Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Ichabod and Abbie Don’t Need Your Blood Money in Sleepy Hollow: “Root of All Evil”!

Reactor

Home / Ichabod and Abbie Don’t Need Your Blood Money in Sleepy Hollow: “Root of All Evil”!
Movies & TV Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod and Abbie Don’t Need Your Blood Money in Sleepy Hollow: “Root of All Evil”!

By

Published on October 7, 2014

This week’s Sleepy Hollow brings us back into intimately battle with Henry, gives us some redemptive backstory on a Revolutionary villain, and plants some clues that Reyes is more than an ignorant bystander in the Apocalyptic War! Now, if you notice the title, “Root of All Evil,” you could be forgiven for thinking that the Tree Demon returns, but alas no! The root of all evil they’re referring to is money in general, and an evil coin in particular.

First, When Ichabbie tries to visit Irving in Tarrytown Psychiatric, they learn that his new lawyer, Henry Parish has blocked their visitation rights!!! War is always two steps ahead! They track Henry to the bank, where a tellers has taken hostages. Abbie’s trying to reason with her, until Reyes shoots her!

WHAT DOES REYES KNOW???

Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

Watching the security camera, Ichabod catches the teller putting a coin in her pocket. He regales Abbie with the tale of his secret mission to track down some coins that were being put into circulation—he thought to bankrupt the struggling economy. But the leader of that mission was one Benedict Arnold! Who pocketed a coin and then turned eeee-villllllll! So is the coin turning people now? Was the actual purpose to bankrupt the soul rather than the market? Or as Ichabod says, “The coins almost turned the tide of the Revolution, now they’ll turn the tide of this war.”

Jenny stops in long enough to provide Ichabbie with the contact info for a dude who can help with the Evil Coin Project (This being one of the Jenny’s friends, said contact info is “He hangs out by the river”). The sisters then get in a fight because it’s been a whole episode since they fought because Jenny discovers that Reyes, Abbie’s new boss, is the one who put their mother in Tarrytown Psych! Only like twelve people exist in the Sleepy Hollow Universe, and they all know each other. Abbie tries to defend Reyes to her sister, which goes as well as you’d expect.

Abbie and Ichabod seek out Jenny’s contact, Hawley, whom I’m guessing tracks down esoteric artifacts as a hobby during Ultimate Frisbee’s off-season.

Crane declares him a privateer, which is most likely the best thing this guy’s ever been called, and hates him on sight. In the plus column, Hawley knows about the coin they’re looking for. It’s a Tyrian shekel which was the… oh, wait. Seriously, show? So Tyrian shekels, minted in Tyre, were used to pay the Temple Tax in Jerusalem. They’re about the size of a quarter, and have an image of the Phoenician god Melqart on the front and an eagle on the back. They are also traditionally thought to be the payment that Judas received to rat Jesus out to the Romans. So if you thought the Benedict Arnold allegory was a little subtle, allow the show to put a finer point on this season’s theme of Trust vs. Betrayal: these are the coins that turned Judas into the biggest Iscariot in Western history. And Ichabod breaks out his awesome memory to quote Ben Franklin: “Ben Franklin said Judas betrayed only one man, but Benedict betrayed 3 million.” Well, true, but Judas really picked the wrong guy to screw over…

But enough theological musing! The florist’s shop has exploded! The Coin has struck again! When Mills and Crane get back to the police office to try to snag it from the evidence locker, it’s already gone, and the mad bomber what bombed at mid-day has retained the services of Horseman of War, Esq. Ichabod attempts a reasonable discussion with his errant son and Henry, lashing out in the spirit of embittered children everywhere, assures Ichabod that he hasn’t yet “begun to know fear.”

Yikes.

Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

Then Reyes shows up to bark at people again, and demands that Crane produce ID of some kind within 24 hours. Which, first of all, in all the time that Irving was running the show no one bothered to provide ID for Crane? And secondly, Reyes gives him that much time to come up with some fake shit if he needs to? WHAT IS YOUR DEAL, REYES? And then we learn that Reyes wasn’t actually “doing her job” when she got Abbie and Jenny’s mother put in the psych war—doing her job would have meant sending the woman to prison. Instead, she pulled some strings to give her what she thought was the safer alternative. Huh.

Henry uses his full power as the Horseman of War to, um, roll a coin down a sidewalk so it can attract Jenny’s attention and do its Ring of Power routine while he stands a few blocks away… giggling? Henry. Come on. You’re one of the agents of the Apocalypse: DO SOMETHING AWESOME. I’m starting to think Moloch made a bad call here.

