The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 3
Squeeze
Detective Frank Briggs: When I walked into that room, my heart went cold. My hands... Numbed. I could feel... it.
Fox Mulder: Feel what Frank?
Detective Frank Briggs: 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.
Squeeze is the first monster-of-the-week episode of The X-Files, and I have to say, it is even better than I remember.
We open on the Baltimore skyline. For fans of The Wire, a moment to reflect on what some of those characters might be doing circa September 1993. But I digress.
The rest of the cold open plays out beautifully, following a typical middle-aged businessman as he leaves work for the day, walking through a plaza, and eventually right over top an incredibly creepy Eugene Tooms peering out of a storm drain. As it happens, the creep factor is organically provided by Juilliard alum Doug Hutchison. From Wikipedia:
On May 20, 2011, Hutchison married his third spouse,[10] Courtney Stodden, in Las Vegas.[11][12] They met when Stodden attended an acting class taught by Hutchison.[13] Their relationship drew controversy and criticism, as Stodden was 16 years old when the couple married, and Hutchison was 51.[3][14] According to Hutchison, his agent quit, his family disowned him, he received death threats, and he was labeled a "pedophile", as a result of the marriage.[15][16] Hutchison had some defenders: Stodden's mother, Krista Keller, who praised him for the kindness and love with which he treated Stodden, and Dr. Jenn Berman, a therapist who worked with the couple during their appearance on Couples Therapy.[13]
You may not be surprised to find out, Doug and Courtney eventually divorced. I feel obliged to take this opportunity to say that I think child marriage is bad. The added dynamic of acting teacher/student is too weird to get into here, but trust me, it didn’t make anyone safer.
Fortunately, Hutchison isn’t the only new face we meet - following Seth Green’s big splash in episode 2, audiences are introduced to a fresh-faced Donal Logue as Agent Tom Colton, Scully’s friend from the FBI Academy. Colton is assigned the case involving the murder committed by Tooms. Due to the perplexing nature of it, or perhaps because Colton is not cut from the same cloth as Scully and her new partner, Tom turns to Dana for help. The crime scene has no entry point!
Colton and Scully catch up over lunch, and when Scully asks after a mutual acquaintance making a name for himself in the FBI, Tom mentions that “He lucked into the World Trade Center bombing.” Of course, he’s referring to the February 26th, 1993 attack in which a van exploded under the North Tower of the World Trade Center. How strange to be reminded of the cyclical, horrible violence in our modern world.
This comment is couched in a larger conversation that has Colton attempting to persuade Scully with promise of future reassignment. He makes the mistake of criticizing Mulder, and Scully is quick to defend her new partner. It is heartwarming and also important to show that even when Fox is not there, she has his back. The polarization between her and a former classmate further illustrates how Scully has already become part of something bigger, deeper, and more bizarre than herself and even the FBI. The X-Files. Colton has not yet pierced the veil and is consumed by thoughts of his own careerist goals, a subtle show of how this character is not compelled by a sense of truth and justice like Mulder and Scully.
Scully and Mulder have a somewhat hilarious conversation in which Mulder is seemingly oblivious to his reputation among colleagues, pointedly asking why they might be uncomfortable asking him for assistance directly, instead relying on Scully as go-between. Dana does not get a chance to answer Mulder’s question - “Do you think I’m spooky?” - before she’s introducing him to Tom Colton.
Fox Mulder does not suffer fools, especially big-timing FBI agents like Tom Colton who see themselves as would-be hot shots, never knowing the supernatural bounds of adventure Mulder and Scully will reach after this episode. Fox is already steps ahead of his peers when he discovers the fingerprint at the crime scene, inexplicably placed on a vent cover - the one we know Tooms used to access the room.
Unsurprisingly, Mulder’s evidence-based ideas are still seen as “out there” and as such, dismissed unfairly. That is not to say he is making altogether reasonable claims but this is a tv show.
Our Fox proposes that the killer they are hunting is a seasonal serial - emerging once every 30 years to satiate whatever freak metabolism is keeping him alive so long. It is absurd aside from explaining everything the authorities have been dealing with.
In a pop-science/sci-fi way, I think The X-Files signifies a voice of reason in unreasonable times. When Scully tells Mulder “They don’t want to hear your theories,” it points to the fact that what Mulder posits are theories in a scientific sense, albeit strange - based on facts and hypotheses that can be used to predict certain outcomes. In this instance, murder. Rather than essentially admit they are ill-equipped and adapt, the FBI-by-proxy in Colton resists a terrifyingly real truth.
By imagining a world in which Mulder’s theories and strange truths are still true, and authoritarian government overreach balks or scoffs at the clear implications or evidence suggested or credibly justified by what he can show, the thematic connective tissue of The X-Files is a commentary on the corrupt nature of power, and how it will drive even good people to sneer at what is demonstrably true if it conflicts with their interest. It does not matter to them what you know you saw, and they have the resources to shift public opinion to act as self-imposed propaganda. Seems a bit relevant, no?
Before I get too far, I wanted to include that this episode had a difficult production due to creative differences between the director, Harry Longstreet, and the crew, with reshoots and post-production work finally completing the show after Longstreet was replaced. I am dying to know what these creative differences were. Did Harry want Tooms to create his paper mache hibernation nest out of a different publication? Would that I had avenues to explore these unanswerable questions.
It is worth mentioning that Donal Logue continues to have a varied career to this day, with recent releases on tv and film in 2023 and upcoming title(s) in 2025. An actor who would eventually lead his own family comedy on Fox, before bringing a proper Harvey Bullock to the small screen on that network’s own Gotham. I remember attempting to engage with this 2000 comedy (romantic?) The Tao of Steve, a buzzy Sundance indie in which Logue portrayed Dex, a perpetually single schlub with a well-documented beer gut that nevertheless, if you will, scores with the local babes quite easily. He has some pseudo-philosophy learned from a guy named Steve that is of course disrupted once he meets the romantic interest of the film. I have no desire to revisit but all of that to say, this guy came from somewhere. Ottawa, Ontario, to be exact.
