Sleepy Hollow Episode 5 Recap: John Doe From Roanoke

If you abandon all reason when watching "Sleepy Hollow", it's great fun. If not, you'll be seriously frustrated. Case in point: who knew that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Ichabod Crane and the lost colony of Roanoke were related? Not I.

The colonists of Roanoke were cursed with a plague courtesy of the Horseman of Pestilence. Apparently he's trying to kill everyone in the world and what better way than to infect an isolated community that will never come in contact with anyone else? He's not very good at his job. So anyway Virginia Dare who was the first person born in the New World (if you forget about the millions of Native Americans already here) dies from the disease. Her ghost leads the rest of the colonists to a village in the woods where they're lived since. A boy (Thomas) is lured out of the village and the disease begins infecting Sleepy Hollow citizens. Luckily Ichabod speaks Middle English and gets the scoop from the boy. And he is able to track where he came from. Is there anything that guy can't do?

Ichabod becomes seriously ill and sees Katrina who is still being held in purgatory (or wherever) by Moloch. That woman apparently can't give a straight answer. Spit it out lady! If she was like that in real life she must have been frustrating. The one useful thing she did tell Ichy was to stay alive. Good advise for us all.

So end of the story. Ichy and Abbie return the boy and Ichabod and everyone else is cured. It turns out the Roanoke colonists were all dead to start with. OK that makes sense...NOT!

Odds and ends:

"If a building if left standing for 10 years they declare it a historical landmark"- Ichy to Abby.
Ichy tries to open something wrapped in plastic and figure out why tape is sticky. And he has yet to find out what 'spa kale" is.
Abbie's ex Morales is up to no good.
Ichy moves into the Sheriff's old cabin.
Is it just me or did Pestilence look a lot like a Samurai? That must have been all that was left in the costume department the day of filming.
Abbie discovers she has faith and the water in Roanoke Village is the secret.

Episode summary from Wikipedia:
A sickly boy suffering from an unknown disease is discovered in the woods and immediately put under CDC quarantine. Because the boy can only speak Middle English, Irving asks Ichabod to question the boy. The boy, Thomas, says that he is from Roanoke, which Ichabod realizes is the Roanoke Colony that mysteriously disappeared in the sixteenth century. Ichabod and Abbie track the boy's journey from where he was found, and discover a hidden village where the Roanoke colonists show symptoms of the same disease but are still alive. From the colonists' story they figure out that the disease originated from the horseman Pestilence/Conqueror, who wished to spread a plague through the land in preparation for the Apocalypse. The colonists were protected by the ghost of Virginia, the first girl to die of the disease, who lead them to the hidden village where the disease is contained. When Thomas left the village he took the disease with him. Abbie and Ichabod return to town to fetch the boy, but Ichabod starts showing symptoms and has to be quarantined. Abbie persuades Irving to let her take Ichabod and Thomas back to the woods. They are successful in returning Thomas to his village, only to realize that the colonists were dead the entire time. Thomas was lured back out into the land of the living in hopes of spreading the disease, but once he is returned all the infected people in Sleepy Hollow, including Ichabod, are cured.

Grade: 3 1/2 Monsters (out of 5). Not my most favorite episode but it was OK. There will no new episodes of "Sleepy Hollow" until November 4th.