Case 04, File 02: Home

AKA: The People Who Should Go Back Under The Stairs

I've mentioned (once, twice, a few dozen times) that Season 4 is the moment where the series felt bulletproof enough to take the series in a darker, grimmer direction and it's important to put that in context. The series has always been irrevocably an adult show, but it also a show that was usually pretty restrained in its content, enough so that it managed to keep its Parental Guidance rating at TV-14. So when the series got its first TV-MA, it was something of a big deal.

Our episode kicks off in Home, Pennsylvania with a woman giving birth in darkness surrounded by some deformed looking guys. They decide that the best course of action is to take the baby out back and bury it. The next day a group of kids playing baseball accidentally come across the corpse and Mulder and Scully are called in to check it out. They spend some time talking about the town with the sheriff and he tells them how small and quaint it is, while also suggesting they leave the nearby Peacock family, who lost their parents to a car accident people he openly knows are inbred, alone. That's weird guys.

After examining the dead baby and some talking about genetics and such, Mulder and Scully decide that the baby was so intensely inbred that they should check out the Peacock farm...and find a MASSIVE amount of evidence that they're responsible. So they put out an APB and the sheriff gets all wistful for how his home used to be. He doesn't have much time to be wistful though, because the three Peacock boys immediately come to his house and beat him and his wife to death. Woof.

"Hey, did you question the creepy inbred family who live right next door to the crime scene about the creepy inbred baby?"
"Nah."

The sheriff's deputy shows up with Mulder and Scully and they question how the Peacock's could have known about their APB but decide that there's probably a kidnap victim at the house they need to rescue and thus it doesn't matter and go to bring them in. Meanwhile the Peacocks are being given a pep-talk by a mysterious figure. When our intrepid heroes arrive at the Peacock's farm, the deputy is immediately killed by a trap the Peacock's set in their doorway, which I'm sure is against some sort of zoning ordnance.

Mulder and Scully lure the Peacock's outside by freeing their pigs and sneak into the house, eventually discover a woman with the same number of limbs as Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Mulder initially thinks that she's the kidnap victim, but Scully figures out that she's the mother who survived the car accident (ick). The Peacock boys return from outside and attack Mulder and Scully, but two of them are killed in the resulting fight and the third escapes with the mother. And with that, our episode ends with the last surviving Peacocks on the run.

Home is an infamous episode, for a good reason. In terms of setting the tone for the season, its much more on theme than Herrenvolk. It stands as a great introduction to the season: Grim and bloody yes, but also solidly written, incredibly well directed and surprisingly thoughtful. Yes, while Home is infamous for being a brutally violent episode, it's also famous for being one of the truly great episodes of Season 4, and probably one of the best of the series overall.

"Hey Edmund?"
"Yeah George?"
"Where did you learn to drive?"
"Shut the hell up George."

One of the things that really makes this episode stand out, in my estimation, is the script, and how it deftly handles its thematic underpinnings (even if its not super subtle about it). From the first moments of the episode, where Sheriff Andy Taylor (I didn't get that joke until I was an adult) talks about how the modern world is encroaching on his town, you think you get the theme, the simplicity and moral virtue of small towns and the past. 

At least that's what the characters seem to think, until the revelation that the vicious monsters hiding in his town were not only there the whole time, but have been there for an incredibly long time. The cruelty found in the Peacock family are not some invention of the modern world or the big city, but have been lying just under the surface of the town the whole time, and by extension, has always been there at the heart of small town America.

It also gives Mulder a nice little emotional journey, one that begins with him talking about how he'd like to move to a small town to live and ends with him staring down at Mrs. Peacock with abject horror. It's not the focus of the episode, but it does a lot to flesh out the story and give it some emotional resonance. It's a shame then that they can't do the same for Scully. Oh they try, with some brief lip service given to the idea of her as a mother, but it's really only two beats, and we're too far away from the Emily pair of episodes for it to be said to pay off there.

The final thing I really like about the script is how it manages to actually keep the tone up. Given the content of the episode, it would be really easy for the mood to become so grim it would be wearing, but Mulder and Scully's constant amusing dialogue keeps that from happening. It's a good thing too, because there's a lot of funny stuff in this episode; Who can stay too depressed when you've got Scully making a Babe reference?

I had another caption I was gonna put here, but honestly, their reactions are just too perfect. Just bask in them.

Well I've talked about the script for so long that there's basically no room left to talk about anything else, so let me say: While the violence in this episode is legendary, it's also pretty subtle (much of its is off screen or in suggestion, in typical X-Files fashion), much of what we see is aftermath...which is horrifying enough. And I gotta say, Duchovny sells his shock and horror at discovering Mrs. Peacock below the bed fantastically.

It's very difficult to discuss episodes that are this important and well known to the series' internal mythology, because it inevitably becomes me dissecting my own relationship with the episode. But, as I decided to do with Clyde Bruckman, there's nothing wrong with that; After all, I would cite my strong love of the series as the reason I decided to do this blog in the first place. And in my opinion, the "I Want to Believe" title card in this episode might as well read "Welcome to Season Four," given how strongly this episode sets the tone for the season.

Hey, don't they actually change the title card for the next episode?

Case Notes:

• Every time I watch this episode I am reminded how incredibly unnerving the cold opening is. No dialogue, barely comprehensible visuals, it's grabs you right away.
• Do we ever find out why they killed the baby? One of them seems genuinely upset and they're obviously down with the incest thing, so what's the reason? Was it just too deformed?
• That long-ish pause between the Home part of location title card popping up and the state following is a wee bit on the nose, but it's always worked for me.
• "Meanwhile I've quit the FBI and become a spokesperson for the Ab Roller," is A++ Scully sass.
• I like Scully and Mulder's dialogue about living in a small town. It sets up the theme and Mulder's emotional journey pretty well.
• The Sheriff is WAY too blase about knowing that incest is going on on the Peacock farm.
• This has always bugged me, but the Peacocks don't have running water or heat, but they have a car? Get your priorities straight.
• Scully stops Mulder from entering the Peacock's place because he doesn't have probably cause, but when has that ever stopped him?
• The zoom shot on Mrs. Peacock's eyes when they're searching the house is aces.
• The Sheriff saying that they get people abandoning their cars by the side of the road bugs me. Who just leaves their car when it breaks down? My partner insists that people do, so what do I know?
• Mulder doing the dance to get the rabbit ears to get reception dates this episode hard, but it amuses the shit out of me.
• I'll get into it more during my audio observations, but the use of Wonderful Wonderful in this episode fucking slays.
• The sheriff's room post-attack is almost as bad as the actual attack. Just the blood everywhere, it's horrifying.
• Scully got those DNA tests back in like 12 hours, in 1997. Impressive.
• I am very very glad we never have to see the Peacocks in full light without their shirts on. The view we get is bad enough.
• My dad owns a muzzle loader rifle, and I doubt the Peacock's are capable of loading one correctly (it's very complex), but that's a level of nitpicking beyond even me.
• Honestly, if I were Mulder and Scully, I would wait for SWAT backup from Pittsburgh. Or like a goddamn tank.
• The reveal of Mrs. Peacock under the bed and of who she is hit so hard that it still gets me. Duchovny sells his deadened, horrified reaction brilliantly with just a look.
• The shot of the wire in the hallway is such an obvious Chekov's gun.
• Mrs. Peacock calls the Civil War "The War of Northern Aggression." You live in Pennsylvania lady, you're in the North.
• Scully learns that the Peacock's don't feel pain and her solution is to just keep shooting them. Never change Scully.
• The final shot is still just incredibly unnerving, both with and without implications.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. They just reversed the stupid changes they were planning, so if you want to become a Patron, I would really appreciate it.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Tucker Smallwood, who plays Sheriff Andy Taylor, was also a major character on Space: Above and Beyond. If that seems like I'm stretching the definition of Celebrity, I am, but seriously, so many of the case of that show were on The X-Files, I feel like I'm duty bound to mention it.

Future Celebrity Watch:

Sebastian Spence, who plays the Deputy, is one of those jobbing TV actors who is pretty much consistently working his entire life, most notably getting the lead on a sci-fi show called First Wave. He was also on Battlestar. He played Narcho.

Audio Observations:

As we all know, the attack on the sheriff's house is scored to Wonderful, Wonderful by Johnny Mathis, although it's a cover since Mathis read the script and refused to let his version be used. Honestly, that grim humor is part of what makes the episode. It's already a very dark scene, but then setting it to such an upbeat, and if we're being honest, unnerving song makes the scene hit all the harder. A++++ music choice.