Well Incident at Stone Manor was an odd episode of Sleepy Hollow. The majority of the episode takes place in the alternate reality that Abbie is trapped in. A place Pandora calls the Catacombs. Time travels at a different pace in the Catacombs and while it has only been a few weeks in the real world, Abbie has been trapped in the Catacombs for 10 months.
During her time in the Catacombs, Abbie has been exploring her surroundings, and mapping the environment. She has found a cutlass by a well, and made herself a chess board. As she slowly losses her grip with reality, she begins playing chess with herself, and talking to Crane (who is not there)
Crane is back in the real world working with Jenny and Joe on a way to get to Abbie. They believe they find a way to astral project Crane’s spirit into the realm that Abbie is in. Crane uses his impressive carpentry skills to build a “spirit box” and Jenny and Joe round up the other needed items. The plan seems to work and Crane’s spirit (tethered by a candle) wanders off into the abyss to look for Abbie while his body remains unconscious in the spirit box.
Unfortunately, an incident at Stone Manor where a worker has died leads agent Foster to believe a Gargoyle has come to life and started killing people. With both of the Witnesses MIA, agent Foster will have to make due with Jenny and Joe’s help. This sequence gives us some of the most meta dialog of the season as Jenny and Joe talk about what Crane and Abbie would do if they were there to investigate the Gargoyle. This, along with Jenny’s hostile attitude toward agent Foster serve to make this otherwise useless side story more entertaining.
The Gargoyle doesn’t seem to be targeting anyone other then people who accidentally cross it’s path. It isn’t particularly menacing or scary. It doesn’t seem to be progressing the plot along. It just seems to be there to give the subplot crew something to do.
Of course, Foster, Jenny and Joe manage to find an old letter with a secret code that describes Betsy Ross’s previous run in with the Gargoyle. Of course, it gives no clues other then to bring Jenny to the conclusion that the Gargoyle can’t go on hollow ground.
The crew then decides to distract the beast with Holy Water, and then dispatch it by drowning it in concrete. I guess the works (as long as you don’t understand how concrete works… seriously, you can’t just go fire up the concrete machine and shoot a hundred gallons of concrete on someone).
Back in the Catacombs, Crane manages to find Abbie who is one step away from a loony bin… and having a bad hair day. They talk about the writing on the wall (which seems to be about Pandora’s boyfriend), and Crane claims the cutlass Abbie found is Betsy Ross’s. Then Pandora shows up.
Pandora tells Abbie that if she refills the eye crystal thing (that Abbie ran into the tree with when she first ended up in the Catacombs), Pandora will show Abbie how to use it’s power to get home… as long as she gives the eye to Pandora.
Abbie realizes that Pandora, like Crane, is astral projecting into this realm and therefore can’t physically interact with Abbie. She proclaims this and refuses to help. What Abbie fails to realize, is that Pandora can interact with Crane (since they are both spirit forms). Pandora quickly cuts Cranes tether, and he fades away.
Pandora explains to Abbie that Crane will not be able to find his way back to his body now that his tether has been cut. She then demand Abbie refill the eye or Abbie will be trapped in the Catacombs forever. Abbie then decides to smash they eyes so that it can never be refilled. This pisses Pandora off and she cuts her own tether (which apparently doesn’t affect her the same way it affected Crane) and disappears.
Back at Pandora and the Egyptian guys place, Pandora informs him that the eye is smashed. She then offers to sacrifice her own power so that he can regain his. He sucks her power from her.
Over at the library, Jenny and Joe realize something is wrong when they see Crane’s candle is out, and he is still in his trance.
And back in the Catacombs, Abbie realizes that if the Cutlass was Betsy Ross’s, then Betsy was not only there, but found a way out.
Abbie takes the cutlass back to where she found it, and realizes it was holding rope that was used to lower someone into the well. Abbie makes some new rope out of vines, and lowers herself into the well while calling out to Crane to follow her.
Abbie emerges out of a lake and sees an airplane in the sky proving she is back in our world. She heads to the library and when she gets there, Crane comes to. He proclaims that he heard Abbie call for him to follow her so he did.
Like I said, this was a strange episode. The play between Abbie and Crane was great, and the Catacomb part of the episode was really well done. The Sophie, Jenny and Joe part of the episode was entertaining, but pointless. Incident at Stone Manor was far from the best episode of Sleepy Hollow that I have seen, but it wasn’t the worst episode either.