Not these days." It's an idea that brings this hour into the present, where technology means kids spend more time in the home, and then what does it matter where that home is? Small towns are less isolated now than they were even in the '90s, making them both less distinctive and more omnipresent. But it leaves us with a great parting line: "There is no getting out of this town, Scully. Only the spell book is left unburnt, ready for the next jilted woman. When Mulder and Scully find her, Anna ignores their pleas to drop the book, and she spontaneously combusts right in front of Dana Scully's skeptical eyes.
("I can end this!" she screams as if on cue, a hellhound jumps her husband and devours him.) In a story with so many shades of female victimhood, it's a shame that a woman's attempt to claim power is depicted through such a foolish gamble. Anna meant to curse her husband by cursing Diane, but she unleashed something dark, and it spun out of control. And when he goes looking for his lover in the woods, he meets his wife, surrounded by candles, chanting a spell from the grimoire she claimed was his. The chief, after shooting Rick dead in the Strongs' doorway, passes the car wreck on the road and is beckoned into the forest by an unscathed Diane, even though her bloodied body is propped dead against a tree. Diane, fleeing her violent husband, gets behind the wheel when she's emotional and possibly not sober, then flips the car when her son appears in the middle of the road. As long as there's something we love out there, it can be turned against us.īy the time the night is done, the affair between the chief and Diane has claimed each of their families in full.
XFILES SEASON 8 OPENIN TV
What is the logic of these familiars, exactly? Is each familiar a new spirit or the same spirit wearing a new face? (What I'm getting at is: Are there hundreds of TV characters just roaming the woods in Eastwood, Connecticut?) Old Chuckles isn't a likely candidate to haunt the Strongs' home, but maybe he's here for Rick, taunting him with the face his son turned to when he was "feeling lonely/lonely as can be." Anna mentioned to Mulder earlier that screens had become the new outdoors, stealing kids' attention there were shades of last week's technophobia in her comment, but in "Familiar," technology hasn't replaced the paranormal - just changed its face. Chuckleteeth and that infernal theme song. Rick busts into the Strongs' home to confront his boss about the affair, only to find himself face to face with Mr. (This episode was filmed ninth in the season, far enough into the groundswell of the movement that it should have known what it was echoing.) Mulder's argument to Scully has the hallmarks of a prepared statement: "You and this mob are re-convicting right here and now for the sins of his past, with a fervor that we see too often in this American experience of ours." His sentiment is in line with the letter of the law, but he's countering fervor with too much fervor of his own, treating the debate as more important than the people it affects.Īnd so the more personal aspects of this case hover out of reach, not unlike a certain ghoulish TV character. But it carries an unfortunate subtext in the #MeToo era, when "witch hunt" is the default cry of anyone looking to cast doubt on an accusation of sexual harassment, undermining a cultural shift that aims toward greater respect for victims.
XFILES SEASON 8 OPENIN FREE
His insistence on the "very democratic ideal that it's better to let 10 guilty men go free than imprison one innocent man" is well intentioned, and his claim that this is a "witch hunt" ties this episode's interest in mob mentality together. Mulder is the only one to distrust all of this "perfect" evidence, and his gut instinct is right.
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