1x04: Conduit

It seems to me the best blogs, the ones that last, are frequently the ones that are rooted in obsession.  You know, one day you look at the X-Files and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere.  And the show that was just a show is suddenly the only thing you can think about.

It actually felt kind of dirty and wrong to mess with that quote (from S6's Rain King).  I love that episode. Can't wait to get there.  But first, 1x04, Conduit.

As we go forward with these reviews, I'm going to keep the following themes in mind:

1. The show is as much about Scully's journey toward becoming a believer as it is about the paranormal events she and Mulder encounter.

2. Scully is only a skeptic when viewing things from a clinical distance; when the shit hits the fan, she acts on Mulder's crazy beliefs because she knows it will keep her alive.

3. Mulder isn't right nearly as often as he thinks.

4. The evolution of the Mulder/Scully relationship - not just the romantic involvement that eventually occurs, but their dynamics of trust and distrust, the changing ways they view each other, and the friendship that grows over time.

5. Assault on a federal officer never seems to lead to jail time.

6. Mulder is kind of a dick.

7. Hotels, car rental places, and apartment landlords must be crazy to rent to FBI agents.

8. The enormous top-secret government conspiracy actually really sucks at keeping things quiet.

9.  There are some serious homoerotic undertones in this show.

10. The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.

11. Mulder and Scully are both terrible at their jobs.

I reserve the right to add more items to this list as the series progresses and you can't stop me!

Just a little note before we start: I've seen this series multiple times, so I'll be referencing characters and plots and events that haven't yet occurred. There will be spoilers.  If you're seeing this series for the first time and reading this reviews, consider this fair warning.

So, welcome to 1x04, Conduit.  This is one of those early season episodes that I always forget about because the abduction mythology wasn't firmly established yet.  Plus it always felt like a weird mix of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Poltergeist to me.

Anyroad, we open on a lakeside in the middle of some woods, where a couple of kids are having a campout while their mom sleeps in the trailer nearby. Ahh, family camping. What could possiblye go wrong?

Well, this is the X-Files, so, a lot. Everything starts to shake, spilling the mother out of her bed. A bright light fills the trailer.

When the shaking and the light fade away, one of the kids starts screaming and the mom rushes out to see what's wrong - burning herself on the doorknob of the trailer, which has become scaldingly hot. The little boy starts yelling that Ruby is gone, and sure enough, they can't find her. The mom looks up to the sky and screams her daughter's name.

Cue opening credits. 

At the FBI Headquarters in the J Edgar Hoover building, Blevins hands Scully a folder on Mulder's latest assignment request (this was back when he still bothered filing paperwork ahead of time): the abduction of an Iowa teen, presumably by aliens. Blevins is, of course, less than thrilled that Mulder wants to waste bureau time and resources on a tabloid headline. Scully tries to defend him but it all comes out rather weak, probably because he never told her about this case in the first place. #6.

Blevins pulls out another casefile, an X-file actually, and hands it to Scully, who opens it to reveal this:

Blevins tells her that Mulder initiated the X-file himself and asks if Scully knows about it.  She reveals some of the same information from the pilot about Samantha's abduction, reminding viewers of his backstory and his motivation for opening the X-files in the first place. I'm assuming we're all fairly familiar with this story, so I'm gonna skip her rehashing.

Blevins asks her if she thinks Mulder's "personal agenda" has clouded his judgement, and Scully very firmly says no.  He says he's going to deny Mulder's request, but Scully asks for time to talk to her partner and then make a recommendation.

Cut to the basement office, where Scully is pacing in front of Mulder's desk, trying to convince him to drop the case. She asks him what sources or evidence make this case more credible than - and she picks up the tabloid sitting on his desk - the 100-year-old woman with a lizard baby.

God I miss those crazy tabloids. All I ever see now is celebrity gossip. What ever happened to good old American bat babies and three-headed monkeys, I ask you?

Mulder responds that the lizard baby wasn't born anywhere near Lake Okobogee, and seems all indignant when Scully doesn't have a fucking clue what that means. He even gets all up in her face about it.

Pretty sure that counts as sexual harassment, Mulder.

He whips out the slide projector again in what is fast becoming one of my favorite nostalgic habits of his. He starts talking about UFO hotspots and how a bunch of girl scouts spotted a UFO there in 1967. He gives Scully a file with the names of those girlscouts - and one of them is the mom from the teaser, Darlene Morris.

Little aside here: Mulder, look at all this evidence you've pieced together. You couldn't have shared one iota of this with Scully BEFORE filing a request for a formal investigation?  You were going to drag her along on this thing no matter what, but you didn't see fit to tell her that you'd be dragging her halfway across the country maybe a couple days ahead of time? Who's gonna water her plants?  Her neighbors must be sick and tired of all these last-minute phonecalls. "Hey, my douchebag partner is dragging me out of state again with no notice to go chase slime monsters or whatever, will you make sure my philodendron doesn't die?" Not to mention the fact that, y'know, she got called before their freaking section chief to justify this investigation and didn't know word one about it.  That really inspires the FBI to have confidence in the working relationships of their agents.  #6.

I know Scully's supposed to be a surrogate for the audience, and it's better storytelling to have Mulder reveal all of this after we see that the bureau is questioning his sanity and motives, but it really makes him out to be a jerk.

Anyway, The Sculder arrive in Iowa at the home of Darlene Morris. She invites them in and Mulder starts touching a picture of Ruby as a young kid in what is kind of a creepy way.  Of course we know that he's thinking about his sister, but anyone else looking in might see it as a touch of pedophilia. Scully notices him doing this but doesn't say anything, just looks at him with sympathy.

Darlene and the Sculder gather around the kitchen table and discuss Ruby's disappearance over a cup of coffee. Darlene mentions that it happened "just like it was before," and Mulder brings up the UFO incident in 1967.  She asks him if "they" took her, and there's a long pause in which a lot of tense glances get thrown around. Mulder doesn't answer, but instead asks if he can go talk to Kevin, the little boy.

He leaves, and Darlene tells Scully that every time she tells this story, people get this look in their eyes... the same look of disbelief that Scully has right now.

I can only imagine they sit there in awkward silence as Mulder goes into the living room to talk to Kevin, who's sitting in front the TV just watching static. Mulder asks Kevin about his nightmares, but the kid doesn't want to talk - he's more interested in drawing 1s and 0s on his pad of paper.  Mulder asks to see what he's doing, and as he looks at the page, Kevin points at the TV and says, "It's coming from there."

Cut to Mulder in a scene that would not happen today: talking on an actual corded landline and sending a freaking fax to his tech friend, Danny.  Mulder promises him tickets to Redskins game if he can figure out what it is.

