"Home"
Written by Glen Morgan and James Wong
Directed by Kim Manners


In which Mulder and Scully investigate the murder of a newborn in a remote town, and discover a disturbing family situation that time has finally caught up with...

Status Report - Memorable Quotes - Final Analysis





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Status Report

After more than a season away from the familiar harbors of 1013 Productions, Glen Morgan and James Wong made their return with the appropriately titled “Home”. Wrapped in the trappings of cliché horror staples, this episode is actually the introduction to Scully’s mindset following the events of “Herrenvolk”. More than that, the familiar Morgan/Wong style of ongoing character continuity begins to reveal itself.

In many ways, the series took a wrong turn in the middle of the second season, abandoning the idea of ongoing plot and character arcs in favor of a more episodic format. The mythology became something wholly separate from the stand-alone episodes, and as a result, certain emotional and logical consequences were often left unaddressed. The third season suffered greatly from this lack of focus.

While there are several reasons given for the return of Morgan and Wong as contributors to the series, the fourth season immediately seems to have a more cohesive tone. The current character arcs actually began in the wake of “Apocrypha”. Mulder’s need to hunt down the paranormal was fully explained: he needs to hope that there is something more to the world, so he can continue to believe in his quest.

Scully, however, found herself at odds with her own self-imposed restrictions. After Melissa died, she forced herself to deny anything and everything that might point to something more than a government conspiracy behind her abduction. Mulder needed to find something to sustain hope; Scully had to explain it away to sustain denial.

After “Herrenvolk”, Mulder is struggling to find a reason to hope. The truth remains just out of reach, and now Scully has become the one person he can trust to keep his hope alive. He is completely dependent on her, even if he doesn’t realize it. Scully, however, can no longer deny that there larger implications to her abduction. With the explanation provided to her in “731” no longer sufficient in her own mind, she cannot help but wonder what the future holds.

It’s hard to imagine that the future twists in the mythology, especially in the last few seasons, were completely unknown when this episode was written. So much of what is covered applies to Scully’s emotional landscape and the analogy set up between Scully and Mrs. Peacock. While this episode certainly stands apart from the series mythology, it pertains directly to Scully and her well-hidden fears about motherhood. These fears would ultimately come to pass in unexpected (and poorly received) ways.

The Peacocks themselves are the “X-Files” version of the Appalachian inbred mystique. One can practically hear the banjos playing from the second the episode begins. The inbreeding suggested by the episode is certainly disturbing to the vast majority of the audience, but the writers dance around something that is clearly meant to come to mind: this is not far from the kind of bioengineering conducted by the conspiracy itself. The test subjects in “Anasazi” or “731” were equally grotesque.

The depiction of Home, Pennsylvania itself could be seen as a metaphor for the larger canvas of the series. The small town atmosphere of Home is almost like an ideal, a veritable Garden of Eden. The Peacocks are the unnatural darkness, the serpent, biding its time. The town of Home is like Earth itself in the face of the conspiracy; the darkness inherent in human nature will ultimately present, wiping out everything virtuous in its path.

Having seen how horrible the conspiracy is and how far it reaches, is it any wonder that Mulder would consider an isolated small town attractive? Scully knows Mulder better than that, but the fact is, Mulder is seeking something untouched by the taint of the worst in humanity. A place like Home is hope realized. Sheriff Taylor understands it perfectly, however: sooner or later, the illusion of safety shatters. Like the products of the conspiracy itself, it is the discovery of malformed “humans” that signals the downfall.

Knowing that the conspiracy has been dealing in reproductive experiments, and knowing that she has been a part of those experiments, Scully has been wondering what the future holds in terms of motherhood. She’s seen her own possible fate in Peggy Hagopian in “Nisei”; she knows that there are likely to be serious effects stemming from her abduction. The natural question, of course, is whether or not she can have children, and what kind of children they might be.

This certainly becomes a central issue for the series. Scully is determined to be barren as a result of the abduction, and at least some part of the conspiracy’s use of her genetic material comes back to touch her life in Emily. Her eventual pregnancy becomes enmeshed in the later stages of “Phase II” of the conspiracy’s plan, and the fact that William is ultimately a “natural” child sets Scully as a Mary figure.

As Mulder says in this episode, Scully has never been depicted as the mothering type, at least not in terms of an actual child. She serves that capacity for Mulder at times, when his impulsive nature gets the better of him, but that’s typically staged for the sake of exploring Mulder’s psychology. Scully herself comes across as too tightly wound to get a date, let alone start a family.

A yearning for children is natural under the circumstances, but it also raises a troubling possibility. The mythology episodes have already established at this point in the series that the control chip implants have the capability of recording memory and thought. It is eventually revealed that the reverse is also true: abductees with the control implants can be subconsciously “commanded”, their thoughts and compulsions altered.

While the circumstances lend themselves to Scully’s thoughts on motherhood, the full measure of the mythology dictates that there could be more to it. The conspiracy certainly has interest in Scully based on her genetic profile, and since she has all the right genetic markers as William’s mother, the conspiracy would consider her perfect for “Phase II” experimentation. Her inclusion in that program could have been postponed when her cancer presented, quite soon after this episode.

If Andy Taylor and the seemingly peaceful way of life in Home is the fleeting expression of the perfect human society, at least through the filter of Mulder’s eyes, then the Peacocks are the brutal savagery of humanity’s darkest recesses. Morgan and Wong liken the Peacock brothers to a pack of wild animals, but there is a certain clever human element to their violence.

