Well, well, well. I was sort of answered in my request for an actual air-clearing between Crane and Abbie on Friday’s Sleepy Hollow, and while it didn’t put everything on the table, it was a massive step in the right direction toward Abbie beginning to heal.
The boogedy of the week is the Jersey Devil, who is, of course, revealed to be an old crony of Crane (and foe of Franklin), who decided to experiment on himself way back in, turning himself into the scourge of the Jersey woods. This time around, he’s falling in liege with VOB (or The Hidden One as they formally tag him this week, but I still like VOB).
Abbie keeps taking timeouts to commune with her sigil and is very nearly discovered by Jenny when she and Joe convene at Casa Crane-Mills for Sunday brunch. Jenny and Crane have a quiet chat that maybe not all is well with Abbie, but they agree to adopt a wait and watch *spy* approach.
Abbie is called out to the case of a gruesome murder that seems animalistic, and they realize it’s the Jersey Devil, but not the specifics until they get back to their books and Crane figures it out. They go visit Dr. Leeds’ underground laboratory, which is underneath some ruins, and discover that yes, he’s spent the last two centuries hiding out and picking off folks in the woods.
Leeds returns to find them there and he and Crane taunt each other a bit before he attacks, leaving Crane to die of a scorpion sting from his tail. Thankfully, because they’re in a lab, the components are there for an antidote. A barely conscious Crane manages to tell Abbie what to mix together. She spills it and when she turns back to remix it, she’s distracted by a gold version of the sigil that Leeds has kept on hand through the millenia.
Crane begs Abbie to help, alternating between “Lieutenant” and “Abbie,” and just as he blacks out she realizes she’s letting him die. She races to fix another preparation and then she has him drink it, but she clutches the sigil to her chest all the same. He rouses and calls her out on it. She admits, in the same terms that someone would use for an addiction, that she needs it, and it was the only thing that kept her sane during her year.
Crane tells her he understands, but clearly there’s a line that was almost irreparably crossed when she nearly let him die. They come back to that at the end of the hour, after pulling it together to tag team Leeds and dispatch him via a strike to his homemade lightning rod (which sounds dirty, but it was actually effective … and squishy).
Back at home, Crane walks in on Abbie clutching the gold sigil and reminds her that because it was found in a place of evil, it cannot connote any good, no matter how much comfort it brings. She agrees that it’s time to let it go and she hands it to him with a simple, “I need your help.”
Also in the mix we get the backstory on Pandora and VOB, that she was a servant girl who took a shine to him when he’d been cast out and he used her to seek his revenge on the other gods and then elevated her to his level (although we don’t get the story on how he was cast out a second time).
On the Joe and Jenny front, they head home after brunch for a little afternoon loving that’s interrupted when they find the airstream flooded. Joe throws some of his money at the problem, replacing it with a shiny new RV and carefully storing Jenny’s valuables and she responds a mite bit ragey that he was presumptuous to have done so. So he puts it all back, she makes nice and kisses him, and then locks him out. I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll be back in a future episode with nary a comment.
I’m very glad to have Abbie and Crane back on almost the same page. This was also mostly a core four episode — no Danny, no Sophie, no Betsy — which I also appreciated. I’m still not where or why Pandora and her VOB fit. The show works (for me) as a straight MOTW yarn. We also get a throwaway comment that Crane’s citizenship bid was rejected because he skipped the interview while Abbie was MIA. I almost wonder (no spoilers) whether his Pledge of Allegiance as a newly-minted U.S. citizen will be the last thing we see this season. If it turns out that’s the last image ever, I’ll be disappointed to see them go, but it’ll be an earned resolution to our tale.
Sleepy Hollow airs Fridays at 8e/7c on FOX and 8e/p on CTV two for the rest of the spring. Here’s a sneak peek of this week’s episode, “Into the Wild.”
Photo and Video Courtesy of FOX