X-Files Episode Guide: Home

Written by Glen Morgan & James Wong

Directed by Kim Manners

The opening images of this episode, even decades later after series like Criminal Minds and SVU, are still among the most revolting in TV history. It's not because they're more disgusting than what we tend to get with broadcast fare these days, it's because what we are seeing overloads the senses to a degree that we had almost never seen on TV before, and despite all this, will rarely see again. Based on that, one can understand why Fox, when this episode first aired in 1996, took out of syndication and didn't put it back til five years with very graphic warnings. One almost wonders if these days they'd even bother to do that much.

The imagery that we see and the crimes that are depicted are part of a new phase from Morgan & Wong that we will see in their fourth season episodes. One wonders if this in part a reaction to their being dragged back in the world of a show they spent the first two years mastering. One could almost make the argument that what the Peacock family is doing falls under the watchword of The X-Files at all---- Mulder and Scully certainly seem to think so, and given  their reactions throughout the episode, one can tell just how far they have been drawn outside their comfort zone. Morgan & Wong have satirized small-town values before on this show--- their last chronological episode Die Hand Die Verlezt was an out and out satire of it--- but even compared to this, they seem like gentle pokes in the side compared to what we see here. One can tell that Sheriff Taylor (the first in  a series of fascinating performances by Space: Above  & Beyond veterans--- in this case, Tucker Smallwood) looks upon the coming of the FBI and the horror of this murder as an affront to everything he holds dear. The Peacock family, latest in a generation brought about by decades of inbreeding, have the same fears. They have been satisfied to orbit around each other without violence--- it is only the coming of Mulder and Scully that brings them into conflict.

Division among where this episode ranks among X-Files fans differs radically depending on who you ask. Some have thought it a brilliant and darkly fascinating episode--- perhaps in the tradition of Grand Guignol.  Certainly, it was one of the most highly rated of fans early on--- but that may have just been an example of absence making the heart grow fonder. There is  a tending to revile this episode as a grotesquerie of some of the most horrible impulses that man is capable of, but compared with what gets on, say, the most recent episode of Hannibal, it seems positively mild in comparison.

Perhaps what revolts people is seeing Mulder and Scully trying to gag their way through the horrors of Home as if it were just a traditional monster of the week episode, when in fact the horrors of what are going on with the Peacock family---- particularly the horror show that both figuratively and literally is their mother--- are in many ways far more frightening and harder to dismiss than a liver eating mutant.  Some part of me, though, can't help but wonder if this in itself is a commentary on the complacency of the series, considering some of the horrors that they've viewed so far. You wouldn't want to have to go through this every week--- God knows, there are enough TV series where we see this--- but for a single episode its well done  And the fact is, there are some absolutely chilling bits that, mixed in with the unusual amount of gore create images that are among the high points for the series. The scenes where the Peacock brothers get in their car, drive over to the Taylor's house, and brutally murder them, all to the sounds of 'Wonderful, Wonderful' stands out as one of the great pieces the series will ever do.

And much as we can be astounded by how the personal seems to intervene in our heroes lives, one finds it hard to believe how this place--- of all places--- makes Mulder want to return to a simpler life (which considering how nightmarish his childhood must have actually been, )is remarkable. And that seeing a child born with the most horrifying birth defects leads to Scully thinking about becoming a mother becomes particularly galling when we learn what appears to be the fate of her ability to give birth later this season. (We'll deal with the idea of Scully becoming a mother when we have to)

Let's be honest. Home is not an episode for everybody, even among the most rabid devotees of the series. It's a  lot easier to admire it then it is to enjoy, and even the gags that resonate (Scully's reaction to her nephews near constant viewing of Babe, Mulder's to when he find an article in the Peacock house to Elvis dying) seem a little had to stomach given the horrors that the Peacocks bring with them. But it's well directed, well shot, and some of the most god-awful frightening moments in the history of the series that guarantee you will never listen to Johnny Mathis the same way again. For that reason, it has to be regarded as one of the series most remarkable achievements, even though, like some great works of art, once you've seen it, you can't imagine watching it again.

My score: 4.75 stars.