SLEEPY HOLLOW Recap: Crane Loses his Spirit

Season3, Episode10 “Incident at Stone Manor”

[photo credit: Tina Rowden/FOX]

Purgatory, and this episode, are boring. Even Crane (Tom Mison) slept through this episode. They blew it in a big way a couple of times.

Abbie (Nicole Beharie) wakes up on the floor of an ancient temple. She has the broken shard and the eye with her. The eye is no longer glowing red. It’s clear. She starts exploring her surroundings.It’s rivers and rock and mountains and mist. She finds on old well and the trunk of a very large tree with a sword stuck in it. She pulls out the sword and takes it back to the temple. She builds fire and maps her surroundings with the charcoal on the end of a stick.

And this is my first and biggest  complaint. I am not much of a gamer, but even I know that if you find a well you explore it! Even if it looks empty and dry. It’s the only man made thing in the entire landscape except for the temple.

The Hidden One (Peter Mensah) and Pandora (Shannyn Sossamon) are out for a stroll, talking about the death and destruction they want to rain down on mankind. The Hidden One moves their home, rearranging mountains to do so, to please Pandora.

A construction worker who’s working on an old creepy building goes back for his cell phone and gets thrown off the building by a gargoyle. This brings Foster (Jessica Camacho) and Reynolds (Lance Gross) to the crime scene. Foster decides to go to Crane after noticing that one of the gargoyles is missing.

In the meantime, Jenny (Lyndie Greenwood) and Joe (Zach Appelman) steal a lighter from Jenny’s dad as a token that they need for a spell. They are going to send Crane to Abbie in astral form in a spirit cabinet with a candle to tether him to their world. When the candle goes out, he comes back.

Sophie Foster shows up in the archives to find both mom and dad gone. She has to settle for Jenny and Joe. Jenny is not happy to help. There is a pretty funny bit where Jenny and Joe visit the crime scene and then describe how Crane and Abbie would handle it.

Abbie is playing chess with herself,or with an imaginary Crane,when a disembodied voice calls out his next move. Ichabod has found her and gradually appears. He tells her that he is an apparition, and she tells him that from her point of view she has been there ten months. Pandora sees in her pool that Crane has reached her with astral projection and decides to do the same.
Crane reads some of the Sumerian hieroglyphs on the wall. They are about the Hidden One. This makes sense as this is undoubtedly the purgatory Pandora pulled him out of. Crane and Abbie discuss the eye. He is for reviving it and using it, she doesn’t want to give the Hidden One what he wants. He also says the cutlass belonged to Betsy Ross. I don’t see how he could know that when it has no distinguishing characteristics and is covered with rust. Pandora shows up and cuts the smoke behind Crane, leaving him unable to get back and unable to stay with Abbie. She tries to make a deal with Abbie but Abbie smashes the eye.

Jenny, Joe and Sophie have found a cipher that shows that Betsy Ross (Nikki Reed) encountered a gargoyle while the building was still in France and she was trying to get help for the war. Without Crane, they can’t get the whole story. When they next encounter the creature, they find that the creature can’t go into the abbey because it’s hallowed ground. Jenny wants to use holy water and church pews sharpened into stakes to kill the creature. Sophie thinks it can be killed by non-magical means. Joe sides with her, which makes Jenny mad. But they go with Sophie’s plan. Jenny lures the creature into the structure for a new foundation and they pour concrete on it. Jenny decides that Sophie Foster is okay. I tend to agree with her. It’s the first time she’s added something that was purely her own contribution.

Abbie, left alone, imagines having a conversation with Crane about Betsy Ross’s cutlass, which implies that Betsy was there and got out. She takes the cutlass back to the stump, realizes that it is a stay for a rope and the rope lowers someone into the well. She yells out to Crane, who she can hear in a muffled way, and tells him to follow her back to their dimension. Abbie comes back out in the pond that Pandora floated a healing Hidden One on.

Jenny, Joe, and Abbie come back to find Crane still sleeping, but Abbie calls to him and he comes back. It’s very emotional. There is a brief moment where Crane says he wants to tell Abbie something, and we think it might get romantic, but he starts talking chess.

Pandora wakes up as well and because she has failed offers her power for her husband to take. He does. She lives through it. He then powers up her box fragment.

Thoughts: I like that without a relaxer or comb Abbie’s hair reverts to a more natural state. They explain away other problems by making it obvious that she has no need for sleep, food, or water while in Purgatory. They do a good job of reinforcing the bond between her and Crane and how important it is for what they do.

I would like to have seen more about Abbie; how she handles the isolation, what struggles she went through, what television shows she was missing..anything. Tom Hanks made it more interesting and all he had to talk to was a soccer ball. They did it better on Agents of Shield, where at least there was a mysterious threat in the other dimension. They missed an opportunity to make Abbie more interesting and test out her acting chops. And if she can’t figure out to use the vines as a rope, or that the cutlass was left there because the person got out right at that moment and needed it to be there to escape, or that a well would make a good portal to another world, then she DESERVED to stay there for ten months.

I find it hard to believe that the gargoyle was enticed there by the spell. Was the building just moved here? Even if it was, the gargoyle didn’t arrange that. Couldn’t it just have flown over the ocean? I suppose it could have woken up because of Pandora and her husband’s efforts.

However, the gang is back together plus one, and Abbie is alive and well and home. The show should improve from these first couple of episodes of the last half of the season.

Next week we encounter the kindred again.

Sleepy Hollow airs on FOX on Fridays  8/7c.