I’m admittedly not up on my fairy tales and folklore, but I am looped that the source material is wicked darker than the versions from our childhood. Case in point, last week’s Sleepy Hollow had a Pied Piper whose flute is a human femur bone. Shudder. On top of that, going back several generations, he likes to lure girls from their homes, and if he doesn’t get his quota, he drops the rest of the family’s children. Despite that darkness, the episode was solidly entertaining.
We begin with Ichabod learning to drive Abbie’s Jeep, and doing fairly impressive pinwheel drifts in the parking lot, to boot. This leads to a chat between them where Ichabod calls her out that she wants him to know how to drive in case he’s ever on his own. He tells her they will die or triumph together–there is no one scenario without the other in tow. Love that.
So, once on the case of a new missing girl, and after Ichabod watches Abbie fall into a catatonic dream state and they realize what they’re dealing with, Ichabod and Abbie cross paths with Hawley again, and he hilariously addresses Ichabod as “Pride and Prejudice,” which I ran back a few times.
Together, they defeat the Piper, for a bit, and rescue the girl, only to have her mother drive her back into the woods as a peace-offering so the rest of her children will live (which begs the question of why report her missing in the first place … details).
They finally properly vanquish him and save all of the family’s children. Hawley wants the bone flute for his reward. Abbie snaps it in half before handing it over, and then it turns out that Parrish is the buyer and he’s grinding it up anyway. (Hmmmm.)
At the asylum, Irving works on firing Parrish and calls him out for his true identity, and then realizes he’s in a pickle because he’s signed over his soul to Moloch via the bloody signature when he and Parrish first met. That’s not good.
No Jenny, Katrina, or Abraham, or really, Parrish last week. Very streamlined. I liked it. It was nice to see Ichabod and Abbie sit on the banks of One Tree Hill … er Sleepy Hollow and drink overpiced coffee (equal to three horses, says Ichabod) and just take a breath. I say it every week, but I really do love that they talk to each other.
Here’s a sneak peek of tonight’s episode.
Photo and Video Courtesy of Fox.