Our heroes talk to the city sheriff, who tells them that he assumes Ruby ran away from home, and not for the first time.  The sheriff thinks that Darlene's story is the result of an overactive imagination, and that Ruby has been a source of trouble for a long time. "Something bad" was going to happen to her eventually. Shit, talk about blaming the victim there, Sheriff. I hope no one ever comes to you with a rape case.

Mulder and Scully leave the building and find a note on their windshield.

They follow the note-leaver into a library (hey look, it's not a diner this time!) and she asks them if they're looking for Ruby.  She tells them that Ruby was supposed to meet up with her boyrfriend, Greg, up at the lake the night she disappeared... to talk about the fact that Ruby was pregnant.  She says they were planning on leaving town, and that Greg worked at the Pennsylvania Pub.

A woman nearby conveniently knocks some books of a shelf, and Mulder and Scully are momentarily distracted.  When they turn back, the girl is gone.

How do these random people keep getting the drop on trained FBI agents? Why don't they, I don't know, go looking for her? It's a library - generally only one door, and a lot of hard-to-hide-in aisles on the way.  #11.

Our agents head to the pub, which is a 90s vanilla version of a biker bar - lots of bearded dudes in leather with big bikes. Mulder and Scully try to blend in.

Mulder asks the bartender where they can find Greg Randall - and hey, the bartender's, uh, that guy!

Pretty sure he was also Moose on a couple episodes of Step By Step.

Y'know, the big guy, who was in Revenge of the Nerds and who I always think was in Rookie of the Year but wasn't. Always plays some monstrously large, generally dumb bad guy.  IMDB says his name is Donald Gibb, but I'm gonna call him The Ogre for clarity's sake.

The Orge, upon seeing Mulder's badge, mumbles something about Greg being in trouble again.  He says Greg called in sick 3 weeks ago and hasn't been seen since - but if they see him, they can tell Greg he's fired. Scully hands him a card with their hotel information on it, in case he hears anything, and as they turn to leave, Mulder spots a tattoo on the Ogre's arm.  He asks about it, putting on his "I don't believe in that hooey" face, which gets this reaction from Scully.

Who are you and what have you done with my nutbag partner?

The Ogre tells them that they should head to Lake Okobogee sometime, where you can get a killer sunburn in the middle of the night.

Bet this makes him real popular with the ladies.

Cut to Scully's hotel room, where she's woken up in the middle of the night by voices and someone trying to open her door. She goes for her gun and someon kicks down her door - causing a fair amount of damage to the frame. Now who's gonna pay for that? #7. Men in nondescript suits shine flashlights in her face and demand to know where Mulder is.

Dana Scully: totally hot and with great hair and makeup, even when rudely awakened at 5:30 am by men with guns knocking down her door.

Now we're in Mulder's room and the door-busters are asking him about a document.  They show him a copy of Kevin's "artwork," which Mulder says just looks like a bunch of ones and zeroes. They threaten him with D6 (whatever that is), he's obstructing justice and blah blah blah. Eventually they tell him the papers are a fragment of a highly classified defense satellite transmission. They threaten him some more, but he has nothing to tell him and they leave after getting a clandestine phone call.

Finally, gratuitous shirtless Mulder action.

Scully comes in and Mulder's all pissed, saying she shouldn't have told the suits where he was.  She tells him those guys were NSA and they think the boy might be a threat to national security. Mulder scoffs, but doesn't have a good answer when Scully asks him just how Kevin came across this top secret information in the first place.

Back at the Morris house, the NSA guys are being total jerks and taking everything, including scooping all of Kevin's toys into a big evidence box, throwing all his books on the floor, and ripping his drawings off the wall.  NSA - a class act since 1952.

Our agents pull up to the Morris house while all this is going on. A crowd of neighbors has gathered to watch as two agents escort Darlene and Kevin to waiting cars with tinted windows; Darlene tries to console her son as they are separated. Back inside, one of the NSA guys pulls out a stack of the ones-and-zeros papers. Mulder finds a broken piggy bank on the floor and sets it gently on the dresser.  He makes some barb about the NSA guys sure doing delicate work, but they ignore him and bustle out, satisfied they've got what they needed.

When I first saw this episode, I thought they were exaggerating the assholery of the US government.  But these actions seem almost gentle compared to some of the shit that's come to light in the last few years. MULDER WAS RIGHT.

As Mulder watches them from the window, he notices that the roof of the camper (the one from the teaser) is burned black. He grabs a ladder and climbs up to the roof, where he scrapes up a piece of the roof, which crumples to ash at his touch.

At the regional FBI office, a random employee tells M&S that, aside from that one fragment, they haven't found anything in all 77 pages of Kevin's 1s and 0s that could possibly be construed as a security risk.  Scully asks if it was all just random 1s and 0s, but the woman tells her no - there was actually an incredible range of different data in it: the Vitruvian Man, a DNA double helix, a snippet from a Brandenburg concerto, Koran, Shakespeare...

(Never mind that even one of these bits of data would be at least a couple KBs, with each KB represented as over 327,000 individual 1s or 0s. Kevin's writing's not that small. There's no way he fit all that shit into 77 pieces of construction paper.)

Mulder says it sounds like someone's switching channels, but the ladies just sort of stare at him, either unable to answer or wondering what the hell he's talking about.

In the hallway, Darlene and Kevin are being escorted out of the holding area; Darlene ignores Mulder and Scully as she walks by them.  Mulder tries to talk to her, but Darlene is super pissed about the whole shitstorm they brought down upon her house (understandably). All she wants is her daughter back and for them to be left alone. She storms away and warns them to keep away from her family.

Please, look at this jacket Scully is wearing in this scene:

That's a plaid jacket with multi-colored lapels. For crying out loud, wardrobe, that's not right.

In the car, Mulder is once again behind the wheel for the sole purpose of taking Scully someplace she wouldn't otherwise go - in this case, Lake Okobogee.  He tells her that he "just knows" Kevin is somehow the key to finding Ruby and that he was affected in some way by her abduction, creating a link to who or whatever took her.  After a brief pause, Scully gently tells him:

SCULLY: Mulder, I know what you're thinking. I know why this is so important to you... I know. But there is no evidence indicating an abduction.

Translation: Mulder, you're projecting your own experiences with Samantha onto this case, like you will with literally every missing-girl case we'll encounter for the next 7 years. But there's no such thing as aliens, so get your head in the game.

That is not the face of a rational individual, and I wouldn't want to be in a car with him when he's making that face.

Cut to the campsite where Ruby disappeared. Scully points out how close they were to the tree line and how easy it would be for someone to come out of the forest and grab her; Mulder points out that the trees are all burnt at the top as if exposed to extreme heat. Scully thinks it could have been an electrical storm.

