TV Review: Sleepy Hollow (2×02) – “The Kindred”

The premiere of season two reintroduced us to Sleepy Hollow, and the second episode, “The Kindred,” slowed everything down and positioned our characters where they need to be for the time being. So, Ichabod and Abbie are teamed up and ready to face the forces of evil, Jenny is sacrificing herself for her sister and ends up behind bars, Captain Irving has been shipped off to a mental asylum after having told the police officers the truth about why he turned himself in, and Katrina has been given a convenient storyline to keep her out of the way because the writers still haven’t figured out how she’ll affect the Abbie and Ichabod dynamic.

Phew.

It takes the entire episode to reach those conclusions, and despite them all being settled I couldn’t help but think that a whole lot of nothing got done. It didn’t make it any less enjoyable, but it certainly left me wondering what the point of the entire episode was. Then that made me think that maybe I was thinking too much into a show whose newest episode had a headless phantom of sorts trying to seduce Katrina, a witch who had been stuck in purgatory for two centuries.

The episode begins with Ichabod dreaming of Katrina being offered up for a ritual for the Headless Horseman. When he awakens he tells Abbie that the he believes the Horseman is planning on taking a bride – Katrina. They find where she’s being held captive, but before Ichabod can do anything rash Abbie tells him that they’ll need backup, so they go to get Jenny.

Jenny agrees to help, despite noting that the last time they tried to save Katrina nothing worked out well for them. She’s tasked to go grab weapons while Ichabod and Abbie need to find the Horseman’s decapitated head that Irving locked away, along with the Kindred body to attach it to so that it can become an equal force with the Horseman and defeat it. They need to find where Ben Franklin hid the body before performing an incantation on it so that it will fight for them.

See why I believed I was putting too much thought into this show? As long as the writers keep up the level of enthusiasm in which they tell their story, I can accept any oddity or absurdity they throw at me.

Abbie is worried about fighting evil with evil but they go ahead and do it anyway. However, before they go and perform spells Abbie first needs to have an emotional side conversation with Ichabod. She tells him that he’s her blind spot and that she puts too much faith in him, almost to her detriment. She asks him if maybe Katrina is his blind spot as well. Ichabod reassures her, saying that he hasn’t forgotten their mission and how much it means for the world, but that Katrina is his wife and if he has the chance to save her he needs to try.

Jenny isn’t having any luck and is arrested for the illegal weapons in her possession, while Abbie isn’t able to do much about it considering she’s racing against the clock. Jenny tells her to go and that they were with her so she’s the one who should deal with the consequences from the new Sheriff (yet another badass female character).

Abbie and Ichabod run into some mishaps along the way of possessing their Kindred body, but in the end they succeed and the Horseman and his Kindred duke it out while Ichabod runs to rescue Katrina from the cabin they’re holding her in. However, two wrenches are thrown into the plan pretty swiftly. The immediate threat is Jeremy/Henry transferring his soul momentarily into the Horseman of War, which greatly outnumbers the side of the just. Abbie is put into danger until the Kindred steps in to save her, proving they hadn’t simply created a tool for war.

The slightly more irritating if not life threatening wrench comes in the form of Katrina saying no to her rescue. She tells Ichabod that she can work as a double agent and stay with the Horseman. The Horseman – or Abraham to her – still loves her, and she can use that to her advantage. Begrudgingly, Ichabod agrees to leave her behind despite all of the effort that had just gone into saving her.

However, as the audience you have to wonder if she truly is staying behind to help, or if there was some honesty to her statement about not belonging in the modern world. Or, maybe, Abraham’s words about Ichabod’s devotion to Abbie rang true.

The episode ends with Henry coming to the aid of Irving, who is oblivious of his true identity, which can only spell trouble for the upcoming episodes. Jenny is still locked up and Ichabod is coming to terms with technically failing his mission. The characters are going to need to ready themselves for the possible horrors ahead.

As a whole, the episode was enjoyable and moved at a quicker pace than last week’s. It was fun and ridiculous and had some more bewildered Ichabod, which is always a plus in my book. I’m a little curious about where they’re going to take the stories this season and how they’re going to make Katrina’s plot at all enjoyable, but I’m confident that the writers know what they’re doing.

The Best of Ichabod Crane:

~Is none too pleased about how marriage has been commercialized

~Gets angry at bank tellers for not trusting members with their pens

~Still hates Ben Franklin

7/10