; Henry's evil. I'm not getting the parallel here.
Meanwhile, back at Club Twerk, Hawley, when asked his intentions by Crane in loco parentis, again proves himself totally unworthy of our brave leftenant.
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| "Dear God, not the Urn of Rats! Will my suffering never end?" |
When, at the cemetery, Katrina and Abbie find the urn that holds the Inchordata's heart, we're treated to a surprising and humorous scene which does nothing to raise Katrina's stock for female fans. It turns out that Katrina-the-powerful-witch is mortally terrified of rats. Since Henry put a perception spell on the urn, we also learn that Abbie's afraid of maggots, but that barely gives her pause. Typical Abbie; she sucks it up, sticks her hand into the seemingly-maggot-and-rat-filled-urn, and pulls out the heart.
As Katrina begins doing the old Romani-Greek thing, Abbie calls the fellas to let them know the gals are working on destroying the heart. Hawley takes another giant step toward winning Mills' heart by informing he's lost her partner. And the succubus.
In a back room of Club Twerk, the succubus, this time channeling Katrina even down to the corset and breathy English accent, shows us that the missus is Crane's most hidden desire. Wait, what?!?! Why would Ichabod hide his desire for Katrina? How could it be a secret to anyone? Even Siri and Yolanda know. She's his legal, Christian wife; she's the one person on earth he is not only allowed, but supposed, to desire!
Is this a tacit acknowledgment of the complete lack of chemistry between these two actors last year? It certainly confirms that watching TV was the raciest thing the Cranes attempted during the-week-alone-that-should-have-been-a-second-honeymoon.
The whole purpose of this scene, and indeed, I suspect, the succubus' existence in this episode, is to inform us (and Ichabod) that despite that burning desire, his feelings for Katrina have soured, and he now doubts her. But we already knew he doubted her, and if his feelings have really soured, how can he be a hero, a man we admire, and still be burning with desire for the woman?
Perhaps a tad phased by Sucky's revelations Crane stabs her with a supernatural knife given to him by Hawley who doubted Crane, the war hero, could handle the fire power of a revolver. In a very interesting cut, at the exact moment that Crane stabs the succubus, the vessel that held her heart zaps Katrina with a protective hex. Now, this could just be an excellent job of editing for maximum climactic action, but Albert Kim has a lot of poetic stuff going on in this episode, a lot of potential story-telling pieces being moved around the chessboard, so I suspect there is more to this connection than meets the casual eye.
Fans have complained that Katrina faints here, but she doesn't. She's attacked precisely because her power is working which is quite a bit different, but given Katrina's history, not necessarily better. Since Katrina is, once again, incapacitated, Abbie again demonstrates that she bears more than a passing resemblance to a witch herself and promptly ignites the succubus' heart.
But before Sucky's heart can be destroyed, she recovers from her stabbing and comes after Crane's life force with a vengeance. When Hawley arrives to help, she turns on him, allowing Crane to demonstrate both impressive knife-throwing and gun-slinging skills, for a guy, who, you know, only fought a war to found a country. A nice fraternal beat between Hawley and Crane plays out once the succubus is dispatched, but because I can barely stand Hawley at this point, I just don't care.
Meanwhile, Abbie, channeling a hobbit, next to Katrina, channeling an elf, tries to help the older woman walk. Curiously, with Abbie, Katrina doesn't seem to feel a need to appear helpless. “I'll be fine,” she says, even displaying a rare and utterly charming moment of humility. In return Abbie finally concedes Katrina's value to the team, which touches the older woman immensely. Sense and sensibility again reign among the women as they reach accord that Moloch has to be stopped.
Katrina then tries to redeem herself for pretty much every whisper, every fall, every mistake—hell, even the damned corset--by announcing that she is going to solve the conflict between her and Abbie, risking her life and her husband's love for her, by killing Moloch. To quote Abbie, wow. I mean, damn, girl, way to step up!
Naturally, her plan requires she send herself back into captivity.
WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! SERIOUSLY, SLEEPY WRITERS?!?!
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| "Just so you know, Abigail, I'm totally Team You Guys." |
To convince Abraham to take her back, that she's not a spy, Katrina “will tell him how Ichabod has moved on, how he has found his life here, with [Abbie] by his side.” Abbie's nonverbal response, “Wait! Even you're shipping us now?!?!?,” is worth the price of admission alone.
At Crane's cabin, Hawley takes his sweet time bandaging his torso from Sucky's attack giving both Abbie and the audience a nice view of Matt Barr's lovely muscles. In a gesture of thanks for his part, Abbie gives Hawley the succubus' burned-up heart to sell on eBay. Hawley's “it's not every day a girl gives me her heart,” is made tolerable only by Abbie's, “and now I have to punch you in the throat.” Still, I find myself shipping these two microscopically more than I do Ichabod and Katrina, which has to be the 21st century definition of wrong.
When Abbie tells Ichabod what Katrina's gone off and done this time, he, shockingly, goes all Sensitive New Age Guy on her, saying Abbie was right, that relationships have to evolve. “Katrina is the love of my life, but she is also a highly skilled operative, a fact I tend to overlook [perhaps because I've never seen it.]”
Oh, Crane! You liberated husband, you!! “I must trust in her skill, her experience. But more than that I must trust her.” Such a lovely thought. How far Ichabod has come in one episode from Mr. Stuck In His Patriarchal Ways!
Unfortunately, his faith, and Katrina's brains and bravery, are both TOTALLY UNDERMINED by the visual we're given as he waxes admiringly about his spouse, namely that KATRINA'S BRAIN APPEARS TO GO COMPLETELY ON HOLIDAY BECAUSE SHE'S PRESENTED WITH MOLOCH DISGUISED AS A HUMAN BABY!!!!
(Is a WTF even necessary at this point?)
Following a wordless and oddly moving reunion with Headless, Katrina returns to Fredericks Manor, looking not remotely like it did in her vision. Does this clue her in that things are not what they should be? We don't know, because Katrina's as good an actress as Katia Winter, so, like Henry and Headless, we believe she's been seduced by the illusion. This is a TERRIBLE thing to do to Katrina after a whole episode in which you try to convince us that she's a valuable, if weak, member of the Scooby Gang.
As for the Ichabod-Katrina show, which I'll concede needed attention this season, I don't have the foggiest idea what I'm supposed to think or feel about Ichabod's relationship with Katrina at this point. What I do know is that it is not a satisfying relationship on any level from a storytelling standpoint, which makes the time Ichabod isn't spending with Abbie, the emotional storytelling that isn't going on between those two, so much more incomprehensible, frustrating and disappointing.
Sleepy, I appreciate the feels, but I'm really starting to worry again.
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