He also finds a section of sand that's turned to glass, and asks her if an electrical storm could do that.  Uh, yeah, Mulder; lightning will strike sand and often sometimes turn it into glass. It's called a fulgurite. You'll point this out yourself in 3x03 DPO. But you're going to ignore that now for the sake of being contrary and say something had to be out here producing a lot of heat to melt the sand, scorch the trees, and burn the roof of that camper.  Lightning could have totally done any and all of that, as well as accounted for the bright light that Darlene saw from the camper... maybe even scrambled Kevin's brain a little.  I'm actually kind of amazed Scully doesn't try to point any of this out, but it's the early seasons and I guess the writers are trying to get us more on Mulder's side.

They poke around a little more until Scully spots a white wolf in the woods. She points it out to Mulder and he goes chasing after it into the woods. Nice work there, Mulder, very professional. Is this wolf supposed to be some sort of spirit guide or ghost, or is Mulder just in the habit of chasing woodland creatures for shits and giggles? #11.

Mulder finds the wolf and its buddies clustered over a shallow grave, and fires a shot into the air to drive them off.

Scully comes running up to him (he does tend to get ahead of her with those long legs of his) and he starts to remove stones from the grave. She tries to stop him, telling him that he's disturbing a crime scene (#11!), but he says he has to know if it's her.  ("Her" probably means Ruby, but he's projecting so hard right now we can't be sure he isn't actually talking about his sister.)

Scully takes hold of his arm and shakes her head. They exchange an intense look over the grave, and it seems Scully has talked him down..

NOW KISS!!!!

A few hours pass, as the scene is now crawling with police officers and coroners taking photographs.  Scully is looking intently at Mulder and asks him if he's okay; his eyes never leave the gravesite as he says he's fine.

The coroner pulls a few more stones off the grave and reveals a male caucasian - so neither Ruby nor Samantha.  They find a wallet on him which IDs him as Greg Randall. Scully comments that he's Ruby's boyfriend, and the sheriff says Ruby had a lot of boyfriends.

That's fucked up and kind of misogynist, Sheriff.  This kind of thing is a trend in TXF: local law enforcement being judgemental, narrow-minded douchebags constantly at odds with Mulder and Scully, who are just trying to find the truth.  Half the time, the local cops are in on whatever's happening and trying to cover it up, as we saw in the pilot and again in Deep Throat. I'm gonna put this on the list as #12: Local law enforcement are portrayed in an extremely negative light.

Mulder examines the wallet and finds a ton of cash in it, as well as a piece of paper with a doctor's appointment on it:

Back at the sheriff's office, Mulder is comparing the handwriting on the doctor's note to the note left on their car earlier - they match. The sheriff, in what is his first helpful act the whole episode, tells them that he's friends with Doctor Fowler and can find out who had that appointment.

Cut to the girl from the library being escorted down the hallway by two cops. They put her in an interrogation room, where Mulder and Scully start asking her questions. They know that she's the one who's pregnant, not Ruby and can prove Greg was the father. The girl (now identified as Tessa), who has already waived her right to an attorney, says that Greg promised her they would be in LA by Christmas. She says she was nowhere near the lake that night, but Mulder accuses her of waiting for them there and killing them both. He's very dramatic about the whole thing, banging on the table and making "BAM!" noises, being the total bad cop in this scenario.

He keeps asking where she buried Ruby until Tessa finally screams that Ruby wasn't even there that night. Mulder asks how she would know that, if she wasn't there herself.

Cut to Mulder and Scully walking down the hallways. Scully tries to tell him that Ruby is probably dead, and that Tessa is lying to them about killing her like she's lied about everything else.  She tells Mulder it's over and they should just go home and let local law enforcement handle this, but he won't let it go.  He leaves the station and Scully rushes after him; he tells her he has to talk to Kevin, even though she points out they want nothing to do with them anymore. He keeps walking away, and she calls out to him:

SCULLY: Mulder, stop. Stop running after your sister. This won't bring her back.

MULDER: Come with me or don't come with me, but until they find a body, I'm not giving up on that girl.

Scully pauses a moment, and then she follows him.

That's been happening a lot, and it's not going to stop any time soon. Scully will have a moment where she thinks about leaving him, or letting him leave her, but in the end she chooses to stick with him. It's almost cute that she's trying, at this point, to heal or at least soothe his old wounds; and even when it doesn't work, she'd rather follow this broken maniac than leave him alone with his madness. #4

Interestingly, in the original script, Scully first says, "They don't want to have anything to do with you..." then amends, "...us."  As if Scully is either hesitating to lump herself in with Mulder and/or realizing that others have already done so.  I prefer the spoken line (where she just says "us") over the written because I think, at this point, Scully's pretty much resigned to being an "us."

Anyway, Moose and Squirrel pull up at the Morris house and knock, only to find the front door unlocked and nobody home. They call out for Kevin and Darlene but no one answers; the TV has been left on and there's a kettle boiling on the stove, so clearly something's wrong here.  There's also a huge swathe of binary papers spread out over the floor. Scully goes to check the upstairs but stops as she reaches the top and looks down in the living room. She calls Mulder up, amazed, and they look down on the spread out binary pages...

which make up Ruby's face.

It's nighttime now and M&S are driving up to Lake Okobogee... with Mulder behind the wheel again because there's no way Scully would agree to that.  She tells him it's a long shot to look and the Morrises could be anywhere, and Mulder drops one of his more obsessive and character-defining lines:

MULDER: You know, when I was a kid, I had this ritual. I closed my eyes before I walked into my room, because I thought one day when I opened them, my sister would be there. Just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened. You know, I'm still walking into that room, every day of my life.

Yep, no psychoses here.

Okay, I get that he's depressed and traumatized over what happened to his sister... but there is no way this guy passed all the psych tests required to get into the FBI. Like the federal government is going to let someone with this many issues carry a gun.

They spot Darlene's camper van on the side of the road and pull over, but the camper is empty. They follow a trail into the woods and hear Darlene cry out as she trips and falls. They find her still getting up and she says Kevin has gone on ahead because she couldn't keep up with him... but that "it's here."  Scully stays behind with Darlene (of course!) while Mulder runs on ahead.

Just to be clear, this is 3 out of 4 episodes where Scully hasn't been present for the big paranormal event; and in the one remaining episode, said paranormal event tried to eat her.

Mulder spots Kevin just as a bright light appears in front of him.

The little boy walks towards the light as becomes more defined - it's several smaller lights, belonging to a bunch of motorcycles; Mulder reaches him just as the bikes do and pulls him down to the ground as the bikes pass around them.

As the last of the motorcycles drives away, Kevin starts telling Mulder that "she's back," but Mulder tells him she's not, no matter how much they both wanted that bright light to be her.

