Netflix synopsis: Mulder and Scully search for a humanoid killer whose savage murder spree reoccurs every 30 years.What I remember: AWWWWW, YEAH. LIVER! EATING! MUTANT! Ahem. Horace from
Lost steals livers. Mulder and Scully are adorable. Donal Logue plays a douchebag. That is all.
YOU GUYS. I love this episode. It might be my favorite from the whole season. Anyway. Let's get to it.
BALTIMORE, MARYLANDA dude walks out of a building. We find out later that his name is George Usher, so that's what I'm going to call him. He goes all slo-mo and we see that someone or something is watching him from a sewer. All we can see are creepy, creepy eyes THAT ARE CREEPY.
Usher (not this
Usher) gets off an elevator and goes into his office. OH NO. Something is crawling up the elevator shaft. Usher makes a phone call and leaves a message for his wife to tell her he'll be at the office late, but we know that he's going to be there forever because he's about to die.
There's a close up of a small heating vent. One of the screws turns and falls out. Dirty fingers poke out of the vent. Usher goes to get some coffee and then comes back to his office, where he is savagely attacked. Luckily, we don't have to see exactly what happens, but we do see blood dripping on the carpet and Usher's totally-dead reflection. There is blood everywhere and the vent closes.
Credits!
WASHINGTON, D.C.Scully is having lunch with one of her classmates from Quantico, an Agent Tom Colton, played douchetastically by a very young Donal Logue. They're discussing one of their classmates who got a job that Colton thinks is too good for him. Colton is jealous but Scully tells him it'll be him getting an awesome promotion someday, because she's nicer than I am. Colton makes a crack about Scully working with Spooky Mulder and she defends him, saying that Mulder's ideas might be "out there" but that he's a great agent. Also, he's way hotter than you, Colton, so STFU.
Colton tells her about a case he's working on that's "out there," which is a good way to describe a murderer who steals livers. Apparently, George Usher wasn't the only one to be violently murdered lately, though. Go figure. More than one violent murder in DC. The tricksy thing is that they can't figure out the point of entry because everyone was, like, locked up tight in their murder caves. Also, their livers were ripped from their bodies, which is kind of weird because if I've learned anything from TV and movies, it's that serial killers are meticulous and hardly ever use their bare hands to remove body parts. I just made all that up. Anyhow, Scully says it sounds like an x-file. Colton wants Scully to go to the crime scene and look around. Scully asks if she should bring Mulder and you can tell that's what Colton wanted all along but he tries to cover with, "sure, if you want...but make sure Mulder knows this is MY case." Hey. Colton. Why don't you just pee on the crime scene, that ought to do it.
Colton calls Scully, "Dana." Then he calls her Mrs. Spooky. I hate him so hard.
CRIME SCENEGEORGE USHER'S OFFICEBALTIMORE, MARYLANDMulder asks Scully why they didn't just ask him to come to the crime scene and instead went through Scully. She says they're friends of hers from the academy and probably felt more comfortable dealing with her. Mulder's all, "why do I make them uncomfortable?" She says it's because of his reputation. He pretends not to know what she's talking about, like he doesn't know he's a big weirdo who wants to be BFF with E.T.
Colton enters and Mulder and Scully have to stop flirting. Ugh. Go away, Colton. Scully makes introductions. Colton makes a crack about "little green men" and Mulder acts like a dick and it's awesome. I love when Mulder is a dick to dicks. He finds a teeny piece of...something on the ground and checks out the small vent that the killer crawled through. HE FINDS A FINGERPRINT. Take that, Colton.
Back in the basement of unsolved mysteries, Mulder is showing Scully a slide of the fingerprint he took from the office, as well as a fingerprint from an old x-file. They're a match. They're also really weird, in that they're all stretchy. Mulder's wearing glasses. Here:
Here's a little something...for the ladies.Mulder says that the old murders match the new ones because of the undetermined points of entry. There were prints discovered at five out of the ten crime scenes for murders that took place in the 1930s and 1960s. AND there was at least one liver-disappearance in 1903. So we're looking at five murders every 30 years. Mulder says there are two more to go this year before the killer disappears. Scully wonders if they are copycat murders and Mulder's all, "remember how no two fingerprints are alike?" Duh, Scully. You're better than that.
She says she can't go tell people that these murders were done by aliens and he's like, "SIGH I know I always say things are aliens but not this time. Try and keep up, Scully." So then she asks if he thinks this is the work of a 100 year old serial killer, which is awesome because even though she's being sarcastic, she's right. Mulder's like, sure, we're looking for a really old guy AND he should stick out in a crowd with ten inch fingers. That's probably true. He's probably also pretty popular with the ladies, if you know what I'm saying and I think you do. Yeah, I went there. Anyway, Scully says this is Colton's case so they should back off, but Mulder says their x-file goes back to 1903 so it's really their case. Mulder suggests that they have their own investigation, totally separate from Colton's, and Scully can't say no to Mulder's pouty face so that's what they do. I'm sure Colton will be fine with this when he finds out.
