The best (ok first but it’s still pretty darn good) new show
of the season returned this week with its second episode, Blood Moon, and,
thankfully, it managed to retain the fun, chills, interesting mythology and great
chemistry that made its pilot so entertaining. Looks like this one’s a keeper,
Sleepy Heads (fandom is crazy fast, right?).
Even better than maintaining the quality of the pilot this
episode also resolved the one big upset so far, the death of John Cho’s Andy,
reviving him in gleefully gory fashion and leaving the erstwhile Sulu
jelly-necked and cranky. They even brought back the fantastic Clancy Brown for
flashbacks and hauntings (was that man not just born to play a ghost?!).
The episode kicked off with Ichabod experiencing a
dream/vision of the four horsemen (looking very cool), reunited and gunning for
him, fortunately (this being the only time ever that being swallowed up by
creepy tree roots is fortunate) he finds himself deposited in an underground
tunnel (CLUE Ichabod, CLUE!) and face-to-face with the exception-to-the-rule of
characters being pretty great on this show, his dead witch wife Katrina who
lets Ichabod know that a horde of evil is on its way, obliquely stating that
the first shall be “one of us”. Argh. In an unfortunate turn of events (for me)
the ok/nicely atmospheric/very boring sounding title sequence features Katrina
but not John Cho. Whaaa? Fingers crossed with a bit more back-story she’ll turn
out better. We can only hope.
In a cute contrast, Ichabod wakes to his motel room which
has been plastered with super adorable and actually helpful sticky notes from
Abbie including such gems as “television, it’s like theatre”. I’m probably
reading too much into it at this point but it almost feels as though he’s
waking from a dysfunctional and confusing relationship to the beginnings of a
more sweet and supportive one. This also seems to be backed up by his refusal
to discuss Katrina with Abbie any more than saying that she ‘disliked [him]
intensely’ to begin with. Then again maybe when we hear more, which we surely
will, this might change (but I’ll probably always be irritated at least by
Katrina’s goth gown attire). Again there’s a nice link here when Ichabod runs
into Abbie’s ex, Officer Luke, and after witnessing he and Abbie exchange looks,
asks her, in a hilarious sort of camp wedding planner voice, ‘are you
betroooothed?’. Super cute.
It turns out, thanks to a handy/magical gust of wind blowing
dirt off a gravestone (could you not just have told him, Katrina?!), that the
evil-of-the-week is in fact a witch (which we all knew cause even though “one
of us” was irritatingly phrased and unnecessarily cryptic it was actually
pretty easy for viewers to decipher). Said witch is Serilda of Abaddon who,
with the help of re-uniformed John Cho, is off to fetch the ashes of her
persecutor’s descendents in order to regain her fleshy form and become
ridiculously pretty once more. Descendent #1 is some middle aged
driver who rudely asks John Cho what’s up with his neck. Intriguingly Officer
Andy (yep I did just remember John Cho’s character name) apologises to
soon-to-be-ashes guy before leaving Serilda to do her thing, which is nice and
reaffirms that there is some sympathy to be found in this character who seems
to have made a deal with the devil (he really ought to have watched
Supernatural before doing that).
Thankfully upon witnessing the murder scene
Ichabod remembers the modus operandi from back in the day as Serilda’s and
tells Abbie that, after wiping out a whole troop with her witchcraft, she was burnt
at the stake. Ichabod shows Abbie an underground tunnel (!) which belongs to a
network they dug ‘back in the day’ and this leads to a room full of everything
they could ever possibly need for case-solving! Hurrah! Amazingly, within
seconds they find out who was present at the burning of Serilda and, with a
quick spot of modern policing from Abbie, track down the details of modern descendent
#2, who happens to be an adorable/creepy-haired (delete one) child who
obviously isn’t going to die. What follows is a pretty delightful horror
sequence with Serilda, and a cat, appearing in the little boy’s home but, shock
horror, leaving not with the ashes of a dead kid but instead having pilfered
his father’s ashes from an urn. Nice twist, show.
The denouement, which sees Abbie and Ichabod
track down Serilda in the underground tunnels (ta-da!) felt just a tiny bit
underwhelming; there didn’t seem any big threat to either of the two and
Serilda was taken out with a swift gunpowder explosion. Still, her
transformation was pretty cool-looking and very nicely shot and we did get a
fun ‘bit’ with Ichabod not understanding that there’s more than one bullet in a
gun.
I was happy to give up a more satisfying
fight for the next scene of Abbie in the police station walking into the
sheriff’s office to be greeted by the ghost of Clancy Brown. An earlier, really
affecting scene in the episode fleshed out the relationship between these two,
as a younger Abbie, having been involved with drugs after her Blurry Man
experience was taken to a café by the Sheriff and encouraged to change her
life. It was great to see that this relationship is still going to be built on
after one half’s death. And especially great as Clancy offered up a juicy clue:
“don't be afraid of number 49. That's where you'll find you're not alone”. Cue a cut to that very
number itself adorning the room of none other than long-lost, supposedly crazy
sister Jenny who looks ready for battle, and a quick jump scare from Blurry Man
before the credits roll. Looks like this series is not planning on slowing the
pace and I’m certainly excited for next week’s episode. Obviously not just for
shirtless Ichabod.
NOTES
Coincidence? Captain Irving’s trip to Albany seemed a tad
suspicious considering Ichabod had only just told us that that’s where his
troop were stationed. Hmmm. As someone who lives a few thousand miles from NY I
assumed that maybe Albany was really nearby but a quick google maps check tells
me that it’s over 2 hours drive. Hmmmmm.
Soundtrack: You know that this show is having as much fun as
you are from the tongue-in-cheek song choices, this week being Frank Sinatra’s ‘Witchcraft’
Best lines: Ichabod – “a ten percent levy on baked goods?!”
Abbie - “I will literally pay you
to stop talking”, Ichabod - “I would happily accept as I am in need of
currency”
Abbie - “jolly good”, Ichabod - “that
was not an accurate impersonation”
Worst line: Ichabod - “her remains remain a mystery” (oh
Ichabod, that was not cute)
Addendum, in which I shall make a weird, pretty grasping
Harry Potter comparison: John Cho = Wormtail. Obviously. Headless/Blurry Man =
Voldemort. Ichabod/Abbie (and maybe Jenny) = Harry. Ichabod and Headless are
intrinsically joined; when one awoke the other did too. Ichabod, literally, has
a piece of Headless AKA a horcrux. Blurry Man has seemingly had a beef with
Abbie and Jenny since they encountered him when they were little but he/it
didn’t do anything to them then and appears powerless against them. What does
it all mean?!?! Nothing really but, y’know, Harry Potter…
