Sleepy Hollow - Episode 4 - Recap - The Lesser Key of Solomon

Sleepy Hollow - Episode 4 - Recap - The Lesser Key of Solomon

Here we are again with another episode of FOX's simply superb new action fantasy show, Sleepy Hollow. The premise, for the uninitiated, is that Revolutionary War turncoat Ichabod Crane is preserved in life by his wife's witch coven until he's awakened in the modern day, where he partners up with police officer Abbie Mills to prevent the forces of Hell from taking over the small New York town of Sleepy Hollow (and subsequently, the world). We start in the long time ago, at the Boston Tea Party. Ichabod finds some guy speaking mumbo jumbo before a voiceover transitions us to the present, with Ichabod speaking in a car seemingly to no one. It turns out he called OnStar from Abbie's car and has been giving relationship advice to the now weeping OnStar lady. This scene is hilarious. More of this from now on please, Sleepy Hollow!

Back at police HQ, Abbie and Captain Orlando Jones (I still refuse to learn this character's name) are panicked looking for Abbie's sister, who escaped the mental hospital at the end of last episode. Ichabod offers up some advice, saying they should look to Jenny's past. The dynamic duo of Ichabod and Abbie visit Jenny's most recent foster home, and it isn't pretty. The lady who runs it is a monstrous jerk who neglects the kids in her care. She gives out heroes a lead and they head off to a cabin in the woods. Ichabod clues some evidence (listen I don't know detective parlance) and determines that the cabin belonged to beheaded Sheriff Corbin. Jenny and him knew one another, turns out!
Meanwhile, Abbie's sister Jenny picks up a secret duffel bag from a bar. she leaves and is replaced by a bunch of presumably-evil thugs, who beat up the barman looking for Jenny. The barman, credit to him, doesn't break. Well, he doesn't give up info. He certainly breaks in the sense that his body stops functioning when he gets a spike through the head. The thugs leave a headless body for the cops to find, and also a bodyless head.

Jenny shows up to Corbin's cabin just in time for her and Abbie to point guns at one another and yell a lot. Ichabod diffuses the situation easily, and I like him even more for it. Jenny talks about an artifact, a sextant, that was important to the Sheriff. Ichabod then tells the story about how he faked the Boston Tea Party to steal an artifact from the British, but he was foiled by a suicide-bombing Hessian soldier. The sextant is actually a secret map, pointing to the location of a hidden chest in the town of Sleepy Hollow. Just as the trio discovers this, a bunch of gun dudes show up to blow the set up with bullets before stealing the sextant and running away. The good guys capture one bad gun dude and interrogation begins! The guy turns out to be a Hessian Shadow Warrior (like the Headless Horseman), which is a real cool name for some kind of magical Army badass. The chest contains a book called The Lesser Key of Solomon, a trigger that will unleash 72 demons of Hell onto the Earth. Apparently, these Shadow Warriors are all over the place, undercover. They worship The Devil, the same one seen by Abbie and Jenny when they were kids. He says "Moloch shall rise" in German before biting down on a cyanide capsule and dying. Woah! The season's villain revealed! Ichabod uses his eidetic memory to redraw the map and the group is off to find this demon Key! The bad guys are already there, though, so that's not good. You can tell they're bad because the music is all organs and choirs and the camera only shoots them from below and they speak German and they pour their own blood onto books. The leader one reads some blood words that formed on the book he put blod on, and it starts summoning devils I guess?? In any case, clearly the good guys are too late. Abbie, Jenny, and Ichabod surround the baddies just in time for some way grody devils to yuck their way out of the floor. A fight ensues, and when Abbie gets to the book, she throws it into the devil hole, destroying literally all the bad guy magic stuff.

After the whole fight and mystery, Abbie and Jenny have a heart-to-heart, and Abbie makes a real move towards fixing their relationship: Papers to have Jenny released to her custody! It could take six months, but the mental hospital wants to get rid of a problem patient. Ichabod reaffirms what we deduced earlier (probably for the less astute in the audience), that the demon the Mills sisters saw in their youth is called Moloch, and that he will be the season's main villain.

This show, man. It just keeps getting better and better. I realized tonight that the entire show seems constructed to instigate a fandom on the Internet (of the type enjoyed by Doctor Who, Sherlock, or myriad Joss Whedon productions) and then I realized that I'm totally okay with it. The show is pandering to me, absolutely, and I do not mind one bit. It's got a male lead constructed from every type fangirls fawn over: British, intellectual, long-haired, fish-out-of-water, endless heroic, slightly detached. The female lead is not a romantic interest for Ichabod, but instead is her own person. It's got a supporting cast made from non-white characters, which is refreshing. It's got magic and monsters and action. There's a season-long mystery to unravel. Everything about Sleepy Hollow seems to be expertly crafted to make Tumblr teens lose their minds. Regardless of your Tumblr membership or your age, I recommend this show highly. There's a preview below, and the episodes that already aired are up on FOX's website. Go! Go now!