We open with the kind of scene I really want to see a lot
more of – the happy domestic breakfast with Jenny, Joe, Abbie and Ichabod
having breakfast, Ichabod being all historical and outraged. It’s cute. Though
this time Ichabod is outraged because he’s distracting himself from his
immigration issues
Another shadow over this whole domestic scene is Abbie –
she’s still very distracted by her obsession with her special symbol, which
will come up later.
The monster of the week turns out to be the Jersey Devil
which, in addition to being a cryptid Urban Legend, turns out to be an old rival
of Franklin’s who turned to Alchemy and turned himself into a green skinned
monster with claws and poison and a tail with more poison and horns and a whole
lot of other things that the guy considers an advantage despite living in a
time of firearms which rends most claws/poisons etc rather obsolete while
clothes shopping becomes a pain in the scorpion-tailed arse. It does come with
a side order of being immortal and bullet proof though, so ups and downs.
The beast also has his own little video of the Hidden One’s
history – which is the main point of this episode.
Way back in time we had super duper gods hanging around
humans, being worshipped and occasionally squishing people while getting lots
of presents to keep the squishing to a minimum. Boss god happily lives in the
sunlight with his super-powerful Hourglass of specialness. While the Hidden One
is banished to the basement, hidden away for reasons unknown. Unfortunately,
being gods doesn’t make you intelligent, because he’s also locked up with a Box
full of evil (Pandora’s Box) which has the power of destroying shiny god’s
Hourglass
Do I need to point out the racial problems that comes
with good Boss god being made up, literally, or shining light while the
dangerous, imprisoned, naughty bad god is a dark skinned Black man?
Pandora was given the job of providing please-don’t-squish-us
offerings to the gods and she totally fell for the Hidden One, giving him
presents and, at his not-so-subtle manipulations, using the box to kill shiny
God by destroying the special Hourglass.
To the present, the devil guy is collecting golden
artefacts from history which are apparently made up of the pieces of said
Hourglass, so he can give it to the Hidden One so he can then gain the awesome
Shiny Sand of power.
He runs into the Witnesses and after a few fight scenes,
lots of banter and some cunning, he ends up being zapped by lightning and Dead –
but not before getting the Hidden One the Shiny Sand. Which means he is getting
his power back and kind of being nice to Pandora, but her face says she’s
really not buying it.
Along the way we find that he also has a little model of
the symbol Abbie has been obsessing over which pretty much exposes her secret
to Ichabod. There’s a lot of back and forth about this with Ichabod both
deciding the symbol is evil but relenting, apologising for being judgemental
and acknowledging that after being through a traumatic experience soldiers –
and Abbie – use whatever they can to try and keep things together. While Abbie,
since she froze for several minutes staring at the symbol at a very bad time
has realised that her dependence, her addiction, to this symbol is now a
problem and she needs help
How this storyline is handled is going to be interesting,
worrisome and difficult. It could be extremely well done. It could be a train
wreck. It could be both.
We also have Jenny and Joe. Joe has money and decides, as
a romantic gesture, to get rid of Jenny’s trailer and buy her a while new
trailer. She doesn’t consider this to be romantic. She considers it stealing.
They have a lot of really cute interactions about this as Jenny clearly sets
her boundaries and Joe learns his lesson. I like them, yes yes I do.