Then Scully screams his name, and Mulder runs back towards her with Kevin in tow.  The script actually reads:

SCULLY: MULDER!
MULDER: SCULLY!

I love it when they do that.

Mulder and Kevin find Scully performing chest compressions on an unconscious Ruby as Darlene looks on.  Ruby is naked and appears to be covered in Scully's hideous plaid jacket. Mulder runs off to get help.

Later at a hospital, M&S walk down a hallway while Scully reads Ruby's chart: no head trauma, no traces of drugs, no electrolyte abnormalities, but a sky-high white blood cell count. Mulder asks if there was an "attendant reduction in the lymphocyte population or a release of gluco-cordacoids" (aw, he's so cute when he uses big words) and Scully says there were both. Mulder tells her that these are symptoms of prolonged weightlessness, like shuttle astronauts experience.

And look, it's that hideous cranberry suit! WHY did they dress the redhead in such ugly red tones? WHY!?

Gillian Anderson, on behalf of women everywhere, I sympathize with the unfortunate clothing choices you made (or were made to wear) in the early 90s. Let she who has never worn shoulder pads and giant brass buttons cast the first stone. (Okay, I was 7 when this episode aired, but my leggings collection qualifies as enough of a catastrophe, right?)

They head into Ruby's room and ask her if she can tell them anything about where she was.  Kevin tells her it's cool, Moose and Squirrel are in the know, but Ruby says "they" told her not to talk about.

Pictured: a sane and cogent individual capable of giving testimony.

Mulder tries to press her, despite Ruby being clearly afraid, but Darlene comes in and tells her she doesn't have to say anything; Darlene then pulls the agents out into the hallway with her and gives them the old "we just want to forget this ever happened" routine.

Mulder tries to convince Darlene that Ruby should be stronger and less disoriented in a few days or weeks, but Darlene doesn't want her talking to them or anything else, and besides she hardly remembers anything, and she doesn't want her daughter to be ridiculed like she was.  As far as she's concerned, Ruby spent the last month on the back of a Harley Davidson. Mulder asks what they're going to tell Kevin, but she just says "I'm sorry" and goes back to Ruby's room. Mulder tries to follow, but Scully puts her hand on his shoulder and stops him, then he turns and storms away.

In the final scene of the episode, Scully sits along and listens to the tape of Mulder's hypnotic regression, as he talks about his sister's abduction. He talks about lying in bed unable to move (which will be retconned later), hearing her call for him; Scully picks up a photo from the file of Mulder and Samantha as kids. In a transition that I just love, Mulder is now the one holding the picture as he sits in a church.

Mulder starts to cry, and his voice on the tape describes how he can't move or help her.  The doctor on the tape asks if he's afraid and he says no, because there is a voice saying that she won't be harmed and will return someday.  Mulder-in-the-church gets down on his knees and begins to pray.

The doctor asks Mulder-on-the-tape if he believes the voice. The screen fades to black and we hear him answer, "I want to believe."

I do love that last scene, as well as the introduction of Mulder's obsession with his sister spilling over into unrelated missing-persons cases - this will happen again and again, and not just when he suspects alien involvement.  I just don't get how Kevin's sudden ability to write in binary has anything to do with his sister's disappearance; it doesn't fit in with any of the later mythology, as there's no evidence that he's gotten an implant or anything that would allow alien communication. Mulder theorizes that "they" are talking to him, but if so, they're not telling him anything useful. It's more like he's got a busted chip in his brain that's picking up random radio signals. In fact, that would have made a really cool plot for another episode - abductee goes crazy picking up mixed signals from a malfunctioning implant. The way it was handled here just comes across as too Poltergeist-y, and TXF is too good to be that lame.  I guess this is just one of those hindsight problems that arises when early episodes are written before the mythology really gets going. It all solidifies pretty well eventually, but these first-season abduction eps are just all over the place.

Firsts: Mulder projects his sister's abduction onto another kidnapping case, Danny, shirtless Mulder, Mulder interrogates someone, "MULDER!" "SCULLY!", the hideous cranberry suit.

1x03: Squeeze

I am the key figure in an ongoing blogger project; a project to review each episode of The X-Files in chronological order.  It's a global project, actually, with awesome readers in the highest levels of nerdiness and hopefully it will be read by every man, woman, and child on the face of this planet.

As we go forward with these reviews, I'm going to keep the following themes in mind:

1. The show is as much about Scully's journey toward becoming a believer as it is about the paranormal events she and Mulder encounter.

2. Scully is only a skeptic when viewing things from a clinical distance; when the shit hits the fan, she acts on Mulder's crazy beliefs because she knows it will keep her alive.

3. Mulder isn't right nearly as often as he thinks.

4. The evolution of the Mulder/Scully relationship - not just the romantic involvement that eventually occurs, but their dynamics of trust and distrust, the changing ways they view each other, and the friendship that grows over time.

5. Assault on a federal officer never seems to lead to jail time.

6. Mulder is kind of a dick.

7. Hotel managers must be crazy to rent to FBI agents.

8. The enormous top-secret government conspiracy actually really sucks at keeping things quiet.

9.  There are some serious homoerotic undertones in this show.

I reserve the right to add more items to this list as the series progresses and you can't stop me!

Just a little note before we start: I've seen this series multiple times, so I'll be referencing characters and plots and events that haven't yet occurred. There will be spoilers.  If you're seeing this series for the first time and reading this reviews, consider this fair warning.

Welcome to 1x03: Squeeze. The first of the "monster of the week" episodes - those that have nothing to do with aliens, abductions, or government conspiracies and instead focus on mutants, monsters, and the occasional serial killer.

The episode opens on Baltimore, Maryland, and some dude walking down the street.  The camera keeps cutting to a sewer drain, with creepy music playing, so we already know something terrible is going to happen.  Then Some Dude starts walking in slow motion as the color drains from everything else around him ...

Hey, isn't this the same thing that happens in Tithonus in S6?

Oh shit, never mind that, there's a creep in the sewer.

Some Dude arrives in his office building, which has a state-of-the-art security system consisting of one guy watching one black-and-white monitor showing one view of the elevator lobby.  And it's not even a very good view (or the security guy isn't paying any attention whatsoever) because moments after Some Dude gets to his floor, the elevator doors open again - but this time on an empty shaft, with the cables twitching as if something is climbing them.

Our great hero, Some Dude, sits at his desk and calls his wife to tell her he's going to be home late since things aren't going so well at the office. Aw, poor Some Dude. I already feel bad for this guy who is totally not about to be brutally murdered or eaten in any way.

Remember this snow globe, folks. We'll see it again.

