Sleepy Hollow Episode 2.17: The 51st Way to Leave Your Lover

"Why does it surprise me not at all that you cracked
the Liberty Bell?"

[Addendum, 2/19: I was reminded rightly by a reader that Doug Aarniokoski did a phenomenal job directing this episode--Sleepy Hollow is so lucky to have him--my apologies to Mr. A. for neglecting to mention his vital contribution].

A reader recently asked me what the turning radius of a television show is, given the time delay between the breaking of a story and production of a finished script. She wondered if trying to amend an ailing narrative might not be like trying to turn the Titanic. I told her, “TV writers wish they had the turning radius of the Titanic.”

I have tremendous sympathy for the predicament the writers were in by this point in the season. Ratings were suffering, fans were complaining (rightly so) that the Crane Family Drama was boring and had sidelined Abbie, Jenny and Frank indefensibly. The writers, to their enormous credit, heard us and responded. Given what they were working with, the Sleepy writers did a commendable job turning the Season 2 narrative in order to save the show, re-win the trust and faith of the fans, and give us a finale which could either gracefully end the show, or give us a clean, fresh start if renewed.

Unfortunately, certain things cannot be rushed. Pregnancy, for example. A good boeuf bourguignon. The fall of Katrina Crane.

It speaks volumes about then-show runner Mark Goffman's faith in M. Raven Metzner that he assigned him this script. “The Awakening” was arguably the most important episode in Season 2, and quite possibly the toughest to write (time travel conundrums be damned) because it was saddled with the entirety of the fall of Katrina Crane. And therein lies its primary problem. I wholly believe no writer could have made Katrina's fall believable in one episode (and no, playing around with exploding genitalia metaphors and “dreaming” about Henry coming back to her in earlier episodes do not qualify remotely as adequately predicting her fall).

But let's talk about what worked in this episode, for there was so much.

As a whole, “The Awakening” was extremely well-written and the show, as a whole, beautifully executed. The episode was exciting, entertaining, and the nature of Katrina Crane's fall was very creative and innovative and really could have worked, had it simply had sufficient time in the season to develop and land.

Katia Winter's performance in this episode was a revelation. She was in every way M. Raven Metzner's partner in conveying the complex and difficult emotional landscape of a good woman turning her back on everything she is and has been. To the extent that her arc worked, to the extent it landed at all, we largely have Ms. Winter to thank.

Huge kudos are also due Mr. Mison, without whose range, subtlety, passion and restraint this episode also could not have worked. He so believably conveyed Crane's shock, anger, frustration, and sorrow. I could not take my eyes off him and Winter in their scenes together; they were wholly mesmerizing. If only they could have had more scenes like this together throughout the series.

Act I was fun and set us up for a good adventure. We begin with a charming bit of side-eye meta in a bookstore where Crane is discovering that time-travel is a fairly worn literary trope. His ego is wounded to find he's not unique; Abbie rescues him by reminding him he's the only one in the non-fiction section. What follows is delightful in its entirety (when Metzner puts Abbie and Crane in a public room full of books, magic ensues). Mison plays gorgeously Ichabod's delight at being served a proper cup of tea (granted, probably not much of a stretch for an Englishman stuck in the U.S.), whilst conversation about how the downloading of books is putting small, independent booksellers out of business gave the scene some nice social weight.

It turns out, Abbie and Crane are here on business: they're trying to recreate the Witness Bodleian, thoughtfully assembled for them by Jefferson et. al., protected by starving, cursed zombies for centuries, only to be blown to hell by our heroes in the previous episode. The bookseller isn't sure she can help them. “There's rare and obscure and then there's your list.” When she asks where they saw some of the esoteric titles, Abbie and Crane overlap and contradict adorably, taking each other's place in their attempts at obfuscation. Abbie: “Oxford.” Crane: “The internet.” A lovely and hilarious way to underscore their growing intimacy, Mr. Metzner.

Abbie speaks for absolutely all of us when, leaving the store, she bemoans their not having taken a few of the books with them from the Fenestella. Crane proposes that, without a clear library of guiding intelligence for their quest, they will have to figure out the rules on their own (haven't they been doing that all along?). A charming, light exchange outlining the rules of Witnesses follows. “Always tip the bartender, never start a land war in Asia....”