Scully's at home, typing a profile of the killer. It's pretty boring. Anyway, later she reads her profile to Colton and his group of investigators. They look impressed and say they're going to target the sites of the previous murders. They tell Scully she's welcome to work with them, so long as she doesn't mind working in an area more "down to earth." She looks perturbed, probably because they're acting like dicks for no raisin.
CRIME SCENEScully is sitting alone in her car in a parking garage. She hears a suspicious noise and gets out, gun drawn. It's just Mulder, though, carrying a bag of sunflower seeds. Because it's totally normal for him to be wandering around a crime scene having a snack. And he's probably spitting the empty shells everywhere. Gross. But really he's just came to tell Scully that she's dumb for being there because there's no way the killer's coming back. Scully is annoyed and says he's jeopardizing her stakeout. Mulder's offers her a sunflower seed and then wanders away.
On his way out, he hears someone crawling around a heating vent and creepy music starts to play, so you know some shit is about to go down. Mulder runs to Scully, tells her to call for back up and then follow him. She does this because she's good at following orders. They approach the heating vent, Scully points her gun, and she orders the guy to proceed slowly down the vent. Someone crawls out, ass first. He's all dirty. It's Horace! From
Lost! Anyway, they arrest him.
The ass of a killer.Mulder tells Scully she was right because apparently he can tell right away that this is totally the guy they're looking for.
F.B.I. BUREAUBALTIMORE, MARYLANDThey're giving the suspect a polygraph test. His name is Eugene Victor Tooms and he works for animal control. We don't know if he's lying yet but he's creepy so let's assume that he is. He says he's never removed a liver, he's never killed a human being, he's never been in George Usher's office, and that he didn't kill him. The polygraph lady asks him if he's over 100 years old. Colton mentions that it must be a control question but Mulder says he had her ask it. Anyway, Tooms says he's not over 100 years old. She asks if he's been to Powhattan Mill in 1933, which is where the previous murders from the x-file took place. Colton looks annoyed.
The polygraph lady says Tooms didn't kill those people. They also confirmed that Animal Control had been called in to see about a bad smell in the vents, which turned out to be a dead cat (aww, poor kitty), so his story checks out.
Scully still thinks it's suspicious that Tooms was crawling around a heating duct that late at night without alerting security and Mulder says she's right. One of the agents acts all annoyed and is like, "what do you got, Mulder?" because even though they think he's a weirdo, they also know that Mulder knows his shit.
Mulder says Tooms lied on some of the questions, namely the 100 year old question. The agent gets pissed. Mulder insists that Tooms is the murderer and the agent leaves in a huff. Colton asks if Scully is coming with them and she thanks him for letting her work with them, but she's officially assigned to The X-Files.
Colton says, "I'll see what I can do about that," and Mulder gives him a dark look, all, "I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY SEXY EYES IF YOU TAKE SCULLY FROM ME."
Don't you take away the precious.Mulder and Scully leave and Scully asks why Mulder purposefully pissed them off. Mulder says he thinks Scully caught the right guy, but OK, yeah, he also gets tired of people being hostile just because his theories are out there. Also, he wanted to mess with them. I don't blame him at all, those guys were awful. Scully says he was acting territorial and he says "of course I was!" while messing with her necklace and almost groping her boobies. I guess she's lucky that Mulder didn't pee all over her, right?
Uh...Mulder says that even though Scully doesn't always agree with him, at least she respects the journey. He says he won't hold it against her if she wants to continue working with Colton but she cutely says she wants to see what Mulder has to back up his bizarre theory.
They use a fancy-by-1993-standards computer program to examine the stretchy finger print they found in George Usher's office, as well as the fingerprints they took from Tooms. Turns out they match, but only after Mulder stretches Tooms's fingerprint. I'm not sure it'd hold up in court, but I'm convinced.
Cut to a car pulling up to a house. Someone is watching from the shadows and again, all we can see are creepy eyes.
Welcome to my nightmare.It's Tooms! Duh. He runs up to the house and peeks in the window. He climbs up the side of the house, kind of like Spiderman. Then he crawls down the chimney. The teeny chimney. He's SQUEEZING inside because he can SQUEEZE into small spaces. Get it? Cause...
Squeeze is the name of the episode. Anyway.
The guy tries to light a fire but can't get the newspaper to catch. Tooms comes out from behind him and yeah, that guy is dead.