We cut to a close up of an air vent, and something is unscrewing the screws, presumably from the inside... which is totally impossible, actually, and is one of the things that really bugs me about this episode.  If you screw the vent cover to the wall, the screw goes into the wall and thus can't be reached by something inside the vent.  Unless you did a really shitty job of it and just sort of hung the vent on there, leaving the screws for decoration... in which case our liver-eating mutant buddy wouldn't need to be unscrewing them at all.

Our brave and noble Some Dude, slayer of hideous monsters and defender of the weak and innocent, grabs himself a nice cup of coffee and doesn't seem to hear the building and increasingly creepy music.  He closes the door to his office and we hear the sounds of a struggle, but the only visual cues are the rustling of his blinds and a sudden dent in the door. Then we see blood dripping slowly onto the carpet and pan up to his desk, splattered in blood; a reflection briefly shows our beloved Some Dude, who shone too brightly for far too short a time, lying dead. Then we pan back up to that vent and just catch a glimpse of something scurrying back inside.

RIP Some Dude, you sweet prince.

Opening credits roll.

"The Truth is Out There" fades and we Scully actually engaging in normal human behavior, having lunch with a classmate from Quantico.  Take note of the times we see Scully having interactions with friends from her past, because they will get to be fewer and fewer as the series goes on and Mulder becomes basically her sole social contact.  Part of this is just Stockholm Syndrome as her world becomes more and more focused on Mulder and his insanity, and part of it is that as her life gets weirder, she is less and less capable of finding things in common with anyone outside said Mulder insanity.  Plus she gains a reputation as "Mrs. Spooky" at the FBI, so she can't really make any new friends at work.  Poor Scully. Putting this as #1 and #4.

They talk boring work shit that doesn't really matter because we'll never see this guy again and holy shit, it's Donal Logue!

Donal Logue teases her about "close encounters of the third kind" and Scully defends Mulder by saying that, despite his "out there" theories, he's a great agent. The Stockholm is already going strong, I see.

Logue confesses that he's dealing with a rather "out there" case right now - a serial killer has committed 3 murders over the last 6 weeks, and the cops can't determine any sort of point of entry for the killer. One victim, a college girl, was found dead in her dorm room with the windows locked and the door chained from the inside; the last victim, beloved and sorely missed Some Dude, was in a "high security office building" and yet nobody heard or saw a thing. Scully asks if they could be suicides, but Logue pulls out what must be a rather grisly crime scene photo (which we never get to see because this was 1993 network TV and we hadn't been desensitized enough by things like The Walking Dead yet) and says each victim's liver had been ripped out - no cutting tools used, just bare hands.

Logue slyly asks Scully to come look at the case as a favor, but he doesn't seem too enthused with Mulder coming along... probably because he knows Mulder is a nutcase who will start talking about liver-eating mutants and totally make Logue look like an ass in front of his superiors and try to take over the whole case. Logue wants her to know that this case could be his big break... and it could also mean Scully gets out of being "Mrs. Spooky." That's a low blow, dude. 

Poor Scully looks so conflicted about this. We already know that her loyalty to Mulder is growing and that she's starting to like him despite his weirdness... or perhaps even because of it. She's sort of an uptight, highly logical, super organized person; you have to wonder if maybe she sees Mulder as the sort of free spirit she was never able to be.  But we also see, in this scene, that there's a part of her that wants the sort of success her classmates from Quantico are having.  Looking back, this is one of those episodes where she really could have gone another way: chosen her career over Mulder and had a normal life.

I'm adding one to this list, here: #10: The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.  Already, this early in the series, we're seeing this assignment strip Scully of her sterling reputation within the FBI; we're seeing its alienating effects on her social life; and we're seeing how the rest of the bureau doesn't want to touch Mulder with a 10-foot pole because of it.  And those are the tip of the iceberg compared to all the horrible shit that is yet to come.

Anyway, jump to the crime scene where dearest Some Dude met his tragic end. Mulder's wondering why Logue and his colleagues didn't come to him directly, and Scully thinks it just might have something to do with his reputation as an utter nutcase... and Mulder seems genuinely confused by this, and maybe even a little hurt.

I don't know why you're surprised at this. You called yourself "the FBI's Most Unwanted."

Logue walks in and asks Mulder if this looks like the work of little green men. Mulder just decides to fuck with him and says they're actually little grey men, and that Reticulans are notorious for the extraction of human livers due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy.

Mulder, this is why no one wants to play with you. #6.

Scully gives Logue an apologetic look and they start to discuss the case; meanwhile Mulder starts taking a look around and notices a few funny fibers just below the vent, so he decides to dust it for prints.  Logue does the standard "what do you think you're doing, you're crazy" routine until Mulder actually does pull a really weird-looking print off the vent.

The following day, Mulder puts on his smart glasses and shows Scully slides (actual slides!) of fingerprints from previous cases in the Baltimore area, all with unidentified points of entry, all with their livers removed... and all with the same distorted shape as the one from sweet, beautiful Some Guy's office. Scully wonders how Logue didn't know about the previous murders, and Mulder reveals that they happened before he was even born, and some before his mother was even born. There was even a case of stolen liver murdr in 1903, before fingerprinting was even a thing. 5 murders every 30 years, and 2 to go this year.

Scully's mind goes to copycat killers, but Mulder reminds her that the prints are a perfect match - it could only be one killer. As Mulder starts throwing out spooky theories, Scully reminds him that this is Donal Logue's case... but he says that, as the murders in the x-file date back to 1903, they had it first.

Scully tells him, in as gentle a voices as she can: 

SCULLY: Mulder, they don't want you invovled. They don't want to hear your theories. That's why Blevins has you hidden away down here.

And he reminds her:

MULDER: You're down here too.

#4, #10

He suggests that they conduct their own investigation, separate from Logue's, and nobody has to know about it.

Scully goes to do what she does best: type stuff up.  Her voiceover tells us that the killer is most likely a male between 25-35 who's wicked smart.  We see some blueprints, presumably of the site of Some Dude's tragic and untimely death, as Scully postulates that the killer may have superior knowledge of the buildings and duct works where the murders occur, or that he could be blending in as maintenance or delivery workers.  She looks at the slides of the elongated fingerprint, clearly wondering about it

but her voices glosses over it, focusing instead on the liver extraction as "the most significant detail."  Her voiceover segues directly into a meeting with Logue and his superiors as she suggests that the killer is taking liver trophies as a way to cleanse himself of his own impurities in a form of obsessive compulsive behavior.  She tells them that, since they can't predict who will be the next victim, their best bet is to stake out sites of previous murders because the killer will most likely come back to relive the emotional high.

And isn't this the kind of shit that Mulder should be telling them? After all, he got his gold star in profiling serial killers.  I wonder if these are Scully's original theories or if Mulder was feeding her lines for her report.

