 |
| What the hell do they write on their Workman's Compensation claim? |
Damian Kindler and Phillip Iscove gave
us a very entertaining episode in 2.16, “What Lies Beneath.” The
villains terrified, whilst paying loving homage to two of the show's
artistic ancestors, Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(we all want to be Joss Whedon when we grow up, don't
we?); our heroes worked together very well and shared some sweet
moments; the choice Abbie and Crane are required to make gives us
some beautiful character insight; the “love story” between Crane
and Thomas Jefferson was interesting; Jefferson himself was more
fascinatingly written and played than Abigail Adams, Ben Franklin,
and George Washington combined, in my book; Irving and Jenny got
plenty of air time and made the absolute most of it; Calvin, a
potential new love interest for Abbie, proved a strong, charismatic
addition to the team, one with whom Abbie already has way better
chemistry than she ever did with Hawley; and the little bit of
Katrina and Henry we got was cool and appropriately creepy.
But, let's face it: we all know what
didn't work in this episode, namely a plot hole so huge the entire
episode started taking on water. That said plot hole didn't sink
this episode completely speaks volumes not only about the writers of
“What Lies Beneath,” but everyone involved in Sleepy Hollow
for the past two years, in creating characters and a world so
well-crafted and delightful they can outweigh unfortunate incidents
like this.
Our story opens, appropriately, with a
survey team studying what lies beneath Sleepy Hollow in preparation
for a new commercial development. They come upon the infamous ancient
tunnel system and in turn are sucked unwillingly into another, secret
tunnel system below that. We eventually learn that the three
unsuspecting workers awakened an ancient fighting force of George
Washington's called “Reavers,” posted there a couple of centuries
ago to protect an anti-apocalypse version of the Bodleian for Abbie
and Crane's ultimate usage. Said fighting force, once men, were
supernaturally made into vicious creatures who could survive
indefinitely—or at least until Crane and Abbie showed up.
Unfortunately, these fellas have awakened monstrously hungry, and,
not unlike their Firefly namesakes, they are quite willing to
slake that hunger with human flesh. Hence, our surveyors go missing.
Abbie and Crane, meanwhile, are
strolling around a warship because the Witnesses have a gorgeously
weird idea of courtship, and because “sacrifices made for the
greater good” is the theme of this week's episode. (Also because
Fox is apparently in danger of losing the US Army recruitment
account.) Abbie's still not giving Crane much emotional quarter,
managing during their conversation to look everywhere but
at his handsome self, which I understand not at all. But hey, at
least they're together and central to this week's story, which is a
huge improvement over much of the season. Crane gives us a great
rant as he watches people take selfies, outraged by people “posting
life” instead of living it. He then goes on to tell us “there
are reminders of conflict everywhere.” Well, Crane, you are
standing on a friggin' battleship, for
example.
Abbie wonders aloud where their fight
against evil might end. To encourage her, Crane reminds Abbie that
the Bible foretold a seven-year mission for the Witnesses. “Have
faith,” he softly insists, to which the fandom replies, en
masse, “we're trying, Fox, but it would be a hell of a lot
easier if you'd just renew the show already, damnit.”
Reyes summons them from their Not A
Date (via text; sadly, Sakina Jaffrey is still MIA) to help with a
missing persons investigation. Abbie and Crane don't make it to the
scene until well after dark because daylight is just not scary. At
the scene, a journalist stops them before they can make it to the
tunnels, and we're introduced to Calvin Riggs, Pulitzer-prize winning
war correspondent, and an intelligent, brave and (naturally, because
this is Sleepy Hollow), ridiculously handsome man who might
actually be worthy of Abbie. Between the introduction the writers
gave Calvin, and Sharif Atkins' charismatic portrayal, we have a
potential new regular who may add an interesting dimension to our
story (as long as he's clear that someday, eventually, Abbie will
leave him for Crane). (You are clear on that, right, Calvin?).
(Oh dear, I think I feel another
Horseman of the Apocalypse coming on).
 |
"Hi. My name is Calvin, and I'll be your cock-blocker
for Season 3." |
For now, Calvin's just here to humanize
the Reavers' victims: his brother is among them. He takes a lot of
photos with his $7,000 camera, but mostly just wants to make sure the
cops do their job (oh, and get Abbie to stop giving him “propaganda
face” long enough to give him her email address). Abbie promises
he'll be her first call once they know anything, and heads with Crane
down into their beloved tunnels.
