Sleepy Hollow S01E06: Sin Eating With Dr. Fringe

Sleepy Hollow S01E06: Sin Eating With Dr. Fringe

[Ed. Note: Carmen Petaccio is a writer from New York City. He blogs regularly at bpofd.com and loves Sleepy Hollow.]

WAKE UP, #Sleepyheads! Rise from your enchanted subterranean mud baths! Emerge from your atmospheric time-travel caves! Stagger confusedly out into the suddenly strange, suddenly frigid world of our shared present! We have waited long enough. We have endured long enough. The Boston Who Gives A Shits have won The Garbage Olympics. Ted has proposed to the mother atop a reprehensible green-screen lighthouse. Eminem still exists. Enough is enough. We’ve earned this. A new day is upon us. Sleepy Hollow is back. We equal back.

So, in an apt segue from FOX’s coverage of The Garbage Olympics, Abbie has taken Ichabod “out to the ballgame.” As The Sleepy Hollow Spookies take the field, Abbie explains the draw of modern baseball. “It’s a wholly outmoded sport played at the speed of molasses by greedy, hypocritical deer antler addicts,” Abbie says. “Its sole remaining role in society is to frustrate ESPN viewers waiting to see how their fantasy football players did (Sidebar: Fuck you, Chris Johnson).” Good synopsis, Abbie! Her synopsis is followed by some v. missed and v. v. back repartee, which ends with Ichabod eloquently berating the umpire. (Deserved.) Abbie heads to the Jeep Grand Cherokee while Ichabod goes to take a nice stroll to, where else, a graveyard. (Sleepy Hollow is back.)

Ichabod is having a swell time saying his prayers to his not-dead wife’s grave, until he gets shot in the handsome neck with a tranquilizer dart. So now he’s abducted by this week’s capital-M, capital-F Mysterious Forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of Sleepy Hollow, in the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Abbie is having a Vanilla Sky-esque lucid dream. As the musical accompaniment plays, Abbie wanders the candlelit halls of Luigi’s Mansion. She finds a leather-faced  American Girl doll thing. She gets chased by The Headless Horseman, and interrupts the three witches from Macbeth’s canasta game. Katrina apparates in and explains that Luigi’s Mansion is actually Ichabod’s Mansion and he’s been kidnapped and something about a “Sin Eater” and Abbie needs to save him. “Okay,” Abbie says. “I should probably do that since I’ve been driving blindly mid-lucid-dream for the past ten minutes. Byyyye.”

Abbie rushes to Captain Orlando Jones, re-explains Ichabod’s kidnapping, ghost wife, “Sin Eater,” etc. In response, Cap OJ says, “There are two things in life I believe a man should hold on to for as long as possible: his virginity and skepticism,” which is an excellent response. In response to that excellent response, I say, “WHAT?” (Sidebar for real though: WHAT.) Anyway, Captain Skeptic Virgin agrees to grant Abbie’s sister Jenny a 24-hour furlough from Arkham because Abbie needs a buddy or else she can’t solve crimes. At Arkham, Jenny isn’t about it at all until Abbie mentions the “Sin Eater” and then she is totally about it for sure. To the Cherokee!

Ichabod has been abducted by the staff of The Men’s Warehouse and taken to their fight club. JK they’re Free Masons and so is Ichabod and they’ve decided it’d be best for everyone if Ichabod killed himself, severing his Horcrux bond with The Headless Horseman. To illustrate this, we flashback to a funnier version of  the 12 Years a Slave sketch from SNL two weeks ago. Ichabod’s commander in the British army, who is probably really a bat demon, orders him to be a jerk to a freed slave, Arthur, suspected of knowing the identity of someone named Cicero, or something. This subplot honestly comprises a quarter of the episode, and I honestly couldn’t give two spooky shits about it. In summary: Ichabod doesn’t shoot Artie. Bat demon commander does shoot Artie. For some reason, Ichabod develops a guilt complex about it, and Ichabod and Katrina fall in love. Summary over. Onto what really matters: the return of our favorite milkshake enthusiast, Dr. Fringe PhD.

In Sleepy Hollow, Dr. Fringe is a Hartford-based Sin Eater, which is ‘street’ for a person who lives in Hartford Connecticut and eats blood sponges to absolve people of their sins. Dr. Fringe isn’t about Sin Eating at all until he grazes Abbie’s boob and has a boob-graze vision that allows her to deduce that the Free Masons are holding Ichabod in the secret under-town tunnels. Then he’s kind of into Sin Eating, but not all the way into Sin-Eating. “Forget you, Fringe,” Abs and Jens say. “We’re rescuing Ichabod. Don’t you dare show up at the last second to make things all better via Sin Eating.” Dr. Fringe lurks back into his solarium, is like, “Yeah. Okay.”

Meanwhile, back in the secret under-town tunnel system, the Free Masons have given Ichabod a scary black box.

WUSINTHEBOCKS? There’s a poisonous bottle of Gran Marnier in the box, and Ichabod has decided to drink it “for the greater good.” With Ichabod dead, they’ll be able to kill The Horseman and Harry can be resurrected and kill Voldemort and Rowling can flash forward 19 years and ruin the whole series. Fun. Abbie tries to talks Icks out of it, but he’s all for killing himself, so he drinks the poison Gran Marnier and dies. Show over.

JK. Dr. Fringe show up and eats Ichabod’s blood sponge and absolves him of his guilt for not killing Artie. All better!

Or at least you think everything is all better…until…The Headless Horseman rides up on Ichabod’s atmospheric time-travel cave! Do I know what that means? No. Do I care. NOPE. Sleepy Hollow is back. Good night, #Sleepyheads!

more from Videogum