"Tooms"
Written by Glen Morgan and James Wong
Directed by David Nutterv


In which Eugene Victor Tooms is released from his imprisonment and seeks to find a fifth victim before Mulder can stop him, as the Bureau begins to apply more pressure on Scully...

Synopsis - Analysis - Memorable Quotes - Observations


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"Honey...I'm home..."


Synopsis

As the episode begins, Eugene Victor Tooms remains in his cell in the Druid Hill Sanitarium in Baltimore, Maryland. Using his ability to squeeze through small openings and extend his limbs, he attempts once again to disengage the deadlock at the top of his door. He’s interrupted, however, when his doctor, Aaron Monte, arrives with news that he is being recommended for release at a hearing the next day.

The next morning, Scully is called into a meeting with Assistant Director Walter Skinner. The cigarette-smoking man present at her initial assignment to the X-Files is also present. Skinner questions Scully’s work with Mulder, and her seeming inability to keep Mulder to conventional methodology.

At the hearing for Tooms, several doctors attest to Tooms’ good behavior. His attack on Scully (in “Squeeze”) is attributed to “frustration directed in the wrong direction”. As Dr. Monte goes on about Tooms’ desire to contribute to society again, Tooms hungrily looks on.

Mulder, barely able to restrain himself, takes the stand as a witness for the prosecution. Mulder launches into a detailed accounting of the evidence he and Scully unearthed in “Squeeze”. The judges and others in the room take it about as well as might be expected. Even the prosecutor wants him to stop before too much damage is done.

Shortly afterwards, Scully joins him. Mulder is annoyed that she wasn’t there to testify, but she tells him about the meeting with Skinner. They’re called back into the courtroom, where Tooms is formally released from the sanitarium. He is remanded to the care of Dr. Monte, with living accommodations provided by an elderly couple, the Greens. He even gets his job back.

Mulder is furious. He’s positive that Tooms will kill his required fifth victim as soon as possible, and he swears that he’ll be there to stop him. Scully offers to help keep watch, but Mulder tells her that she ought to look into the earlier murders for clues. When Scully balks, knowing that it would involve unorthodox methods, Mulder chastises her for letting Skinner get under her skin.

Sometime later, Tooms is back on the animal control job, and he’s still waiting for a chance to get his fifth liver. He sees a young woman getting a cup of coffee, and begins to walk towards her, but Mulder steps in his way. Tooms is less than pleased at the constant surveillance.

Meanwhile, Scully visits Detective Briggs, and asks him if there was anything unusual about the previous murders by Tooms that he might have noticed in his investigations. He recalls that in the 1933 murders, the final victim’s body was never found. Only a partial liver was found at a chemical plant during its construction. Briggs is sure that if they can find the body, they could find something connecting the murder to Tooms.

Scully and Briggs go to the existing chemical plant, where a technician uses ground-penetrating radar to search for an object or cavity in the cement flooring. Briggs wheels himself to a specific spot and calls for Scully, positive that what they are looking for is right beneath him. When the concrete is hammered away, they find bones.

Later in the day, Tooms continues his work, and sees a man walking by. Tooms follows the man home, and is followed by Mulder in turn. That night, Mulder falls asleep for a moment, just as Tooms begins making his move. Mulder searches the area for Tooms, and manages to see evidence of Toom’s entry into the man’s house before anything can happen. Tooms escapes when Mulder enters the home, saving the man’s life.

The recovered body is taken to the Smithsonian, where a forensic anthropologist named Dr. Plith determines the year of death to be in the 1930s. Pennies found with the victim date to 1933. The cause of death is indeterminate, but there is evidence of gnawing on some of the ribs. However, unofficially, Plith has been able to match the skull to a picture of the man missing in the 1933 murders.

Later, Scully catches up with Mulder, who is still conducting 24-hour surveillance. She points out that he’s violating Bureau surveillance procedure by working alone for more than three days without sleep, but he points out that any request for additional support would be denied. Scully offers to take over, and Mulder eventually agrees.