“Don't spoil the end of motion pictures,” Crane pipes up before, joking aside, Abbie reiterates for the gazillionth time this season that they must put their bond as Witnesses above all else, including all other relationships. Unlike almost every other time this season, however, this warning becomes almost immediately relevant.

We're next introduced, in tightly written, directed and edited scenes, to three strangers with serious rage issues with other people in their lives. A woman learns her husband has gambled away literally all of their assets. A young man on a bicycle is hit by a truck driver who blames him. A dead person resents a relative or friend bringing his/her lover to the funeral. A bell tolls and ample use of shaky cam shows us something is happening to these folks, and when each gets Sandman Eyes, we know it's not good. The first two folks each use supernatural violence against the person whom they feel wronged them; the last speaks for the dead.

As the bell stops ringing, each person returns to normal, with no memory of what they've done. Cut to Henry Parrish reading something in Latin from the Grand Grimoire and we have all the exposition we need as to who or what is behind these strange occurrences.

Ichabod and Abbie stride purposefully through the precinct, exposition flowing naturally between them. They're on their way downtown to investigate these events when Jenny catches up with them. The scene among these three is just marvelous—it's almost always magic when Jenny, Abbie, and Ichabod get together, and Metzner makes the most of it. Jenny tells the Witnesses Frank is actually batting for Team Evil. As we learned last episode, Frank was able to hide his evil from Katrina with a rune embedded in his hand. But the power of the rune is fading, and Good Frank fears Evil Frank will soon take over. He wants Jenny to get his family out of town to protect them from him.

With mind-boggling speed, Ichabod and Abbie come up with a “nuclear” option in the event Frank really has joined the Bad Guys: use the Gorgon's head (whoa, they kept that thing?!?!) to turn Frank to stone if necessary, giving them more time to figure out how to free his soul from Henry. It turns out Abbie's been researching how to reverse the Gorgon's curse in order to free Grace Dixon's daughter from her stone prison. They've uncovered the alchemical spell used by Pygmalion to free Galatea (naturally). When Crane explains this to Jenny, with professorial delight, and Jenny responds with her best “Pig-who?” stare, it's kinda fabulous.

Our detective work continues downtown, with Abbie interviewing witnesses, and Crane deducing, with the help of lots of nifty flashbacks from Seasons 1 and 2, that what they are observing is not only supernatural, but witchcraft (why Andy Brooks was included in this list I have no idea. Yes, he spoke for the dead, but not due to witchcraft). Our heroes proceed to make a number of supernatural deduction leaps, while at the same time feeling irritatingly behind the curve in figuring all this out.

The act break is wonderful, delightful, and wholly refreshing. But just before it, Abbie and Crane deduce that all those affected by these “fugue” states heard a bell just before they went Full Sandman. When they come upon a Pass & Stowe bell in the town square, Abbie tells Crane, so quickly one could miss it, “the same bell has been hanging here since colonial times. This is not it.” This is an extremely important part of their cracking the case, yet this clue is almost lost in the joke of Ichabod having cracked the Liberty Bell (“a little” he deadpans to end the act).

(It turns out he actually blew it up, which is one of the more creative interpretations of “cracked” I've heard).

We begin Act II in the archives, Crane explaining that the bell he “cracked,” an earlier version of the Liberty Bell, poured in the same mold, was being transported by soldiers working for the Crown in 1773. Crane blew up that bell using a “black powder charge of my own making,” so now we know where he got his skill at exploding himself out of a coffin. Very nice. The flashback also shows us Crane knew how to create a good diversion whilst blowing up the bell. Put a pin in that.

It turns out bells have long been associated with pagan, wiccan rituals. Crane reminds us “there was once a thriving coven in this area” thus the descendants with witch's blood could number in the thousands.

Wait, isn't it canon that there were two covens is Sleepy Hollow—one good, one evil? Also, since when are pagans evil? It is nice to see Nicole Beharie get a chance to show off her awesome language skills pronouncing the German thingie. Abbie continues abrogating canon by supposing that, “a bell rings, and a thousand people turn into witches? We're talking mayhem.” But those who were affected most recently engaged in acts of violence because at the precise moment their witch powers were awakened they felt they had been screwed over royally by the folks whom they attacked. Their anger and attacks were anything but random.

Deducing that the new bell had been placed in the town square intentionally, in order to awaken witches (I'm just not even going to ask if this meant the Liberty Bell raised witches in Philadelphia), Abbie realizes they need to talk to Katrina. But Crane tells us that, since her encounter with the warlock Solomon Kent, she's been distant and withdrawn. Guys, fan outrage or no, we needed to see that, to see what was happening in the Cranes' marriage.

