Recap: SLEEPY HOLLOW Makes New Frenemies

Season 3, Episode 15 “Incommunicado”
Directed by Russell Fine
Written by Shernold Edwards and Heather V. Regnier

It’s really hard to be stuck in a room with someone you can’t stand..

This week’s episode was at once more exciting than we’ve had lately and a showcase for some of the worst problems that this season has been plagued with.

We open with some adults, not teens, making more cacophony than music while practicing for their garage band. It seems that they are not all on the same musical page and haven’t agreed on the style of music they are playing. Suddenly all of the sound leaves the room and then a wail starts, which shatters their ear drums and then their brains.  A light bulb goes off in mine — I know what this is, it’s a banshee.

Crane (Tom Mison)  is experimenting with the symbol, with oven mitts. Abbie (Nicole Beharie) walks in bringing pastries. He already knows she has the wrong ones because he’s been experimenting with the symbol. She grouses at him for spying on her but if he’s trying to find out under what circumstances it works,  he has to make it work. Touching it with bare skin seems to be the key.  In this scene, they are very cute together. Abbie gets a call from Sophie (Jessica Camacho) about the deaths, which she immediately suspects are supernatural.

This leaves Crane alone for an unwelcome visitor. The Hidden One (Peter Mensah) walks in to the archives through the door. Crane’s response is to put the symbol in his pocket. This turns out to be right thing to do because when the Hidden One tries to kill him with a bolt of blue light, the symbol flies out of his pocket to protect him. Light expands to fill the room, and Abbie is rebuffed by the front door when she returns. The Hidden one is still not very frightening. It helps a bit that Crane is frightened of him.

Abbie runs to the tunnels and finds Pandora (Shannyn Sossamon), who tells her that the emblem is the Emblem of Thura, and that it was created to hold gods. It uses the power of the beings it holds captive, and she predicts that the Hidden One will fight so hard that destruction will rain down on everyone. Abbie’s not so worried about everyone, just Crane. She suggests working together to get them out.

Jenny (Lyndie Greenwood) figures out that the killer was a banshee. Abbie sets her, Sophie and Joe (Zach Appelman) on the trail of the banshee. Pandora says the banshee could help amplify the power of the box pieces she has.

Jenny bribes an Irish smuggler turned bar owner with blood sausage for information about banshees. There’s some nice Celtic music playing in the background. I guess this is our St. Patrick’s Day episode. He tells them to use pure iron that’s a couple of hundred years old. They steal some from the cemetery. I’m not sure if they are parts of an iron fence or grave markers but they look like arrows. They find the banshee before getting the message that they need it alive. Jenny must not check her messages often because Abbie should have sent that right after their conversation, and they obtained blood sausage, went to the bar, and robbed a cemetery since then. Hampered by the no kill order, they lose the banshee.

We now have a lovely bit where Crane defends the art and literature of humanity, mostly with his eyes closed. Divine. The Hidden One talks about Crane’s childhood, which he seems to know intimately. He says that Crane’s life was always mapped out, because being a Witness was in his blood line.

The rest of the Sleepy Gang lure the banshee onto an amphitheater stage with Beethoven’s Fifth. I assume this must be where the Sleepy Hollow symphony orchestra plays on nice summer nights.  They use a sound proof  blanket and iron cables to wrap her up in. This works, in that she can’t attack them, but she gets loose and aims her voice at Jenny. Joe gets out a crossbow and shoots her with an iron arrow. Sophie is appalled that he killed the banshee.

Since the banshee is gone, Joe offers to be the conduit to open the room and rescue the Hidden One and Crane. He might be killed, but he is hoping that it will remove the wendigo permanently. Crane talks the Hidden One into translating some Sumerian for him to enable them to communicate with the ones trying to get them out.

Joe turns wendigo and and power flows through him and the box. The wendigo doesn’t like this much and decided it’s had enough. Jenny talks to the man inside the monster, tells him she loves him and offers him a key to the trailer. He goes back to the circle but it’s not enough. Pandora needs the other piece of the box. She confesses tearfully that it was her fault, the first time the Hidden One was trapped because she had revealed the power of the emblem to the human servants and this second time he was trapped because she knew they had the emblem and didn’t tell him, so he essentially walked into the trap when he decided to kill the Witnesses. Unfortunately, this is the point that Crane and the Hidden One see when they get the emblem’s communications working.

They give Pandora the box fragment. The wendigo is drawn out of Joe, the captives are released, and we have happy endings for Jenny and Joe, and for Crane and Abbie. Not so much for Pandora and the Hidden One. Pandora is in trouble.

Thoughts: This episode illustrates many of the problems in this season, both in the embodiment of them and in the lack. One of the things they’ve been doing this season is to separate Abbie and Crane, from the beginning of the season when Abbie was lost. I suppose that they are trying to create UST, or some sort of romantic tension, but when one of the joys of the show is to see them interact, you don’t want to kill that. In this episode they locked them away from each other. They even called it “Incommunicado”. Geez, people, you don’t have to lock them in separate cages.

Another problem is making the monsters too visible. Monsters don’t do well in daylight. Atmosphere makes a difference. Squirmy from the last episode should always have been in shadow. I suppose for some people being in the woods was scary enough, but not for most of us. Joe’s transformation into the wendigo was frightening, mysterious and took place in the archives in candle light. The banshee chase in this episode was glorious. I loved the music, the setting, the creativity, and the fact that the dramatic elements made sense. ALL of the Sleepy Gang monster chases should be that good.

The Hidden One is just not scary. He is not as frightening or strange looking as the Republican Party candidates for president this election season. The only person I am afraid for is Pandora.

There are too many of the Sleepy Gang. I think Sophie’s mostly there so that Abbie can chase monsters and keep her job. Ditto for Reynolds(Lance Gross). They need less problem solving and more problem creating by the writers.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Crane rant, and I really liked this one. He would have been made a great Captain Kirk, defending humanity’s right to exist to the God-like aliens. The show needs to remember that Crane is not a hero just because he is a Witness, but because he held ideals about freedom and fairness that led him to be part of the Revolution.

And, there were no unnecessary flashbacks this episode, except for the brief bits reminding us that Pandora and the Hidden One had been hurt by our heroes occasionally. I love the flashbacks but they should not be telling us stuff twice or thrice.

Next episode: Is the Kindred back? And it looks like the Hidden One comes out of hiding. Does Abbie tell Reynolds that monsters are real?

Sleepy Hollow airs on Fridays at 8/7c on Fox.