Post by Rainbow Rosa on Jun 2, 2020 2:31:55 GMT -5
"Squeeze" [1x03]
Written by Glen Morgan & James Wong
Directed by Harry Longstreet
It occurs to me I never did real synopses of these episodes back in 2017, largely because I watch these episodes as 3 AM in complete darkness, without easy access to any word processor or ability to read my handwriting - but also because I figured that writing plot synopses of thirty-year-old genre fiction was a fool's errand. But I probably should have something for y'all to go off of.
What Happened? Scully gets hit up a classmate from Quantico (played by Donal Logue of Terriers fame, but twenty years younger and with an unsightly polka dot tie), who asks her for help profiling a serial killer in the Baltimore area. The only thing connecting the unsub's crimes is the extraction of kidneys from the victims (ew) and a lack of entry points in any of the crimes - a locked-door mystery! Except, it isn't, because the cold open for the episode helpfully shows us the killer - a yellow-eyed gremlin man who lives in the sewers, who killed his latest vic by squeezing out a tiny air vent.
Scully obliges and visits the latest crime scene, bringing Mulder along for the ride - against Donal Logue's wishes, because he, like most of the FBI, regards "spooky" Mulder as a lunatic dragging down Scully, and he invited Scully to the case so that they could "climb the ladder" at the FBI together. Donal Logue asks Mulder if he thinks little green men did it. Mulder explains that the little green men are in fact grey, and that kidneys are quite expensive on their home planet. Duchovny's line delivery is so wooden that it is impossible to tell if this is sarcasm. (This is a recurring theme in the series.) Anyway, Mulder dusts the air vent and finds a fingerprint twelve inches long. Huzzah?
Later, he explains to Scully that these killings are similar to the ones in an X-File - every thirty years since 1903, five people were killed and de-livered in mysterious circumstances by a guy with really big fingers. So the killer is a copycat, Scully asks. No, Mulder explains - it's the same perp. Scully dismisses the centenarian slenderman theory and tells Donal Logue and his colleagues that the killer is probably a 30-year-old white guy with above average intelligence and an extensive knowledge of ventilation systems. They think this is accurate, because apparently in 1993, amoral white guys were really into impromptu liver surgery. Hey, it was the 90s, 4chan wasn't around yet. They do a stakeout in a garage based on Scully's profile, which Mulder crashes, bag of sunflower seeds in hand. Mulder says they're wasting their time, and then immediately runs into the gremlin man from the teaser.
During a polygraph test they discover that the dead-eyed gremlin man's name is Eugene Tooms, and that he is totally not the killer, because when the polygraph lady asks "have you killed anyone" he says no. Mulder asks if Tooms is over 100 years old, and if he'd been at a crime scene in 1933. Another pair of nos, these ones more believeable. Donal Logue says this line of inquiry is dumb and lets Tooms free. A couple hours later, Mulder explains himself to Scully by using the "scale" function on his FBI-issued eMac to elongate Tooms' prints on file. They're a perfect match with the ones from the murder. Mulder says letting him go was a mistake. Cut to Tooms squashing and stretching his way down a guy's chimney and killing him.
At the scene of the crime, Mulder finds another stretchy fingerprint on the victim's fireplace. With no further leads on Tooms' whereabouts, they hit up the microfiche machines for a couple hours, where apparently in the past hundred years Tooms has not produced a shred of paper trail. They do, however, find info on the sheriff who investigated Tooms' 1963 murder spree. The sheriff is now in a retirement home, where he explains that he quit because he couldn't deal with the evil he uncovered, which apparently was on the same magnitude as Auschwitz and the siege of Sarajevo (no, seriously). He identifies Tooms as the killer from a photo Scully has on hand, and gives the two info on where Tooms used to live. They go there and find that Tooms definitely has been there recently - not only has he stolen personal affects from all his victims, he's also built a creepy-ass nest in the basement. Mulder floats a theory that perhaps Tooms hibernates in here for decades at a time, and eats the livers of his victims for sustenance. Sure, why not. Unfortunately, this discovery has come slightly too late, as Tooms is there hiding in the ceiling, and has marked Scully as his next victim.
Mulder calls a stakeout outside Tooms' nest, but unbeknownst to him, Donal Logue has called the stakeout off. Donal Logue says Scully's gone insane, and Scully calls him a slimy careerist. At home, Scully starts undressing and prepares a nice bath; meanwhile, Mulder circles back to Tooms' place and finds Scully's necklace. Uh oh. In the episode's creepiest scene, Scully tries and fails to open a bath bomb, only for a glob of Tooms' spit to fall down on her from the ceiling. Scully flips the fuck out and grabs her gun. She gets in a scuffle with Tooms, who grabs her leg - but Mulder comes in in the nick of time, and together they handcuff him to a faucet. Tooms gets arrested, and promptly starts building a new nest out of newspaper in his cell. Scully tries to explain Tooms' weird metabolism to Mulder, whose takeaway from this incident is "security systems don't work."
