 |
"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 21st 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 18th century man to his 18th
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 18th 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 18th 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.
