Sleepy Hollow: Incident at Stone Manor

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There are a lot of aspects of this episode I thoroughly enjoyed and a few I had no patience with. I love how Ichabod and the others refuse to give up on the idea that Abbie is alive and must be saved. In fact, Ichabod is  desperate to save her and will do almost anything to get it done.

I’m not averse to a relationship between Ichabod and Abbie. I’m a lot more comfortable now with the two of them expressing their devotion to each other, now that Katrina is gone. I just think it’s a bit soon after her loss. On the other hand, it is a long time coming. I think Ichabod was dealing with his feelings for Abbie long before Katrina died.

We’re back with Abbie, picking up where the last episode left off. It’s been awhile because we can see that her hair has gone back to its natural state. I hope she keeps it that way. I like it. It seems like  her isolation is making her  stir crazy but actually it’s pretty common for people who spend a lot of time alone to amuse themselves by talking out loud. The problem comes when they can’t stop doing it.

The show highlights Abbie’s resourcefulness, which I enjoyed. She’s smart enough to make fire, and create a chess game, but there’s no Wilson, no night time, no other life forms, and she doesn’t seem to need food or drink, so life is very, very boring.

Jenny, Joe, and Ichabod hit on the idea of sending Ichabod’s astral form to look for her. I like the way this team is working. I’ve got some drawbacks with the addition of Sophie, just like Jenny seems to. I hope she’s on the up and up and not just a bad guy in disguise.

Ichabod is successful in finding Abbie, who has  been missing him terribly. Since he’s non-corporeal, he can’t effect the environment, but he can keep her company and talk through ideas with her, to help her find an escape.

Pandora and her boyfriend, The Hidden One, wish to come out of hiding and take over the world. My eyeballs were rolling fast and deep at their level of reasoning for that. They really don’t have any lofty goals. Be evil and try to take over the world seems to be it. The only way they could accomplish such a thing would be to plunge the world into a new Dark Ages of some kind, because on their own, they’re like those Trailer Park couples who plan to be rich some day. The Hidden One can lift castles out of the ground so maybe he could try a job in construction.

Pandora sends her astral form to see Abbie in the Catacombs. She can’t do anything to Abbie, so mostly succeeds in pissing Abbie off enough, to destroy the little stone she came to get. Angry about that, she severs Ichabod’s astral cord. But it’s cool. Abbie is smart enough to figure things out.

Earlier, during one of her walking tours, she discovered Betsy Ross’ sword stuck in a pile of rocks and figures out how Betsy managed to escape. She ends up saving herself and Ichabod, and that’s some beautiful shit, if you ask me.

Back with our ‘Vaders of the story, the Hidden One is pining for his lost position,  and upset that his power-stone is broken, thanks to his girlfriend. He seems more than happy to take Pandora’s life energy for himself, and leave her laying on the ground in a weakened state, but that’s the kind of thing that happens when you follow power hungry, narcissistic, wanna-be despots. They’re happy to use you for their own ends because that’s  what you’re there for.

Maybe Pandora will get a clue, change her mind, and turn on him. I actually want to like her, but she’s fallen in with a bad crowd, so  I despair for her future. She’ll probably suffer whatever fate he’s going to suffer when he’s defeated.

Simultaneously, we get to watch Joe, Jenny and Sophie use their big brains to defeat one of the monsters, who has shown up early to Pandoras summoning, a gargoyle from a French church, restored to Sleepy Hollow, brick by brick, whose history I remember from Art School. This time I was totally squicked out by the monster. I hate inanimate objects with a mind of their own and was hoping, when I first saw the gargoyles, that they wouldn’t be doing any extracurricular activities.

Jenny and Joe want to do things the long way around, using spells and books and stuff. They do a pretty good spoof of Ichabod and Abbie’s methods of crime solving and that got a good laugh out of me. Sophie comes up with the more pragmatic approach of using construction equipment, and who doesn’t want to kill a gargoyle, by covering it in concrete, which is all kinds of awesome.

One monster down, about bajillion more to go, maybe.

The Scooby Gang return to The Archives, just in time for Jenny’s happy reunion with Abbie, and to wake up Ichabod.

This ain’t one of my favorite episodes but it’s alright. I liked seeing Abbie’s return because what kind of show is it without her snarking on Ichabod. I have to give a letter grade slightly below last week’s episode because there were a few moments that felt “by the numbers” and Jenny had a couple of “Afterschool Special” speeches, that I had no patience for. Also, the villains need better reasons to be villainous, other than liking being evil.

Otherwise, it’s not a bad episode. I’ve resigned myself to the idea that the show will never be as good as that first season, but we what have now is close enough, and I can live with close enough.