Sleepy Hollow - 'Go Where I Send Thee...' and 'The Weeping Lady'

You have to take the journey...*

As my darling daughter prevented her parents watching anything new this weekend, here's a couple of episodes of Sleepy Hollow I'd been meaning to review for a while.

In 'Go Where I Send Thee...' we revisit Abbie's past, as a child kidnapping leads her back to a woman who helped her when she was orphaned. Recognising some family memorabilia (and taking umbrage at the canonisation of an ancestor he - naturally - knew personally to be a cad,) Ichabod realises that the Lancaster family's surse (to lose a daughter each generation) is the work of a Pied Piper in the service of Moloch. With a little help from mercenary artefact hunter Nick Hawley (a man with a truly ludicrous collection of magical gizmos to  not believe in magic even a little bit) they rescue the kidnapped girl, but her mother takes her back into the woods, because the curse has a second edge to its blade that forces a truly terrible choice.

** Well, it certainly ends badly for someone.

The Piper is immensely creepy, thanks to a combination of costuming and eerie camera effects to visualise his sonic powers. The added element of child threat makes this episode good, old-fashioned nightmare fuel. As a cherry on the sundae, former captain Frank Irving tries to fire his attorney on the grounds that he is the infernal Horseman of War, only to learn that due a trick pen he's already signed his soul away in blood. He is also given a sneak preview of how that will end for him**.

It's okay; I wasn't planning to sleep anyway.

Following up the creepfest of 'Go Where I Send Thee...' is 'The Weeping Lady', which is probably as close as Sleepy Hollow is going to get to doing The Woman in Black. It begins with the mysterious death of Caroline, a lovely Civil War reenactor with a sweet crush on Ichabod. There's a  La Llorona in town and she has a personal beef with anyone laying a hand or even an overfamiliar eye on Ichabod.

Once more, the villain is a personal acquaintance of Ichabod's (I'm mostly okay with this, because 'destiny') and indeed was his promised bride when they were both children. This woman, Mary Wells, even went so far as to try to 'save' him from the clutches of the colonies (and the trashy ginger witch who seduced him from his kin and country) but supposedly went home again when he wouldn't turn. Once the day is saved and the Weeping Lady put down, it emerges that she was killed in a confrontation with Katrina, who wrote a letter in Mary's handwriting so that Ichabod wouldn't take her body home to England and screw up his destiny with the sense of damned decency that leads him to turn up and personally apologise for giving the doomed historical seamstress the wrong idea**.

I liked the way this episode was put together, with Henry raising Mary through her connection to Katrina's sin (the lie she told Ichabod) in order to put a wedge between them. It plays back nicely to his sin eater gift. It also led on to a new revelation, that Katrina is something important to Moloch - a 'Hellfire Shard' - and that compared to her the Horseman of War is a disposable asset, suffering a major executive arse-kicking for putting her in danger.

'Go Where I Send Thee...' and 'The Weeping Lady' play to all of Sleepy Hollow's core competences: Historical coincidence, high octane nightmare fuel, sinister John Noble, and the lovable awkwardness of Ichabod. I am hoping to see more definite progression of the arc plot soon, and maybe some sign of a third Horseman*** before the season is out.

* No, I don't forsee myself running out of Into the Woods references any time soon.

** An adorable scene; I am so sad they killed her off essentially as ablative armour for Abbie and Katrina.

*** I say man but I won't lie; as much as the new Captain annoys me, it would be awesome if she turned out to be the Conqueror on the White Horse.