The next day, Colton is yelling at people at the crime scene because he's cranky that he's so out of his league. He says he's willing to give any theory a shot, but when Mulder walks in, he's all, "any sane theory." Dick. Colton tries to get rid of them and Mulder asks if he's worried that Mulder's gonna solve his case. Jesus, you guys, just get a ruler and measure them already. Colton tries to physically stop Mulder from entering and Scully says that if he doesn't let them in it'll make him look bad and Colton can't have that. Colton asks Scully whose side she's on and she says, "the victim's." Also, Mulder's.
The victim's name is Thomas Werner. Scully starts to tell Mulder some facts about the crime scene but Mulder's already decided that it was Tooms. He says Tooms took something, too.
Microfiche time! Mulder is doing research and finds a Eugene Victor who lived on Exeter Street in 1933. Scully comes in and says that Tooms hasn't shown up for work since he was arrested. Mulder still thinks it was Tooms doing all the murders, including the ones from 1903, 1933, and 1963 but Scully thinks maybe it was Tooms's grandfather. What? Mulder says they need to track Tooms down now because if Tooms gets one more liver, he'll go into hibernation in 30 years. That was a weird sentence to type.
Mulder says he's going to keep doing research and asks if Scully has any Dramamine because microfiche makes him seasick. Me too. We had to learn how to use microfiche in high school and it made me dizzy. I'm so happy that Google exists.
Research, research, research. You can tell they're working hard because Mulder takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. They don't find anything, except the current address of the man who investigated the murders in 1933.
LYNNE ACRES RETIREMENT HOMEBALTIMORE, MARYLANDThey meet with an old man in a wheelchair named Detective Briggs. He was the investigator on the 1933 murders and he says he's been waiting for them to come see him ever since. He says the Powhattan Mills murders stuck with him, because he felt true evil when he walked onto those crime scenes. Only a human monster could have done something like those murders.
Briggs asks Mulder to get a box out of the trunk. The box holds all the evidence he's collected, officially and unofficially. He says he knew the murders in 1963 were done by the same person as the murders in 1933 but could never prove it because he wasn't allowed to investigate. He says that Tooms took trophies from each victim. He shows them pictures he took of Tooms in 1933 and he looks exactly the same as he does now, except he's in front of an old-timey car.
Hey Tooms, Urkel called and he wants his look back.Detective Briggs directs them to 66 Exeter Street, where Tooms lived in 1933. So, obviously, Mulder and Scully go there immediately.
The building is in ruins. Mulder and Scully walk around with guns and flashlights drawn. They find 103, the apartment Tooms lived in, and burst in. Hey! This part is in the credits.
Do do do do do doooooooThey walk slowly in and Mulder says that the old man was right, you can feel the evil in the room. I'll bet evil is cold and smells weird.
Scully says there's nothing there but Mulder moves a mattress to reveal a large hole in the wall. Mulder wonders what's down there. Scully calmly says, "let's find out," and then just crawls down a ladder, into the darkness. I know I said this last week, and I'll probably say it every week, but SHE IS SO BADASS.
Mulder follows her and they find an old coal cellar. They also find a pile of junk, which turns out to be the all of the trophies that were taken from the recent victims. There's a weird nest in the wall and...it's gross. It's made out of rags and newspapers. Mulder, of course, sticks his hand in it and gets goo all over his fingers. He's pretty grossed out when Scully tells him he just stuck his hand in bile. This would be grosser if the goo didn't look so much like
ectoplasm.
Should I...should I taste it?Scully says no one could live in there but Mulder thinks the nest is where Tooms hibernates. Mulder's theory is that he's a genetic mutant who can eat five livers every 30 years and then hibernate. That sounds like a pretty terrible mutant power. No wonder Professor Xavier never invited Tooms to join his School for Gifted Youngsters.
Anyway, Scully's like, "...yeah, so anyway, at least we know where to find him now." Mulder tells Scully to go see if she can get a surveillance team to come stake out the building while Mulder keeps watch for now. As they leave, Scully's necklace gets caught on something, but she quickly untangles herself. We see a hand drop down, holding Scully's necklace. It's Tooms. Aww, shit.
66 Exeter St., 11:30 A.M.Mulder's hanging out in his car when a couple of agents come to relieve him. Mulder shows them a picture of Tooms, so they know who to look for, and says he and Scully will be back in eight hours to relieve them. One of the agents calls Mulder "Spooky" as he leaves. Why is every other FBI agent they work with a total ass?
Scully's wrapping stuff up at the office and Colton bursts in all, "we have to talk." This should be fun. Scully blows him off and says she has to meet Mulder. Colton is pissed that they're using some of his agents to stake out an abandoned building. He says he was looking forward to working with her at first, because she was a "good agent," but that Mulder ruined her. Wait, DID Mulder pee on her? Anyway, Colton says he had the stakeout called off and Scully starts to call Mulder. Colton takes the phone from her and is all, "let ME tell Mulder the news because I haven't acted like a big enough douche and people don't hate me enough yet."