Everyone is all super impressed with her rational explanations, and Logue's boss wants to starts the stakeouts tonight.  He invites Scully along... that is, as long as she doesn't mind working in an area that's more "down to earth" nudge nudge wink wink.  Everyone at the table has a good laugh, and you know that just has to sting something fierce by the look on her face. #10 all over the place!!

Put some cold water on that burn, Scully. It helps.

It's a good thing Scully has a real stubborn streak, or all this derision would have driven a hard wedge in between her and Mulder, rather than drawing them closer.  She could have abandoned him at any time, sided against him and given the Smoking Man all the ammo he'd need to shut the X-files down through official channels, but instead she stuck with him and ultimately developed an "us against the world" mentality.  You go, Scully. #4.

Cut to late at night, Scully on a stakeout.  She's just reporting her position over the radio when she hears some banging noises. She draws her gun and gets out of the car - I'm hesitant to file this under #2 because at this point we don't know if she believes Mulder's theory or not and could be just exercising normal caution when there's a serial killer on the loose. She almost shoots Mulder in the chest as he jumps out from from behind a corner. 

Real professional, there, Mulder. Not sure if #6 or he's just terrible at his job.  Y'know, we're gonna put that as it's own thing.

11. Mulder is They're both actually terrible at his their jobs.  Remember last episode when he let an old man get the drop on him in the mensroom at that bar?  Someone as paranoid as Mulder, who's also had FBI training, should not have let that shit happen. Just like he should know better than to run around making a bunch of noise and then leap out at someone who's on a stakeout for a freaking serial killer.  And Scully's no shining star here, either.  I'm pretty sure stakeout protocol is 2 people to a position (or at least, that's what every other crime drama has taught me AND it's what we'll see several times later in this series), and she also should have radioed in that she'd heard something before leaping out of the car to go poke it with a stick.  So yeah, they're both kind of bad at their jobs.

Mulder has apparently just shown up to tell Scully this is all a waste of time and that she's totally wrong about this whole case (#6), but as he leaves he hears some movement in a vent duct and runs back to get Scully so they can poke it with a stick together.

Scully orders the vent monster to come out slowly.  Just as Vent Monster comes out and puts his hands up, their backup arrives. Wow, that was fast, guys. What, did you have literally every member of your squad in this same parking structure?  And if you did, why did you leave Scully - the only female on this case, and a rather short and unimposing one at that - all alone at her own position? Not that Scully needs male protection (because she's a badass, except when plot dictates she be a victim), but y'know, protocol and shit.

Logue and his men arrest Vent Monster - who's really just some skinny guy in a dusty shirt - and Mulder begrudgingly admits that Scully was right! Confetti! Balloons! Case closed! Party time!

Except we're only 15 minutes in, so there's actually no way Scully was really right. 

After a commercial break, we come back to Vent Monster undergoing a lie detector test while Scully, Mulder, Donal Logue, and his superiors watch through one-way glass. The test administrator is asking a bunch of questions about the murders, and Vent Monster very calmly denies any involvement. She asks if he's over 100 years old; Logue scoffs that must be some kind of control question, but Mulder says he put that question in himself. Vent Monster denies it.

Afterward, the test lady says Vent Monster got an A+, passed every question, and says as far as she's concerned, he had nothing to do with those murders. Thanks for your input, lady, but as lie detectors aren't admissible in court, and you're not wearing any sort of badge, I'm gonna go ahead and say your opinion doesn't really mean much. Mulder takes a look at the results himself and we get this nice shot:

Mulder and his crackpot theory, examining evidence on one side of the table, while everyone else (including Scully) stands at the other end, satisfied they know everything already.  Mulder says Vent Monster missed questions 11 and 13 - the ones about being over 100 years old and about having been at a crime scene in 1933.  Logue's boss angrily dismisses Mulder's theories and evidence and says he's going to let Vent Monster go free. He storms out.

Logue asks Scully if she wants to storm out too, and she politely tells him to go fuck himself because she's assigned to the X-files now.  

TOM COLTON (Donal Logue): I'll see what I can do about that.

SCULLY: Tom, I can look out for myself.

Translation: Back up off me, dude. I'm a strong, independent woman who don't need no Logue.

What follows next is another of those little scenes that's easy to overlook, but speaks to the Mulder/Scully dynamic.  They walk out together, and Scully wants to know why Mulder was pushing his theories when he knew they wouldn't believe him.  He answers in classic Mulder style: he runs into so many hostile nonbelievers that sometimes he just has to fuck with their heads, even though he knows it will lead to his ridicule.  Scully tells him that he seemed pretty territorial, and we think maybe she means about the case... but then he starts playing with her necklace

and we get the sense that maybe he was being territorial over her, as well. Scully seems surprised by this rather intimate act - they've had very little physical contact since that hug in the pilot - but doesn't say anything.  He tells Scully that even if she doesn't agree with him, she respects the journey of the investigation... and if she wants to run off with them, he won't hold it against her.  He starts to walk away, and after a brief pause, SHE FOLLOWS HIM.  She had her out, she could have sided with Logue and his asshole buddies, but she's seen the way they treat Mulder and she'd rather go with him.  She says something about how she just has to see what evidence he has to back up his bizarre polygraph theory, but we know it's more than that. We've seen her growing loyalty to him, and we've seen how already she doesn't have anywhere else to go. Scully and Mulder vs. the world.  #4.

Cut to Mulder and Scully looking at Vent Monster's prints (now identified as Eugene Tooms) on a truly ancient-looking computer.  Mulder isolates one of the prints and pulls it up against the elongated one from his file.

And OMG you guys, Scully is eating sunflower seeds in this scene. The conversion is complete. One of us! One of us!

Anyway, utilizing a feature that no fingerprint software could possibly actually have, he stretches out Tooms' print, overlays it with the elongated one, and proves they're a perfect match.

Scully's all WTF how? Mulder says all he knows for certain is they let the guy go. 

Cut again, this time to a dark night and car pulling into a driveway.  A pair of yellow eyes watches from the bushes as a man gets out of the car and walks inside... and just like with dear departed Some Dude, all color fades to black and white except around this man. Tooms emerges from the bushes and watches the man through the window.  As the man walks about his house - checking the mail, making himself a drink, generally just settling in after a long day - Tooms Spidermans up onto the roof and starts Mister Fantastic-ing his way down the chimney, like some ultra freaky supervillain Santa Claus.

The Man - who I don't like as much as Some Dude, who was obviously the true hero of this story - adjust a little glass knickknack on his mantle and bends down to light a fire.  Unfortunately for him, Tooms is one fast motherfucker and is already out of the chimney; he leaps from the shadows and presumably eats the man's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Ft ft ft ft ft ft ft.