The first five seasons of The X-Files filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, giving us Yanks access to some northern talent by way of the Canadian casting pool. I have a deep soft spot for Canadian actors and musical acts, pausing now to contemplate how this show, for me, logically follows a childhood affinity for SCTV:
It’s the best, please find a way to watch it.
While we are taking a breather, can we also appreciate Mulder’s denim/plaid/blazer outfit in the parking garage? The agents look outstanding in almost anything but I would have loved seeing more of this mode for Fox.
It is not totally unlike some of the looks from Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, released about a month before this episode aired:
I have nothing brilliant to add here, I just love this type of outfit. As a child, I fantasized about hunting bad guys in jeans and a tie, with sensible shoes and a shoulder holster for my sidearm.
Scully presents her psychological profile to Colton and his superiors, only to be gently laughed at due to her association with Mulder. She is transparently perturbed by the casual harassment, only to be proven right when they apprehend Tooms crawling through the vents at the scene of a previous crime, late at night, alone, for no good reason. Scully’s work and instinct allowed them to catch Tooms, with the unexpected assist from Mulder. That’s fucking teamwork! Tom Colton and his stooges could never.
Squeeze looks terrific, with cinematography and music rivaling todays’s movies on streaming platforms that I am sure have bigger budgets. Compositional consistency can be found from the screen to the page; our characters and their stories are arranged and executed in ways that are unexpected but constructed out of familiar plot and story elements. Similarly, the look, sound, and feel of the show is unchanging for all of the best seasons. I love the aspect ratio of the original broadcast, but watching on Hulu means a full screen view on my Roku tv and I am not mad about it.
It is uniquely wonderful to me how The X-Files’s sound is not only the music of Mark Snow (and at least one future needle drop), but the dialogue and sound design, too. The deep bench of incredible character actors not only have faces you won’t forget but those voices as well. Anderson and Duchovny both have singular vocal deliveries of their line reads, a somewhat understated tone in common between them.
Mulder succeeds in adding two questions to the polygraph test, here treated like a reliable interrogation method for the sake of drama. Both questions are about Tooms’s activities in the decades prior, and though they have the intended effect on the results of the test, the FBI agents on the case summarily reject the implications and let Tooms go. Lucky for us, we get another disturbing murder, watching 1993 effects pushed to their limits to squeeze Doug Hutchison down a chimney like a stretchy Santa Claus.
Mulder and Scully visit retired detective Frank Briggs, played by Henry Beckman in a moving scene in which Frank describes arriving at the murder scene in 1933 at Powhatan Mill. You can read the quote above. The performance transforms into a harrowing monologue, Beckman imbuing Briggs with a pathos again reminding me of Twin Peaks. After all, Frank Briggs could be a distant relative of Major Garland Briggs and his son, Bobby. Not only that, but the way Frank seems to feel like he communed with the embodied evil of man - a presence - sends my thoughts to Bob, the atomic bomb, the Woodsman. I am not unearthing new evidence of the influence of Twin Peaks but I do not mind reiterating the reach Lynch and Frost had and have.
I do not recall what happened on screen to make me write this, but in my notes:
Donal Logue is giving big incel energy here. Scully definitely turned him down in college.
“Then I can’t wait till you fall off and land on your ass.” Get him, Dana! Suck your own dick, Tom!
Once again and for one of the first times, Dana Scully chooses Mulder and The X-Files - and her own integrity - in the face of FBI ego and stubbornness. It is a choice she will continue to make, never losing the dramatic weight Gillian Anderson is able to bring to moments where she is acting the action of thinking or deciding. Abstract actions occurring internally, externalized in narrative by her physical performance. I believe given the opportunity, almost anyone can learn how to act. However, some performers are one-of-a-kind and The X-Files has two of them.
In an gripping climax, Tooms manages to squeeze his way into Dana’s place, violating her sense of privacy and safety, lunging at her like the villain in Wait Until Dark.
The X-Files sustains a habit of delivering authentically riveting, scary action sequences like the one in Squeeze, always using the camera’s point of view to give us a sense of our setting and place. It goes an incredibly long way in immersing a viewer in the scene when we are not confused about where we are as unexpected violence explodes in front of us.
I love her bathroom so much. So many tiles.
Scully is in ultimate badass mode once she realizes someone is in her place. The phone line has been cut so Mulder can’t get through on his cell as he races to his partner. Dana stalks her home, gun drawn, before Tooms makes his move and they tumble into a full-blown scuffle. Scully will not let Tooms get away this time. I am not hung up on her small stature vs the reality of taking down mutant lunatics unarmed, but Gillian Anderson always looks natural as an action hero. She is tough.
Once Mulder arrives, they manage to subdue Tooms and latch him to the bathtub with cuffs. After all that, a 60-year saga of mutant murder comes to an end.
We are briefly treated to another moment with Frank Briggs, reading the headline, confirming that the injustice which haunted him for decades had finally come to light and to an end. His tears are earned and ground the episode, re-upping the lived-in quality the supporting cast always adds.
We are briefly cursed with a last look at Tooms from Mulder and Scully, with the killer in his cell methodically tearing apart a newspaper, licking each piece, crumpling them up, and finally tossing them into the corner to slowly build his new nest. Will this be the last we see of Eugene Tooms? You don’t have to keep reading to find out but come hell or high water, I will write about him again if he shows that ugly mug.
Thanks for spending your time with my humble worship of an immaculate show. Trust no one but your Mulders and Scullys. Remember:
