Season 2, Episode 4, “The Weeping Lady”
Monday night’s “Sleepy Hollow” was like some of the glass that is occasionally shattered in this series: a lot of fragments. Was I the only one who thought it was a bit of a head scratcher, in terms of how the pieces fit with the overall story, if they fit at all?
One thing that we all probably already knew was certainly confirmed: Ichabod Crane is a chick magnet. The episode’s opening scene found a present-day woman named Caroline (Laura Spencer) throwing herself at him, only to be turned away. And then came the soggy Mary Wells, the central figure of the episode, whom Ichabod rejected two centuries ago and who apparently still hasn’t gotten over it.
The guy seems to bring out something in women, which is odd because wasn’t the Ichabod of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” the Washington Irving story, actually a loser in love? He left a dance where he had hoped to secure Katrina’s hand disappointed — or “chopfallen,” as the text says. Tom Mison’s Ichabod may sometimes be baffled by modernity, but I have yet to see his chops fall.
The episode did chip away a bit more at the pedestal on which Ichabod has placed Katrina. It turns out she had been keeping a secret from him about Mary Wells, the Weeping Lady. The more Katia Winter, who portrays Katrina, is given to do in an episode, the more untrustworthy her character becomes. Who still likes this woman (the character, not the actress)? She’s beginning to annoy me.
Also, was I the only one who kept flashing back to the Harry Potter movies as this episode went on? The Weeping Lady no doubt hangs out with the equally damp Moaning Myrtle, the bathroom-dwelling ghost from the Harry Potter stories. And was that a basilisk reference that zipped by? That reptile of legend, of course, figures prominently in the Harry Potter saga, especially “Chamber of Secrets.”
Anyway, the bottom line for this episode: too much Nick Hawley (Matt Barr), not enough (i.e. no) Capt. Frank Irving (Orlando Jones), and hardly any Henry Parish (John Noble), either. What did I miss? Was there something important in this installment, or was it just filling air time?