Scully says she can't wait to see Colton fall on his ass, then storms out. She goes home and we see that Tooms is watching her from the shadows.
66 EXETER ST., 7:25 P.M.Mulder is back to relieve the surveillance team but they're already gone. He's confused because apparently either Scully never called him to tell him what Colton did, or he doesn't listen to his voicemail ever. He runs inside.
Scully is at home and OK NOW she's leaving Mulder a message about how much Colton sucks and how furious she is. She's also drinking. Good call. Do you think if Tooms eats Scully's liver and she's drunk, he gets drunk, too?
She hangs up and starts a bath. Tooms lurks outside her window.
Mulder investigates the trophy station in the coal cellar and finds Scully's necklace. See, when he was messing with her necklace before, it was important and NOT AT ALL borderline inappropriate, because now we know that Mulder knows what Scully's necklace looks like, so we know that he knows that Scully is is DANGER. Cue Mulder freak out. He's in SaveScully! mode now, which is the most frantic of all his modes.
Scully's bath is ready, so she opens a bottle of bath salts or smelly soap or whatever the hell women put in baths on TV. Some
ectoplasm bile drips on her hand and she freaks out because A) that's way gross and B) her liver is in danger.
She sees that the bile is dripping from a small vent on the ceiling. She grabs her gun. Mulder's trying to call her but Tooms cut Scully's phone line, which seems like a lot of thought for a liver-eating mutant to be putting into his murders.
Tooms reaches out of a small vent near the floor and grabs Scully's foot. She falls down and he bursts the rest of the way out of the vent. Scully hits him and even digs her thumbs into his eyeballs, but he's stronger than her and is about to rip out her liver WITH HIS BARE HANDS. Mulder finally gets there and runs in to help. Tooms decides at that point to run and tries to get out the window. Scully stops him and Tooms strangles her a little. Stop being so mean, Tooms. Mulder reaches to stop Tooms but gets hit and falls on the floor. As Tooms goes for Mulder, who is lying helplessly on the floor, Scully handcuffs him to her bathtub. Tooms. Not Mulder.
Mulder asks Scully if she's alright and she nods, clearly not OK, but she's handling this a lot better than I would.
This is the face of someone rethinking her career path.Mulder says Tooms isn't going to get his quota this year and Tooms struggles against the handcuffs. Couldn't Tooms just slide out of those? I mean, he squeezed through a teeny vent, right? So I wouldn't think handcuffs would be a problem. I don't know, maybe he's tired.
Detective Briggs reads in the newspaper that Tooms was caught and he starts crying. Aww, poor old guy. I want to give him a hug.
Meanwhile, Tooms is in the crazy house, tearing newspaper into strips and licking each one, before throwing the pieces in the corner. He's building another nest. Mulder watches him from outside and Scully approaches.
She says she ordered some genetic tests and spews a lot of sciency talk. Basically, Tooms is a genetic mutant. Scully seems pretty accepting of it, I guess because there's science to back it up. Mulder says something about how people putting bars on their windows and buying security systems are screwed if people like Tooms are in the world. Tooms could still get in and eat their livers. Maybe with some fava beans. Or a nice chianti. Aren't you guys so impressed that it took me the whole recap to make a Hannibal Lector joke? Scully touches Mulder's arm (whoooooooooo!) and breaks him out of his depressing reverie. They walk away together.
An orderly slides a food tray through a small opening in the door to Tooms's room, then locks it. Tooms sits creepily, staring at the slot in the door, and then smiles. Eff. You guys. He freaks me out. Whenever Doug Hutchinson showed up on
Lost, I spent the whole time worried that he was going to spew bile everywhere and rip out someone's liver.
Hello, Clarice.The End except not really. To be continued in like 18 episodes.
Favorite quotes:Mulder: Why would I make them so uncomfortable?
Scully: It probably has to do with your reputation.
Mulder: Reputation? I have a reputation?
Scully: Mulder, look, Colton plays by the book and you don't. They feel your methods, your theories are...
Mulder: Spooky? Do you think I'm spooky?
Agent Colton: So, Mulder, what do you think? Does this look like the work of little green men?
Mulder: Grey.
Agent Colton: Excuse me?
Mulder: Grey. You said green men. A Reticulan's skin tone is actually grey. They're notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human livers. Due to iron depletion in the Reticulan galaxy.
Agent Colton: You can't be serious.
Mulder: Do you have any idea what liver and onions go for on Reticula?
Scully: Oh my god, Mulder. It smells like...I think it's bile.
Mulder: Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?