Back at his apartment, Mulder falls asleep on his couch while watching “The Fly”. He doesn’t notice when Tooms uses the ventilation ducts to sneak into his apartment. Shortly, Tooms is being treated in the hospital, where he claims that Mulder beat him down. The detectives on the case stop to retrieve Mulder not long after.

The next morning, Skinner calls Mulder and Scully to task. Mulder immediately claims that Tooms is framing him, which Skinner doesn’t entirely buy. After all, Mulder was already breaking procedure. Scully provides Mulder with an alibi, but Skinner sees right through it. He asks to speak with Mulder alone, and suggests that he take some time off to “clear his head”. Mulder knows all too well what that really means, especially when Skinner warns him to stay away from Tooms or face the consequences.

Back at the Smithsonian, Plith shows Mulder and Scully that the gnawing marks on the exhumed victim’s ribs match Tooms’ dental radiographs. At the same time, Dr. Monte stops to visit Tooms at the Green residence. Tooms is already ripping up newspaper for building his nest, and within moments Tooms attacks Dr. Monte.

Mulder and Scully pull up to the house just in time to find the body (sans liver) and some remaining strips of newspaper. Knowing that Tooms would return to his habitual nesting place, the agents go to 66 Exeter Street. The old apartment building is gone, replaced with a shopping center. They search for any small, isolated spot where Tooms might have relocated his nest, and Mulder notices the utility hatch for one of the ground level escalators.

There’s only room for one, so Mulder climbs inside and crawls through a tunnel lined with the bile-coated newspaper. When Mulder finds the nest, Tooms immediately attacks. Mulder smashes him in the face, giving him just enough time to turn and crawl back the other way. Mulder makes it to where Scully is waiting by the opening, and barely gets away from Tooms. As Tooms struggles to get out, Scully quickly pulls Mulder out, and Mulder starts up the escalator. Tooms is crushed and ripped apart.

The agents submit a report on the incident, closing the X-File on Eugene Victor Tooms. Skinner isn’t sure whether he believes it or not, but the cigarette-smoking man certainly does. Meanwhile, Mulder tells Scully that he can feel a change coming…a change for them and the X-Files…


Analysis

Sequels, in general, are rather difficult to write. Often the initial idea for a story leaves details unanswered, but those details seldom justify a story of their own. The results tend to be derivative, and this makes it hard to justify creating a sequel when the original is more or less complete in its own right.

This episode is a direct sequel to “Squeeze”, one of the best of the early episodes of the first season. At first, this episode feels like a retread. Tooms is let out of the sanitarium, and Mulder must stop him from using the same techniques previously seen to extract his required fifth liver. What makes this episode work is the portrayal of Mulder as the obsessed pursuer, and the fact that the renewed threats against the X-Files neatly mesh with the growing lack of respect for Mulder seen in “Squeeze”.

That aspect of the episode, of course, introduces Assistant Director Walter Skinner, a character that would come to have a much greater impact on the series than hinted at here. In this case, Skinner is simply a tool of the conspiracy. Although it’s not stated, VCU Section Chief Blevins would work under AD Skinner, based on the Bureau’s organizational scheme.

What we are seeing in this episode, then, is Scully being taken to task by upper management for failing to complete the duties assigned to her. In both cases, the cigarette-smoking man is there to watch the proceedings himself, to ensure that everything is going according to plan. The question is, what might those plans be?

The previous episodes in the first season depict Mulder as the unwitting stooge of the conspiracy, spreading through his carefully-manipulated investigations a wealth of disinformation. Scully has been assigned to help keep Mulder’s activities under close scrutiny. For the most part, this arrangement has worked well for the conspiracy. Mulder’s reputation suffered as Scully’s friends and colleagues were exposed to his ideas, and Scully herself openly questioned his conclusions.

However, that is beginning to change. As Scully mentions, Mulder’s casework has a very high success rate, very often due to Scully’s involvement and acceptance of unorthodox methods and conclusions. Because Mulder has been having unusual success, often because of Scully’s involvement, his credibility is also increasing. And that is exactly what the conspiracy does not want.