(And yes, I'm pretty sure this whole episode was inspired by Silence of the Lambs. Chris Carter has stated multiple times that Clarice Starling was his inspiration for Dana Scully's character, so we know he's a fan.)

The next day, Logue and his buddies are examining the crime scene.  He says they should start checking liver transplants, wondering if this could be a black market thing.  His boss thinks it's a silly idea but Logue says, "At this point, I'm willing to give any theory a shot."

Mulder shows up right on cue.

Logue tries to bar their access but Scully reminds him that they're authorized to be there, and gosh, wouldn't it just be such a black mark on his record if word got out that he was obstructing another officer's investigation.  Logue lets Mulder by but demands to know whose side Scully is on. She tells him, with a small degree of contempt in her voice, "The victim's."

Boom. Suck on that, Donal Logue. You're all worried about how this case is going to make or break your career and not giving a shit that people are dying and you don't know why, and you're dismissing outside-the-box theories that could save someone's life.  Meanwhile Mulder (who is just as driven to solve the case, mind you) will do and think whatever's necessary to find the killer without giving a shit about his career or reputation.  Not that he has much to lose, but still... it's the principle of the thing.

Pictured: the face of a man who just had his ass handed to him by a ginger with shoulderpaads.

Mulder looks around the fireplace and notices that someone else has dusted a print on the side - one of the super elongated ones.  He also sees four smaller prints on the mantle and guesses that Tooms took something; sure enough, we the audience notice that the little glass knickknack is missing.

I love it when shows present evidence in this way.  The character realizes something at the same time the audience does, even when we have slightly different information.

Mulder and Scully go dig through some microfiche - seriously, was this a thing in the early 90s? - and find Tooms' name on a census from 1903, with an address one floor below that of the 1903 victim.  Scully thinks the record could be Toom's great-grandfather, with genetics explaining the similarity in prints and the passing down of sociopathic behavior. Scully, come on, you know better than this. Fingerprinting 101: everyone is unique. Even identical twins have different prints.  There are similarities that might lead a naked-eye observer to believe two prints are identical, but you two have scanned them through a computer. 

Scully just doesn't want to believe.

Mulder reminds Scully that if they don't catch Tooms now, they won't get another chance until 2023, so they need to start digging through the census data as well as marriage/birth/death certificates. He jokingly asks her for some dramamine, because the microfiche reader makes him seasick.  (This comes back in Dod Kalm and a few other later episodes; I never noticed this offhand remark before but it's kind of neat that they planted this relatively minor character trait so early and stuck with it.)

Hours later, they haven't found anything.

Pictured: Two people wondering how the hell they wound up here like this.

As far as they can tell, Eugene Victor Tooms was never born, never married, never died... at least not in Baltimore county.  The one thing Scully did find was the address of the investigation officer of the 1933 murders at Powhatan Mill.

They head over to the retirement home where officer Frank Briggs now lives. He says he's been waiting 25 years for someone to show up and try to catch this monster.  The scenes still haunt him:

FRANK BRIGGS: But those murdres in Powhatan Mill, when I walked into that room, my heart went cold, my hands, numb. I could feel it... When I first heard about the death camps in 1945, I remembered Powhatan Mill. When I see the Kurds and the Bosnians, that room is there, I tell you.  It's like all the horrible acts that humans are capable of, somehow gave birth to some kind of human monster.

Damn, Briggs. You deep.  Maybe Mulder and Scully should be taking the stuff this guy says with a grain of salt, since (1) he's super old, (2) these murders happened 60 years ago, and (3) he's clearly developed some sort of maniacal fixation on the case. But no, they just sort of accept all of this because #11.

He shows them a trunk full of all the evidence he collection - both officially and unofficially. 

When the murders started again in 1963, he knew it was the same person, but he was on a desk job and no one would let him near the case.  He tells them about the trophies that went missing along with the livers: a hairbush, a mug.

Mulder asks if Briggs has ever heard of Eugene Victor Rooms; Briggs says he did some of his own surveillance in '63 and shows them a photo he IDs as Tooms.  He shows them another photo of the apartment building, and in a cool transition, the shot fades from photo to reality as Mulder and Scully pull up to the building in their car.

They poke around inside - this scene is the origin of one of the clips used in the opening credits, so yeah Scully, we're all really glad you wore that hideous burnt orange suit so we can be reminded of it every week for the next 7 seasons.

The building appears to be abandoned, but Mulder claims he can feel the same spookiness that Briggs felt. Mulder pushes aside an old mattress to discover a sizable hole in the wall. They just whip out the flashlights and head on in, which you could not get me to do in a million years.  (Of course, I've see The X-Files so I know what that kind of nonsense leads to.)

They find an old cellar full of Tooms' trophies - including the glass thing from the latest victim and a snowglobe that we the audience recognizes as Some Dude's.

Sorry, I'm tearing up a bit just thinking about him.  The loss is still so fresh and raw.

Off in the corner they spot some kind of psychotic papier-mache project. Mulder theorizes it's some kind of nest and so promptly stick his hand straight in it. When he pulls its hand back, it's covered in slime. Scully tells him she thinks it's bile and Mulder drops one of my favorite lines:

MULDER: Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?

You'd be amused to find how many of my image placeholders are just the word "eeeeewwww."

With mental gymnastics that no one who didn't write the script could follow, Mulder starts theorizing that this is Toom's hibernation nest, where he naps for 30 years at a time in between liver-eating sprees; he thinks Tooms is some sort of genetic mutant capable of living off human livers for long periods of time.  He wants the building under surveillance, which Scully knows will be a difficult sell.

As they leave, Scully stops suddenly and says she's snagged on something.  She twists around a little and gets free, and we see Tooms in the rafters holding Scully's necklace.

This is an interesting shift in Tooms' pattern that's never really explained, as before he's always taken the trophy after selecting and killing his victim.  We have no reason to believe he ever stalked any of them; the two we've seen on screen make it seem like he just spotted them randomly, followed them to the scene, and then ate them.  We don't know whether the whole draining-of-surrounding-color thing indicates that he's noticed something special in them and chosen them as victims because of it, or if it means he's just focusing on them randomly and going into hunter mode.  If it's the first, that might explain why he chooses to target Scully as his next snack; he may, in fact, have chosen her when she first caught him coming out of that vent.  If it's the second... well, maybe she just walked by at the wrong time looking delicious, but he could easily have targeted anyone else.  This is the third episode, though, and we haven't seen Scully in immediate danger, so the Powers That Be dictate she has to be targeted by something by now or else risk becoming too much of a strong female character.

