Sleepy Hollow - Episode 7 - Recap - The Midnight Ride

Sleepy Hollow - Episode 7 - Recap - The Midnight Ride

FOX's Sleepy Hollow is back, and this week it surely earns its place as TV Guide's Favorite New Show! More jokes about Ichabod not understanding phones, more absurd action, more Orlando Jones looking skeptical. More Sleepy Hollow! Back in time, during Paul Revere's late-night "The British are coming!" ride, Paul and his colonial buds are chased down by a certain horseman, one who you might recognize better if he were... about a head shorter. Ichabod was keeping guard that night, and he spotted a demonic star on a document which changed hands between Revolutionaries that night... How mysterious...

Abbie sets Ichabod up with a cool hideout, filled with food. He's still all "I do not understand your infernal motorized carriages" about pretty much all modern technology, which is great. The episode is filled with joke about Ichabod not understanding modern life. The best part of the show is those jokes. At one point, Ichabod corrects a children's museum tour guide about some Paul Revere facts and Abbie has to drag him away. There's a sequence nears the end of the episode while the team is setting up a trap where he debates the moral character of Thomas Jefferson, whom Ichabod knew personally. The whole Sally Hemings thing was not known to Ichabod. Also throughout the episode he makes like five jokes about bottled water. It's great! More of this please.

Anywho, the latest apocalypse crime is a quadruple beheading, which Ichabod informs us is at a Freemason hideout. Ichabod determines the horseman is still looking for his head, which Abbie reminds us is the necessary ingredient to cause the apocalypse. The pair enlists the help of Captain Orlando Jones (stop it, don't tell me this character's name, don't destroy this for me) to find and destroy the skull, which has been sent off to the forensics lab. The Horseman follows him there and attacks the lab with a friggin' machine gun. The captain totally believes their story now, and heads off, presumably to drink a lot of whiskey. Abbie and Ichabod get right into a montage of trying (and failing) to destroy the skull. They try hammers, axes, acid, and dynamite. No luck, so Abbie suggests they try the industrial car compactor. Ichabod spots some lanterns in a window nearby, Paul Revere style, and they investigate. The lanterns are actually (yuck) the heads of the beheaded Masons. They've been hollowed and lined with silver, a technique Revere used to brighten his own lanterns back in the day.

Early on in the episode, Abbie's co-worker, Morales, runs into his former fellow officer, the dead zombie guy Andy, who was (and still is) played by guest star John Cho. Andy gives Morales some kind of mind screw which gives Morales an aversion to Abbie. Weirdly, Andy finds Abbie later and helps her. He gives her a clue about "defeating" death. Death can't be killed, obviously, but he can be trapped. Ichabod runs in on this little meeting to have Andy deliver a message to the Horseman and set up this trap.

Now that everything is all set to go, Ichabod (with candlelit skull in tow) and crew bait their trap. There's a cool chase through a graveyard, then down into the sewers. Once they're underground, the heroes fake out the Horseman with Halloween light-up skulls. They then lead him to a dead end by having Abbie pretend to hurt her leg. Captain Irving (yes, Orlando Jones!), as a newly-initiated member of the Scooby Gang, flips a big switch and blasts the Horseman with artificial sunlight! The trap works and the Big Bad is captured!

Wow! The best episode yet! I'm thoroughly satisfied. This show is on an upward trend, and with a second season on the way, I've got a lot of hope. Most shows don't have such a strong showing in their first season! Also, it's quite popular, which I'm glad about. Anyway, check out this preview below!