Elsbeth Recap: Let ’Er Rip (Van Winkle, That Is)
“These nice suburban ladies are freaking me out.” This wisdom comes from a character named Chop (so called because he likes chopped salads, not for any hatchet or chainsaw-wielding tendencies), and he is not wrong. Poor Chop (James P. Reese) is only thrust into the turbid waters of Sleepy Hollow’s social scene because his company furnished all the props for the town’s annual Halloween maze, which is unfortunately the scene of a murder. Nice suburban-lady-on-nice-suburban-lady violence is nothing to laugh at, but I do find something very amusing about Elsbeth’s investigation of Sharon Norman (Annaleigh Ashford) for the murder of Beryl Nix (Kate Jennings Grant). Her style and approach are, as always, dogged, thorough, and relentlessly cheerful. What has me chuckling in admiration this week is how Elsbeth scythes her methodical way through Sharon’s thicket of lies and misdirection, all while wearing one of four different Halloween costumes honoring Audrey Hepburn’s film performance as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. The fish out of water (Elsbeth) wearing the costumes of another fish out of water (Eliza) as she navigates a wholly unfamiliar social world run by rigid norms and rules is one of the season’s best ongoing gags so far.
Sleepy Hollow’s rigid norms and rules are all ultimately just Sharon’s very strong preferences. She puts them all in a handy three-ring binder that she thinks is a good accompaniment to the Welcome to the Neighborhood walnut pie she brings to Beryl, making them seem more official and legally binding than they are.
I feel a bit bad for Sharon, who is so tightly wound and so insistent on exerting control over nearly everything that happens in her neighborhood that she was bound to snap. She wants things to be fun and beautiful and well organized! All of that is good! She is a bit of a victim, too, trapped by her own anxieties over loss of control and status. This episode is a bit of a case study in how not to respond when you realize that being Queen Bee is not all it’s cracked up to be(e).
We start to see the cracks in Sharon’s foundation almost immediately. Beryl’s response to Sharon’s three-ring binder and gluten- dairy- and sugar-free pie is all wrong. How dare this newcomer suggest that the towering maple between their properties be trimmed or cut down? How dare she hand the binder back to Sharon? She’s too free-spirited (likes to paint in the nude); too loud (to be fair, those wind chimes and her drum circles are a bit much); and receives too many male visitors at all hours (none of Sharon’s business). How is Sharon supposed to live like this?
She is being kept up all hours of the night, and it’s surely going to start affecting her volunteer work as the head of Sleepy Hollow’s PTA, Garden Club, Social Committee, Neighborhood Events Committee, and Neighborhood Safety Committee. Meanwhile, over the next few years — Sharon later specifies that Beryl moved into the neighborhood in May 2022 — Beryl starts to fit in nicely with all the other women in the neighborhood, but despite her invitations to parties and offer to take on the responsibility of designing the spooky Halloween maze, Sharon never comes around from her bad first impression. The last straw for Sharon is the fate of the towering maple, which appears to have died of old age. Beryl wraps a comforting arm around Sharon as the arborist revs up his chainsaw, but it’s clearly not enough for Sharon. As far as she’s concerned, that tree was a member of her family, and though she doesn’t accuse Beryl of having had a hand in the tree’s demise, you can see the gears in her mind working.
Sharon’s big chance for vengeance arrives with Beryl’s work on the Halloween maze. She wants to ramp up its scariness, and though she doesn’t have any of the details in mind, she does have a vision of herself “in the center of a fabulous display.” All of the other women in attendance at the organizational meeting offer to help her out, and Beryl graciously accepts Sharon’s assistance, too, and for a moment, it seems as if things might turn out just fine. The maze is quite scary, including an It-style clown with a chainsaw, chainsaw-wielding doctors in scrubs, and Beryl at the center of it all as the town’s biggest cultural claim to fame, the Headless Horseman. It’s really impressive, but Sharon kills the vibe by donning a pair of her anesthesiologist husband’s OR scrubs and using an actual chainsaw to divest Beryl of her head, for real, while all the kids are at the costume contest.
Remember Chop? Born to enjoy Halloween-themed charcuterie with his co-workers, forced to discover a severed human head. The case winds up in Elsbeth’s and Detective Donnelly’s laps because Beryl’s body (sans head) was found in the city, so even though Beryl’s head (sans body) was discovered in Sleepy Hollow, the whole thing is under NYPD’s jurisdiction. (This is a little hand-wave-y, but I’m going to go with it.) It’s unclear what Sharon thinks is worse: Beryl’s murder or the fact that police from the big bad city have infiltrated her idyllic little corner of the world. What she does know, right down into her bones, is that the killers must be the “outsider” props guys. They’re a bunch of “roustabouts,” after all! They may have had the opportunity to indulge in a little evening homicide, what with all of the kids being at the costume contest, but no discernible motive, and the prop chainsaws they supply are notably chainless. You know, for safety reasons!
