Xfile home7/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Manners was the most prolific helmsman on the show and did all sorts of different episodes. ‘Home’ was directed by the late Kim Manners. While in the Peacock house, Mulder finds a newspaper reporting the death of Elvis and Duchovny pulls a great face. I think the funniest moment, though, is actually dialogue-free. There are some really good quips from both Mulder & Scully (and an unlikely reference to Babe). Wisely, Morgan & Wong leaven the grimness of the subject matter with a fair bit of humour. In the gripping final stages of the episode, the agents raid the Peacock house and have to contend with a range of booby-traps that aren’t immediately visible. Mulder & Scully presume the Peacock house to be empty when they enter it, but Mrs Peacock was there unseen all along, under the bed. Soon after, he is surprised when Scully talks about motherhood in a way he hadn’t heard her speak before. Mulder tells Scully that she doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does when she jokes that he couldn’t live without his cell phone. What looks like a great place for kids to play baseball proves to be a bad choice when blood bubbles up from the soil. The idea that things are not what they seem on the surface is baked into the script. Finally, ‘home plate’ is the base that we first see in the kids’ ball game, where the baby’s body is discovered. It’s also an apt title for an episode that meditates on the way modernity encroached on a certain way of American life, represented (in an extreme way) by the lifestyle of the Peacock family, and the problems posed when not everybody accepts that change has been for the best. Home is the name of the town, a place that hasn’t fully moved with the times. The cleverness of Morgan & Wong’s writing usually becomes apparent with close analysis and this one is no exception. I’d argue that ‘Home’ is the apotheosis of a certain type of Morgan & Wong script – scripts that embrace the possibilities The X-Files offers for thematically-rich, genuinely frightening horror (see also ‘Squeeze’/’Tooms’, ‘Ice’, ‘Die Hand Die Verletzt’). ‘Home’ is almost certainly the most violent and disturbing X-File ever made. It was the first in a quartet of very fine Season 4 episodes that all test the elasticity of the series in different ways. ‘Home’ was written by the great Glen Morgan & James Wong, who were returning to The X-Files following the cancellation of their series Space: Above & Beyond. If you are somehow reading this but haven’t seen this episode, you should rectify that immediately. Their investigation leads them to encounter the Peacock family, three brothers seemingly living alone in an old house near where the baby was found. The episode sees Mulder & Scully looking into the death of an infant whose body was buried in the dirt in the remote town of Home, Pennsylvania. In particular, I would argue that the writing and direction are outstanding. In my view, it represents the artistic peak of the X-Files episodes that can be categorised as horror. It’s tense, scary and, at times, very funny. ![]() ‘Home is a particularly audacious instalment of The X-Files. ![]() ![]() Carl Sweeney talks about his favourite X-File, the dark & legendary ‘Home’… ![]()
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