In later seasons, we discover that Mulder is being protected by some within the conspiracy, and so the most expedient way to stop Mulder’s work from becoming a liability is to shut down the X-Files. It’s probable that Mulder investigation of the events depicted in “E.B.E.” prompted this decision. It also makes sense in light of the events that take place in the early second season.

This is by far the best part of the episode. The ongoing battle of wits between Mulder and Tooms works well enough, especially when it’s clear that Mulder places higher value on proving Tooms is a killer than his career. That ought to have been rather simple, once Tooms made his move, but under the circumstances, it made sense that Mulder might feel that something stronger was needed to make his case.

What doesn’t make sense, no matter how one wants to cut it, is Briggs’ identification of the burial site in the chemical plant. Even after watching the scene several times, it’s clear that there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the spot that Briggs identifies. How, then, did he know that a body had been buried in that exact spot? There’s not one explanation for it in the episode, other than the super-convenient mention of a “hunch” on another issue.

It might have been interesting to see how that connected to something else. In fact, there are some common threads in a lot of the early episodes that relate to psychic or spiritual abilities, but there’s nothing combining those concepts together. In this instance, that lack of connectivity makes the episode suffer a bit.

Still, allowing the conspiratorial aspects of the plot take place during a case that is familiar allows the larger stakes more weight. As the episode itself implies, there are changes on the horizon, and the tension that begins here culminates in the season finale.


Memorable Quotes

MULDER: “You think they would have taken me more seriously if I wore the gray suit?”
SCULLY: “Mulder, your testimony…you sounded so…”
MULDER: “I don’t care how it sounded as long as it was the truth.”

MR. GREEN: “I hope you’ll be comfortable, Eugene. The room in the back is small, but I’m sure you’ll be able to squeeze in.”
TOOMS: “I’m sure…”

MULDER: “Excuse me. Could you help me find my dog? He’s a Norwegian Elkhound. His name is Heinrich. I use him to hunt moose!”

SCULLY: “Fox…”
MULDER: “And I…I even made my parents call me ‘Mulder’. So, ‘Mulder’.”
SCULLY: “Mulder, I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you.”
MULDER: “If there’s an ice tea in that bag, could be love.”
SCULLY: “Must be fate, Mulder. Root beer.”

SKINNER: “You read this report? Do you believe them?”
CANCER MAN: “Of course I do.”


Observations

- Apparently the sanitarium doesn’t have surveillance cameras. They ought to have seen Tooms trying to escape!

- Ahhh…the good ol’ practice of introducing a character within the FBI authority structure without explaining where they fit into the chain of command…

- No one in the courtroom noticed Tooms going all yellow-eyed?

- I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d find Mulder’s courtroom antics to be rather refreshing, if I were on a jury or panel…

- The Greens have apparently lived a very long time, despite their incredibly stupid practice of letting recently released psychotics live in their home!

- So was Tooms getting ready to attack that woman in broad daylight? Not exactly the action of someone trying to stay out of sight…

- If the fingerprints were on the window sill, they would have been made before Tooms began to distend. Shouldn’t that have been enough evidence to show Tooms ought to be confined again?

- The “root beer” scene is certainly one of the better early moments between Mulder and Scully…especially in context with the renewed threats against the X-Files…

- I love the look on Scully’s face when she’s staring at the sandwich. It’s as though she expects it to jump onto her face or something!

- I like how Skinner immediately understands that Mulder thinks he’s being framed. From the dialogue, one could just as easily conclude that Mulder simply beat Tooms about the face with his shoe!

- The scene of Tooms crawling naked through the slimy passage was very well done…extremely unnerving!

Overall, this episode brought back some of the lingering hints that Mulder and the X-Files were in danger of being shut down, while also providing one of the few follow-ups to an earlier episode. This sequel works better than most, but at the same time, there are some odd moments where the plot makes unjustified leaps.

I give it a 7/10.


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