You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been watching What We Do in the Shadows, so whenever I see the word “familiar,” I think of a human who is recruited to care for and protect his/her vampire master. Let’s see if that’s the case here, literally and figuratively.
In Eastwood, Connecticut, a young boy named Andrew is holding the world’s creepiest doll – it’s even creepier than the clown doll in Poltergeist – while playing in a park. Mom takes a phone call while Andrew sees a human-sized version of Mr. Chuckleteeth (what a dumb name) and chases him into the woods, unbeknownst to his distracted mother. It’s reminiscent of the scene from Stephen King’s IT -- the little boy is wearing a yellow raincoat, the camera zooms in on him, bloody remains are left behind. This sounds like an X-file!
The town holds a memorial for little Andrew. His parents, Diane and Rick Eggers, are livid they can’t bury their son. Officer Wentworth tells Rick, a fellow cop, about Dana’s suspect profile. Chief Strong tells his wife, Anna, to let the feds interview their daughter, Emily. Fox tries to talk with Emily, but she’s more interested in her Teletubbies knockoff show. Anna provides some background information but nothing useful. Luckily, the Strong library has a book entitled Grimoire of the Eastwood Witch. (Maybe my Shadows exposure will be useful after all.) Mulder is about to leave when Mr. Chuckleteeth appears on the show and Emily claims she saw him in the forest.
Scully meets with Chief Strong to discuss Officer Eggers’ alibi. Unfortunately, Rick thinks local sex offender Melvin Peter matches Dana’s profile, so he disobeys orders and heads to Peter’s house. Scully and Chief Strong follow him there. Eggers loses it, but Strong is able to disarm him. Meanwhile, Fox is wandering the crime scene and sees a wolf while he’s talking on the phone to Scully. He heads to Dana’s location where Chief Strong has obtained a search warrant. (They’re all using flashlights while searching the sex offender’s residence because the electricity seems to be off.) They learn Peter likes dressing up as a clown and he has a Mr. Chuckleteeth doll. Meanwhile, the town’s residents are acting more like a vigilante mob. If they had their way, Melvin would be burned at the stake like a witch.
Back at the Strong home, Little Emily is still watching that creepy show. She sees one of the Teletubbie wannabes outside her door. Anna, who was in the kitchen, realizes her daughter is gone. The poor child is found mutilated in the woods, just like Andrew. Chief Strong is already grieving when a devastated Anna arrives and blames him for everything that has happened. At the crime scene, Mulder uncovers a magic circle made of salt as well as a Puritan graveyard. Fox confronts Chief Strong, who admits he knew witchcraft was involved. He confesses to having an affair with Diane Eggers – she was distracted by his phone call the day Andrew was murdered – and says Diane tried to end it. Strong believes he’s being punished for his sins.
At Rick’s arraignment, he is released from custody with a pathetically low bond. Afterward, Wentworth provides information to Scully and Mulder that proves Peter could not be the killer. Strong wants Wentworth to stop investigating. Eggers returns home and confronts his wife about her affair with his boss. They separate and Rick goes gunning for someone else. Diane speeds away from the house and flips her car when she thinks she sees Andrew in the road. There’s a distinctive growl at the crash scene. A hound from hell maybe?
At the Strong residence, Rick wants to kill his boss but gets distracted by a demonic-looking Mr. Chuckleteeth on the television. Eggers finds Strong and they draw down on each other. Team Sculder arrives and find Eggers’ dead body. Fox realizes the grimoire is missing. Strong is heading back to the woods when he finds Diane’s crashed car. He thinks he sees her so he follows her into the woods. Instead, he finds Anna trying to fix her mistake. See? This is why you shouldn’t use witchcraft for revenge. Unfortunately, the hellhound takes care of Chief Strong while Anna watches in horror. (Clearly this is not the “familiar” I was familiar with.)
Mulder and Scully arrive and try to save Anna but she manages to set herself on fire. It’s pretty cool how the grimoire wasn’t damaged by the flames. Now that all of the main characters who should be punished are dead, Team Sculder hightails it out of town. I hope Wentworth becomes Eastwood’s new Chief of Police.
We're deep into Season 11, so it seems like a great time to have a regulation eerie X-file. This one came to us courtesy of Benjamin Van Allen, a writers' assistant during the revival, and was helmed by longtime X-Files fan Holly Dale (her first and only credit for the show).
Watching "Familiar" brought back memories of my interview for The X-Cast when Dale talked about coming aboard, kind of in response to complaints that not enough women were behind the camera on the series. Just FYI, Dale reminded me that most of the people writing episodes at that point in the revival were also directing them. So there weren't too many opportunities for any newcomers, be they women or men. Strike down the discord on this occasion. It's going to be a lot harder to do that in a couple more episodes.
Mr. Chuckleteeth, won't you play with me? This one starts in trademark fashion, with a mother so distracted by who she's talking to on the phone that she doesn't watch her kid, let alone listen to what Andrew is telling her. The way Mr. Chuckleteeth swiftly appears and disappears from view, the last thing I'd want to do is chase him through the forest. I'm kind of surprised a kid in that day and age would follow, we're talking about a culture in which clowns have been displaced as entertainment figures and now fit more into the horror category.
Scully seems to have her head on straight while Mulder goes pinballing through an array of different options. Some sound logical (just because there were bogus witch trials doesn't mean there wasn't witchcraft being practiced) and some sound completely implausible (hellhounds and spontaneous combustion, so -- of course -- that winds up being the case.) I'll give Fox full marks for backing up his homie, though, when it counted most -- namely in front of local law enforcement.
They're pushing another story: When Mulder gets to interview the young witness, I'm guessing he might have had an easier time of it had the Bibbletiggles not been on the television while he was doing so. The mother complains about not being able to drag her kid away from the screen, but she's not doing much to stop it either. There's a lot of this kind of thing in this episode, but how else would Fox have gotten his lead?
Social media went crazy upon original airing when the little girl was named Emily. I mean, I get the point, there are thousands of names out there -- why pick one that can get Dana thinking back upon her first child? Then again, how many times do you run across someone with the same first name? Probably a lot.
Our traditional X-file heads in a different direction when Andrew's dad tries to dispense his own brand of vengeance. Eggers is about as scary as the random wolf/hellhound Fox runs across in the forest. By the way, if Rock, Paper, Scissors was an animal game with, say, Wolf, Fox and Monkey, would wolf beat Fox or would Fox beat wolf?
Van Allen and company do raise an interesting point through Mulder. What happened to the presumption of innocence that used to be afforded by the Constitution? Scully and the townspeople did kind of rush to judgment against the bewildered alleged sexual predator in a way that we're familiar with seeing in America. Then again, I kind of would have expected Dana to have more information at hand on his case so she wouldn't wind up on the wrong side of the argument.
I've opened the gates of hell: The very weak Chief Strong may have opened those gates, but apparently the town's denizens have been leaning hard against them for some time. Why Eggers was allowed to keep his gun after his initial violent outburst is beyond me, let alone the light bail and retention of his piece after his arraignment. It really did become a self-fulfilling prophecy with mass hysteria and mob violence.
Sometimes I kind of wish Mulder wasn't right at the end of the day. This would be one of those times. Now they're going to have to update the town's tourist literature after all.
Guest star of the week: There were a few nice variations on the theme this week, and I'm going to go with Keith Arbuthnot, who did a lot of fine cloaked work for the series during the revival. Besides the nimble Mr. Chuckleteeth, he was also Chatter Man in "Home Again" (Season 10, Episode 4), the Sega-driving alien in "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" (S11E4) and the title character in "Ghouli" (S11E5).