Our heroes aren't the only ones on the
job, but they are the only search team that “know[s] about this
section,” thankfully. When they find a camera used by the survey
crew, and watch the playback, they see what they're dealing with in
terms of monsters but they also see something curious which Crane
recognizes: a room, underneath them, the architectural design of
which points unequivocally to Thomas Jefferson. Huh. That's odd.
So they decide, monsters or no, to climb down into the lower tunnels
and have a look-see, as you do.
Shockingly, this doesn't go well. On
the upside, they do get some valuable intel. There are a lot
of these creatures down below, and our heroes are going to need more
firepower to have any hope against them. But more importantly, they
learn that Calvin's brother is still alive, in captivity somewhere
close by (in their battle with the Reavers, one of the workers had
the presence of mind to hold onto a radio; I want these guys on my
team when the apocalypse comes).
On the downside, Crane is nearly taken
by the Reavers, saved only by flashes from Calvin's camera as the
journalist enters the upper tunnels to capture all this fun on film.
The light from the flashes unnerves the Reavers sufficiently that
Crane reaches the top alive. Calvin immediately starts getting pissy
with Abbie because, despite the fact that until a half-second ago she
and her partner were fighting for their lives, she hasn't called him
yet to tell him of this latest development.
Having grown up in Sleepy Hollow,
Calvin's neither surprised nor thrown by the seemingly supernatural
creatures Crane and Abbie have encountered. He demands to be
embedded with them. After a quick confab with her fellow
Witness—Crane, of course, doesn't want such a handsome man within a
mile of Abbie—the leftenant grants him “limited access” to
their investigation, confiscating his cell phone for good measure.
After the first act break, we're
introduced to some wonderful C story: Frank Irving having a drink
with Jenny Mills, and seducing her into helping him break into the
police evidence locker, ostensibly to recover his wedding ring.
Jenny--being Fabulous Fucking Jenny Mills--is skeptical, silently
notes the weird tattoo on Frank's arm, and eyes him with heartening
reserve. She agrees to help him, but also volunteers as his back-up.
Abbie and Crane return to the archives
for more firepower, research, and detective work. Happily they need
no help with witchcraft in this episode since Katrina is, as usual,
napping. Crane's deduction regarding the “fenestella,” the room
he's convinced Jefferson designed and built under Sleepy Hollow,
leads naturally to Crane recounting his relationship to the third
President. It turns out Jefferson was one of his many mentors, and
Crane counted him a friend—so much so that he even helped him edit
a draft of the Declaration of Independence, in a flashback scene
which is handled beautifully, refreshingly devoid of camp. But
suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Jefferson turned cold to Crane,
cut him off.
“In the common vernacular,” he
explains to Abbie, “he 'unfriended' me.”
Delightful, but you guys meant “current
vernacular,” right? Since “common vernacular” is redundant?
Crane still carries the wound of that break-up, as Jefferson never
explained himself.
The time in the archives also
introduces us to the history of the Reavers, whose unswerving loyalty
to the first President was repaid by their being made into immortal
monsters forced to spend eternity beneath the ground guarding
whatever the founding fathers thought important enough to keep in the
fenestella.
 |
Seriously, Frank! We all knew Ms. BAMF the Younger
wouldn't fall for this. |
At the police department, Jenny and her
gorgeous romantic heroine hair help Irving break in, pretend to stand
guard, then follow him. She sees the evidence he's actually taking is
from The Hellfire Club and pulls a gun on him. Lyndie Greenwood
deftly delivers lots of exposition to explain to viewers just tuning
in why this matters, and a brief, physical confrontation follows.
Frank takes off, leaving Jenny her gun.
Armed to the teeth, our heroes return
to the tunnels, and, much to Calvin's horror, also commandeer his
$7000 camera to use as a flying Reaver deterrent. Our heroes get a good
scary fight from the Reavers, escaping eventually through an open
door, into the gorgeously lit fenestella, and a face-to-face meeting
with...Thomas Jefferson. As act breaks go, I daresay, that one's
pretty hard to beat.
Once we meet Jefferson, things start to
get rather interesting. Save his (sarcastic, I hope?) insistence
that Crane call him “Mr. President”--something Jefferson would
never have done--and Crane's incessant courtly bows (Abbie gets one;
Jefferson gets three?), the meeting with Jefferson is charming.
Crane is enchanted, while Abbie remains marvelously reserved as
Jefferson greets her warmly (we learn later that he immediately
recognized her as the Second Witness).
 |
Crane has so much more chemistry with Jefferson
than he ever had with Katrina. It's sad. |
Jefferson's presence in the fenestella
is a stellar creative invention: he's a hologram, powered by a
delicate but indefinite electricity source co-created by Jefferson
and Katrina's coven (damn but those witches got around), and provided
with a perfect facsimile of Jefferson's personality, thought
processes, memories and values. But near as I can tell, his sole
reason for being there is to welcome Crane and Abbie when they
eventually find the place. Couldn't he have just left them a note?
