The Breakdown
The fourth episode of Sleepy Hollow starts off in Boston Harbor, December 16, 1773. If you don’t have your history books out, this is when and where “the Destruction of the Tea in Boston” happened, now known as the “Boston Tea Party”. We are only briefly shown this scene as a teaser. We see a soldier blow himself up and then we are back in modern times.
We see the lovely Katrina as we hear Crane talk about her being lost to him. We then see him in a car, in the passenger seat, talking as if telling the story to someone. A woman’s voice sobbingly says she’s sorry, as if she were touched deeply by the story. As the conversation ends and she thanks him, we find out she is speaking through the speakers of the car from North Star Systems. I imagine in real life this would be similar to OnStar. After he gets out of the vehicle, Abbie come out of the building telling him about Jenny. The last episode ended with Abbie discovering that her sister Jenny had broken out of the institution.
Back at the station, Abbie tells the Captain that something unusual must be going on because her sister was supposed to get out in six months and this breakout did not make sense. She convinces him to give her some time before issuing the warrant for her sister’s arrest. He hesitantly allows her 12 hours. That Captain is a hard man. Even though he allows the extra time, he still acts as if Crane and Abbie are to blame them for Jenny’s escape since just the day before, they went to see Jenny and Ichabod had a conversation with her. The Captain makes it clear that even though Ichabod has been the key to solving these mysteries, he still lacks some faith where his story is concerned.
Next we see Jenny walk into a bar and the bartender gets something out of his safe for her. He of course wants to know what it is and what is going on. She simply says “remember when I told you one day this town was going straight to h*ll? I hate being right.”
In a nice house, we see a boy playing a piano with a stern looking father-like man hovering over him. The man gets a call (probably to the kid’s relief) and hears a robotic-like voice telling him Jenny has escaped. He ends up at the bar with two other guys and the question the bartender. The bartender denies knowing who Jennifer Mills is, but the guy and his two thugs aren’t buying it. The bartender pulls out a huge shotgun and points it inches from the guy’s eye. The guy bats the gun away flipping the bartender over the bar (at least he tried right?). He ends up pinned on a pool table with a pool stick across his neck. The guy has some type of tool in his hand and after the bartender refuses to give up any information we soon hear him screaming in agonizing pain (I cringed little).
Meanwhile, Crane is looking at Jenny’s records and seeing how much she has done. Abbie says her sister never did anything half-way. Crane sees that Jenny has taken trips to several countries and wonders why she went to exotic places and came back knowing what kind of treatment awaited her in Sleepy Hollow. Crane keeps asking questions trying to understand Jenny and their family dynamic so Abbie finally tells him about their parents. Their dad left when they were kids and their mother had a nervous breakdown a few years after and was hospitalized. The state dumped them in foster care and Jenny ended up living with seven foster families. Crane, being his usual astute and perceptive self, looks to the information about Jenny’s foster family history as a way to find her.
Back at the bar, Captain Irving investigates the bartender’s death. It’s not too surprising when he sees the headless body hanging in the corner and the head grotesquely sitting on the pool table. However, he notices that the head was not severed cleanly like the others which appeared to be cauterised.
Crane and Abbie continue their own investigation by going to one of Jenny’s foster homes. Abbie is surprised to hear that Sheriff Corbin caught Jenny shoplifting at some point. She did not know they had crossed paths. While Abbie is listening to the foster-mother, she can see into a bedroom where a malnourished girl is scratching away at her neck. Abbie can’t help but to bring this up to the foster-mother as well as the fact that she is getting a paycheck for each of these kids. The girl was sleeping on the floor, had bags under her eyes, and had dry skin, while the foster-mother had a new car sitting in the driveway. Of course the foster-mother starts getting snippy when Abbie brings this up and strikes a nerve by asking Abbie if she is mad at the foster-mother or herself for turning her back on her sister. Abbie threatens to bring on legal action for all of the violations if the foster-mother did not give her information about Jenny. She tells her about a log cabin that Jenny used to go to with a friend but claimed not to know who. Abbie tells her to expect a call from legal services.
Abbie and Crane go to the log cabin (Abbie breaks in using her old mischievous skills). As they look around, Crane notices a picture of Sheriff Corbin and Jenny, realizing that the cabin belonged to Corbin. Abbie had no idea that her sister knew Corbin and the picture shows that they clearly had a closer relationship than just cop and criminal. As they are making this discovery, Jenny comes out of hiding with a gun. The scene ends with the sisters pointing guns at each other and Crane saying “This is awkward”.
Still pointing their guns at each other, Abbie tells Jenny that she bought her time, that she was lucky it was them coming in there instead of a SWAT team. Jenny doesn’t buy it. They keep going back and forth and Crane finally has enough and yells to shut them up. He makes them drop their weapons. Abbie asks Jenny about Corbin. Jenny was surprised to hear that Corbin never told Abbie they knew each other. Jenny tells them that she helped Corbin obtain rare objects and find answers. Corbin visited Jenny the night before he died and told her something was coming for him. When she asked what, he simply said “death”. He told her if it happened she had to go to the cabin and get something to keep safe. I guess now we know why she looked like she was preparing for something with all of that working out in Episode 2.
She pushed some secret button and some drawers came out. She pulled out some type of contraption which is recognized as a sextant, which is used for mapping sea travel. Crane looks at the markings on it and recognizes them from before the war when he was in Boston. They had received word that the redcoats had some type of contraption. About this time, Jenny starts wondering about Ichabod and his stories of so long ago. Abbie tells her in short that Ichabod truly was from the past. Jenny seems a lot easier to convince than Abbie was. Ichabod continues his story, saying that the contraption, a secret weapon, was trapped in the Boston Harbor. They devised a diversion to gain entry with the help of a local politician, Samuel Adams. We then see flashbacks of the ship and harbor from the beginning of the episode. Soldiers are breaking boxes and we are witnessing Sleepy Hollow’s version of the Boston Tea Party.