This transitions us nicely to Katrina, back at the cabin, using blood magic to try to find Henry (since she thought he was alive, based on his dream-like visitation, why she didn't just bike over to Fredericks' Manor I have no idea). We know Katrina's in the process of turning to the dark side because she's back in her widow's weeds, the black corset-cursed dress she wore in purgatory. A lovely and moving reunion between Katrina and Henry follows, as Katrina's magic appears to bring her son through the door. But the whole bit about “instinct pure and simple” being what motivated Henry to kill Moloch--”now I realize it was part of a bigger plan,”--sounds an awful lot like a conversation in the writers' room after the fact.

Back in the archives, detective and deduction work continue apace. Crane and Abbie decide they again have to “crack” [read: explode] the bell, but all their C-4 is gone from stupidly blowing up the Witness library. Can't they just get more from Cop Supply? No, they can't, because we need a hilarious trip for Abbie and Ichabod to a hardware store, so that Crane can get the necessary supplies to recreate his own black powder charge.

But before that, we head over to Fredericks' Manor for the most important scene of the episode. Henry's cleaned up the place, has his beloved plants growing there now, tells Katrina that spring has come to Frederick's Manor. He can see his mother still fears him, tells her he means her no harm. He describes his previous homicidal behavior as “misguided choices I have come to regret.” Katrina's willing to let him off easy, but not that easy. “You stood by Moloch's side as he sought to bring the apocalypse!”

“His apocalypse, not mine,” Henry retorts, proving once and for all that Henry Parish really is a lawyer. Before my brain has time to deduce that this explanation explains absolutely nothing, Henry presents Katrina with the Grand Grimoire. She takes the book from him in awe, fearfully noting the power of the enchantments within, how much destruction one could cause with them. But Henry attempts to reassure her. “I no longer seek wanton carnage,” he tells her. “I've found my path, to bring back our kind.”

Katrina's surprised that her son wants to “create witchbreed.” (What does that mean? It sounds super cool--create witchbreed—but wouldn't that be what Katrina's parents did between the sheets? What Katrina and Ichabod did?)  “To what end?” Katrina wonders aloud. Henry then goes on to paint a vision he hopes will enchant her: a new coven, a thousand strong, made up of the modern-day descendants of Sleepy Hollow witches, with Katrina and her son at the center.

We're led to believe this idea is attractive to Katrina, but for this idea to have any power over her we needed to have seen previously that a) Katrina felt lonely as a witch in the 21^st century, b) Katrina lived in fear of her powers being found out and/or felt persecuted as a witch in either century, and/or c) that Katrina sought power, particularly over other witches. We've never seen any of these things.

Now, one could make the argument that that doesn't matter because Henry's vision isn't what really turns Katrina. All she wants is her son's forgiveness, acceptance and love—the chance to be a real mother to him. But it takes us quite a while into the episode to get to this place.

In response to Henry's plan, Katrina asks “what about your father?” Henry gently explains,“he can never be one of us.” Okay, Crane can never be a witch. So? It's not like he doesn't have a full-time job being a Witness. This will be great! A three-income family! Katrina then, inexplicably, tells her son, “you're asking me to give up everything I have believed in, fought for, for 200 years.”

“Yes, I am,” he replies, just so we are all clear the die has been cast.

Wait, huh? What? Why? If Henry's changed, as Katrina later argues to Ichabod, and if there's as likely to be “good” witches as “evil” witches among those “awakened,” why would Katrina have to turn her back on the Witnesses and their struggle against evil? Why couldn't she, Henry, and the good coven simply ally themselves with the Witnesses as the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart allied themselves with Washington & Co. back in the day? Wouldn't this be a good thing in the war against evil?

Thus we come to Problem #1: Katrina's fall, as written, required an unexplained and really irritating abrogation of canon. If you tell us in Season 1 that there were two witches' covens in Sleepy Hollow—one good, one evil—you cannot expect us to accept as inevitable that the coven formed by Katrina and Henry will produce “mayhem” endangering the “innocent citizens” of Sleepy Hollow—especially if, per Katrina, Henry has changed. Particularly when Katrina, a supposed Quaker, tells us in the pilot that she is part of an ancient order, sworn (something Quakers don't do) to fight the evil in Sleepy Hollow. My generation—the generation who had our fondest childhood memories shat on by George Lucas because he seemed to think respecting his own canon was optional—has very little in the way of patience for this.