Beyond powering Jefferson's hologram, which Crane hilariously keeps
running his hand through (“could you please stop doing that,”
Jefferson entreats), I have no idea what the point of the delicate,
indefinite electrical source is. To keep the lights on? Couldn't
they have just left some wood for torches, trusting Abbie and Crane
to figure how to light them? Was the place climate-controlled to
keep the books and scrolls in good condition?
Meanwhile, Jenny catches up with
Irving, and with the help of a very moving performance from Orlando
Jones and a powerful flashback, we learn that Frank protected his
humanity, before his fatal confrontation with War, with a rune stolen
from Henry. The little bit of Good Frank left in him broke in to steal a ledger from the Hellfire Club proving wire
transfers of $1.37 million dollars, and the flashdrive that
would allow him to transfer that money to his family. He gives the latter to
Jenny and begs her to protect them from Evil Frank, about to
overtake Good Frank, because the power of the rune is fading. Jones and Greenwood are magnificent together.
Back with Jefferson, Abbie and Crane
are ever-so-slightly impressed with the fenestella. But they're also
unequivocally clear that their object at the moment is to find the
workers and free them from the nasty clutches of the Reavers, and
they're not going to let a little thing like a treasure trove of
answers to every question they've ever had about their purpose and
the fight against evil come between them and those men.
 |
| Ms. BAMF the Elder. As usual, clear as the proverbial bell. |
And here would be where our plot begins
to take on water. In an agonizingly slow bit of exposition,
Jefferson explains that the fenestella is there to help Crane and
Abbie. Abbie, never a big fan of wasting time hanging out with a
dead white guy when men's lives are at stake, leaves Crane to
negotiate with his old pal--“get him to help”--and goes in search
of the men. Just below the fenestella she finds a “nest” of
(currently) sleeping Reavers, the fenestella's power source, and the
two surviving surveyors. Abbie signals the men to sit tight, that
she'll be back for them, and returns to tell Crane.
But Jefferson's having none of it.
Attacking the nest, he says, will destroy the fenestella. “It
weighs on me that these men must die, but the information within
these walls eclipses the needs of the few.” Both Abbie and Crane
are horrified by Jefferson's conclusion, but this fan is deeply
grateful for your showing Jefferson as morally ambiguous at best.
When Abbie says “Mr. President,” she glances at Crane, and he nods
to show her he agrees—men before books—in an absolutely gorgeous
economy of storytelling, bond-showing.
 |
I'm so glad you guys finally got work again. I was worried about you
when Firefly got cancelled. What have you been up to the last 12 years? |
I just need to pause a moment here and
encourage fans to go back and watch this entire episode for no other
reason than Nicole Beharie. She is so beyond marvelous, especially
in the scenes with Jefferson. You can see the extraordinarily
complex emotions and thoughts this woman is having simultaneously in
response to meeting this man, and it's all SO RIGHT in terms of
strengthening Abbie's character as a badass hero. The subtlety of
Beharie's performance, her range, are just awe-inspiring.
Well, huzzah! Abbie and Crane manage to
free the two surviving men, leaving the fenestella and a dejected
Jefferson behind them, without harming the power source or the
library at all! It would seem they can have their cake and eat it
too! Battling fierce Reavers, they make it to the surface and hand
off the traumatized men to Calvin.
And then our A-story really
starts listing. When Crane and Abbie reach the top of the secret
tunnels, they agree quickly that they have to kill the Reavers, and
blowing up the power source of the fenestella is the only way to do
so.
Wait. Huh? Why? The Reavers were down
there for 250 years and never bothered a soul! Can't you just
re-bury them until you get a chance to come back and empty the
fenestella of its invaluable, irreplaceable contents?
Crane tells Abbie to take the surviving
surveyors to get medical attention, and then quite heroically goes back
into the tunnels alone. A flash-bang scares off enough of the
Reavers to get him to the fenestella, and then he shoots and
hand-fights two more. But just as he's about to go into the Reavers'
nest, an iron fence comes down out of the ceiling to block his way.
It seems despite being a hologram, Jefferson still has some tricks up
his sleeve, and he's had about enough of these ungrateful Witnesses
trying to destroy his greatest invention.