A prison guard opens the food slot to Tooms' cell to deliver a meal. Tooms looks at the light shining through that open doggy door, and for the first time in the episode, he smiles. Fade to white.
Is It Aliens? No. Just what the hell Tooms is, though, is up for debate.
Is It Good? You know, I've watched this episode a dozen times now, and every time it gets to that final confrontation in Scully's apartment, I'm still thoroughly icked out. It's great that "Squeeze" holds up on repeat viewings, because it in many ways is the template for half the show, being the first "monster of the week" episode. (They're not all as good as this, I'm sorry to report. But we'll get there.) What stands out most in this context is how "Squeeze" plays with the plot conventions of the procedural - it's not a pure whodunit, because we know Tooms did it from the first shot of the episode, but at the same time it's not entirely clear who or what Tooms is. The two leads at this point are still firmly representatives of two different genres, and the Sculder relationship dyad right now is in line with the genre cross-pollination on display. Mulder repeatedly tells Scully her rational hypotheses are wrong, but her cop show instincts lead them to Tooms by the end of the first act; still, it's Mulder's conspiracy thriller instinct to go against the system that ends up saving Scully's life in the end. And of course, Mulder and Scully aren't just interesting in some dry academic dialectic sense, they're a compelling pair of leads whose respect (or affection, if you're a shipper) for one another is what makes the show work. When Mulder says that Scully will be running the FBI by the time Tooms resurfaces in 2023, he's not joking around.
Speaking of Tooms, he's fantastic: Doug Hutchison plays Tooms like an animal passing as human, in equal parts savage and pathetic, and his creepiness is accentuated by A+ production design. The pizzicato motif that accompanies him skulking around is a fine bit of work from Mark Snow on the scoring front, and the way the episode is plotted smartly avoids explaining away what makes him scary through exposition. (Mulder's disinterest in the abnormal results of Tooms' medical scan is indicative of the show itself at this point.) One very subtle aspect of the plot and staging that makes Tooms spooky, I'd hypothesize, is that he's always stalking his victims in urban or domestic spaces, and always through rectangular vantage points - which mirrors the location and shape of most viewers' television screens. As a child, I had recurring nightmares about being dragged through the screen of our crappy old television, a fear that I would revisit watching everything from Videodrome to Cyberchase - perhaps Morgan and Wong had similar fears, ones deliberately invoked by those shots of Tooms reaching towards the camera.
In any case, this is far and away the best episode of the show so far, and it will be for quite a while, I bet.
Written by Glen Morgan & James Wong
Directed by Harry Longstreet
It occurs to me I never did real synopses of these episodes back in 2017, largely because I watch these episodes as 3 AM in complete darkness, without easy access to any word processor or ability to read my handwriting - but also because I figured that writing plot synopses of thirty-year-old genre fiction was a fool's errand. But I probably should have something for y'all to go off of.
What Happened? Scully gets hit up a classmate from Quantico (played by Donal Logue of Terriers fame, but twenty years younger and with an unsightly polka dot tie), who asks her for help profiling a serial killer in the Baltimore area. The only thing connecting the unsub's crimes is the extraction of kidneys from the victims (ew) and a lack of entry points in any of the crimes - a locked-door mystery! Except, it isn't, because the cold open for the episode helpfully shows us the killer - a yellow-eyed gremlin man who lives in the sewers, who killed his latest vic by squeezing out a tiny air vent.
Scully obliges and visits the latest crime scene, bringing Mulder along for the ride - against Donal Logue's wishes, because he, like most of the FBI, regards "spooky" Mulder as a lunatic dragging down Scully, and he invited Scully to the case so that they could "climb the ladder" at the FBI together. Donal Logue asks Mulder if he thinks little green men did it. Mulder explains that the little green men are in fact grey, and that kidneys are quite expensive on their home planet. Duchovny's line delivery is so wooden that it is impossible to tell if this is sarcasm. (This is a recurring theme in the series.) Anyway, Mulder dusts the air vent and finds a fingerprint twelve inches long. Huzzah?
Later, he explains to Scully that these killings are similar to the ones in an X-File - every thirty years since 1903, five people were killed and de-livered in mysterious circumstances by a guy with really big fingers. So the killer is a copycat, Scully asks. No, Mulder explains - it's the same perp. Scully dismisses the centenarian slenderman theory and tells Donal Logue and his colleagues that the killer is probably a 30-year-old white guy with above average intelligence and an extensive knowledge of ventilation systems. They think this is accurate, because apparently in 1993, amoral white guys were really into impromptu liver surgery. Hey, it was the 90s, 4chan wasn't around yet. They do a stakeout in a garage based on Scully's profile, which Mulder crashes, bag of sunflower seeds in hand. Mulder says they're wasting their time, and then immediately runs into the gremlin man from the teaser.
