TV REVIEW: Sleepy Hollow “Pittura Infamante”

By Jennie Bragg

The good news is, the gang is back together. The bad news is, one of them may be a zombie minion of evil.

Frank Irving’s surprise return at the end of “Paradise Lost” was the cherry on top of a good episode. One where we saw all the main characters used successfully – Abbie and Ichabod together, Jenny thankfully back in play and in full snark mode, Katrina acting suspicious, and Headless acting menacing. Now Frank’s made it all the way to the police station, still looking dazed and confused – although possibly less thirsty. But instead of a happy reunion at the police station, he’s greeted with Abbie pointing a gun at him.

But let’s start at the beginning. We open with an art restorer working on a painting – and since it’s not a very good painting, it must have some other significance. Oh yes, there we are, the painting is oozing blood, much to the horror of the restorer. We’ll soon learn he is another of Ichabod’s few friends in Sleepy Hollow – and another who won’t make it out of the episode.

Ichabod and Katrina are out on a date at the Sleepy Hollow Historical Society, where the art restorer works. For the special occasion, Ichabod has made his second foray into modern clothing. No skinny jeans this time. No, he has his hair in a man bun and is wearing a high collared white shirt with a black vest and a sort of bow tie. European soccer player on top, Old West saloon barkeep on the bottom. And he evidently is wearing modern underwear, as his discreetly deals with a wedgie – something Tom Mison manages to make funny but not undignified.

This week’s “creepy crawly” is a revolutionary era painter turned serial killer. And for this week’s twistory, we find out that Katrina was the midwife to Abigail Adams, and that Abigail Adams spent her time capturing serial killers. She had Reverend Knapp managed to capture the killer in his own painting, but the poor art restorer inadvertently released him and now he’s killing again. This time, he’s using his victim’s blood to paint his own resurrection.

This week’s setup marks Katrina becoming a real member of the witnesses’ team, as she and Ichabod track down the killer using her flashbacks of Abigail, while Abbie is back at the police station trying to figure out whether Frank is back for good or evil. The Abbie of season two is not a soft touch, and she sends Jenny on a mission to secure whatever weapon Hawley has to kill zombies, just in case. Jenny ends up having to fish some special bullets out of a dead man’s body, in what looked like the worst episode of Fear Factor ever. She also convinces a skeptical Abbie that Katrina might be useful for figuring out whether Frank has gone to the dark side or not.

Katrina’s magic actually proves useful for a change, as she casts a spell to get the Cranes in and back out of the painting to save the painter’s second victim, but it takes Abbie to kill the painter, using those special bullets.

Does this mark a shift in Katrina’s role in the team? Last week saw her going rogue trying to help Headless. I liked the fishy Katrina we got in the last episode, and so was a little sorry to see her back on straight and narrow this week. Speaking of Headless, he didn’t make it into this episode, so we’ll have to wait at least another week to find out what Katrina’s plan is for him. This is the downside to a “monster of the week” episode, as it doesn’t move the big story forward much and leaves threads dangling. And I can’t help wonder if this is the new format for the show. This past weekend, Fox executives commented that the show had become overly serialized and dark this season, and were aiming to make it more episodic and lighter. More fun, less Apocalyptic gloom. My concern is that it may become just another supernatural procedural, not exactly an original idea. Here’s hoping that the witnesses still have some other horseman to worry about, or even a new “Moloch” threatening to bring about the Apocalypse and giving them something more to do than battle this week’s creepy crawly.

But on to next week, where it looks like we’re going find Frank Irving vindicated and set free. To do what, we’re not sure yet.