Ichabod says that things did not go smoothly as a Hessian soldier took his own life (by blowing himself up) to stop them from getting to the weapon. Hessians were German soldiers loyal to the British Army during the Revolutionary War. (I bet you didn’t know you were getting a history lesson today). Crane was the only one to survive and was able to see the weapon after the smoke cleared. He saw a chest made of stone, protected by glass that held those same markings. He never saw what was inside. They projected the map on the wall. It was a map of Sleepy Hollow from Ichabod’s era. George Washington crafted the maps to hide things. Right as Ichabod figured out where the chest would be, a red laser beam showed up on the wall and gun fire followed. During the shootout, someone ran in and grabbed the sextant. Jenny was able to hold one guy at gun point but the other two got away with the sextant. It was the same guys that killed the bartender. They tie the guy up and question him but he says nothing. Crane finds a tattoo on his upper chest that is the same as the Headless Horseman’s tattoo on the back of his head before Crane sliced it off. Crane realizes the guy is a Hessian.
The guy starts to talk about the Book of Revelations and the two witnesses, indicating that he knows Ichabod and Abbie are the two witnesses. He talks about 72 demons and the lesser key of Solomon. Jenny explains that there is a legend about a book of black magic and King Solomon. The guy says that the book is key to releasing more evils. He says that these hours are the final moments of a symphony written centuries ago. He says that he and his fellow Hessians having been living in Sleepy Hollow all this time, blending in as their neighbors, friends, and teachers. He happens to be a music teacher. He says they are everywhere and he doesn’t know how many there are. He knows all over their names which surprises the three of them since they do not know who he is. He says that “he” told him their names. “He” is inside of them, their hearts, and their minds and has been since he appeared to them that day in the forest. “He” was the one who summoned the horseman and with each dark spirit he brings into the world, his evil design grows stronger. He then says something in a language only Ichabod can understand, “Moloch shall rise”. The music teacher says his task is completed and bites down on a cyanide pill. They don’t realize it until it is too late.
The two sisters start at each other again because Abbie wants to call her people and Jenny doesn’t trust anyone, especially after the guy said the Hessian are living among them. Crane interrupts the argument again as he tries to recreate the map from his photographic memory. They start driving toward the place although the two guys who took the map are already there and hammering away at a wall inside a dark dungeon like place. During the drive, Ichabod is starting to get to know some more about Jenny which Abbie does not seem too happy about. He finds out that she has learned her military combat type skills from multiple places in different countries: from demo training in Mexico to Tactics in South Sudan. He calls her a freedom fighter and she talks about her strong belief in fighting for what you believe in.
In the meantime, the two men start to do some ritual and drip blood from one man’s cut hand onto the book. They say some words that end with Moloch’s name. A flame starts out of water in what looks like a while. The water and fire overflow onto the floor indicating that their evil process has begun. As the water and fire become more fierce, strange noises and ghost-like figure are creeping up out of the ground in the water & fire. At the same time, Ichabod, Abbie, and Jenny walk in and another shootout begins. While Crane is fighting one of the guys, Abbie picks up the book. The other thug has a gun to Jenny’s head and tells Abbie to drop the book while her sister protests. Abbie throws the book into the flaming water and the guy goes after it. The process seems almost reversed as the ghost-like figures disappear, the water dries up, and the fire goes away instantly. Still gaining his composure back after the fighting, Crane says, “They left without a farewell, how impolite”.
Back at the precinct, Abbie uncuffs Jenny and they talk in some type of meeting or interrogation room. Jenny asks about Abbie and Crane. Abbie explains that she and Crane are the two witnesses referenced in the Book of Revelations. Jenny is irritated at the fact that Abbie turned her back on everything yet is the one chosen to “fight the good fight”. Abbie asks if Jenny will punish her forever and Jenny says that was her plan. Abbie speaks from the heart and tells Jenny that she sees who Jenny is and that she is proud of her. She admits to turning her back on Jenny and knows that it was wrong. She reminds Jenny that they are the only family they have and that she can’t take back what she did but can try to make it right. She has some paperwork that will give Abbie rights over her affairs and help get her out of the institute. If Jenny stays in the facility, it would have to address the fact that she beat their security and they wouldn’t want to shine a light on that. Abbie tells her if they work together they could find some real answers for once. If you looked hard enough, you would have seen a slight gleam of acceptance towards in Jenny’s face. Jenny said that Corbin told her one day Abbie would find her way back and hoped Jenny could find a way to forgive her. Jenny is still not sure she can. Abbie apologizes for it taking so long to find Jenny (figuratively). Abbie walks out of the door and Crane pulls her aside to show her a picture of the creature whose name they now know, Moloch.
The previews for next week show a plague coming to town and Crane possibly gets it. Uh Oh.
The Analysis
Whew! A lot happened in this episode. We finally learned the name of the mysterious evil and as usual, we are left with more questions. I have to say I really love how the show ties in real history, including Biblical history, with the fictional story. It makes it more fun. I bet the history nerds get a real kick out of it. I think they should have students watch some of these episodes in their history classes. It actually makes me want to read up on some of that stuff. I saw a tweet from someone that more has happened in this show so far than in 22 episodes of others. I agree. I forget that we are only four episodes in to the entire series. It is my understanding that the writers tried really hard to be accurate with the stories from the Bible. My curiosity has me looking up passages on a Bible on my kindle app. I guess that’s one way to get me to read the Bible!