During a polygraph test they discover that the dead-eyed gremlin man's name is Eugene Tooms, and that he is totally not the killer, because when the polygraph lady asks "have you killed anyone" he says no. Mulder asks if Tooms is over 100 years old, and if he'd been at a crime scene in 1933. Another pair of nos, these ones more believeable. Donal Logue says this line of inquiry is dumb and lets Tooms free. A couple hours later, Mulder explains himself to Scully by using the "scale" function on his FBI-issued eMac to elongate Tooms' prints on file. They're a perfect match with the ones from the murder. Mulder says letting him go was a mistake. Cut to Tooms squashing and stretching his way down a guy's chimney and killing him.
At the scene of the crime, Mulder finds another stretchy fingerprint on the victim's fireplace. With no further leads on Tooms' whereabouts, they hit up the microfiche machines for a couple hours, where apparently in the past hundred years Tooms has not produced a shred of paper trail. They do, however, find info on the sheriff who investigated Tooms' 1963 murder spree. The sheriff is now in a retirement home, where he explains that he quit because he couldn't deal with the evil he uncovered, which apparently was on the same magnitude as Auschwitz and the siege of Sarajevo (no, seriously). He identifies Tooms as the killer from a photo Scully has on hand, and gives the two info on where Tooms used to live. They go there and find that Tooms definitely has been there recently - not only has he stolen personal affects from all his victims, he's also built a creepy-ass nest in the basement. Mulder floats a theory that perhaps Tooms hibernates in here for decades at a time, and eats the livers of his victims for sustenance. Sure, why not. Unfortunately, this discovery has come slightly too late, as Tooms is there hiding in the ceiling, and has marked Scully as his next victim.
Mulder calls a stakeout outside Tooms' nest, but unbeknownst to him, Donal Logue has called the stakeout off. Donal Logue says Scully's gone insane, and Scully calls him a slimy careerist. At home, Scully starts undressing and prepares a nice bath; meanwhile, Mulder circles back to Tooms' place and finds Scully's necklace. Uh oh. In the episode's creepiest scene, Scully tries and fails to open a bath bomb, only for a glob of Tooms' spit to fall down on her from the ceiling. Scully flips the fuck out and grabs her gun. She gets in a scuffle with Tooms, who grabs her leg - but Mulder comes in in the nick of time, and together they handcuff him to a faucet. Tooms gets arrested, and promptly starts building a new nest out of newspaper in his cell. Scully tries to explain Tooms' weird metabolism to Mulder, whose takeaway from this incident is "security systems don't work."
A prison guard opens the food slot to Tooms' cell to deliver a meal. Tooms looks at the light shining through that open doggy door, and for the first time in the episode, he smiles. Fade to white.
Is It Aliens? No. Just what the hell Tooms is, though, is up for debate.
Is It Good? You know, I've watched this episode a dozen times now, and every time it gets to that final confrontation in Scully's apartment, I'm still thoroughly icked out. It's great that "Squeeze" holds up on repeat viewings, because it in many ways is the template for half the show, being the first "monster of the week" episode. (They're not all as good as this, I'm sorry to report. But we'll get there.) What stands out most in this context is how "Squeeze" plays with the plot conventions of the procedural - it's not a pure whodunit, because we know Tooms did it from the first shot of the episode, but at the same time it's not entirely clear who or what Tooms is. The two leads at this point are still firmly representatives of two different genres, and the Sculder relationship dyad right now is in line with the genre cross-pollination on display. Mulder repeatedly tells Scully her rational hypotheses are wrong, but her cop show instincts lead them to Tooms by the end of the first act; still, it's Mulder's conspiracy thriller instinct to go against the system that ends up saving Scully's life in the end. And of course, Mulder and Scully aren't just interesting in some dry academic dialectic sense, they're a compelling pair of leads whose respect (or affection, if you're a shipper) for one another is what makes the show work. When Mulder says that Scully will be running the FBI by the time Tooms resurfaces in 2023, he's not joking around.
Speaking of Tooms, he's fantastic: Doug Hutchison plays Tooms like an animal passing as human, in equal parts savage and pathetic, and his creepiness is accentuated by A+ production design. The pizzicato motif that accompanies him skulking around is a fine bit of work from Mark Snow on the scoring front, and the way the episode is plotted smartly avoids explaining away what makes him scary through exposition. (Mulder's disinterest in the abnormal results of Tooms' medical scan is indicative of the show itself at this point.) One very subtle aspect of the plot and staging that makes Tooms spooky, I'd hypothesize, is that he's always stalking his victims in urban or domestic spaces, and always through rectangular vantage points - which mirrors the location and shape of most viewers' television screens. As a child, I had recurring nightmares about being dragged through the screen of our crappy old television, a fear that I would revisit watching everything from Videodrome to Cyberchase - perhaps Morgan and Wong had similar fears, ones deliberately invoked by those shots of Tooms reaching towards the camera.
In any case, this is far and away the best episode of the show so far, and it will be for quite a while, I bet.
RATING
X X X X X
