SLEEPY HOLLOW Review: Sisters and Dentists and Monsters

Sisters Are Doing It….

The end of last week’s episode saw Crane feeling very comfortable back in Sleepy Hollow with Abbie. Maybe a little too comfortable. For some reason, the fastidious housekeeper of episode two is gone, and Ichabod is now slouching on the couch playing video games, with empty candy wrappers and soda cans littered about him. Mom comes in to nag him about when he’s going to stop playing and do his homework. No sorry, Abbie comes in and asks why he’s not studying for his citizenship exam. Which, well, several things. First, applying for citizenship takes a long time. I am pretty sure that exam is a ways off. Second, eidetic memory. Remember, show? He’s supposed to have one. That’s why he’s not going to spend hours studying. Anyway, their scene of domestic discord is broken up, thankfully, by a phone call from Joe, who says that another monster may be on the loose.

This time, Jenny joins Crane and Abbie on the scene of the first monster attack – and by the way, why is Abbie allowed to bring anyone she wants into a crime scene? Is she on the Friends and Family Plan at the FBI? Anyway, Jenny and Abbie compare childhood memories – I love the theme this week of how even close siblings don’t remember their childhood the same way and the whole big sister-little sister dynamic – while Crane is off engaging in some pratfalls with the child who’s been terrorized by this monster.

Once the team puts its plan to defeat the Abyzou into action, Abbie spills to Jenny that she’s tracked down their father. After the buildup of the first few weeks, it was almost anti-climactic but it worked. Abbie has a lot of other tensions building in her life right now: between her FBI job and being a Witness; with her boss and their relationship history; there are hints that her mentor, and father figure, Corbin may have been hiding more secrets; and it looks like Pandora has set her sights squarely on Abbie. The girl has a lot on her plate right now, so probably best that she and Jenny aren’t on the outs.

Added to her troubles is the realization that they didn’t quite work out the Abyzou’s weakness as they thought. Abbie and Jenny realize this while attempting to defeat the demon – a very creepy, backwards-walking creature with a gaping maw – and failing. Abbie ends up in the hospital while Jenny and Crane end up back at the Archives trying to figure out where they went wrong.

This leads to a frightening encounter for Abbie with Pandora, who’s in disguise this week as a nurse at the hospital. Abbie is drugged up with tubes in her, when Pandora comes in to mess with her head: “Hello Sleepyhead.” Meta, very meta, Sleepy Hollow. She continues to engage in psychological warfare with Abbie, asking what she most fears to lose. Is it her father? Pandora also reveals something about her own, ahem, difficult father relationship and her way of resolving it: having her father fed to a lion. Ooo-okay, this may not be the best pathway for Abbie.

Thankfully, Crane and Jenny have worked out the real weakness of the Abyzou. After Crane uses his silver tongue to get hold of Paul Revere’s dental kit, he realizes that the tools combine together to create a weapon. Silver exposes the Abyzou, allowing Crane and Jenny to see its weak spot and kill it. The end all comes fairly quickly at this point, with the two attracting the Abyzou again with a child’s tooth and dispatching it without too much drama.

In between solving supernatural crimes, Crane is being ardently pursued via text message by Miss Corinth and ranting about dentists. He also appears to have some unresolved feelings about Betsy Ross. The flashbacks with Betsy are still a bit of a mystery – it’s not clear why she’s being presented as the conduit to Crane’s past now and Crane himself is oddly passive in these scenes.

NEXT: A Tricky Balance