1.03: Squeeze

[padders]

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[MythingLink]

A man is found murdered in his office, his liver missing. There is no apparent signs of entry until Mulder discovers what turns out to be an elongated fingerprint.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Ha! It was like an episode of Supernatural, which made the eldest happier. Curiously, though, in a Supernatural episode they have time to tell a human story, as well as deal with main character development. In this X-Files episode, there was no human story - the victims were simply victims, and all the focus was on Mulder and Scully - making them our ordinary world, rather than the ordinary people who have suffered. It's an interesting point of comparison IMO - Sam and Dean are "saving people, hunting things" while Mulder and Scully are just "hunting things".

 

[Randy M.]

I suspect the creators of Supernatural learned from The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the focus shift may have been intentional. That said, I also think if you re-watch early episodes of Supernatural you'll see they evolved over time, too. It originally appealed mainly to pre-teen and teen girls -- Padalecki and Ackles were fresh off turns that had drawn attention to them (Gilmore Girls and Dark Angel respectively). I can attest to that given my then teen-age daughter when the show started.

There was a touch of that with Duchovny, I think, but mainly it was trying to be seriously spooky, certainly succeeded with this episode -- even watching it again years later I found it one of their more effectively creepy noir early outings.


Randy M.

 

[Toby Frost]

I found this on Disney+ and watched it for the first time in about 25 years.

It's an interesting mix of the genuinely good and the slightly wonky, like a really good amateur production. Obviously the look of the show and its production values are dated. There's a lot of scenes involving people standing close to each other in office sets. I was surprised by the lack of showy special effects, which helped it a lot. There's an odd discussion of atrocities somehow creating monsters, which doesn't fit well with the rest of the story.

It's interesting that all the victims we see are middle aged guys in suits - in fact, 90% of the people seen in this episode are guys in suits. It resisted the temptation (assuming such a thing was viable) to show Gillian Anderson in the bath - "politics" aside, I think shows lose a lot of credibility when they have attractive women as their victims, as the titillation aspect dilutes the drama. The villain resembles someone who used to play clean-cut, boyish characters (Dick Van Dyke, perhaps, or Michael Crawford?), which makes him more unsettling. The contact lenses that he wears look a bit silly. The really unpleasant question of "What must this guy look like in his true form?" is wisely left to the viewer.

Overall, quite good, and simultaneously sinister and low-key.

 

[Toby Frost]

I also watched the sequel episode, "Tooms". This is more of the same, really, as the mutant villain tries to continue his killing spree, but it's equally as good. Again I was surprised by the lack of obvious special effects. There's something vaguely unconvincing about the look of both episodes, but that might just be the style and budget of the show. I think if it was made now, there would be more shots of extras going about their business and it would generally feel "bigger", but that's fine. Pretty good stuff.

 

[Randy M.]

Budget precluded too much in the way of special effects. So you get the old film noir trick of keeping the sets dark and suggesting rather than showing anything much.

 

[Toby Frost]

That's definitely a good thing, as effects from that time would have dated very badly.