Geekscape Recap: Sleepy Hollow: “The Lesser Key of Solomon”

So, congratulations are in order for Sleepy Hollow: not only is it the first Fox series to be picked up for a second season, but it also continued its upward trend: last night’s episode was by far the best in terms of consistency and plotting. Was it a little too procedural? Did it give up too much style for a predictable substance? Maybe, but it was still the best entry in the series so far. And it moved; scene to scene connected in a fast, cohesive and entertaining way.

The episode starts with a one-two punch of a voice over explaining the show’s backstory, followed by a ‘previously on.’ It’s a good two minutes of rehashing events before the show starts; when it does, it’s a flashback to Boston Harbor, 1773. Crane and a Revolution-era A-Team are tracking a cargo. It’s protected by another Hessian (they’re everywhere!), who blows it up with an incantation to Lord Death (never a good sign) and boom (quite literally) flashback’s over.

Back to the Future

Crane is giving romantic advice to an unknown woman—a radio show? A wrong number? Nope, the Northstar (read Onstar) lady.  It was a nice bit of humor before jumping right into the action: it’s just moments since last week’s episode, we find out, as a white cargo van careens out of the psychiatric hospital and Abbie runs out, informing Crane that Jenny has escaped.

This does nicely answer our final question from last week; Abbie had not left poor Crane all alone in the super-secret research room, but had brought him with her. And left him in the car, sure. Why not?

Abbie manages to convince Captain Irving to give her time to find Jenny before calling in the escape to State authorities. Irving, in fine, if caustic, form, eventually relents and gives Abbie and Crane 12 hours to find Jenny.

Meanwhile, Jenny (in a hoody as her disguise, because no one in a hoody has ever drawn unwarranted suspicion) visits a dive bar—apparently one of her old haunts. The bartender, Wendel, pours her a drink and welcomes her back.

Jenny drinks (one shot, whiskey. Just I case we didn’t already know she was a badass). She asks if Wendel still has her things. He does, and is glad to get rid of them–Jenny’s so badass even her stuff scares normal people. From a safe comes a mysterious, beat-up, badass duffel bag. Jenny spouts some more badass tropes, just to cement how truly badass she is, takes her bag, and leaves.

In case the scene didn’t clarify it—or the whole breaking out of the psychiatric hospital didn’t clue you in—Jenny is badass.

Ze Germans Are Coming! Ze Germans are Coming!

We move to young kid learning piano from a creepy German piano teacher–Gunther. CREEPY PIANO TEACHER. Who’s GERMAN. So, he’s the bad guy.

Gunther gets a creepy distorted-voice phone call on an ancient cell phone. The caller creepily telling him where to find Jenny (creepy!) and that Jenny might know where ‘item 37’ is. Also, a ‘team’ has been dispatched with info on Jenny and her ‘known associates.’ Even creepier! Gunther hangs up and abruptly dismisses kid playing song on the piano.

While each scene was successful, they were very routine. No new angles. No interesting quirks or inner dilemmas hinted at. Rebellious woman of course goes to the hole-in-the-wall bar when on the run; the bad guy is hiding in plain sight as quiet, foreign piano teacher.

These tropes are fine—the scenes were fine–they were just very standard. Still better than some of the more cliché heavy moments in earlier episodes. Besides, lots is happening and the plot is moving. Onward.

To Wendel, the bartender. Poor Wendel, it’s not such a good day for him. Gunther shows up with Central Casting German Thug 1 and 2.

Side note: That’s an awful lot of first-generation German’s hanging out in Sleepy Hollow. Just saying.

They ask for Jenny’s whereabouts. Wendel refuses. After the mandatory bad-guy-has-moral-upper-hand-because-the-bad-guy-is-aware-he-has-no-morals discussion concludes, Wendel gets tossed on the pool table with a case full of very nasty tools beside him.

Got to give him credit for refusing, though.

Tell Me About Your Mother

Back to Abbie and Crane, who are at the police station attempting to figure out where Jenny may have gone. Crane, looking through Jenny’s file, questions Abbie about her childhood. We discover that Abbie’s father left when they were young and mom had a ‘nervous breakdown,’ putting the sister’s in foster care.

Crane notices in Jenny’s file that there was one foster family Jenny stayed with longer than any other—perhaps they might know her hiding spots?

Speak of the devil—Jenny’s at a truck stop bathroom, going through that duffel. Money, passports—guns. She holds both up (one in either hand) because, remember, badass? Then checks they’re loaded. Of course they are. Because leaving live ammunition in your weapons for years is totally not going to be bad for the weapon or the ammunition.

Back to the bar, where poor Wendel is dead—body hung from a hook, head in the pool rack. Irving, in a that’s-why-he’s-the-captain deduction exercise, points out to the detectives that Wendel was tortured and that the beheading is a drastically different type than that which killed Corbin. Poor detectives, they were so proud of their ‘same as Corbin’ theory.

Crane and Abbie visit Jenny’s last foster mother; who is, of course, a terrible foster mother just in it for the monthly checks.

Not a bad scene, played well by all involved, but it was predictable. Exactly what a viewer who’d seen Law & Order would expect. Yes, it gave us a peek into Jenny’s life but we already knew it wasn’t ice cream and puppies. But it didn’t challenge us. Or surprise us. Or take any risks.

Turns out foster mom does know one or two things about Jenny—including that she used to visit a cabin up by the lake when she was upset.

Into the Woods

Crane and Abbie go to the cabin; Abbie breaks in with her lock picking skills.

Turns out its Corbin’s cabin—and Jenny is there. Corbin, apparently, mentored both girls in different ways. Abbie towards a career as an officer of the law, Jenny as a sort of super-commando.

The sisters pull guns on each other (because who among us hasn’t wished, every now and then, to be able to aim a weapon at a sibling’s head?) and proceed to have a series of sisterly arguments.

Crane chides them for both being childish and they put the guns away. Jenny reveals that Corbin visited her the day before he died and told her that he had a premonition of his death—and if that happened, she was to go to his cabin because there was an important object there.

Now, if you’re asking yourself, why did she even bother to store her stuff at the bar when there was Corbin’s super-secret cabin? The one no one knew about and far less likely to be traceable, or sold while she was locked up, or burnt down or whatever—that’s a good question.

Of course if she hadn’t gone to the bar we wouldn’t have known what a badass she was—and that she could hold a gun in each hand while looking pensive.

So, Jenny pulls out a wooden box that hides a leather bag that holds a sextant and a scrap of leather with a symbol on it.

The symbol sparks yet another one of Crane’s recollections—this time back to Boston Harbor, 1773, and the Colonial Mission: Impossible team. Turns out they—sent by Washington himself–were after a device that was stored in a box that had the same symbol.

And Voila. A Secret Map!

Crane rearranges the parts of the sextant to reveal that it is also a projector—and it projects a map of Sleep Hollow where the mystery box is hidden.

They are interrupted by gunshots—it’s the Germans (plausible that they found the cabin, since the distorted voice did tell Gunther that there would be a list of known associates). After a shootout that proved everyone involved is a terrible shot, German Thug 1 and 2 run off with the sextant—leaving Gunther behind to answer just enough questions to move the plot forward before crunching down on a cyanide pill (why he waited until after he had given them all the information, we don’t know).

There’s a torture/don’t torture argument between Jenny and Abbie which doesn’t really go anywhere, but does show off Jenny’s knowledge of guns. ‘Cause she’s badass. Just in case we’d forgotten.

Meanwhile, Irving has found Gunther’s house using good old-fashioned police work. The house is normal—the basement? Not so much.

Apparently the Hessians—we know Gunther is a Hessian thanks to a tattoo on his chest—have been living in secret in the community just waiting for the signs so that they can assist their evil dark lord.

Side note: Was anyone else unsure if the Germans had been there for hundreds of years, unaging, or if there was some secret Hessian society still operating, training little Hessians to be sleeper agents and sending them over?

The object they are after is the Book of Solomon, where according to legend, King Solomon wrote down the spells that would release the 37 demons from their banishment to Hell’s 7^th circle.

Along with those demons, the demon king? Lord? Ruler of some sort would also rise—Moloch, or the demon Abbie and Jenny saw in the woods all those years ago. The brains of the operation, so to speak.

So Gunther crunches a cyanide pill and dies. Crane—he of the memory—draws the stolen map. Solomon’s book is buried in the abandoned Dutch Reform church. Off they go.

To the Creepy Abandoned Church!

German Thugs 1 & 2 are already there. It’s a suitably creepy church, though the statue of a nun seems a little off (didn’t think Dutch Reform went in for nuns, but okay) and they—rather easily—find the chest (with the book inside it) hidden in a fireplace.

Side note: Why didn’t someone just hide the book in the library? Or the super-secret research room? It’d probably be harder to find then in some giant stone box with demonic writing all over it.

Also, was the Church deconsecrated? If not, does the consecration rule not work in the Sleepy Hollow world? If not, why not?

Crane, Jenny and Abbie rush over, and during the car ride we learn that Jenny traveled the world as a freedom fighter and has super-commando training. Of course she does.

This is a reoccurring issue; our characters are all the super-best. Crane remembers everything and always has the perfect flashback to solve the case. Abby is a super-cop; Jenny is a special forces trained freedom fighter. If they have these great strengths, they should have correspondingly great weaknesses. But their foibles and weaknesses aren’t truly detrimental to their attempts to fight the good fight, nor do they force them to change, or cause them any real loss—they are the kind of weaknesses you say you have at a job interview: “I just work too hard,” or “I find that my greatest weakness is once I’m given a task I just have to complete it,” or “I pay too much attention to detail.” These aren’t real, fatal flaws and without them the characters remain stereotypes.

There is a pointed conversation between Jenny and Crane about fighting for things one believes in. Considering the day Abby’s had, Crane and Jenny are lucky all she did was roll her eyes.

Back at the Church, German Thug 1 and 2 find a spooky baptismal font in the center of the church. They open up the book (a decidedly medieval-looking book, which isn’t quite right for Solomon’s time but okay) and chant the super-evil chant to wake up Moloch (in German, nonetheless, ‘cause that was around 3000 years ago). The baptismal font bursts into flames and oily goo spills out into a pentagon-y shape.

That Was Almost A Close Call

Crane, Jenny and Abbie rush in. Despite having numbers on their side, and surprise, and supposedly being a super-cop and commando-chick, they are handily defeated by the German’s when one of them takes Jenny down and holds a gun to her head just as Abbie reaches the book.

The German tells Abbie to put the book down or Jenny gets it (if you are feeling like you’ve seen this before, reader, you have).

Abbie, of course, throws the book down into the flames. The German let’s Jenny go to try to save it—the book bursts into flames, and the Hell portal closes. It was just that easy.

There’s another brief scuffle and both the Germans end up dead.

Back at the police station (Still no paperwork!) Jenny and Abbie make amends, because Abbie arranges for Jenny to get out of the psych hospital early (no charges for the escape, the hospital doesn’t want the ‘bad press’) under Abbie’s conservatorship.

We end with Crane showing Abbie an excerpt from Paradise Lost that refers to Moloch. Moloch led a revolt of demons against heaven and was punished. He is the demon of child sacrifices, and the demon which controls the horseman, and imprisons Crane’s wife.

Now, says Crane, they know his name.

Tune in next week for more haps in the Hollow!

Sleepy Hollow airs on Fox Monday nights at 9 p.m. EST/PST