All questions and concerns are meant to be smoothed away when Henry puts the nail in Katrina's proverbial (eventually actual) coffin, telling his mother, “I need you.” It seems that Henry, who, throughout Season 2 has proven infinitely more powerful than his mother, needs her for the awakening spell's success because unlike him, she's a full-blood witch. To the writers' credit, we have been shown that, since she started experimenting with blood magic, Katrina's competence and power have increased dramatically. But still, guys. Jeremy was strong enough to survive Katrina's coven of (presumably some) full-blooded witches when they cast a spell on him to stop his heart, but now he needs mom for the awakening ritual? Okay. Fine. I'll buy that, because frankly, that's a small potatoes problem in comparison.

Katia Winter's response to Henry is marvelous--she is totally believable as a woman seduced by the promise of family, and fulfilling her son's needs—but it's not enough. Even watching the ideas of “coven,” “family,” “my son needs me again, and this time I won't let him down” flit across her fantastically expressive face, I'm just not buying it. It was all. Just. Entirely. Too. Fast.

Thus we come to Problem #2: One cannot undo two entire seasons of a character being good, self-sacrificing, noble, brave, and—most importantly—insanely, head-over-heels in love with her husband, in a single episode, let alone a single scene. To have worked, Katrina's fall required a multi-episode arc, as well as considerably more planting of motive earlier in the season.*

We needed to see Katrina developing and expressing profound resentment of, and perhaps a sense of abandonment by, Crane, the person for whom she sacrificed her son and 250 years of her life. We needed to feel that the only person with whom Katrina feels any real affinity/understanding is her son. And we needed to see Henry really seducing his mother into believing he worshiped her. Her then choosing the only man in her life who does could have made more sense. **

What was particularly sexy, from a writing perspective, to me, about Katrina's fall is that she didn't choose evil. She chose her son. She didn't become immoral, she became amoral, vis-a-vis the battle of good vs. evil. That she started trying to murder Witnesses hither and yon, that she was about to raise an army of witches and the mortals of Sleepy Hollow could become collateral damage in the process, that her marriage was simply flushed down the toilet because, inconveniently, her husband was a Witness who might take issue with their son's actions...none of these were her objective, merely the inevitable result of her choosing her son above all else—results she accepted with womanly fortitude and not even a hint of looking back.

Later in the episode, Katrina tells Henry that he saved her soul. At last we are meant to fully understand Katrina's motivation, namely, that she has been wracked with guilt since she left her son in Grace Dixon's care to protect him, since she learned of his suffering as a child and then a young man buried alive after she herself had been imprisoned in purgatory for saving Ichabod's life. She has been a shell of a human, not fully alive, until this moment. Henry has offered her redemption.

This is a beautiful, believable motivation. This could have worked, over several episodes, had we seen more evidence of Katrina's guilt and sense of spiritual emptiness throughout the rest of the season. Her love for Henry we saw. Her maternal need to protect him, to save him, was very clearly demonstrated. Her primal need to be reunited with him, her joy and horror that he died, perhaps, to save her...all of this was very clearly set up in the season that preceded this moment. But guilt? The kind of guilt that would make her turn on the only man she ever loved not to mention her entire identity until that point, as a person and as a witch fighting for good? No. That was not established, Sleepy writers. I'm sorry, but you just did not earn that.

I have wished all season that you would really explore/show Katrina suffering from serious PTSD from her time in purgatory. I think this could have helped in this regard, since what essentially happens here is that, given a chance at redemption, given a chance to finally be there for her son, she loses her mind.

No words for how marvelous this was.

In a tempo change which mysteriously works, Abbie's and Crane's trip to Sleepy Hollow's version of Home Depot proves delightful. Crane discovers pink flamingos as Abbie explains lawn decorating. Mison's impersonation of a bobbleheaded gnome is awesome. Perfect as a man discovering power tools for the first time, and wondering what holiday might be celebrated with a “band of barbate pygmies and monopedal pink birds,” Mison again demonstrates that the prop room is his oyster. The dialogue throughout is charming and hilarious, and the guest actor who asks Crane if “flint and steel” is a CD or a cologne is great.