Sharon is not to be deterred, though. If Elsbeth doesn’t believe that the blameless Chop and his team of props guys did it, what about all of the men who like to visit Beryl at all hours of the evening? So much for Sharon’s line about respecting Beryl’s “different lifestyle.” Reviewing a bunch of doorbell camera footage leads Elsbeth and Donnelly to a conversation about varying definitions of neighborliness. People living in cities are more likely to live in apartment buildings where people’s proximity and the varying quality of walls and floors makes it important to know what not to pay attention to. On the other hand, New Yorkers tend to look out for each other when it counts. Donnelly summarizes the suburbs as offering more space and less privacy; for her there’s no question as to which situation she prefers. It’s a little poignant to see Elsbeth looking a little forlorn and doubtful about her relationships with her own neighbors while she’s wearing a pretty flawless-looking replica of the dress and hat Eliza wears when she and Dr. Higgins attend the horse races at Ascot. It’s a gorgeous look, even though the hat is so large it looks as if it could topple Carrie Preston over.
As Donnelly and Elsbeth make their way through lesser potential suspects including the arborist (Grant Harrison) who cut down the towering maple and Sharon’s daughter, Avery (Olivia Daponde), and Avery’s friend Xander (Jeremy Parrott), Elsbeth continues to probe Sharon’s alibi. She was doing her traditional jump-scare-crow bit on her front porch the entire evening, but her doorbell camera captures the kids she spooked, not any footage of her. There’s no proof that she was anywhere but her porch at the time of Beryl’s murder, but neither is there definitive proof that she was on her porch the whole time.
Sharon, of course, takes Avery’s mild interrogation very seriously. It’s unclear which allegation is worse in her eyes, the possibility that Avery would have had something to do with Beryl’s death, or the idea that Avery was hanging out at Beryl’s house with a boy who “only got into state schools.” Avery is very quickly excluded from the suspect pool thanks to the time stamp on a photo of her and her father enjoying dinner together on their own at a local diner. Sharon’s relief is tinged with bitterness when she learns that their excursion was just the latest in their MFT (Mom-Free Time) adventures. Sharon is extremely annoying, but my heart does break for her a tiny bit here. She wants so desperately to protect her daughter from the worst the world can sling Avery’s way that she’s become a caricature of a control freak.
My tiny heart fissure heals itself instantly, however, when Elsbeth presents the case against Sharon that she and Detective Donnelly have put together. Having discovered a scarecrow dummy — an exact-looking replica of her costume — stashed in Sharon’s garage, a quick fingerprint dusting revealed a clear fingerprint from the kid who was on her porch at the time of Beryl’s murder. That fingerprint was sufficient enough to qualify for a warrant to search the rest of the Norman home, where tests of the pipes leading out of the washing machine revealed some matter containing Beryl’s DNA. Sharon must have been too flustered to think clearly — surely burning the scrubs would have been a better method? Her husband might not even have noticed that they were gone.
Sharon’s final delusions about Beryl are put to rest as she’s placed under arrest, and Donnelly tests out a draft of her case report on Elsbeth. How does “Trace amounts of blood of the slain / Stayed mainly in the drain” sound? It’s nice to see Donnelly’s prediction about good neighbors in the big bad city come true, as Elsbeth finds that one of them has returned Gonzo’s favorite toy (a squishy stuffed taxi) that had gone missing earlier.
Back at the precinct, Captain Wagner undergoes his own journey of understanding that control is an illusion, particularly when it comes to relationships between parents and their adult children. His daughter, Julia (Brittany Inge), an IT whiz of nearly infinite patience with his printer-related challenges, doesn’t mind coming down to the precinct to help out, but she minds very much when he sticks his beak into her personal life, putting the kibosh on her plans to get together with Cameron for coffee. Wagner apologizes, knowing that his relationship with his baby, who is now 27 years old, is too important to throw away by being overprotective of her (or of his work-daughter Kaya). Let us all just hope that Julia realizes quickly that she can do way better than the obnoxiously cocky nepo-baby Detective Rivers (Braden de la Garza).
From the Tote Bags!
• Poor Dr. Norman (Theis Weckesser) — unmasked as a tree murderer and forced to see his wife made infamous as a human murderer. Not a great week for that guy!
• I last saw My Fair Lady at least 20 years ago, so I hope that those readers with more detailed knowledge at their fingertips will chime in with more fun facts and connections between the film and this episode.
• I came across this video from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s textile conservation department on work that its staff did to make the gown Julie Andrews wore as Eliza for the embassy ball scene in the original West End production of My Fair Lady. The analogous gown in the film (matching Elsbeth’s version in this episode) is simpler and less ornate than this one, but as a piece of this musical’s history and performing-arts history in general, it’s a fascinating watch.
• Elsbeth’s Hallo-week of Eliza Doolittle costumes marks the second year in a row of her paying homage to Audrey Hepburn. What are we hoping for in (presumably and hopefully!) season four? Charade? Sabrina? Roman Holiday? Maybe Funny Face?