ASGW Sleepy Hollow (ep 9)

Sleepy Hollow episode 10 airs tonight.  Only 3 more left!  I wonder if I'll manage to watch season 2.  This is the first season of TV since... I dunno, TNG that I have managed to watch a show every week.  I think it has something to do with the fact that the episodes are online, so I can watch them even when I'm away or forgetful.

Episode 9 was mostly about developing the various charactes' backstories.  For one, I so called it: Ichabod and Katrina had a baby.  A son, specifically, which will probably be important later on.  There was also some slight development in Abbie's story too, but not a whole lot.  Surprisingly, the captain got his fair share as well; we met his ex-wife and daughter for the first time, and his daughter was given some significant screen time.

This, if I may digress a bit, is why Sleepy Hollow rocks and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't.  Sleepy Hollow takes the time to put a kid on screen and give her her own monologue to establish her voice and backstory.  And she's just a supporting character, with no promise she'll ever even come back. Agents is so caught up in explaining the McGuffin of the week that we still don't know who the 6 top-billed characters are, and since we don't know, we don't care.  The only episode of Agents that really did any character-building was the one where Simmons got the alien flu.  Even Coulson explaining how Melinda May got the nickname "the cavalry" doesn't give us any insight into her character.  She's still a cipher, like everyone else on the show.

Anyway, nothing really objectionable in ep 9 for Sleepy Hollow except for the main antagonist.  Why does an Ancient Near Eastern god whose main characteristic is worship involving child sacrifice have a servant made of tree roots from deciduous North America?  I'm waiting to see if there is ever a connection between Molech's worship and Ichabod's and Katrina's child, but I'm not holding my breath.  There was no indication of it in the episode.

Ok, maybe, maybe you could draw something from Abbie's line, "As soon as your son was born, the creature attacked," but that sounds more like the baby is some kind of mystic key (hey, he's the child of a witch, right?), not that Molech needs more child sacrifice.

Speaking of Katrina, one nitpicky bit:  Why is the letter Ichabod wrote to her in case he was killed on the battlefield folded up and hidden in a book when she was right there when he died to cast the spell that kept him alive? preserved? in some kind of magical stasis? for 200+ years?

Also, after the first episode where Ichabod met her, Katrina has looked and dressed nothing like an 18th century Quaker.  I think I already addressed that as Katrina Van Tassel, a Dutch woman in rural New York, she shouldn't be a Quaker at all.  Oh I didn't?  Well, she shouldn't. Quakers were British and largely centered around Philadelphia.  They could have made her Mennonite, which would have fit better, actually.  Mennonites were/are pacifists, like the Quakers, and the Plain Mennonites grew out of the German immigrants, not the Dutch.  So it wouldn't have been out of place for her to wear those fancy dresses and jewelry.  Also, Quakers were disowned if they married non-Quakers, and Abraham was obviously not a Quaker. 

See?  I should be hired as a TV/movie research assistant.