The hardware shopping excursion also allows our heroes more time to elucidate their plan – they'll casually, you know, with no one suspecting a thing, move that ginormous bell from the town square into the tunnels beneath Sleepy Hollow and blow it up. Sure. Why not?

When we're reunited with our heroes outside the tunnels, getting ready to push the bell the last few hundred feet to exploding safety, Ichabod gives us the clumsy, unnecessary exposition, “all that remains is to push the bell into the tunnels...” so we know something's going to happen. Cue Frank, clearly Evil, brandishing a rifle and firing on our heroes.

Jenny, Ms. BAMF, says she can handle Mr. BAMF, and boy can she. Fortunately, Frank was considerate enough to bring a bolt-action single shot, meaning he needs time to reload, so Jenny has time to go after him firing. The fight scene between Jenny and Frank is fantastic. Greenwood's pain is palpable as she decides she has no choice but to take Frank down. Frank wants to know where his family is and promises her he'll shoot to kill her next time, but Jenny promised Good Frank she'd protect them from him. Thus, when Jenny fires next she hits him square on, three times. But, this is Evil Frank. He rises, completely unphased, black eyes of evil shining, and Jenny takes off running.

The happy couple, together at last.

As Abbie and Crane try to move the bell into the tunnels to blow it up, Henry arrives with Katrina on his arm. Crane thinks that Henry has kidnapped Katrina, asks Henry to let her go, that “this”--whatever “this” is at this point--is between the two of them only. Now, let's just pause here a moment. This is the first time Crane has seen his son since the latter killed his adopted father, Moloch, possibly sacrificing his own life, rather than kill his birth father. Granted, the way Henry's and Katrina's arms are entwined does make it look like Katrina's his hostage. But, isn't it just a little bit possible that Crane would want a personal moment with Henry before jumping to the worst possible conclusion? A moment of, “hey, son, thanks for killing Moloch for us. How ya' doin? Oh, and by the way, do you know anything about these witches being awakened by a bell? And, um, why are you kidnapping your mom?”

Mison and Winter are marvelous in this scene. They are both just ruddy amazing. The problem isn't the scene, but the lack of preparation for it. It's just WAY too seismic a shift, WAY too quickly.

Katrina essentially breaks up with Crane in this scene, ending a 250+ year love story and marriage of heroic turns, a love affair which resulted in the creation of not one but TWO Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and time travel for them both, by saying that she never should have tried to hook up with a mortal. Wait, what?  Huh?  SERIOUSLY?!?!  She is cold as ice as soon as she sees her husband, which makes no sense at all.  The contempt with which she tells her husband, “the idea that a mortal man and I could truly make a life together....” OUCH.  Crane immediately realizes that she's siding with Henry out of guilt and love and tries to reason her out of it. I could have done without Crane's paternal, lecturing tone and his insufferable finger, but such behavior from an 18^th century man to his 18^th century wife is sadly believable.

At any rate, once Crane tells them they can't have the bell, the war is on, and Katrina strikes at Ichabod with one of her light-weapon-thingies. She and Henry force Abbie and Crane into the tunnels, and then Henry walls them in so he and Mom can take off with the bell unmolested.

In the tunnels, Abbie tries to sympathize with Crane, to the extent that he's ready to show shock or grief at this point (which Mison does, magnificently, with his face, but it's almost impossible to see given the lighting). Abbie suggests that maybe Katrina's under a spell of Henry's, but Crane's having none of it.  The story he's sticking to, understandably--as Katrina did before—is that destroying the head evil honcho will clean things up for his “victims,” possibly bringing both Katrina and Irving back to the light side of the Force.  In other words, Henry is the problem, not Katrina, but he's still going to hold Katrina to everything she's saying and doing (thank God). Crane assures Abbie he won't hesitate to kill Henry this time, and they reaffirm their commitment to each other. But would a little tenderness have been so out of the question here? I mean, shit. The man's wife just dumped him AND joined the dark side!

Henry and Katrina take the bell to the place her coven used to meet, the old town hall, which also happened to be where the bell Crane blew up was headed (so were Crane and Katrina on opposite sides, unknowingly, even then?). There, something is clearly on her mind; Henry worries she's having second thoughts, but she assures him that when Solomon Kent told her she had neglected the truth about herself, it was never about blood magic or power, only about Henry, and that now, he'd given her back her soul. All season, all she wanted was for her son to love and need her as she had loved him for two and a half centuries.

This much-belated quasi-explanation for Katrina's rapid moral 180 is interrupted by Crane summoning his son down to the street to meet him (so they're on the second floor?  Don't ask me how Katrina and Henry got that heavy bell up the stairs—they're witches—let's just assume magic was involved). Henry's, “you have to admire his tenacity” is delicious—kudos Mr. Noble.

Henry tells his mother to prepare the awakening ritual while he deals with his father. Now, we know from an earlier scene that the plan here is to distract Katrina and Henry so the bell can be destroyed.

Meanwhile, Irving's ruthlessly hunting Jenny in the tunnels under Sleepy Hollow.

In the street, Henry taunts his father that the latter won't hurt him because he hasn't yet. Again, could we pause here a moment, please? This is essentially Ichabod's last opportunity to reason with/reconcile with his son. I know he needs to prove to Abbie that he's willing to kill him, but to have no attempt at a loving, or at least civil conversation struck me as false, particularly after the marvelous scene between the two men in the church in “The Akeda.” Instead, Crane just tries to shoot his son, an assault Henry easily deflects by stopping the bullet with his hand. We're then treated to a marvelous exchange between father and son as the latter complains that Crane is just like Moloch, self-satisfied and self-serving, that both abandoned him, and Crane finally, deliciously, witheringly tells his son that he didn't abandon him--he didn't even know he existed.

When Henry's magic stops Crane's bullet, Abbie appears to begin racing her SUV towards him. Katrina comes to Henry's aid, but she doesn't just stop the SUV, she blows it up! Damn, when Katrina starts doing stuff, she really starts doing stuff!

Crane's response, a weakly yelled “Leftenant” and berating Katrina with “this is how a mother nurtures her son, by teaching him murder in cold blood?” did not work for me. Okay, first, Crane, you just tried to kill your son, so you're not really the moral expert here on parenthood. And second, when Abbie's SUV goes up in flames, Mison has a really tough job performance wise. He has to simultaneously project terror and grief that Abbie has been killed (in order to fool Katrina and Henry, and perhaps even the audience, into thinking she's dead), while at the same time, believably conveying to the audience that he knew she was not dead. I think the director fell down on the wrong side of this one, as Crane's response makes it abundantly obvious he knew she wasn't killed. We know how Crane responds when he thinks Abbie's dead (see, for example, Mr. Metzner's S2 magnum opus, “The Weeping Lady”) and that ain't it.

Katrina's comeback, “you and Abbie chose this fight. You know our cause is noble,” refers to her earlier mention of Washington screwing over American witchery. Supposedly, Washington made a deal with Katrina's coven that if they helped the patriots win the war, they could “reintegrate” into society. (I'm not sure “reintegrate” is the best word for what she wanted, since the covens' descendants merging so effectively with the rest of the population as to become invisible seems like a rather effective reintegration to me). Therefore, she and Henry, by resurrecting this coven, are merely righting an historical injustice.

Well, I might agree with you Katrina if a) you weren't acting like Patty Hearst circa 1970-something, and b) you had ever expressed any of this before. Again, Mr. Metzner, great job trying to create back-story where there was none, but there is only so much after-the-fact tailoring one can do and still earn the huge place you needed to get to by the end of the hour.

In one sentence, Ichabod nails Katrina, and the writers, with the question of the hour, of the season: “How can you turn you back on all we once were?” Which may be why Katia Winter's “it is already done,” spoken with just a hint of regret, is wholly inadequate and yet really perfect, and powerful.

(Katrina's devotion to Ichabod is canon. We needed to see, earlier, that she was capable of even considering a life without him. While I appreciate the restraint of this scene, without such narrative building, I kinda feel like if you're going to reverse canon, you have to give Katrina and Ichabod a knock-down, drag-out confrontation over the fact that Ichabod just tried to kill Henry and Katrina just tried to kill Abbie. Going into a scene where she's willing to burn her husband at the stake, we needed an explicit scene showing why and how Katrina is so totally done with Ichabod).

At any rate, while these two continue negotiating their divorce settlement, despite having woken up in bed next to each other that morning, John Noble's Henry marvelously discovers Abbie, alive and well, at the bell. “A valiant effort, clever even,” he says admiringly. At least he's finally showing his enemies some appreciation. Fortunately, he never does notice the explosives Abbie attached to the bell.