Ichabod and Hawley got to a church to get consecrated stained glass, and try to out-esoteric-knowledge each other. It’s cute. A priest shows up, and Ichabod fakes his way through a confession so that Henry can break some of the glass out of the window, and then they all head up to Sterling Forest to stop Jenny from murdering Sheriff Reyes. There’s also some stuff about dark eagles showing up that are the living embodiment of the eagles on the Tyrian coins, I think? But that makes extra no sense.

Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

As they track through the woods, and once again prove their UTTER INABILITY TO PRIORITIZE by discussing Abbie’s distrust of Katrina rather than focusing on Jenny. They find Jenny targeting the sheriff, and Abbie talks Jenny down enough for Crane to tackle her, but the second the coin hits the ground it starts working its dark mojo on Abbie! But luckily our Mr. Crane is also a master of hackeysack, and he kicks the coin straight into the waiting consecrated stained glass as Holley holds it out. The sisters hold each other, and as the coin’s dark influence begins seeping out of them, Abbie reassures Jenny that she’s always on her side. Oh man.

So we get some nice closing moments: Reyes gives Abbie her mom’s file. Is this a peace offering? Or is she trying to lull her into trust? I DON’T TRUST YOU, REYES. Crane infiltrates Tarrytown psychiatric by pretending to visit a non-Irving patient, and manages to warn poor Irving, who still seems mightily shell-shocked, that Henry Parish is not all he seems. Then we see Irving looking at Henry’s business card, and it literally says “Parish & Cipher.” Has Irving never watched Angel Heart? And Hawley shows up again, and admits that he kept the coin because he wants to find the other 29 so he can sell them all off. Cause that’ll go well. Buuuut, he made Ichabod a fake ID! So I’m sure that’ll work out perfectly, and there’s no way for Reyes to see through this ruse. And then Crane busts out one last flashback to tell Abbie that Benedict Arnold regretted his betrayal, which somehow means that the two of them have to stick together, which probably means that the “Katrina-as-ineffectual-mole” thing is going to continue being a problem…

Notes and Errata

What is Hawley’s deal? Is he going to be a recurring character now? How adorable is it that Crane resents him for knowing esoteric stuff?

Oh god the moment when Jenny’s aim on Reyes failed cause she was crying because of Abbie’s speech and her tears were blurring the sight oh god.

Is Reyes an ally or an enemy? I actually like that the show is packing so many twists in about her.

Wither Franklinstein? Is he just hanging out somewhere, running amok like a golem without a purpose? I really want him to start popping up in the background as an extra.

Henry got a little Oedipal there at the end—maybe Katrina’s presence is having more of an effect than he claims?

Ichabod’s Struggles with Modernity

This week brought my favorite Struggle so far! When Ichabod noticed two men sitting at a table holding hands, and Abbie began to explain marriage equality, I was trusting the show to go somewhere awesome, and it did! You see, Ichabod is quite familiar with same-sex affections, thank you, as he served under von Steuben! …plus he’s seen the finale of Glee. But in Ichabod’s day no true gentleman would have worn his hat indoors. It’s shocking, really.

Please, television show, could we use an episode to hit the pause button on the Apocalypse and just watch Ichabod watching TV?

Abbie’s Struggles with…Anything?

Abbie is now struggling with her perceptions of Reyes: why did the woman show compassion to their mother? Does she know more than she’s saying?

Jenny’s Struggles with Weaponry

Once again our Freedom Fighter tries to shoot her way out of a problem, and has to be wrestled away from violence. Supposedly the Judas Coin brings out what’s already inside you, so is Jenny’s rage and trauma going to be another problem for the team to fight?

Irving’s Struggles with the Psych Ward

Sleepy Hollow Root of All Evil

Poor Irving looks like a broken doll… but seriously, Parish & Cipher? He’s living the Cliff’s Notes of the Book of Revelation, and he didn’t figure that one out? You never hire a lawyer named Cipher. Never never never.

Katrina

OK, I’m just adding Katrina in here because her plotline isn’t doing anything for me so far. Does she have a shot at turning Henry to the Good Side? Was Abraham this dumb even when he had a brain? And once again: how exactly does she plan to get in touch with Ichabod and Abbie?

 

Overall I thought this was a far stronger episode than last week’s! Much more tension, a better role for the new Sheriff, better Katrina-based bickering between Ichabbie…what say the rest of you? Did I miss anything?


Leah Schnelbach purges the evil from her soul by never having any money, ever. You can follow her on Twitter!

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Leah Schnelbach

Author

Intellectual Junk Drawer from Pittsburgh.
Learn More About Leah
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
10 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments