Monday, March 13, 2017

Sleepy Hollow, Season 4, Episode 10: Insatiable



This week’s monster of the week is a demon that Jude, Malcolm’s pet demon, releases that causes famine.

It stares at people and makes them eat everything in sight in desperate hunger (kind of like dog owners who need to get their dinner down before succumbing to those pleading eyes) and then they die of starvation which is unpleasant. The demon is running around the vents of the Eisenhower Building. This is a whole lot of people to snack on for said demon.

The gang gathers around this and follows up the clues. This supernatural creature is Chinese and sort of identified through Jenny’s contacts (but not really since it conveniently attacks). They link it to Ichabod’s past – of course, because every supernatural creature in the history of mythology from every culture in the world has to magically appear in America’s revolutionary history and Ichabod’s personal history at some point. They link it to a historical event, because that’s what Sleepy Hollow does (all your historical figured were werewolves, Americans, it is known)

Pulling together everyone’s talents: Jenny’s contacts, Ichabod’s memories, Jake’s research and Alex’s ingenuity to put together a gold based containment and weapon to bring down the demon

Y’know not only did every supernatural creature ever show up in the distant past to be confronted by America’s historical heroes, but America’s historical heroes were actually pretty bad at dealing with them. How many beasties have been imprisoned for several centuries despite the people facing them having occult knowledge and the resources of an army/nation to deal with it whole Ichabod & co can kill these monsters relatively easily with their own rag-tag resources (they have to scrape scrap gold out of cars! Between them they couldn’t scrape up enough to get a cheap ring from a pawn shop?)

The beastie is killed and duly vanquished. But Malcolm was behind this and this was all part of his plan to charge up the scales of Lady Justice with hunger power. That duly stolen he presents it to his new comatose/mojo’d assistant: Helen. She will now be his horseman of Famine. Logan, the social media plague guy is the Horseman of Pestilence. They also dig up the headless horseman and plan to heal him since he was hurt over the whole Philosopher’s Stone thing. That gives them 3 of the 4 horseman.

At last Ichabod and the gang catch on to what they’re doing.


There’s also ongoing examination of the dynamic of the group while we’re going along with this: one of which is Diana going off on her own and seconding Alex and Jake to investigate Malcolm. She is duly obsessed with Malcolm as the cause of all their problems and the one they have to bring down. She’s also concerned about Malcolm apparently directly targeting Molly. She’s not wrong and no-one disagrees with her: but at the same time people are dying now and you can’t just ignore the monster of the week when you have so many episodes left to fill. Get with the show format Diana! Ichabod, with Jenny’s backing, gently chides them about not consulting with the group about the way they’re moving forward: the have to be united or fall to infighting

He also makes comments to Jenny about how far Diana has changed – which Jenny agrees with: she’s much more comfortable breaking the law for one. There’s also a question of whether this is going to come back at her professionally

This all laces into Ichabod’s housewarming party and his ongoing observation of how much they’ve become close, a group, a family. Ichabod comments on how close he is to Diana and her family, how DC is actually feeling like a home in ways that Sleepy Hollow never did and…

…and someone slap those words out of Ichabod’s mouth right now. Now he thinks he has a family, here in DC not Sleepy Hollow, where he was with Abbie? Gah gah gah no, at least mention the great big sucking void that is caused by Abbie’s loss. Especially when talking about Jenny moving into the flat down the hall for her own part of this Abbie-less family.


But this is also Jenny’s storyline: because when talking to her contacts she learns that there’s demand for a shiny magical artefact and that used to be her job – going around the world, having adventures and finding shiny artefacts for dubious buyers. The life of Lara Croft is appealing to her: because it would be her thing, her life – not something she shares with the rest of the gang.

Which I’m torn about. On the one side – Jenny, the only character except Ichabod who has survived the first season and a character very much in danger to becoming Ichabod’s sidekick – needs her own storylines to make sure she doesn’t become a sidekick. At the same time this sounds like an excuse to either write her out or have her disappear for several episodes as she pursues various projects.

I’m cynical like that

And still not over Abbie.