Meanwhile Jenny locks herself in Jefferson's cell's viewing room with the Gorgon's head (conveniently located in the jar formerly used for the Horseman's head, because, as Jenny deadpanned earlier, “everyone just has a head-storage jar lying around.” Gorgeous Mr. M.)

Lyndie Greenwood, I think I love you. 

Frank's hot on Jenny's heels. He glares at her menacingly from the cell, in a marvelous call-back to the season-premiere. He wants his family, and thinks they want him. “When the bell tolls they'll know what's in their blood,” implying that his family also has witch blood. Hold the phone. Frank, his wife, and daughter aren't from Sleepy Hollow. They're from New York City. It's certainly not impossible that they have witch ancestry, but this geographical origin story does feel forgotten.

We never see how Crane is captured, merely that Katrina and Henry have tied him and Abbie to a giant post in the old town hall, so they can keep an eye on them as they complete their witch-raising ceremony. Oh, and burn them once they're done.

What follows, though, is a fantastic scene of Crane and Abbie being really smart and working together to figure out how to defeat Henry and blow up the bell. The tactic, one of them shooting towards the explosives on the bell, and the other shooting towards Henry, works because they split Henry's attention. The bullet headed for Henry's chest lands, and he dies, finally claiming his birth name—Jeremy--and sharing some dialogue from Hamlet with his father. I'm not going to critique the death scene, except to say that, like the other scenes between Crane and Henry in this episode, it was wholly unsatisfying in terms of any paternal-filial love.

Thank you, Mr. Noble, for all you gave us.
You will be sorely missed.  Wish I could
say the same for Henry.

Moreover, it would have been so nice if Henry could have had an arc, particularly given his game-changing killing of Moloch. Noble can play such a complex character, yet the Henry we got in Ep. 17 was almost boring. He seems kind when he tells his mother that Ichabod can't be part of their future together because his father will never be one of them. Not 20 minutes later he's cackling gleefully about burning his father at the stake. Henry has seemed insane all-season, so this is more believable than Katrina's turn, but not by much.

The bigger problem with this scene is Henry's mortality. It's canon, from Episode 2.11, that Henry's immortality is what makes it possible for him to kill Moloch and not be destroyed. Yet, here a bullet, with some sort of supernatural accoutrement, kills him easily.  Judging from what follows in Episode 2.18, namely that the equally immortal Katrina dies of a simple stab wound, I'm guessing that—like elves—witches' immortality doesn't apply to direct injuries. It would have been nice not to have had to query Tolkien for an answer to that quandary since I'm pretty sure he's never been on SH's payroll (however present he may regularly be in the writers' room).

With Henry dead, Frank is thankfully freed from indentured servitude to the Horseman of War, and he and Jenny reunite in a scene that fell surprisingly emotionally flat for me.

I really wanted this scene to make me weep. 

Katia Winter finally gets to rip up some serious scenery, and does so magnificently, in the episode's epic denouement.  Katrina turns her grief-soaked rage on Ichabod, blaming him for all her sorrow, and casting a spell to send herself back to the day Ichabod would have died, had she not saved him, to ensure that this time he does die. When Abbie follows her through the time-portal back to the 18^th century to stop her, we're treated to a beautiful bas-relief of the pilot, this time with Abbie in Crane's shoes, wandering confused into 18^th century Sleepy Hollow, to the sounds of a colonial “Sympathy for the Devil.” It's an absolutely gorgeous set-up for the finale.

"Wait.  I'm WHERE?  WHEN?"

The show has been renewed, Sleepy Hollow is still afloat (thank God, thank Fox). But there were some serious iceberg scars left in the hull in the turning process. Katrina's fall was the largest scar.

*To his enormous credit, Metzner gave us some of the most believable chinks in Katrina's goodness: covering up the death of Mary in 2.5, and opting to save Headless in the hope she could redeem Abraham in 2.13. Don Todd also gave us some good stuff in 2.10, when Henry lays out for Katrina the idea that her saving Ichabod in the first place is what caused all their problems since, and in particular, his suffering.

**Goffman handed us a golden opportunity in “The Akeda” with Crane breaking Katrina's heart. Yet instead of the writers showing the woman feeling legitimate anger and heartbreak over his treatment of her, and sharing that heartbreak with her husband at high volume, we instead got the same forgiving, self-sacrificing Katrina Crane devoted to her husband. The conflict between them is never dealt with at all, which is a shame because a) it could have been interesting and b) it could have helped make Katrina's fall believable.