Sometime later, Mulder is in his car staking out the building when two agents come in to relieve him. Tells them to keep an eye out for Tooms and that he and Scully will be back in 8 hours to relieve them. And they're all, "You got it, Spooky," and laugh as he walks away.

Elsewhere, Scully is sitting in some office organizing her enormous ... is it a pocketbook? a messenger bag? a purse? who knows ... when Donal Logue bursts to yell at her about using two of his men to keep surveillance on a condemned building, just because Mulder said to. He basically tells her that Mulder has tainted her with his crazy and now he doesn't want to play anymore, and says that he's called off the stakeout. And this is why I love Scully:

SCULLY: Is this what it takes to climb the ladder, Colton?

TOM COLTON (Donal Logue): All the way to the top. [smug face]

SCULLY: Then I can't wait 'til you fall off and land on your ass.

Guuuuuuuuuuurl!

Colton tries to call Mulder to gloat, but there's no answer at his apartment. Jackass.

Cut to Scully pulling up outside her apartment building.  We can see Tooms watching her from the shadows, and as she walks from her car to her front door we see all color drain from the scene except for Scully. 

The reason Colton couldn't reach Mulder is that Mulder has already gone back to the stakeout and is confused when he can't find anyone else there. He calls out for Scully then goes into the building to look around.

Back at Scully's apartment, she's trying to call him but gets his machine instead.  Wow, it's a good thing the show only has cell phones when it's convenient or this ending wouldn't work AT ALL. Also this is totally not the same apartment she has later in the series... which makes sense considering all the shit that goes down here. 

She leaves him a message saying how furious she is with Colton for calling off the surveillance and asks him to call her when he gets back.  After hanging up, she goes to draw a bath.

Baths are fucking dangerous in this show, in case you didn't know.  Any time you see a bathtub, you should start getting scared. Nothing good happens in bathtubs.

She walks out of the bathroom to, I dunno, get soap or something, and we see Tooms reach up to the window. And he's naked. Because breaking into a woman's bathroom to violate her body wasn't enough of a metaphor, he has to be naked while he does it.

Meanwhile, Mulder is back in the condemned building digging through Tooms' little love nest again when he spies Scully's necklace in the pile of trophies.

Back at Scully's apartment, she's getting read to have a real nice bubble bath at the end of a long and stressful day, when a lump of bile falls on her. She looks up and sees bile dripping out of her ceiling vent, then runs out of her bathroom to grab her gun because #2.

Mulder tries to call her from his cell phone (how convenient!) but the camera shows us the phone lines to her apartment have been cut.  Seriously, this is way more planning and stalking than Tooms has ever shown when going after a victim. What is it about Scully that makes serial killers break their patterns in order to get her?

Scully examines her vents at gunpoint and of course, the moment she turns away from one, Tooms bursts out and grabs her leg. She manages to wrestle out of his grasp and scrambles into the bathroom ... rather than, say, towards the phone or the front door. Seriously, did these people not pay attention in their training? FBI agents are trained in how to think rationally in high-stress situations and yet Mulder and Scully repeatedly seem to forget this shit. #11.  

Maybe we can forgive them, though, because I seriously doubt there's a class at Quantico that deals with how to handle a freakishly-stretchy liver-eating Hannibal Lecter suddenly bursting out of your heating vent.

Mulder come squealing up to her apartment just as Tooms leaps out of the vent and pins Scully to the bathroom floor. He sits on her stomach as they struggle, and she jams her fingers in his eyes. He grabs her hands and pushes them to the floor over her head, exposing her stomach ... because half the times Scully is in trouble, it's a rape metaphor.

Mulder bursts in and Tooms tries to bolt, but Scully leaps up off the floor and tackles him because she's a fucking badass. Tooms turns the attack on her and tries to choke her, but Mulder manages to get a cuff on his wrist, drawing Tooms' attack towards him. Scully grabs his arms and gets him cuffed to her bathtub.

(Why doesn't Tooms pull a Leonard Betts here and use his super stretchy powers to get out of the cuffs??)

Mulder asks Scully if she's okay; she's leaning against the wall, breathing heavily and probably already rationalizing all of this nonsense, and manages to nod.

There's nothing super interesting going on in this scene. She just looks so cute all tousled.

Clearly Mulder hasn't developed his Horatio Caine pun skills, because the best "gotcha" line he can come up with is, "He's not going to get his quota this year."

Even Tooms looks unimpressed.

Seriously, Mulder, it's like you weren't even trying.

 

Back at the retirement home, Frank Briggs is reading a newspaper and sees an article about Tooms' arrest at the bottom of the page.  He closes his eyes and starts to sob a little in relief.

In another cool transition, we see that same article of Tooms being slowly ripped apart.  Tooms licks the paper, crumples it up, and adds it to the nest we seeing building against the wall of his cell. 

Mulder is watching Tooms through the window in the cell door when Scully approaches him. She tells him she's ordered some genetic tests and that preliminary medical exams have revealed abnormalities in his muscles and skeleton, and some weird metabolic changes.

Mulder's not paying attention. He's just watching Tooms shredding paper.  And he delivers this creepy line that makes me want to put motion sensors on all my air vents:

MULDER: All these people putting bars on their windows, spending good money on hi-tech security systems, trying to feel safe. I look at this guy and I think, "It ain't enough."

They walk away and we watch as a guard brings Tooms a meal tray, sliding it through a small opening on the middle of the door.  The final shot of the episode shows Tooms gazing at this opening and smiling.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this episode. I find it very odd that the thing that brought Mulder and Scully onto this case (the unknown PoAs at the crime scenes) was the one thing that they didn't really talk about outside of that one scene with the prints.  They spent a lot of time discussing the possibility (or impossibility) of Tooms being a bajillion years old, but sort of glossed over the whole "he's a super stretchy mutant capable of elongating and compressing himself through tiny spaces" thing. Seems kind of important.  His hunting patterns weren't very firmly established, either; he just went after Scully because it was convenient for the plot.  The writers could have just as easily had him attack, say, Donal Logue; maybe Logue had a distinctive pin or something that Tooms swiped and that's what led Mulder and Scully to him.  

It's possible I just want to see that smug asshole get bitten in the stomach by something paranormal.

I do like the character development in this episode, clearly illustrating Scully's increased alienation (pun intended) from her colleagues as she gets pulled deeper and deeper into Mulder's world - a theme that pops up a few times in the early seasons. They lay it on a little thick here, but I do love it when Scully basically tells Donal Logue to go fuck himself.

Firsts: monster of the week, Eugene Victor Tooms, Scully chooses Mulder over a normal life, Mulder mentions seasickness, bathtub of terrible danger, Scully in mortal peril

New items on the list:  

10. The X-files department is super toxic to anyone who comes close to it.

11. Mulder and Scully are both terrible at their jobs.