Sleepy Hollow: Blood Moon

While not so frenetic as the pilot, the first episode of Sleepy Hollow was excellent and scarier by far!  Ichabod dreams of the Four Horsemen and his wife Katrina. 

He learns that the leader of the evil coven which inhabits Sleepy Hollow, Serilda of Abaddon seeks to return to life.

She has help from that hapless Pawn of Evil, John Cho's Andy Dunn.  Andy awakens from death with his head still impossibly bent down his back, and boy does he have trouble seeing where to walk!  Yikes!  The Smoky looking Beast snaps his head back into place and Andy heads off to do his bidding, muttering about some people being ungrateful and not being sooo helpful all the way.

 

He finds and names the victims for the witch, as she needs ashes from the ancestors of those who weakened her so she could be burnt at the stake. 

Serilda is one one scary woman in life and in death.  In life, her eyes were black slates, and in death, she is a lithe, ragged, burnt creature who transports from spot to spot closing in on, then burning her victim to turn them to ash.  I had my shirt ready to put over my eyes as she stalked a little boy in a darkened house.

Andy Dunn is not the only dead character who comes back to life.  In an interview I read, Ichabod aka Tom Mison says you can never tell who will die and who will return to life in Sleepy Hollow.

We have two covens then:  Serilda's and the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart which I think must have been lead by Ichabod's beloved Katrina, now trapped "between worlds".   Good to know she isn't just helpful, but powerful, though her powers are limited if she can only appear in dreams.

We briefly meet Abby's sister Jenny at the end of the episode.  While Abby has dealt with her childhood brush with evil by burying the memory, her sister fully embraced the encounter with evil and has been in an asylum ever since.  She seems completely sane when we see her, doing pushups and pullups in her room to stay buff and ready to fight.  She reminds me of Linda Hamilton from Terminator 2: Judgement Day.  She also sees the Beast in a reflection in her window.  We don't know if he is a regular visitor or if he is coming now because things are heating up in Sleepy Hollow.

I enjoyed the episode.  Ichabod Crane is an intelligent man in an impossible situation.  The fact that he is a soldier and a spy who was investigating possibly supernatural events in his own time for someone like George Washington helps him adjust to his new circumstances more quickly than someone else would.  I enjoy the scenes from Revolutionary times.  It is very cool that he can know about the network of underground tunnels under Sleepy Hollow and secret rooms in buildings because he used them himself in his duties.

Abby is just the right mix of hard cop and wounded inner person who wants to believe and wants to do the right thing.  She is determined to do what is right no matter what that involves personally or professionally.  Her big heart serves her and us well.




http://www.fox.com/sleepy-hollow/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepy_Hollow_(TV_series)

http://www.visitsleepyhollow.com/

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/sleepy-hollow/sleepy-hollow-recap-ichabod-an-51287.aspx

Sleepy Hollow Premier: Awakened

Official Site   http://www.fox.com/sleepy-hollow/


Yo ho! Off to a swashbuckling, head rolling good start! 

Ichabod Crane, still lanky but handsome as anything with a British accent is helping a most cryptic and mysterious George Washington track down a man in the Hudson Valley of 1781.  The man finds him, riding right for Crane on a monstrous white horse, a mask over his face, an enormous axe in hand.

Failing to kill him by shooting the man as he closes in, Crane desperately beheads him with his sword.  The killer takes a swing at Crane, slicing his abdomen open and both fall to the ground.  Semi-conscious, Crane sees the massive fellow get up, headless, and mount his horse to ride away.

Crane awakens in a dank cave, partially buried but he's alive.  He's in modern day Sleepy Hollow.  A local policeman has been beheaded and Crane's story of Revolutionary War times and working for George Washington make him an immediate and convenient suspect.

What I learned from the opening episode:

Don't lose your head over any character because they're likely to be dead by episode's end.

There are two covens of witches in Sleepy Hollow and beyond.  One is good and one is evil.

Two witnesses will work over a period of seven years to keep the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from entering the world.

Abbie's partner has secret files he had been keeping trying to piece together of unexplained events over time in Sleepy Hollow.

The Headless Horseman has an agenda, more than just getting his shrinky glowing head back.

As in any really good scary tale, you can't tell who the good guys and bad guys are.

The episode went really fast and I can't wait for next week's episode!  Scary, great characters, fast paced!  Abbie Mills, the tough female cop and Ichabod Crane, professor of history and adventurer are a great pair.

Map of Sleepy Hollow

About the Show from the Official Site:

Welcome to SLEEPY HOLLOW, the thrilling new mystery-adventure drama from co-creators/executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the “Star Trek” and “Transformers” franchises, “Fringe”).

In this modern-day twist on Washington Irving's classic, ICHABOD CRANE (Tom Mison, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”) is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers. Revived alongside Ichabod is the infamous Headless Horseman who is on a murderous rampage in present-day Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod quickly realizes that stopping Headless is just the beginning, as the resurrected rider is but the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and only one of the many formidable foes that Ichabod must face to protect not only Sleepy Hollow, but the world.

As Ichabod finds himself in 2013's Sleepy Hollow, he discovers a town he no longer recognizes and grapples to understand. Teaming up with Lt. ABBIE MILLS (Nicole Beharie, “42,” “The Good Wife,” “Shame”), a young cop who has her own supernatural experiences, the two embark on a mission to stop the evil that has awoken along with Ichabod and that now is seeping into this once-sleepy town.

Clues from the past enlighten mysteries in the present, as each episode features a flashback to Ichabod's life in 1776. Ripe with untold stories from American history and cloaked in mythology, the divide between present and past becomes dangerously blurred. Lives are in the balance, including that of Ichabod's late wife, KATRINA (Katia Winter, “Dexter”), who is trapped in a mysterious netherworld. In his pursuit to save her, Ichabod uncovers secrets about her, leaving him with countless questions.

Not everyone believes Ichabod's tales of 1776 and supernatural evils, especially the new head of Abbie's police precinct, Captain FRANK IRVING (Orlando Jones, “The Chicago 8,” “Drumline”). When faced with bizarre events he can't explain, Capt. Irving reluctantly turns to Ichabod and Abbie to investigate.

Ichabod's extensive first-hand knowledge of our country's hidden history, coupled with Abbie's superior profiling and modern threat assessment skills, make them a formidable duo. The complex pasts of the pair, from Ichabod's inclusion in the powerful and secretive Freemasons Society to Abbie's childhood visions, will help them solve the intricate puzzles of Sleepy Hollow in order to protect its – and the world's – future. As history repeats itself, the oddly-linked pair will draw on the real stories and secrets this nation was founded on in their quest to stop an increasingly vicious cycle of evil.