And at last we come to the reason
Jefferson abandoned Crane. It seems that, like everyone else Crane
cared about in 1781, Jefferson also knew he was a Witness. But
apparently the “prophecy” required that everyone keep this secret
from him until the Second Witness appeared. Thus when Crane's
research and initiative took him too close to the truth, Jefferson
relieved him of his work as his assistant before Crane could discover
the fenestella's purpose.
The chamber, Jefferson goes on to
explain, represents his proudest achievement. That the Witnesses are
both there in the flesh fulfills his grandest hopes. “The price I
paid in building all this,” he regretfully tells Crane, “was our
friendship.”
“And now you tell me it must all be
destroyed,” Jefferson opines.
No, it musn't. At least not yet, and
not for these reasons. And that's the fundamental problem with this
story.
Mison's performance as Crane,
passionately arguing that if these three men stumbled across the
Reavers, there will be more; that the world is changed, and 300
million Americans now live above the fenestella and they cannot
endanger them, is spot-on. His performance is not the problem;
Crane's argument is. He reminds Jefferson he once told him “a
single life is worth more than a thousand books,” and while I agree
that's true, and am glad to see our heroes agree that's true, this is
such a lousy justification for blowing up the fenestella I don't even
know where to start. Of course, there was a reason why it had to be
done then, and a good one, but it's buried in the denouement, and I
had to piece it together myself. But there's no good reason
explicated at the time why Abbie and Crane couldn't have come
back
later with Jenny, Calvin's camera and a U-Haul, killed
off the rest of the Reavers, and moved that library out of the
fenestella and into the Archives. Even killing the Reavers doesn't really sit well with me. These were men sent to those tunnels as Crane's allies, to help him and the side of good. Sure, the Reavers were hungry. But throw the fellas some take out, pat them on the back for a god-awful job LONG well-done, and let them go back to sleep.
What did make sense, in the denouement,
is that the workers' experience with the Reavers had to be
explainable to their traumatized minds and the police as an attack by
wild animals living underground. Naturally, this would inspire the
police and/or department of wildlife to immediately investigate the
tunnels. Had they done so, before the A-Team could come back and
clean out the joint, they not only would have found the deadly,
inexplicable Reavers, but the even more inexplicable Thomas Jefferson
and a library that would have confused and terrified them mightily.
The Witnesses had to make sure that
didn't happen. Blowing up the fenestella gave them the excuse of a
“gas line explosion,” to keep immediate search teams out, and
keep future teams from finding anything in tact once they did go in.
Unfortunately, that's not the kind of heroic choice we need Abbie and
Crane to make. Saving people is one thing, but keeping
information from them by destroying it... not quite so sexy, not the
kind of stakes that make for a great B story. Unfortunately, this
meant our stakes and our story were at odds with each other.
Anyways, Jefferson finally comes
around, tells Crane the best spot to plant his charges for maximum
effect, waxes poetically that the country is in good hands, and Crane
runs out the door—without grabbing even ONE book and stuffing it in
his satchel! As Charlie Brown put it,
Upon Crane's return to the surface,
Abbie says, “I can't believe we just blew up the author of the
declaration of independence” to which Crane charmingly replies,
“truth be told, he insisted.” Very cute lines, very well
delivered, but, no, he didn't. He yielded. C'mon, guys. We were
there. It was like, four seconds ago!
Crane's conclusion, upon blowing this
knowledge nirvana to hell, that they still have the internet—granted,
I understand that it was meant to be a joke—didn't land for me at
all. If that were true, there would again have been no moral
quandary for our heroes. It wouldn't have mattered that they blew up
the fenestella. Their decision to save the men would have no cost,
and therefore could not be heroic.
(Again, couldn't Crane have thrown a
FEW books in his satchel on the way out the door?)
The beauty of the love story between
Crane and Jefferson, Steven Weber's delightful portrayal of Jefferson
as a fierce intellect with an ambiguous morality at best, and at
worst of all, willing to let men die to save knowledge, is extremely
well done. Unfortunately, it's all tainted for this viewer because a
choice is presented between two options which need not be in conflict
with each other. Stakes are posed that needn't be stakes.
Our concluding scene between napping
Katrina and Henry is marvelously creepy. Katrina awakens to see her
son sitting before her. They chat a bit, he hands her a dead rose
with lots of thorns, one pricks her and causes her to bleed, then
suddenly she wakes and he's gone! She believes it was all a dream.
But when she gets up to wash her hands, she sees the blood and
realizes he really was there. This oft-used trope was very
well-done. I do wish we could stop raiding Stevie Nicks' closet for
Katrina's wardrobe, but the audience teasing of this scene was great.