The murder of the Taylors is still remarkably disturbing. It strikes at the fear that so many suburbanites hold for those untidy and secretive neighbors just around the bend, the ones that don’t keep up their property and stay out of sight. All of the underlying fears for security and safety, the very things that define “home”, become focused on those who could undermine that security from within. The malformed, unkempt neighbor with the wild gleam in his eyes becomes, in this episode, the imagined monster realized.

It wouldn’t be an “X-File” without some kind of bizarre and unlikely concept, so the flow of the episode is momentarily interrupted by Mulder’s theory that the latest Peacock baby is the product of all three Peacock brothers and an unknown female. The fact that the audience has already worked out the identity of the female in question makes the suggestion even more disturbing. But the real issue here is one of narrative flow; this short scene doesn’t quite mesh with the tone of what had come before. It’s unnecessary considering that the Peacocks themselves are “alien” enough.

The rest of the episode is essentially the final act of a horror movie centered on Appalachian inbred monsters, with the particular style of the series in full force. Perhaps aware of how cliché the final act is, Morgan and Wong make an effort to make character moments shine. In the midst of creating a diversion, Scully’s maternal side is revealed once again. The writers note that Scully is babysitting her nephew again, something that hasn’t been mentioned in a couple seasons. No doubt, this is another indirect consequence of resolving Melissa’s murder and no longer denying the repercussions of her abduction.

Mulder and Scully reflect the horror that the audience feels (or is supposed to feel) when Mrs. Peacock is revealed. The family portraits are just plain unsettling, and Mrs. Peacock’s concept of “home” is a bit too familiar to most viewers to be easily dismissed. Some of the details don’t quite work, of course. Was Pennsylvania the preferred home of many hardcore Confederates? The Peacocks were supposed to have built their house in the American Civil War era, and one would think that such a family would have chosen someplace in a warmer climate, so to speak.

It’s the interaction between Scully and Mrs. Peacock that makes the final act so meaningful. Scully is horrified at the thought of the Peacock family’s version of togetherness, and yet Mrs. Peacock makes a very astute observation about Scully’s future. Scully will come to discover that she has a genetic daughter with unique issues (Emily) and she will bear a son with just about every potential human ability at his disposal (William).

In fact, William and the Peacock brothers are genetically on opposite extremes of the same genetic continuum. Everything negative within the human gene pool becomes dominant in the Peacocks, making them freaks in the eyes of civilized society. William, on the other hand, is a freak in the sense that everything humanity has locked in that “junk DNA” is turned on. Scully’s revulsion in this episode is revisited in the final season as her maternal fears are realized as William grows.

This episode ultimately covers two different aspects of the series: providing a good scare and addressing character. In terms of the good scare, the episode strays too far into cliché and shock to be fully effective. The Peacocks do represent the serpent in the Garden, but they are drawn too directly from the “Deliverance” stereotype. The end result is a sense of detachment, pulling the characters into an unreal situation rather than uncovering the horrors hidden in everyday life.

In terms of character, however, this is another strong showing. Mulder doesn’t need to say much to express how much he depends on Scully in his life, but he is definitely opening up to her, telling her things that he probably wouldn’t say to anyone else. It’s the little things, the personal memories and emotions, that show the trust. For Scully’s part, this episode delves into her growing sense of personal loss, too long centered solely on Melissa.

It’s fairly clear that Morgan and Wong were brought in to give the season a strong start and provide a Halloween episode that would be an instant classic. Certainly the FOX network helped by airing the episode once and then banning it for several years, giving the series even more notoriety. The episode itself doesn’t quite live up to the hype, but it is very distinctive and certainly memorable.


Memorable Quotes

SCULLY: “Meanwhile, I’ve quit the FBI and become a spokesperson for the Ab-roller…”

SCULLY: “Mulder, if you had to go without a cell phone for two minutes, you’d lapse into catatonic schizophrenia!”

MULDER: “There’s something rotten in Mayberry…”

MULDER: “Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic make-up and a really high tolerance for being second-guessed and start pumping out the little Uber-Scullys.”
SCULLY: “What about your family?”
MULDER: “Hmm? Well, aside from the need for corrective lenses and a tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials involved in an international governmental conspiracy, the Mulder family passes genetic muster!”

SCULLY: “Now we all have a natural instinct to propagate…”
MULDER: “Do we?”

SCULLY: “You still planning on making a home here?”
MULDER: “Not if I can’t get the Knicks game.”
SCULLY: “Well, just as long as a brutal infanticide doesn’t weigh into your decision…”

MULDER: “Scully, would you think less of me as a man if I told you I was kind of excited right now?”

SCULLY: “I baby-sat my nephew this weekend. He watches ‘Babe’ fifteen times a day.”
MULDER: “And people call me ‘Spooky’…”

MRS. PEACOCK: “I can tell you don’t have no children. Maybe one day you’ll learn the pride, the love, when you know your boy will do anything for his mother.”


Final Analysis

Overall, this episode was a strong return to the 1013 fold for Morgan and Wong. While the scares are somewhat dependent on unfortunate stereotypes and cliché, the character moments are very important to the theme of the season and the series mythology overall. This is easily one of the most notorious episodes of the series’ run, and was instrumental in generating viewers for the fourth season.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 8/10




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